As a coach, one of the most common challenges I encounter in organisations is distinguishing between a business strategy and a product strategy. I often see product strategies written using business strategy approaches. These are two very different entities, and I feel that reaching each requires a unique approach.
Business strategy is built around the purpose, mission and values of an organisation, while product strategy revolves around the products problems, benefits, value, and differentiation. However, the two visions & strategies are interrelated, and a well-defined product strategy should align with and support the business strategy, helping to meet broader organisational objectives. The business strategy is the context within which the product strategy content occurs. Your contexts GIVES YOU your content!
Not having a clear strategy at any level can lead to disastrous outcomes, such as:
- Lack of clarity and focus: When everything in the backlog and every project is deemed a high priority, it’s a sign of strategic ambiguity.
- Order-taking: Teams waiting to be told what to do without considering the impact on users, businesses, or future trends. Particularly prevalent in organisations that operate in hierarchical, project oriented organisations.
- Random projects: Developing features based on the demands of the loudest customers, agencies, ministers, or leaders without validating through discovery.
- Prioritisation Issues: Teams can't prioritise easily and have a thousand projects or backlogs that have blown out of control; this is definitely a big issue
- Teams seeing what sticks: Teams working on whatever seems interesting rather than delivering on a broader purpose.
- Latest cool thing syndrome: Chasing trendy technologies or ideas without evaluating their relevance or value.
- Poor customer and organisational outcomes: Delivering no value to customers or the business.
- Top-down management: Over-reliance on management for decision-making or teams reluctant to make decisions themselves.
- Bottom-up management: Teams making all the decisions with little management input, resulting in a lack of focus or direction.
- Lack of organisational alignment: Leaders and teams working on separate agendas, neglecting the overall system's needs.
- Low team engagement: Lack of motivation, understanding, and alignment within teams.
- Wasting resources: Burnout of cash, time, and resources by delivering features that no one uses. Particularly prevalent in that project operating/feature factory model.
Why is Product Strategy Confusing?
One of the biggest hurdles in developing a clear product strategy is defining the product; knowing exactly what the product is. In some cases, the product is the business (e.g., Netflix), while in others, the business consists of many products (e.g., government agencies). These distinctions can create complexities that make strategy work daunting, especially when there are other challenges like bureaucracy (common in government). So the first step you want to get clear about is, where and what is the product; a product strategy always sits with the product and secondly what is the direction that you are all going to (vision of the future).
Inconsistent Definition of Strategy
If you ask five people to define strategy, you’ll likely get five different answers. Definitions range from broad company vision to a roadmap, or action plan. There is no one-size-fits-all approach, but certain best practice patterns can guide the development of a sound strategy. Rumelt (Good Strategy Bad Strategy, 2017) vividly describes strategy as a multifaceted discipline intertwining problem-solving, decision-making, and leadership that identifies the most significant obstacles to progress and orchestrate a coherent set of actions to overcome them.
I would agree with that definition, but also include the following. A product strategy also communicates how you will deliver value, what you need to do to win, and the desired end-state you wish to achieve. It involves making choices; this customer over that, this market over that, this work over that. It’s about saying "no" more than "yes" because if everything is a priority, nothing is. I would say stick to 1-3 strategic goals, no more; not 5, or 8, but 3 or less. A good strategy is debated and a great product manager facilitates that debate with the team. They do not sit in a room alone and write up a strategy, then give it to their teams to implement; they farm for debate with the team and together inside of the debate, you HEAR the strategy. It only occurs once you listen to ALL of the perspectives (desirability, feasibility & viability) that will deliver value. It is a dialogue, not a monologue. It also takes time; you cannot do it in 45 mins, you will usually need about 4 hours just to focus in and debate on strategic goals. Another 3 for debate around the vision, so put the time aside to do it properly. A strong strategy is explicitly documented and provides a framework for decision-making, prioritisation, and alignment. It allows teams to make informed decisions, act in the product's best interest, and take the necessary steps to achieve the vision. It is also tested; lean into further discovery to ensure that your strategy is robust and the targets you are aiming for are viable.
Business Strategy vs. Product Strategy
These two strategies are often confused, but they have distinct objectives. While they overlap, each plays a different role.
