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
Your Strategy Can't Help You If It Can't Help You Say No during Execution
Your Strategy Can't Help You If It Can't Help You Say No during ExecutionDear Reader, Stephanie walked out of her strategy presentation feeling confident. The executives had nodded approvingly. Every field on her strategy canvas was filled in. Her product strategy for GearSwap, an outdoor gear marketplace, conveyed a clear message: “The GearSwap marketplace will proactively help weekend warriors and professional adventurers alike match trip challenges with the right gear through peer-to-peer and professional seller options across all outdoor categories.” Two weeks later, three requests landed on her desk:
Stephanie pulled up her strategy doc to prioritize. Instead of clarity, she found endless ways to justify each request. Gear insurance? It could help both buyer segments. Warehousing integration? Supports their sellers. Water sports? Just another category. This is what I call Alibi Progress: A strategy that ticks all the template boxes but fails to create value when teams need to make actual decisions. The problem isn’t that Stephanie didn’t create a strategy—it’s that she optimized for theoretical correctness instead of practical usefulness. Her strategy couldn’t help her say no because it never made real choices. Most product strategies fail this same test. When a new opportunity emerges, teams can’t use their strategy to decide. They escalate, debate, or try to rationalize doing everything. Strategy has one job: helping you confidently say yes or no to opportunities. Ever since I started following his work, collaborating on a piece with Ravi Mehta was a big dream of mine. Following his tremendous support for my book, Real Progress, we put together a complementary piece for his blog and newsletter. In it, I break down:
Thank you for Practicing Product, Tim PS.: I had the pleasure of appearing on Jason's One Knight in Product Podcast and enjoyed every minute of it:
Join my In-Person Workshops in BerlinI'm excited to bring my beloved in-person workshops back to Berlin in January 2026. You can choose between 1-day workshops on Product Strategy, Product OKRs, or Product Discovery, or opt for the full 3-day experience for you or your team.
(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. |
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 #402 Product Discovery forInternal Enabler Teams PUBLISHED Apr 2, 2026 READ ON HERBIG.CO Dear Reader, Because the customers of your product just sit three desks away, you might think you can just "talk to them." And that's precisely what often leads to the low adoption of better product practices among product teams working on internal products (also sometimes called Enabler Teams). And why, when a user has a company email address, it is likely nobody's doing discovery on...
Product Practice #401 How to Close Your Confidence Loop PUBLISHED Mar 26, 2026 READ ON HERBIG.CO Dear Reader, Most teams can tell you what they're building. Far fewer can tell you why it matters and how they will know it has worked. And I mean in a connected, defensible way that traces from their next release or discovery back to a company goal. That gap is where confidence lives (or doesn't). The confidence loop describes the critical questions you need to be able to answer and connect to...
Product Practice #400 Get your North Star Metric Reviewed by me PUBLISHED Mar 19, 2026 READ ON HERBIG.CO Dear Reader, To celebrate the 400th edition of this newsletter (🥳), I thought, why not try something different: Share your current North Star Metric and some high-level context with me through the form below, and I'll send you a personalized review video - for FREE and without AI processing. Just me, in front of a camera, sharing my thoughts on your North Star Metric. There's no hook,...