91: How to sharpen up your vision and strategy
You can help your company to sharpen up its vision and strategy with these straightforward questions and worked examples.
Tag: strategy
PRODUCTHEAD: How to align vision, strategy and action
» Every decision is a trade-off — deciding what not to do is just as important as deciding what to do
» A good product vision captures customer, user, value proposition and links to organisational objectives
» Interrogate your goals: “For this to happen, what must be true?”, then mark which are facts or assumptions
» Avoid jumping on the first idea — check what problem we think it solves, then ask, “How else could we do this?”
PRODUCTHEAD: Exploiting inertia for fun and profit
» When strategic frames grow rigid, companies, like nations, tend to keep fighting the last war
» If organisations (incorrectly) view change as gradual they will have resistance to the change
» The innovator’s dilemma: cater to current needs or attempt to anticipate future demands?
» Many common financial tools distort the value, importance, and likelihood of success of investments in innovation
PRODUCTHEAD: Back to school
» Every other team is allowed to be uncertain about the future — so should product
» There are different types of question for strategy, opportunities and interventions
» Avoid investments that are neither defense nor offense
» What people say and how they really feel can often vary
PRODUCTHEAD: The difference between good and bad strategy
Rumelt:
» “Good strategy grows out of independent and careful assessment of the situation”
» “Bad strategy follows the crowd, substituting popular slogans for insights”
Eriksson:
» “Deciding what not to do is just as important as deciding what to do”
PRODUCTHEAD: John Cutler’s North Star Metric
» Plans for the short and long term are often easier to define than those for the medium term (1-3 quarters)
» A North Star Metric is a leading indicator of sustainable growth
» It is the single metric that best captures the core value that your product delivers to customers
PRODUCTHEAD: 5 product strategy tips
» The vision describes the future we are trying to create
» The strategy describes how we’ll make the vision a reality
» There are only 4 strategies after finding product-market fit
» Tesla subsidised more affordable car models with the revenue from their initial luxury roadster
» Storytelling helps to convince stakeholders to believe in your vision
PRODUCTHEAD: World Product Day 2021
» Change in your organisation may be inhibited by a small number of constraints
» Your product, your company is always part of a wider ecosystem
» A product strategy needs to be clear on what metrics to focus on and how to move them
» Finding product-market fit is the beginning, not the end
78: How to start a new product manager job
Starting a new product manager job can be daunting, particularly if you don’t change jobs very often. I work freelance, so I find myself in a new organisation roughly every 3-6 months. Let me share with you my tips for your first few months in a new role.
PRODUCTHEAD: Pricing – everything and nothing has changed
» Pricing determines the structure of the business that produces it
» Start with consumer research to determine potential demand and feasibility of the product
» A step-by-step guide to pricing software
» Scalpers have made $82M in sales of consumer tech in under three months
