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Listened to a great talk on product strategy by Marty Cagan, author or Inspired [It is one of the top books I recommend for Product Managers] . Here is a summary, you can also listen to the talk embedded below

On Product Strategy

• Most companies don’t do strategy, they do roadmaps
• McKinsey and likes would give you Business Strategy not Product strategy
• It starts with a talented leader who identified 1 or 2 critical issues and how to derive leverage from them, and then have everyone focus
• Why is Strategy Hard and how to do it:
  • Have focus : Most companies suck at it. They are not able to chose, leading to bad strategy
    • Focus first, prioritise later. Find things that can move the needle before making a feature list and prioritising them
    • If you work on too many things at once, everything slows down
  • Generate insight
    • This is where magic happens
    • Many companies ignore insights because they are too focused on satisfying the stakeholders
    • Insights lead to great product work
    • Qualitative insights
      • Come from customers , your or even your competitor’s
      • You can gather insights every single week
    • Quantitative insights
      • A/B test that surprises us
      • Lot of great insights are blends
    • Technology Insights
      • Things that are now possible
    • Industry Insights
      • Your and other industries ( Eg B2B learns from B2C)
    • Product Leader’s job is also to collect these learnings and disseminate
    • Leaders are “learning distribution machines”
  • Coordinate actions of each product team
    • Point is not to get features out faster
    • Hard part is working on the stuff that matters
    • Empowered teams are assigned problems to solve not features to build
    • Adding OKRs to feature teams is a flop. OKRs work for already empowered teams. So first move to empowered team model
    • For OKR to be success
      • Empowered product teams and not Feature teams[ recommended article]
      • Only product teams get Objectives not Individuals and managers to start
    • When an exec asks for a feature, they have taken the responsibility for its viability
    • Colocated squads are better for innovation
    • Its ok for multiple teams to focus on same problem, its intentional
  • Actively manage work
    • Active leaders not passive leaders
      • Objectives NEED to come from leaders
      • Servant- Leadership. Clear the road, remove the obstacles.
      • This is not less management, its better management
      • Its also not micromanagement
• A product team serves the customer, a feature team is there to serve the business stakeholders
• Short Summary
  • Product Vision: Destination where we want to be
  • Product strategy: Identify which problem to solve
  • Product Discovery: Tactics necessary to solve that problem. A roadmap is a strategy
  • Product Delivery: Build and ship
• Recommended strategy Books
  • Good Strategy Bad strategy
  • The art of action

You can get Marty’s Audio book Inspired on Audible for free when you signup for free