Why your Users don't care
about your Product Strategy

​Dear Reader,​

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

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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.

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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 Read it here

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.