Many Product Managers must work in the uncharted territories of their industries. The maps and playbooks from the past don’t always help with brand new problems.

The Phoenix Checklist is a problem-solving framework for navigating completely unique situations. It was designed by the CIA to help agents in the field think through approaches to situations they’ve never seen or trained for.

The Phoenix Method consists of a series of several dozen questions that force you to view a problem from different angles and devise a solution based on things you already know. As you work your way through the list it’s impossible not to start coming up with next steps to get you unstuck.

Keep this checklist close to break glass in case of emergency.

💯 This post is part of a series called 100 Things Every Product Manager Should Know about things outside of product management that make great PMs.