Episoder
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Your product vision is a position you aspire to have in the future: be the best solution for a problem a set of customers care about. That should drive your strategy. And I had the fortune of discussing positioning in detail with April, the biggest guru.
We started in a very controversial way: you should not base your strategy on your positioning! Wait, what?
Positioning is an exercise to formulate how your current product is the best for a specific customer need.
Strategy is not about your current product! It is about the value you want to create in the future.
Confusing those can get you in trouble.
But there is a catch. Product Strategy is about âhow you will achieve your Product Vision.â However, if your vision potentially goes 3, 5, or 10 years into the future, your 6, 12, 18 months strategy is getting you closer to smaller milestones that still need to be differentiated and sellable!
These milestones have a âpositioning thesis,â and your strategy needs to build a product that can deliver on the promise you aim to make.
Resources
AprilDunford.com
Aprilâs newsletter and podcast
Obviously Awesome book
Sales Pitch book
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Strategy and its role in connecting vision to execution is one of those n-dimensional problems that is hard to think about, let alone describe in a chart.
Fortunately, Martin Eriksson, the author of the decision stack, did just that. In his work, he describes a mental framework for navigating this challenging space and how you can think about connecting the decisions and artifacts of your vision, strategy, objectives, and opportunities.
In this episode, we navigated the hard questions about this mental model: common pitfalls, what to do as a PM if you donât have a Vision or Strategy, what is the right level of strategy definition to enable empowered teams, and much more!
Find the Decision stack at: https://www.thedecisionstack.com/
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Alignment is one of the hardest challenges of strategy. Conflictive goals, every department fighting for their priority, opposed world views and interpretations of how the future will unfoldâŠ
Luckily, Bruce McCarthy is an expert on the topic, and in this episode, he shares many tactics and tips on how to surface these conversations, use the right artifacts, and create alignment.
Resources
New Book: Aligned
ProductCulture.org
Follow Bruce on Linkedin / X
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We all know Strategy is complex, cumbersome, and foggy. We strive to navigate and make strategic decisions in this environment, which usually leads to opinionated battles and stakeholder misalignment since we can all interpret the signals in different ways.
Remarkably, Dan Olsen, my guest in this episode, created simple tools and one-pagers that help you crystalize your thinking, find the opportunities that can truly make a difference, and have more meaningful conversations with stakeholders.
Iâm amazed by how Dan brought complex situations down to their essence and explained how framing and structuring them can truly make these daunting challenges approachable and almost easy to resolve.
Important note: In a few moments, Dan shared a screen, so if you can watch while you listen, it could be helpful to get a visual reference (but it is not required to understand the concepts discussed).
You can find Dan at dan-olsen.com
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Ready for some strategic wisdom? In this episode, I had the honor of delving into the depths of product strategy with Marty Cagan, a true luminary in the field. I asked the hardest questions and tried to explore topics beyond what you would normally find in Martyâs writing. From the pitfalls of neglecting strategy to the necessity of ongoing adaptation, Marty's insights are a game-changer for product leaders.We explored controversial topics, such as why strategy trumps discovery and the critical role of top-level input in shaping successful product strategies. But that's not allâwe also discuss the significance of understanding team scope, capabilities, and experience, the role of strategy in budget allocation, and the importance of seeking guidance from experienced mentors.Every part of the episode has actionable advice, which Marty very eloquently shares.Where to Find Martyâs Work:
svpg.com, where you can find the newsletter
Transformed is Martyâs newest book, and Empowered contains many topics we explored in the episode.
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There are infinite ways to define strategy. Most involve finding a critical challenge and defining the big strokes of how to solve it.
This can be an intimidating task to any leader! Furthermore, if we spend the high effort involved in putting it together, and communicating it as our brilliant strategy for the next 12 months, chances are that the organization will not be super receptive to feedback, learning and iteration on this critical strategic bets.
This is a very complex and nuanced topic, but I had the fortune to speak with Jeff Gothelf, not only an expert in the topic, but someone who can articulate complex problems in simple ways.
We covered how Jeff defines a âleanâ strategy, how connecting strategy to OKRs help you learn fast about your hypothesis, and how leaders should take a more humble (and smarter!) approach to explicitly calling out uncertainty and willingness to learn.
Where to find Jeff:
JeffGothelf.com, where you can find the newsletter
Linkedin
Jeffâs upcoming book, âWho does what by how muchâ
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Strategy is messy. Itâs happening simoulteaneously at different levels, with different lenses, different time horizons, among many other stakes at play.
My guest in this episode, John Cutler, has a remarkable ability to bridge the world of theories with what we actually face down the road when executing. Together, we unravel the intricacies of the 'messy middle,' that challenging space between lofty company aspirations and the day-to-day grind of teams.
