» Achieving ambitious goals takes years of slog and perseverance — there’s no fast-forward button
» Successful companies such as IKEA use time as a strategic advantage
» There’s no single ‘right’ strategy — what matters more is choosing a good one and sticking with it long-term
You can help your company to sharpen up its vision and strategy with these straightforward questions and worked examples.
» 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?”
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”
» 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
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.
“So this this might seem a bit odd, but are there any lessons from antiquity given your background in Classics that one might apply to product management in the year 2020?”
» The vision describes the future we are trying to create
» It is a first filter for new ideas and change requests
» Mission, vision and other concepts are often confused with each other
» Have one overarching product vision, not lots of smaller ones
I perhaps naïvely assume that a company’s stated product vision and corporate mission are what the organisation is actively working towards. Disappointingly, this is not always the case.