Business Strategy
This is about defining the organisation’s objectives and creating a comprehensive plan to achieve them. It includes the "product" but also considers marketing, sales, operations, and more. Senior leadership is responsible for establishing and communicating the business strategy across the organisation, with input and feedback from teams. Roger L. Martin and A.G. Lafley, in their book Playing to Win, outlined a process for defining a business strategy based on their learnings from Procter & Gamble. They proposed five key questions to create a strong business strategy:
- What is your winning aspiration? - Your vision should centre on customer success, not profit targets, which can lead to negative side effects.
- Where will you play? - This determines the markets and geographies you'll target, balancing cost, revenue, and engagement.
- How will you win? - Identify your competitive advantage—will you win by being the cheapest or by providing the most differentiated product?
- What capabilities are required? - Define the capabilities needed to support your strategy, from customer relationships to marketing strength.
- What is the management structure required? - Decide on the optimal structure to support your strategy, balancing roles and responsibilities.
Product Strategy
In contrast, a product strategy is a high-level plan that outlines the organisation’s goals for the product, focusing on the most important problems to solve. It gives teams the context they need to execute. A product strategy includes understanding the market, the target customer’s needs, the key problems to solve, and the solutions that will bring attention and deliver value. Organisations do not make and sell a product. They make and sell value. An organisation with a good strategy brings their unique value to the forefront.
Key Components of a Product Strategy
A successful product strategy defines five key areas:
- Customer segments/archetypes: Identify and prioritise the subgroups within a market.
- Customer value proposition: Solve for the customer’s job to be done, the problems, pains, and gains of each segment.
- Key features or benefits: Define the essential features that deliver the core value proposition, not every single product feature.
- Channel and relationship: Specify how customers will interact with your business and how you will build relationships with them.
- Pricing: In private enterprises, pricing impacts value perception, while in government, pricing may not be as relevant.
POOR Communication
Another reason for strategy failure is poor communication; both before a strategy is formed and after it’s established. Strategy must not be a closed-door exercise. Teams need the context to make autonomous decisions aligned with strategic goals. Teams need to debate, together about their strategy; it doesn't happen in a vacuum inside someone's head; it happens in a healthy dialogue where different perspectives are shared. Leaders and product managers alike should actively share and iterate on strategy, seeking feedback from across the organisation. Leaders should also spend a healthy amount of time sharing and discussing their strategic choices with the entire organisation, hopefully in a regular cadence such as quarterly; alignment happens inside of communication where leaders are sharing context; this also affects good decision making. Communication about your strategy is critical!
Multi-Tiered Strategy
The final complexity that I see organisations struggle with is a multi-tiered strategy in large enterprises. Like an onion, a vision and strategy can have many layers. In large enterprises, strategies operate at multiple levels: enterprise, business units, regions and teams. A clear alignment from the top to the bottom and across is essential to ensure decisions made at every level contribute to the enterprise's overarching objectives. At each level, the same principles apply but with a broader outlook the higher up you get in the organisation. Each level may belong to a business unit which needs to balance a portfolio of investments and dependencies. An enterprise level organisation may also have several different business units. Whatever your structure, the decisions made at the bottom of the tree should roll up to deliver on the objectives of the enterprise. This is harder to achieve than it looks. Plus, whatever decisions you make at the top of the tree, should cascade all the way down and through the organisation in terms of alignment delivering on the vision and strategy. Vision and strategy are easy, but at the same time, they are really complex because you have to understand the organisational structure, the future you are living into and the definition of “the product/s”, particularly for a product strategy, which sits with THE product.
If you lack a clear product strategy, don’t panic. Start by determining whether you’re working on a business, or product strategy. Ensure your strategy cascades up, down and aligns sideways, through the organisation; aligning with higher-level objectives. Tools like the Business Model Canvas and Value Proposition Canvas can help you visualise and communicate your product strategy effectively. Lastly, link your outcome roadmap to your strategic objectives and customer goals, allowing flexibility to adapt to changing market conditions.
In summary, building a cohesive product strategy takes effort and debate, but it is essential for aligning teams, delivering value, and achieving business success.
What is a Strategic Goal?
A strategic goal is a specific, measurable objective that helps you achieve your vision. It serves as a clear target, guiding your efforts and resources towards impactful outcomes. Strategic goals are the building blocks of your broader product strategy, ensuring that every initiative contributes to the larger organizational objectives.
What Makes a Good Strategy?
A good strategy is one that is aligned with your vision, achievable, and grounded in thorough analysis. It should address key challenges, leverage strengths, and capitalize on opportunities. According to Rumelt "a good strategy honestly acknowledges the challenges being faced and provides an approach to overcoming them". A solid strategy must also be adaptable, allowing for flexibility in response to changing circumstances. However, the true essence of a good strategy lies in its focus and simplicity. This brings us to the critical importance of choosing only a few strategic goals.