The conversation was extremely valuable to me, because it brought actionable ideas to complex topics like:
helping team think bigger and wider,
what is important to define to have a solid strategy,
how to (or not to) align,
and many more topics.
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We often talk about strategy diagnosis and insights as if they were something we go through in isolation when defining the direction of our product.
However, those insights come (or should come) from our discovery efforts. Unfortunately, this connection is often missing, and to be fair, it can be pretty messy.
Thatâs why I had a wonderful conversation with Teresa Torres, one of the top voices on product discovery, and we went deep into the hard questions of connecting these two worlds:
How involved should leaders be in Discovery?
How do we validate our strategic assumptions with users?
How do discovery at different levels interconnect?
and much more. Teresa shared multiple tips on tactics to overcome the typical pitfalls.
Where to Find Teresaâs Work
Product Talk - Hundreds of valuable articles and resources.
Product Talk Academy - All training options.
Continuous Discovery Habits book
To join the product leadersâ monthly sessions, email [email protected]
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While strategy is always difficult, large corporations add complexities into the mix: dependencies, politics, complex budgeting processes, and more.
In this episode, I spoke with Phil Hornby, a Product Coach with vast experience in different contexts, and we discussed his experience with the product strategy for a business unit within Continental, a large German automotive company.
Phil shared great examples and tips on how to gain alignment, deal with politics and dependencies, handle risk, and much more!
More takeaways at https://productdirection.substack.com/
Where to Find Philâs Work
LinkedIn
Philâs site: For Product People
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Few elements wield as much influence over a company's fate as the art and science of monetization. And I know from personal experience that this is a hard-to-master topic for product people.
Consider the multiple complex questions that may arise: do we go for a subscription or pay-as-you-go model? How many tiers of subscriptions? Whatâs the right price? Do we include ads? How frequent? How intrusive?
At the core of all these questions is the value exchange: how much are users willing to pay (in money or attention) in exchange for the value we provide? Solving it correctly can be the difference between success and stagnation.
Megan is a seasoned product leader with vast experience solving these questions in multiple industries and multiple monetization models. We explored real-life challenges, frameworks, and tips that you can apply to your strategies.
You can find Megan Hughes on Linkedin:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/meganhug1/
Find all the details and more episodes in:
https://productdirection.substack.com/
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Frequently, strategies are about finding avenues for growth. We often think about that as directly impacting the core company metrics.
But when developing platforms that allow integrations to the core product, the strategy is more complex: we enable entry points that enable 3rd party developers to solve âedge but valuableâ use cases adopted by users who *only then* increase the core product metrics.
In this conversation with Frank Harris, VP of Platform Product at Slack, we discussed how they formulated a strategy in this complex landscape and the nuances and challenges of the growth journey.
You can find Frank on Linkedin or X.
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When doing expansion strategies, we need to come up with insights about what markets we can penetrate and win. Combining that with product-led growth thinking, you can review the pull from existing users to come up with underserved needs and sizing opportunities.
That can be easier said that done, but in this episode of 100 Product Strategies, Markiyan Matsekh, ex-Director of Product at Vimeo, shared the steps he took to conquer the enterprise segment.
Besides the very insightful strategy story, he shared the fundamentals and the importance of Vimeoâs positioning and differentiation to win in a crowded market.
And of top of that, we closed with an interest story of an unsuccessful strategy, that failed for the same reasons the other one succeeded, reinforcing the importance of these concepts.
You can find Markiyan on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markiyanmatsekh/
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Why do we create strategies?
To focus on the most critical problems or opportunities which will help us get closer to our vision.
And the first step of putting that focus into action is concentrating our resources there.
This is easier said than done, and the complexity becomes more evident when we have more than one product, at different maturity stages, and with very different strategic paths ahead of them.
While this problem can fall into the Portfolio Strategy space for larger corporations, startups also face this challenge when expanding.
In this episode, I had the chance to speak with Iryna Struk, who is running product management at HandsHQ, a startup with a mature product and another trying to find product market fit.
We discussed not only resource allocation but also a broad set of topics, starting as usual with how they create strategy, how they handle context switch, and how they balance the different levels of uncertainty when planning.
You can connect with Iryna on Linkedin:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/irynastruk/
You can also find more info on:
https://productdirection.substack.com/
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Many of us work in complex environments where the set of opportunities we can potentially pursue to impact a desired outcome is very wide.
As you can imagine, at Google, you can find both very complex and large environments, and opportunities to innovate in multiple directions.
In this episode, I spoke with Stefan Schnabl, who works in the education space at Google, with the potential to cover very different audiences, problems, and solutions.
