Product Practice #297 |
Before we get started: My channel of choice for contributing to supporting those in Israel that are in need. More options can be found here.
​Dear Reader,​
It’s easy to lose track of the actual purpose of strategy work, especially between the noise of Product Strategy frameworks and how a “good” strategy should look according to Twitter or LinkedIn. Product Teams should work forward from the value for the recipient, not backward from the defaults of others.
Instead of treating practices like Product Strategy as a tick-box exercise, treat it like a product: Understand for whom you’re trying to create what value and design your process and output accordingly, with early validation in mind.
​
Start with your Audience. Product Strategy should lead to work that produces “outward-facing” products, but it’s supposed to be consumed by internal audiences. Typically, that’s a) stakeholders and leadership, b) other departments, and c) the members of your product team.
What’s the job of your Strategy work? The Strategy aims to serve a different job for each of these audiences. For leadership it’s about being able to trust the direction and decisions of the team and horizontal and vertical coherence within the company. For your team, however, it’s about having clear, reliable, yet flexible decision-making guardrails for prioritization.
How to distribute Strategy? Again, this will depend on the audience. A one-pager or concise .ppt might best match their consumption patterns for leadership. Translating your choices into an agreed canvas-like structure between departments helps the information flow. And within your team, you need to find a shape that’s easy to comprehend, with optional deep dives to back up your choices and translate them into goals to measure your progress.
How to derisk Strategy Creation? Test the assumptions about your strategy as soon as you realize they are only assumptions. One assumption might be the coherence with the company's direction. This might require periodic strategy check-ins with leadership. Another assumption could be the coherence and comprehensibility of your efforts. Sharing synthesized strategy statements and conclusions with your team on an ongoing basis helps to mitigate the “big bang confusion” or “grand reveal rejection.”
There are more questions to consider when creating your Product Strategy to succeed in your target market. However, acknowledging these overlaps can help you go from filling out a template to creating a valuable artifact.
That's (almost) all, Reader. If you enjoyed today's issue, please do reply (it helps with deliverability). If you didn't, you can unsubscribe here.
Thank you for Practicing Product,
Tim
My self-paced Path to Product Strategy Course enables you to form, execute, and measure the progress of coherent Product Strategy Choices based on structure and evidence.
Check out the Course |
What did you think of this week's newsletter?
​Click here if you only want to see what's behind each option​
As a Product Management Coach, I guide Product Teams to measure the progress of their evidence-informed decisions.
I identify and share the patterns among better practices to connect the dots of Product Strategy, Product OKRs, and Product Discovery.
1 tip & 3 resources per week to improve your Strategy, OKRs, and Discovery practices in less than 5 minutes.
Product Practice #338 Product at Heart 2024Keynote Recording and Slides READ ON HERBIG.CO PUBLISHED Oct 18, 2024 READING TIME 2 min & 17 sec Dear Reader, Stepping on stage at Product at Heart 2024 five weeks ago was a definitive highlight of my year so far. I loved bringing a message I deeply care about to an audience I also care about. Without further ado, I'm happy to share the full recording of this keynote with you: Watch the Video You can also get the slides and templates I shared during...
Product Practice #337 How to Know if Your Product Strategy Has Worked READ ON HERBIG.CO PUBLISHED Oct 11, 2024 READING TIME 4 min & 16 sec Dear Reader, Your Strategy can be perfectly thought-out, based on well-researched insights, co-created by Individual Contributors and Leadership, and contain sustainable advantages over alternatives. But if nobody understands it and you can't integrate it into teams' decision-making processes, the value of Product Strategy will remain locked. The degree to...
Product Practice #336 How to Build a Product Strategy That Fits Your Company’s Focus READ ON HERBIG.CO PUBLISHED Oct 4, 2024 READING TIME 3 min & 14 sec Dear Reader, Besides being decisive, another attribute that can determine the value of your Product Strategy is how layered it is. The best way to think of the interplay between the Company and Product layers is the magnitude of overlap between each of them: Is the audience you chose for your Product part of the prioritized audience by the...