Prioritizing Strategic Goals
It's tempting to chase multiple goals and sometimes, you could be working for an organisation that is not very strategic, in fact they are just reactive and say yes to everything. That's a difficult situation for sure. We know that the most effective organisations and strategies are those that concentrate on some key priorities. At Netflix we always worked to narrow it down to no more than 3 key goals. This focus ensures that your team’s efforts are directed towards what truly matters, rather than being diluted across numerous initiatives. If you say yes to everything, than NOTHING is a priority and you will attempt do a lot, but usually with half the quality and possibly not deliver anything significant. For government agencies or large organizations, I would say you can increase this number to 5, but no more; primarily because they need to deliver a lot of services, transactions and products to citizens, residents, agencies and businesses. Why is it crucial to choose? By trying to do everything it often leads to accomplishing nothing; too much work in progress means high switching costs and a reduction of quality and efficacy. Limited resources, time, and attention are better spent on a few high-impact goals that can drive significant progress. This concentrated effort allows for deeper analysis, more robust planning, and ultimately, more successful execution. So choose well!
How Product Strategy Delivers on an Organization’s Strategy
A well-crafted product strategy acts as the bridge between your strategic goals and the execution of your organization’s broader vision and sits between your product vision and roadmap. It translates high-level objectives into actionable steps, ensuring that every release, and product decision aligns with the overarching organisational strategy that delivers value to the customer, for the product & hence the business. The product strategy is one of the most important product management assets that you and your team create. For example, if an organization's strategic goal is to increase the number of users by launching in new international markets; then the product strategy might focus on localisation strategies such as translating into a number of other languages, language/region account settings, refactoring the code for unicode 32 characters, etc and your launch plans would be into the market release plans. The product strategy ensures that the product team’s efforts are not just about building a product but about building a product that drives the organization towards its strategic destination. It helps you to identify the following things:
- Who is the product for?
- What kind of product is it and what makes it stand out?
- Who are the users and, if appropriate, who are the customers?
- Why would people choose it over alternatives?
- What are the business goals?
- Which benefits does the product create for the company developing and providing it?
- Why would people want to use and buy it?
- What specific problem does it address, or which tangible benefit does it offer?
- How does it differ from competing offerings?
Without a product strategy, you will struggle to explain how your product creates value and find it difficult to come up with a realistic roadmap and therefore hard to execute on. Remember, your strategy always needs testing and validation against choices and risk. It is never once and done, you will learn more as you go, so be prepared to iterate on it, as a strategy is changeable and dynamic. As new technologies emerge, as competitors offer new products or update existing ones, as you enter new markets and as users’ needs evolve, your strategy has to change in order to proactively guide the product towards success. Check in on your environmental analysis (tech, competitors, industry trends, the organisation, current problems and tech adoption trends)
The Critical Role of Debate in Strategy Sessions
The process of defining strategic goals should never be a solitary task for the product manager. Instead, it should be a collaborative effort that involves robust debate with your team and key stakeholders. This debate is the critical component that allows you to identify the best strategic goals. You can't find a strategy in a monologue, it requires that dialogue back and forth, debating about what others see as the critical issues, opportunities, trends and pain points that should be solved or leveraged. This is dependent on the environmental analysis (mentioned in previous blog) that you have done as the basis for the debate.
During these discussions, different perspectives come into play, uncovering blind spots and surfacing innovative ideas. The debate helps in stress-testing the goals ensuring they are not only ambitious but also realistic and aligned with the team and organization’s capabilities. By engaging the team in this way, you foster a sense of ownership and commitment to the strategy, which is vital for successful execution. I can't stress this part enough; bringing your team into the product strategy conversation is critical and leads to a more robust strategy.
Measuring Success: Metrics, Goals, Targets, OKRs, and KPIs
Once strategic goals are set, measuring progress becomes essential. This is where metrics, goals, targets, OKRs (Objectives and Key Results), and KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) come into play. I don't want to go into too much depth around these right now, knowing that different organisations, leaders and product managers choose to do different things. What's critical to understand for now is that your strategy should be measurable and your strategic goals sit a level up from things such as OKR's. I will do a deeper dive into these options at a later date.
- Metrics: These are the quantifiable measures that indicate progress towards your goals. Metrics should be specific, relevant, and easy to track.
