1 tip & 3 resources per week to improve your Strategy, OKRs, and Discovery practices in less than 5 minutes.
🛠️ How does your Traffic Light Strategy look?
How does your Traffic Light Strategy look?​Dear Reader,​ Here’s the good news: Your Product Strategy doesn’t have to be 100% proven and watertight based on evidence before you can start sharing and working on it. Instead of trying to hide the assumptions present in your strategy, embrace them by using what I like to call the “Traffic Light Strategy.” This ties in with the idea that your Strategy consists of individual but coherent components that fill universal strategy patterns with life. Once articulated, you can color-code the individual components according to their degree of “unprovenness.”
Green - Let’s go. Your green strategy components are rock-solid foundations for decision-making. This applies to things you can fully control (like the definition of your Vision) or components that are really well-proven, like the choice of user segments based on the strong qualitative and quantitative signal you received. Yellow - Just enough Conviction. Don’t hold back on making decisions based on these components, but be clear about how proven these are. Maybe you have a hunch about the buyer segment you need to serve to reach your target user segment, but not more. Or your strategy metrics sort of tie in with where you want to go, but they lack specificity. Derisking these components shouldn’t be your first priority, but be aware of their somewhat shaky substance. Red - Beware the Assumption. Whether due to a lack of data or the high degree of HiPPO decisions, Some components making up your Product Strategy are just wild guesses. These can either be the assumed reasons why customers will pick you over an alternative (no, a nice UI isn’t a strong moat) or how you will reach users to deliver your value proposition. Making these components explicit has two advantages: First, you get your next Discovery priorities “for free.” Second, you avoid working on your strategy for too long in the ivory tower by being upfront about what has to be clarified further by doing the work instead of thinking about doing the work. Did you enjoy this one or have feedback? Do reply. It's motivating. I'm not a robot; I read and respond to every subscriber email I get (just ask around). If this newsletter isn't for you anymore, you can unsubscribe here. Thank you for Practicing Product, ​Tim​ How to Dive Deeper into Product StrategyLearn how I helped companies like Chrono24 and ausbildung.de hone their Product Strategy practices. I closely work with product organizations through workshops and coaching to introduce and adapt Product Strategy.
What did you think of this week's newsletter? 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. |
Product Practice Newsletter
1 tip & 3 resources per week to improve your Strategy, OKRs, and Discovery practices in less than 5 minutes.
Product Practice #353 How Duolingo Approaches Strategy, OKRs, and Discovery READ ON HERBIG.CO PUBLISHED Mar 7, 2025 READING TIME 4 min & 24 sec Dear Reader, Many Product Managers were in awe of the ways of working shared in The Duolingo Handbook a few weeks ago. While it’s an inspiring read, I used this as a reason to revisit some of my all-time favorite reads about how this company operates (or at least used to operate) and extract my takeaways with you. Duolingo focuses on “Movable” Metrics...
Product Practice #352 My Digitale Leute Summit 2024 Keynote Recording and Slides READ ON HERBIG.CO PUBLISHED Feb 28, 2025 READING TIME 1 min & 40 sec Dear Reader, I'm excited to share the full recording of my talk on How Product Teams Can Connect the Dots of Strategy, OKRs, and Discovery from last year's Digitale Leute Summit. You can think of it as the naturally progressing chapter (hint hint) that would follow my talk from Product at Heart 2024. As always, I won't require you, as an...
Product Practice #351 The Post-it trap: Why Strategy needs more than Workshops READ ON HERBIG.CO PUBLISHED Feb 21, 2025 READING TIME 5 min & 19 sec Dear Reader, 'Product Strategy by Post-it' occurs when teams prioritize filling out frameworks over making real strategic choices. It's a common symptom of treating strategy as a checkbox exercise rather than a tool for decision-making. John Cutler even suggests that most frameworks should feature a warning label like this: "This framework is...