The Post-it trap: Why Strategy needs more than Workshops

​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:

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:

• Strategic choice: Focus on the top 3 bike-sharing providers in each city
• User Evidence: 72% of churned users also use bike-sharing services
• Market evidence: Bike-sharing shows 2x higher usage than e-scooters
• Company Strategy fit: Helps with the expansion of our mobility provider positioning within existing cities and leverages our existing integration SDK infrastructure
• Trade-off: Deliberately postponing public transport integration

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.

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Thank you for Practicing Product,

​Tim​

How to Dive Deeper into Product Strategy

Learn 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.

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Who is Tim Herbig?

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.