Your product strategy is (probably) just theater

If stakeholders aren't pushing back on your product strategy, you're doing it wrong

I‘ll be honest with you: Strategy is really hard. It looks simple on the surface, but when you dive into the details, there’s so much theater happening that it’s almost comical.

Every product team I’ve worked with claims they have a strategy. They’ve got their vision statements, strategic pillars, and beautifully themed roadmaps. But here’s what I’ve learned after years in this field: most of these “strategies” are just feature lists wearing fancy clothes. I still laugh when I remember an executive who half-jokingly told me, “Our strategy is making money.” (That was more than ten years go, but at least he was honest!)

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Real strategy isn’t about what you’re planning to build or how you’ll lead your company. It’s about what you’re deliberately choosing not to build and why you’re making that choice. Those tough decisions? They’re what create your product’s unique spot in the market!

Strategy theater warning signs

I’ve spotted these warning signs, amoung others:

• Your strategy document is over 20 pages long. It lists every possible thing you might do but never mentions what you won’t do.

• The strategy changes every quarter because your competitor launched something new.

• Nobody on your team can explain it without pulling up slides.

• Every decision takes forever and involves way too many people.

• You could swap your company name with your competitor’s, and the strategy would still make perfect sense.

What real strategy looks like

Real strategy tells you where you’ll compete, but more importantly, it makes clear trade-offs that eliminate entire categories of features. It defines your ideal customer profile while explicitly stating which customer segments you’re ignoring. It outlines the problems you’ll solve and lists the capabilities you’re deliberately not building. It establishes which metrics matter more than others.

The strategy test: If your strategy doesn’t make some stakeholders uncomfortable, you don’t have a strategy. You have a wish list. Real strategy means saying no to good opportunities so you can focus on the great ones.

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Canvases force you to make decision

So how do you create something tangible? There are several canvases that force you to think clearly. I have worked with them, and if you’re starting from scratch, try them all and see what clicks for your situation.

Lean Canvas

Busines Model Canvas

Play to win

They all served me well. What I love about these tools is they force you to make decisions. You can’t leave sections empty, you have to write something down. Take your time with this. Discuss every question with your management team and peers. This isn’t busy work, it’s the foundation of your success.

These decisions become your strategy! You’ll focus on what’s in your canvas and ignore everything else. Yes, you’ll have to defend those choices against stakeholders who want their pet features included. But that’s okay because now you actually have a strategy to defend.

The most successful products I’ve seen aren’t built by teams that can do everything. They’re built by teams that choose their limitations wisely.

Bonus thought

While writing this, I remembered a prioritization game called “Buy a Feature”. You give stakeholders play money to “buy” their favorite features. Whatever gets the most money wins.

The problem? You’ve just handed your roadmap over to stakeholders. There’s no strategy involved, no evidence or discovery, no value thinking. Buy a Feature is everything strategy-driven development shouldn’t be.

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What I read

As usual, I will list some of the best articles I read on the Internet. I will keep a list of the best articles (currently >900) at https://www.digital-product-management.com. These are today’s picks:

Harada Method: How to Achieve Ambitious Goals in a 9x9 matrix

Own A Graph: Every problem worth owning can be shown on a graph.

Questions Execs Use to Judge Your Product Roadmap: In roadmap reviews, execs evaluate: what is it, why it matters, when we get it, and how much it costs me.