Product Strategy Stack
|
​Dear Reader,​
Everyone loves a Product Strategy framework.
But choosing between the Product Strategy Stack and Decision Stack isn't straightforward. Both put long-term artifacts like a Vision and Mission at the top and link their different elements. But knowing which works best for you requires decoding their layers.
Both stacks agree: you need an inspiring "roof" that transcends mere business goals. Mission, Strategy, and Goals fulfill different human needs. Mission is emotional, Strategy is logical, and Goals are measurable. Whether you call it Vision (Decision Stack) or Mission (Strategy Stack) matters less than using what resonates in your company.
You're looking for elements that create inspiration and motivation and describe the change you want to bring to your customers. "Be the change" is generic BS and neither a good Vision nor a Mission. Martin Eriksson's Mind the Product example "To make product people more successful by coming together to further our craft." is a great example.
The wording of your Mission or Vision doesn’t have to be unique - but its motivational force on team members should be.
Let's be clear: Strategy is about making (and communicating) choices that move you from status quo to vision within your market context. Importantly, neither stack prescribes how to do Strategy - they first and foremost focus on the value Strategy needs to create for you. Martin's curated Strategy toolkit shows how the actual strategic work happens outside the stack, with the stack capturing only the essence of choices made.
Where the stacks differ most is in their scope: The Decision Stack uses broader language applicable across any domain to make it applicable at a company/organization level, while the Product Strategy Stack explicitly focuses how product strategy nests within company strategy.
Here's where it gets practical: this scope difference shapes how you'll use each stack for strategy choices. While the Decision Stack keeps options open for any strategic decision, Ravi's Product Strategy Stack drives towards specific product choices - like how Slack and Discord make different strategic choices about third-party integrations to serve their respective markets.
Next week, I will work through both stacks' measurement and action layers and their real-life usage.
If you have ever benefited from my content, I'd appreciate it if you would share​ this newsletter on LinkedIn. It truly helps.
Thank you for Practicing Product,
​Tim​
I'm excited to bring my beloved in-person workshops back to Berlin in January 2025. You can choose between 1-day workshops on Product Strategy, Product OKRs, or Product Discovery OR get the full 3-day experience for you or your team.
LEARN MORE |
(reach out for custom team quotes)
As a Product Management Coach, I guide Product Teams to measure the real progress of their evidence-informed decisions.
I focus on 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 #345 Four Decision Tree Frameworks Product Managers Need to Know READ ON HERBIG.CO PUBLISHED Dec 6, 2024 READING TIME 2 min & 54 sec Dear Reader, As a highly visual thinker, decision trees are one of my favorite ways to support product teams in making real progress and bringing structure to my thinking. Today, I want to share four of my favorite tree structures and use an outside-in view on Eventbrite to illustrate their usage. MECE Trees The MECE tree structure, invented by...
Product Practice #344 Product Strategy Stackvs. Decision Stack (Part 2) READ ON HERBIG.CO PUBLISHED Nov 29, 2024 READING TIME 4 min & 49 sec Dear Reader, This is part 2 in my mini-series on putting the Product Strategy Stack and Decision Stack side-by-side. You can read part 1 here. Measuring Progress Here's where the frameworks diverge more significantly. The Decision Stack uses "Objectives" as its connecting measuring element between "the work" and Strategy. At the same time, the Product...
Product Practice #342 The OKR Trap:Reporting vs. Progress READ ON HERBIG.CO PUBLISHED Nov 12, 2024 READING TIME 3 min & 04 sec Dear Reader, Similar to being focused on Discovery motions, but missing Discovery decisions, simply filling in OKR templates will lead to reporting, but not measuring progress. OKRs that report numbers try to get a template-based Objective right and define a Key Result as something with a number. OKRs that measure progress take care of the hard conversations through...