- Targets: Targets are the specific milestones that indicate progress towards your goals. Setting clear targets helps in keeping the team focused and motivated.
- KPIs: KPIs are the critical indicators of success that you monitor regularly. They provide ongoing insight into whether your strategy is on track.
- OKRs: OKRs are a popular framework for setting and tracking objectives and their outcomes. The objective is a clear, time-bound goal, and the key results are measurable outcomes that define success.
However, by setting up the right metrics and regularly reviewing them, you ensure that your strategy is not just a plan on paper but a living, evolving framework that guides your team to success.
How It Shapes Your Roadmap
Your next step is executing on your strategic plan and your strategic goals provide a clear focus for your roadmap if you are still using one in your organisation. They will help you determine priorities, flesh out the details of initiatives that need to happen, help you to say no to new things, guide resource allocation, and set the direction for initiatives and projects. A well-defined roadmap should ONLY have what is relevant to the strategic goals and ensures that every action taken aligns with those strategic goals. This alignment is crucial for maintaining momentum and ensuring that the product development process stays on track to deliver on the strategic goals. If you don't use a roadmap, at this point, you might have some outcomes to work with. These outcomes should encompass business outcomes, product specific outcomes and customer outcomes. Your product and customer outcomes would help you to deliver on the business outcomes. The product outcomes would also help you to identify pain points, problems and opportunities that you and the team can focus your discovery work on.
Conclusion
In summary, a product strategy that delivers on an organization's strategy is one that is focused, debated, and measurable. By choosing a few key strategic goals, engaging in team debates to refine them, and setting up the right measurement frameworks for your organisation, you can ensure that your product strategy is not just a set of aspirations but is also something you can execute on, to achieve your vision.
Introduction
As a leader and/or a product manager, one of your most critical responsibilities is to lead your team in creating a clear vision, setting strategic goals, and developing outcome-based roadmaps. However, before you dive into these essential tasks, comprehensive discovery and analysis are paramount. This preparation ensures that your team has a solid foundation to build upon, maximizing the chances of creating an impactful and achievable vision. In this blog, we'll explore how to conduct this discovery and analysis, where to source relevant information, and how to facilitate an effective workshop with your team.
Understanding the Current State
Before you can plan for the future, you need a clear understanding of the present. This involves identifying existing issues, bugs, problems, and opportunities within your product or organization. Collect feedback from users, stakeholder pain point analysis, customer support tickets, funnel data, usage data and bug reports, review tools such as Zendesk, UserVoice, etc. Use analytics tools to identify patterns and trends such as Google analytics, Tableau, Mixpanel, etc. Consider conducting Surveys and Interviews by engaging with stakeholders, including team members, customers, and partners, to gather qualitative insights. Do Internal Audits by reviewing current workflows, internal reporting systems, processes, and other tools to pinpoint inefficiencies and areas for improvement. Review the costs incurred through every step of your product; does anything stand out as excessive, can you reduce these costs through automation, or innovation? Utilize financials, P&Ls & budgets, working with your financial analyst to review. Write these all up as separate problems and opportunities; if using Miro or Mural, write them up as separate Post It notes you can later sort and categorize.
What is an Environmental Analysis?
An environmental analysis is a strategic tool that leaders and product managers use to understand the external factors that can impact their products and organization. This process involves examining various macro-environmental elements to identify opportunities and threats that could influence product strategy, innovation, and overall business success. By conducting an environmental analysis, leaders and product managers can develop a comprehensive understanding of the market landscape and make informed decisions that align with their vision and strategic goals.
How to Do an Environmental Analysis
Conducting an effective environmental analysis involves a systematic approach to gathering and analyzing data from various sources, in order to offer you and the team insights into future problems and opportunities by incorporating frameworks like STEEPLED/Pestle, 3 Horizons, and megatrends, as well as understanding technology adoption.
Identifying Future Technology and Industry Trends Using the Three Horizons Framework
The Three Horizons Framework helps you visualize and plan for future growth by categorizing trends and innovations into three distinct time frames for your industry, including tech trend adoption:
- Horizon 1: Current trends and technologies
- Horizon 2: Emerging trends and innovations over the next 2-5 years
- Horizon 3: Long-term trends and potential disruptions over the next 5-10 years
Steps to take
- Horizon Scanning: Identify and document current and emerging trends in your industry and in technology over the next 10-15 years. Use industry reports, technology forecasts, and academic research from organisations such as Gartner, Forrester, IEEE, MIT Technology Review, Academic Journals, whitepapers and thought leaders
- Trend Analysis: Evaluate the potential impact of these trends on your industry and product and put together a 3 horizons chart with these trends outlined.
