1 tip & 3 resources per week to improve your Strategy, OKRs, and Discovery practices in less than 5 minutes. Explore my new book on realprogressbook.com
The Post-it trap: Why Strategy needs more than Workshops
The Post-it trap: Why Strategy needs more than WorkshopsDear 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 synthetic. It was designed to be "foolproof" and adoptable under less-than-ideal conditions. Under different conditions, your team could learn much faster, so don't infantilize your team. Doing this framework "well" is not a prerequisite for doing well." While frameworks and canvases can be valuable tools for synthesis and communication, they shouldn't be the starting point for strategy work. They often suggest a linear, oversimplified approach to what should be a dynamic process of making clear choices. The real value of Product Strategy comes from enabling teams to confidently say yes or no to opportunities over the next ~6-18 months. Any framework or template should serve this purpose, not become an end in itself. When teams start with fill-in-the-blank templates to form their Strategy, it‘s tempting to work through a given artifact in a one-off „Product Strategy Workshop.“ You shouldn‘t over-analyze every aspect of your Product Strategy before getting started. But believing something accurate just because it exists as a post-it note is equally dangerous.
One example is the decision to serve and not serve which audiences. This shouldn't just be a debate of opinions when comparing notes after „brainstorming." It should be an evidence-informed choice based on insights probably gathered outside meetings. Given your company's strategy, capabilities, and market opportunities, you need to understand not just who you could serve but who you should serve. Your Product Vision and Strategic Metrics should guide these decisions, helping you evaluate opportunities against clear criteria rather than gut feelings. This means connecting your audience choices to measurable indicators of progress and success. Evidence-informed decisions in Strategy involve not achieving 100% certainty and not acting solely on gut feelings and anecdotes. Strategy work should be treated like tending a garden—an ongoing process of nurturing and refinement rather than a one-time exercise. Templates and canvases can help synthesize and communicate your choices but shouldn't drive the process. The real test of your strategy isn't how well it fills a framework but how effectively it helps your team make decisions and set clear priorities for Discovery and execution. For example, instead of just writing "integrate with third-party mobility providers" on a Post-it, you might document:
This evidence-based foundation helps you confidently say no to other integration requests and defend your choices in stakeholder discussions. The synthesis of assembled Product Strategy Components should help you prioritize and make decisions. Templates and canvases can benefit from this act of synthesis and communication. But the more their contents are an uninformed guess, the less supportive they will be when translating your Strategy into OKRs and Discovery priorities. Did you enjoy the newsletter? Please forward it. It only takes two clicks. Creating this one took two hours. 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.
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. |
Product Practice Newsletter
1 tip & 3 resources per week to improve your Strategy, OKRs, and Discovery practices in less than 5 minutes. Explore my new book on realprogressbook.com
Product Practice #406 Why your Company's POV on OKRs matters more than Processes PUBLISHED Apr 30, 2026 READ ON HERBIG.CO Dear Reader, Before I talk with companies about OKR cadences, templates, or tools, I ask them: "What do you expect to change by using OKRs?" The answers take a bit of time. Not because they don't exist, but because OKRs have been treated as a solution without a problem to solve. OKRs haven't been treated as a product, but as a process without purpose. They've chosen a...
Product Practice #405 How to treat Prototypes as Decision-Making Tools PUBLISHED Apr 23, 2026 READ ON HERBIG.CO From Strategy Choice to Planned Experiments in One Workshop In my upcoming live remote workshop From Strategy to Discovery, I take you from sharpening your Product Strategy, to defining leading indicators for measuring progress, all the way to prioritized assumptions you need to derisk end-to-end. Three 4h Live Sessions - Lifetime Material and Recording Access - Real Results Join...
Product Practice #404 Linked Better Practices over Stacked Best Practices PUBLISHED Apr 16, 2026 READ ON HERBIG.CO Dear Reader, During a recent webinar, someone asked a question I had to think about a bit longer: "What do you do when your strategy is still early, and you're not sure if it's right?" The answer that popped into my head was based on an incredible piece of advice (or admission) I received from a former boss 10+ years ago: No one knows if their strategy is right in the beginning,...