He shared many tips and stories, from how they align on direction down to how the team does research and experimentation in the space to identify strong opportunities.
You can find Stefan on Linkedin, and the pilot post in his blog.
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Most companies' strategies are âroadmap on steroidsâ: large plans of multiple big ideas to implement, which usually have not been validated.
To differentiate and create thoughtful and successful strategies, you must start with evidence-based insights.
But how do we collect that evidence? How do we gain confidence and compare opportunities? After selecting opportunities, how do we keep validating the strategy through the multiple solution ideas we may pursue?
I had the pleasure of speaking with the evidence-guided guru, Itamar Gilad, and we explored the practices, tools, and challenges you will use and face to make your strategy more robust relying on solid evidence.
Itamar has been helping teams with tools and resources I strongly recommend, like the confidence meter, and ICE Scoring. He recently published his fantastic book, Evidence Guided, which is a must for all product managers and leaders.
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TL;DR: Platforms are everywhere, and their challenges are hard to understand and impact even non-platform products. Thor is an expert who shared his learnings building the Miro Marketplace and, previously, the Google Maps Developerâs Platform.
Many times when discussing strategy, we focus on the most typical scenarios: consumer apps, B2B SaaS, media, etcetera.
But platforms are continuously emerging, and even if you are not working on one, they are probably impacting you: app stores, social media integrations, etcetera.
The challenges they present for strategy are quite nuanced, ranging from defining complex success metrics to understanding how to align with the larger company strategy.
Understanding how to think differently about their strategies is critical. Thor Mitchell is the Product Director for Miroâs platform teams, has a long history of working in this field, and shared his process, journey, and challenges in developing their latest strategy.
You can connect with Thor at Linkedin or Twitter.
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Startup challenges change as they grow. The focus and needs of the product strategy also change, as the company moves through funding rounds and product maturity stages.
What are the critical factors leaders should consider at each stage? How does collaboration among different areas evolve? Whatâs the impact of funding rounds on focus areas?
In this episode of 100 Product Strategies, we spoke with Lily Smith, CPO at BBC Maestro and co-host of the Product Experience podcast, who has been taking product leadership roles at startups at different stages.
We discussed the strategic implications of technical scalability, user experience improvement, and business expansion. Lily compared how challenges evolve from pre-market-fit stages to the scale-up period.
You can find Lily on Linkedin!
Remember that you can find more info and material on productdirection.co/podcast.
If you are eager to know more about product strategy, check out Product Direction: How to build successful products at scale with Strategy, Roadmaps, and OKRs
You can also contact or follow your host, Nacho Bassino, at productdirection.co (training, coaching, and more)
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We all love good strategy stories. What is better than good strategy stories? The ones that are simple and that we can derive lessons to apply elsewhere.
In this episode, Saeed Khan shares his stories and thoughts collected over 25 years of product management experience.
Different from other episodes, in this one, we started with the core elements of strategy, which Saeed simplifies as building hypotheses on how you can achieve certain objectives. Making some mapping to the Playing to Win framework, he simplified the result of strategy as a set of Goals connected with Measures, which are connected to Actions.
We also reviewed some examples so you can apply these simple steps to your products.
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Over the last 18 months, I have interviewed 29 product leaders, inquiring about their strategy formulation and challenges.
We covered different industries, customer types, company scales, product types, and geographies.
As I shared in the podcast intro, after writing Product Direction, I felt we didnât have enough examples out there of how people do strategy work and what challenges they face.
My secret project all along was to compile a list of different examples and also tag them accordingly so product leaders could listen to stories they felt were related to their context.
https://productdirection.substack.com/p/my-secret-summary-of-30-real-life
Let's review my takeaways and where you can get the summary of all past episodes!
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If you create a great strategy and communicate it properly, and have good people to execute it, what can possibly go wrong?
Well, as you can imagine, multiple layers of complexities can get in the way.
In this episode, Randy shared two stories where different company intricacies made good strategies fail. The learning will help you view your strategy process from a wider perspective, and help you avoid these pitfalls.
Randy is the author of What Do We Do Now?, host of The Product Experience podcast by Mind the Product, and Coach and Consultant at outofowls.com.
In this episode, we talked about:
2 stories about good strategies failing
The complexities of funding your strategy
Build or Buy decisions in strategy
High-level stakeholder alignment
How to build trust for decision-makers
And much more!
Remember that you can find more info and material on productdirection.co/podcast.
If you are eager to know more about product strategy, check out Product Direction: How to build successful products at scale with Strategy, Roadmaps, and OKRs
You can also contact or follow your host, Nacho Bassino, at productdirection.co (training, coaching, and more)
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