- Workshop Brainstorming: Incorporate these insights into your strategic planning process by engaging your team in brainstorming sessions to explore how these trends could present opportunities and problems for your product.
Identifying Community Megatrends
Megatrends are large, transformative global forces that impact society, economy, and culture over the long term. These can include demographic shifts, urbanization, climate change, and more.
Steps to Take
- Research: Identify relevant megatrends affecting your community and industry utilising research from organisations such as the CSIRO, WEF, OECD, government reports and reports from organisations such as McKinsey, PWC & Ernst & Young to name a few.
- Impact Analysis: Assess how these megatrends could influence your product and organization.
- Workshop Brainstorming: Incorporate these insights into your strategic planning process by engaging your team in brainstorming sessions to explore how these trends could present opportunities and problems for your product.
Conducting PESTLE, SWOT, and Five Forces Analysis
Using analytical frameworks like PESTLE, SWOT, and Five Forces helps you systematically evaluate external and internal factors that can affect your organization.
- PESTLE Analysis: Evaluates Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Legal, and Environmental factors.
- SWOT Analysis: Identifies Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.
- Five Forces Analysis: Examines competitive forces in the industry (e.g., competition, threat of new entrants, supplier bargaining power, customer bargaining power, and the ability of customers to find substitutes for the sector's products).
Steps to take
- Data Collection: Gather relevant data for each framework from government publications, the CIA Factbook, IBIS World, Industry reports, internal reports & market research firms.
- Team Workshops: Facilitate workshops where team members contribute their insights and analyses.
- Synthesis: Compile and synthesize the findings to inform your vision and strategic planning.
- Workshop Brainstorming: Incorporate these insights into your strategic planning process by engaging your team in brainstorming sessions to explore how these trends could present opportunities and problems for your product.
Analyzing the Vision & Strategy Cascade in the Organisation
In large enterprises, you are not siloed, often there are many visions and strategic goals both for the organization and for each business unit. You will need to look for and analyze this cascade around you, as your vision and strategic goals will deliver up and also affect sideways. This is an important step. Identify the organizational vision and priorities as you will deliver on these, even if it is only one part of it, you need to identify that one part clearly.
Secondly identify your business units vision and priorities, and those units around you to see how your vision and strategy fits in and what you can deliver on. Once you have gathered the vision cascade around you, then include this in the workshop brainstorming section. Incorporate these insights into your strategic planning process by engaging your team in brainstorming sessions to explore how these trends could present opportunities and problems for your product.
Preparation for a team workshop
- Set Objectives: Define clear objectives for the workshop.
- Gather Materials: Collect all relevant data, reports, and analysis findings as discussed above
- Invite Participants: Ensure a diverse group of stakeholders is involved, including team members from different departments and levels.
Workshop structure
- Kick-off: Start with an overview of the workshop objectives and agenda.
- Present Findings: Share the results of your discovery and analysis with the team.
- Facilitate Silent Brainstorming: Have everyone spend some time silently brainstorming what all of these documents mean for your product and identify the problems they will bring and the opportunities that could come to pass
- Sort & Categorize: Take all the problems and opportunities identified from current state and future trends and sort and categorize these, until you identify the higher level themes.
- Strategic Goals: Write 1-3 strategic goals, no more as that is too much work in progress and quality will decline. Your strategic goals should come from the problems and opportunities, leveraging those. It should focus you and your team on what problems to actually solve, or opportunities to leverage. You can't do all of them, so which is the most important?
- Discussion: Encourage open dialogue, debate, and creative thinking to discuss. Identify which goals to focus on, and which goals NOT to focus on; remember if everything is a priority, then nothing is a priority.
- Document Ideas: Capture all ideas, insights, and discussions in real-time. Using Miro or Mural is a great way to do this workshop.
- Synthesize & Break out: Work together to synthesize and break out the strategic goals into outcomes you want to see achieved and a coherent plan based on these outcomes.
Post-Workshop
- Refine Vision & Strategic Goals: Refine the vision statement and strategy based on feedback and data or further discovery.
- Communicate: Share the vision with the broader organization to ensure alignment and gather more feedback.
