What Should Strategy, OKRs, and Discovery Allow You To Do?Dear Reader, It’s tempting to focus the process of practicing Strategy, OKRs, and Discovery on technical correctness. Does the Objective not have a number? Cool! Do you interview one customer per week? Great - Let’s move on. But that’s a pattern of Alibi Progress: prioritizing technical correctness over everyday value. Whenever these ways of working feel like a tick box exercise –– either for management or from a thought leader's definition of “how to do them right” –– your chances of experiencing the real value go down. “I have to write the Product Strategy exactly as stated in the most popular template.” - No, you don’t. “My OKRs have to only be about Outcomes, or I’m not allowed to use them.” - No, they don’t. “I have to interview customers every week directly, or else I’m not doing Discovery and my products will fail.” - No, you don’t. Every choice you make about HOW you work should be in service of helping you and your team experience the core value of a practice. The core value of Product Strategy is enabling a team to confidently say yes or no to opportunities that come their way over the next 6 - 18 months. The core value Product OKRs provide is helping teams measure their progress toward strategic priorities by responding to their everyday decisions. The core value of Product Discovery is to reduce uncertainty regarding problems worth solving and solutions worth building through reliable evidence. If I were an “Anti Product Doctor,” here’s what I would prescribe to any product team to keep them busy with alibi progress: Try to talk to more users to unlock “the one insight” that will make you believe that a problem is worth solving. Rewrite your lagging OKRs after reading another thought leaders' book. Or translate your ambiguous product strategy into another canvas, hoping it will make it more tangible A more (seemingly) counterintuitive way of moving from being stuck to making real progress is to stop digging deeper into the area you're stuck in and look around you to spot opportunities to drag yourself out of your current rut. Focus on connecting the dots you have and on improving the practices that exist, rather than drawing new ones and having to seek connections over again and again. 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 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. |
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Product Practice #328 My 2024 Mid-Year Review READ ON HERBIG.CO PUBLISHED Jun 28, 2024 READING TIME 5 min & 20 sec This is the last newsletter before my annual summer writing break. I will return on August 16th after next week's issue. In the meantime, follow me on LinkedIn for more hands-on content. ☀️ Dear Reader, I first encountered the concept of a mid-year review via Tiago Forte a few years back. After I published 7 Things I Learned from Writing a Weekly Product Management Newsletter for...
Product Practice #327 How Product Leaders CanGuide Their Team's OKRs READ ON HERBIG.CO PUBLISHED Jun 21, 2024 READING TIME 3 min & 51 sec This is the second-to-last newsletter before my annual summer writing break. I will return on August 16th after next week's issue. ☀️ For the scope of this essay, I will define Product Leaders as members of a Product Management function with people management responsibilities (e.g., Director of Product, Head of Product, VP of Product, etc.). Product leaders...
Product Practice #326 4 Learnings fromWorking on 40 NSMs READ ON HERBIG.CO PUBLISHED Jun 14, 2024 READING TIME 5 min & 0 sec Dear Reader, During an ongoing long-term Discovery and Metrics Coaching engagement, I had the opportunity to meet many different external and internal-facing teams. One of this company’s focus points is the establishment of more metrics-informed decision-making, and they landed on North Star Metrics (NSMs) as a critical vehicle for that. Here are my four key takeaways...