Why your Users don't care about your Product Strategy


Why your Users don't care
about your Product Strategy

READ ON

HERBIG.CO

PUBLISHED

Apr 11, 2025

READING TIME

3 min & 24 sec

​Dear Reader,​

One of the most powerful ways to spot and stop Alibi Progress is to start treating our practices like products.

This means clearly defining three elements:

  • Audience: For whom is this practice meant?
  • Problem: What core problem does this practice aim to solve?
  • Success: How would we know this practice has delivered value?

The question then becomes: "For whom is this way of working trying to solve what problem, and how would we know it was solved?" instead of "Are we implementing this practice correctly?"

Treating Product Strategy Like a Product

In many companies, there's a tendency to take the CEO's ideas and repackage them in a Business Model Canvas, so they look like a "proper strategy." That's textbook Alibi Progress.

To make Product Strategy truly valuable, articulate its value for you. I define its value like this:

"For product teams and stakeholders, Product Strategy helps intentionally say yes or no to opportunities. We know it's successful when most team efforts align with the strategy and teams proactively decline misaligned requests."

Let's unpack this value statement:

For your audience (product teams and stakeholders):

  • Strategy isn't primarily for customers—they care about your products, not your strategy
  • The real consumers are internal: teams and stakeholders who need to make decisions
  • If teams aren't considered a primary audience, strategy becomes something "done to them" rather than "done with them."

For the problem you're solving (saying yes/no to opportunities):

  • Strategy's fundamental purpose is to enable clear decisions
  • Without explicit choices, teams chase competitors or follow technology trends
  • Good strategy prevents the "sushi pizza" syndrome—trying to build something for everyone but satisfying no one

For your success measures (aligned efforts and declined misaligned requests):

  • Track how much team energy goes to efforts connected to strategic priorities
  • Measure how frequently teams confidently decline opportunities that don't align

Remember: You're not a better product manager because you filled out a strategy template correctly. You're better when you can confidently say no to opportunities that don't fit your strategy and yes to those that do.

Next week, I will share the practical benefits of treating OKRs like a product.

1 Question For You To Put This Into Practice

Think about your current product strategy. If you had to articulate its value in terms of audience, problem, and success measures, what would your statement look like?

Reply and let me know your answer.

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Thank you for Practicing Product,

Tim

Be better with OKRs, not at OKRs

Join me for an engaging roundtable conversation about pragmatic and practical OKRs at this year's ProductLab Conf> on September 18 in Berlin, Germany.

Content I found Practical This Week

Strategy Blocks: An operator’s guide to product strategy

Building a Strategy: Answering the Five Essential Questions

When it comes to building a successful strategy, start with clarity around your mission and vision. Your mission is why your company exists today, while the vision defines where you aim to go. With a clear purpose as your anchor, you can develop a strategic plan that’s both focused and actionable.

A Framework and Method for Developing a Product Strategy Collaboratively

The thing I liked most about this process is the reason for the title I chose for this post: Collaborative Product Strategy. This wasn’t a situation where our leaders sat in a room and came up with stuff. Via each team member we stayed close to our customers and our business throughout the process. And we didn’t do this because it feels better (although it does!). We believe that we get better outcomes when decisions are made by the people who are closest to the data (i.e. customer needs, industry knowledge, etc.). That means that if a Product Strategy is not set in a way that ensures you have all the relevant data, it is more likely to fail. So I guess if I have any advice about Product Strategy, it would come down to this: don’t do it alone.

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.

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