- Action Plan: Develop an action plan for implementing the vision and strategic goals. This is your outcome based roadmap.
Conclusion
Leading a vision, strategy, and outcomes roadmapping workshop requires thorough preparation and analysis. By identifying current state issues, future trends, and conducting comprehensive analyses, you lay a solid foundation for your team's success. Engaging your team in collaborative workshops fosters a sense of ownership and commitment to the vision. Remember, a well-defined vision not only guides your team's efforts but also inspires and motivates them to achieve their best.
What is a Vision?
A vision is a vivid picture of the future you aim to create. It's an aspirational statement that guides and inspires your team by providing a clear sense of direction and purpose. It offers the opportunity for alignment and buy in, if done collaboratively. Leading a vision session involves facilitating discussions that explore aspirations, insights, challenges, and opportunities both in regard to current state and future trends. As a leader, product manager and facilitator you should encourage open dialogue, debate and creative thinking, ensuring all voices are heard. Documenting the ideas and synthesizing them into a coherent vision statement is critical.
The Cascade of Visions Around You
In a large enterprise, your vision is part of the broader picture. It’s essential to align your vision not only upwards with organizational goals but also sideways with other departments. This alignment ensures coherence and collaboration across the organization. Understanding the overarching company vision and cascading it down to your team, in fact personalising for your team and/or product, ensuring you identify how you can deliver on that vision and that your goals support the larger mission, is critical.
A vision should not only cascade up, down, but also sideways throughout the organization, aligning with departmental goals too. Each layer of the organization should understand how their work contributes to the overarching vision and to each other. Engage with other departments to align strategies and avoid siloed thinking. Regular inter-departmental meetings and debates should foster alignment and synergy. It’s critical to spend time debating strategy and get aligned; the tactics will work themselves out. Your focus should be the debate around strategy.
Team visions versus product visions
Crafting a vision firstly takes understanding what the vision is for. Is this for an organisation, a business unit, or a product? Is this something that will be used externally, or only internally during strategy alignment sessions? How you do an organisational & business unit vision, differs to how you do a product vision. With the first you focus in on defining the culture, purpose and mission and your vision arises from those things; this is what brings alignment to a diverse team. With the latter, you focus on identifying your users/customers, your products benefits, differentiators and problems, your product vision arises from these things; here you align around the product itself and the value it brings the users/customers. There is a huge difference between a product vision versus an organisational or team vision.
Just a note about Product visions and where they sit. A product vision sits with the PRODUCT, so you will need to have the conversation around WHERE and what the product is. Sometimes in very large enterprises, there are multiple products, often disparate and not connected, other times there is only one unified product. The next step for those with multiple products is really about sitting down with that product leader to talk about the future of those multiple products; what does that look like. Once you understand that context and where you are headed you can make a decision about where the product vision should be. Certainly there is a view that there should only be one product vision, but that is not often the case, or appropriate, depending on the organisation and what is going on internally.
HOW A VISION SHAPES YOUR STRATEGIES
A vision sets the strategic direction. It shapes your choice of strategic goals and hence your priorities, roadmaps, backlogs and then should guide resource allocation, and inform decision-making processes. A strong vision ensures that every strategic initiative aligns with the desired future state. There should be nothing on your roadmap, in your plans, or in your backlog, that does not align and deliver on that vision. Delete it, or de-prioritise it, if there is; or at the very least at least negotiate about it, utilizing your data.
GATHERING INSIGHTS: Discovery & ANALYsis
Effective visioning requires a deep understanding of the internal and external environment for both current state and future trends. This discovery phase is critical to forming a vision that is both ambitious and achievable. You should be doing some discovery and analysis to prepare for the workshop and then after you're finished, to substantiate, or validate your strategic goals and thinking. Is this the right goal and target, are we heading down the right path.
To craft a robust vision, you need a deep understanding of the external and internal factors impacting your business. Several analytical tools can help:
- PESTLE Analysis: Examine Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Legal, and Environmental factors to identify external opportunities and threats.
- Megatrends Analysis: Look at long-term, global trends that could shape your industry, such as demographic shifts or technological advancements.
- Three Horizons Framework: Assess current business operations (Horizon 1), emerging opportunities (Horizon 2), and long-term innovations (Horizon 3) to balance short-term goals with future growth.
- SWOT Analysis: What are the organizations or products strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Especially focus in on the problems and opportunities that currently exists.
- Data Analysis: What current data do you have, where are the issues, churn and barriers, what does growth look like where; gather this data to be able to make sound decisions.
Collaborating with Your Team
A successful vision workshop hinges on collaboration and debate. Engage your team and key stakeholders from the start, fostering an environment where everyone feels their input is valued. This inclusivity ensures that the vision reflects a collective mindset and garners broad support and buying. Here’s how to set the stage:
- Preparation: Collect data, do the analysis, including current market trends, industry horizons, tech trends and internal performance data, to ground everyone in the context. Kick off the session with this, to level set everyone and get them ideating on the problems and opportunities that will bring your product or team.
- Diverse Participation: Include team members & stakeholders from different departments and levels to provide a holistic perspective and gather buy-in.
- Facilitation: Use a skilled facilitator to guide discussions and ensure every voice is heard.
- Debate: Debate about the words, essentially wordsmithing until you get alignment. Read it out loud multiple times until the vision sings!
- Share and Publish: get your vision on a roadshow, share with teams beside you, share with leaders above you, get feedback and tweak, iterate until it starts to really be bedded down and finalised. Then publish broadly.
Defining Strategic Goals
With a clear vision, the next step is to outline strategic goals. Your vision will help prioritize these goals, but it also means making tough decisions about what to pursue and what to set aside.
- Sort Problems & Opportunities: Sort the problems and opportunities from the ideation until you get higher level themes, this is where you should start writing your strategic goals from. Then debate back and forth, always asking why, why, why until you identify the strategic goal. A good strategic goal, comes from your problems and opportunities, offers coherence, helps you identify the actions you need to take
- Strategic Goals versus Operational Goals: be on the lookout for operational goals posing as strategic goals. They differ in terms of scope, focus and time. A strategic goal is something that will take much longer to realise; multiple quarters to years, they focus on things like growth of markets, new customers, innovation, increasing revenue and they are much broader in scope. Operational goals are short, they can be delivered in a sprint or a quarter and are usually deliverables such as performance uplift, tech debt, cost reduction. So debate and keep digging into the why behind these; the intent; this is where your strategic goal lies.
- SMART Goals: Ensure your goals are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. Now a word about SMART goals. Sometimes this isn’t possible, as you don’t yet have the information or data. Don’t be too fussed on this point, rather ensure that you next step is discovery, to validate your strategic goal, ensuring that you gather data in the discovery process.
- Prioritization: Use frameworks like the Eisenhower Matrix to prioritize tasks based on urgency and importance.
- Saying No: Recognize that you can’t pursue every opportunity. Focus on goals that align most closely with your vision and will have the greatest impact.
Executing the Vision
Once your vision and strategic goals are in place, execution becomes critical. Develop a clear action plan, assign responsibilities, and set milestones to track progress.
- Communication: Regularly communicate the vision and goals to keep the team aligned and motivated.
- Monitoring and Adjusting: Continuously monitor progress and be ready to adjust strategies as needed. Flexibility is key to responding to new challenges and opportunities.
In conclusion, a vision workshop is not just a planning session but a strategic exercise in alignment, buyin, analysis, and prioritization. By fostering debate, collaboration, conducting thorough analyses, aligning with broader corporate strategies, and clearly defining strategic goals, you set the stage for your team to deliver on a compelling vision. Remember, it's not about you or others individually; it's about the vision you collectively strive to identify and achieve. It is not a solo exercise.
Everything Starts with a Vision
Whether you’re a Founder, a CEO, a product manager, or an individual just living their life; having a vision is crucial! A vision is like a lighthouse guiding your direction, aligning your team, offering clarity on which actions to take, or NOT to take, spurring everyone into action and focusing everyone. Without a vision, efforts can become fragmented, aimless, leading to confusion and a lack of motivation. As the saying goes, “If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll likely end up somewhere else.” This perfectly captures how aimlessly people can wander through life without consciously creating their path.
Feeling Lost? A Vision Can Help
As a leader, a product manager or an individual, do you feel like you're just randomly working on tasks that don’t align up to something, or deliver results? Is your list of things to do, or backlog, out of control, with more initiatives than engineers, or time, to complete them?
Do you feel like you’re managing products & work in the dark, reacting to whatever comes your way without a clear direction? Kind of like an order taker? Do you feel stuck, unsure of what you’re doing, perhaps even experiencing ‘imposter syndrome’? If so, you're not alone.
If you need direction and alignment, creating a vision can help! There are many ways to set a vision for your products and teams. You can write them out as a word doc, a story, a song, you can do a vision board, but the most common in organisations is some sort of vision statement. Keep in mind that an organisational vision is very different to a product vision, which is also different to an individual’s vision, so choose the appropriate vision methodology for your need, the audience and size of the organisation. Now more than ever, having a vision is critical. With remote work and virtual meetings, leaders need something that aligns the team, sets an aspirational direction, defines goals, and keeps everyone focused and heading in the same direction.
Rule 3: It’s Not About You or Others, It’s About the Vision
The 3rd Rule of Leadership emphasizes that it’s not about you, or others; it’s about the vision. This rule is about creating a shared vision that everyone in the organization or team can work towards. A well-defined vision helps ensure that work is focused on delivering outcomes rather than spending endless hours on needless tasks that don't deliver results. As leaders, you might not always know what your teams are doing while working from home, but if they are delivering outcomes, does it matter what they do each hour or minute? A vision aligns, defines goals, gets authentic buy-in if done collaboratively, and delivers outcomes in a virtual world. It’s a touchstone for change. If your organization, or team is facing change, defining what that future state could look like, can provide direction. You can always course-correct as you learn more about what you didn’t know initially.
The Power of Vision
Visions inspire passion, motivation, and action. A powerful vision attracts ideas, people, and resources. It creates the energy and desire to make change happen, inspiring individuals and organizations to commit, persist, and give their best, even bringing in new talent. Visions can bring stakeholders together, providing direction and creating alignment. They help keep organizations and teams focused, especially during complex projects and stressful times. You can refer back to the vision to check why you’re doing what you’re doing, reconnect to your purpose, and see if new ideas fit within the vision.
Characteristics of Effective Visions
- Clarity: A vision should be so clear and detailed that you can see, smell, and taste the smallest details.
- Positivity: Focus on the positive outcomes or changes your vision will create. Avoid using fear as motivation, as it can limit results to damage control rather than achieving positive change.
- Ambition: Create a big picture of the effects of your work beyond solving the immediate problem. A small vision may not inspire or generate enough energy to overcome tough spots.
- Attitude Changes: Include changes in attitudes and personal roles. This isn’t about ego but taking full responsibility for achieving desired results.
- Practical Steps: A vision should outline the steps to reach the end goal. It serves as a guide for creating plans, setting goals, making decisions, and coordinating work.
- Ownership Through Participation: Visions get people into action by defining measurable goals and ensuring buy-in, but the entire team has to participate and collaborate. You cannot write a robust vision by yourself in a monologue. You have to lead the team through a dialogue, exploring and discussing all points of view regarding, current and future issues elements.
- Heart Over Head: Visions come from the heart and elicit emotions. They are different from goals or objectives, which are more analytical. They drive passion and motivation.
Challenges in Creating a Vision
Creating a vision can be difficult for several reasons:
- Old Negative Messages: Such as “we don’t have the money for this.”
- Limiting Beliefs and Attitudes. Such as believing that “you can’t do this, or that you aren’t smart enough”
- Omitting Initial Steps: Such as setting up context and safety.
- Over-reliance on Left Brain Exercises: Such as data and analytical models.
- Not Embracing Passion: Visions should come from the heart; in that it should drive your interest, passion & motivation and deliver on outcomes.
It’s often wise to use a skilled facilitator for vision sessions. It’s not easy to facilitate and participate simultaneously as you can create bias. With proper preparation, the process can be accomplished in one to two days.
How to Collaborate with the Team to Identify a Vision
Creating a vision is not a solo endeavor. For product and organisational visions it can and should involve gathering insights and perspectives from team members, stakeholders, the environment, megatrends, other types of analysis and even customers. Engaging the team in visioning sessions fosters a sense of ownership and commitment to the vision.
Cascading the Vision
Once a vision is established, it becomes the guiding star for all activities. Every project, initiative, and decision should align with and support the vision. This alignment ensures that all efforts are cohesive and driving towards the same ultimate goal. As soon as the visioning process is complete, immediately cascade the results throughout the organization. Gather feedback, seek alignment, iterate, and iterate some more. Make sure to look for data to support that vision too, which might mean some discovery and validation work. The power of your vision, comes from shared understanding and commitment, forging alignment of purpose, action, and results.
Having a vision provides a sense of purpose and direction for your product teams. Your vision helps define your short and long-term goals, guiding decisions along the way. As a leader, you inspire the power and energy to get things done and as a result, success will follow!
