100 Product Strategies

As companies grow and expand their services, they need to localize their product. In some industries, where each region has very different needs and regulations, there is high interaction between the need for a global strategy, and the needs of each region to succeed. Jesus Cagide, Product Leader at Intuit and ex-Paypal helps us explore how this can be handled in companies and industries where the local need has a critical role. We talked about: The role of fintech and money in people’s life. What are highly localized products? The difference between the global mission and the needs of each region to achieve the product mission. The 3 attributes you need to consider in a geographical basis: bargain power of customers, tech access and channels, and regulations. How understanding opportunities at a local level affects the global strategy. Besides your global strategy, you need to understand your strategic intent in each geography (and how to evaluate it based on the local diagnosis). The importance of considering each geography the existing set of tools and to clearly communicate your value proposition according to each market. Making market assessments per country: the lifecycle of the product, competitive intensity, and reach or size. How the lifecycle of your product actually varies by country. Assessing your strengths in the country, from your brand power to your core capabilities. How Paypal manages top-down vs bottom-up initiative proposal and assessment. How adding services at a global level requires an impact analysis in a multi-year horizon (versus local initiatives related to the adoption of existing services in the portfolio). The complexity of the product structure when combining global and local roles. Jesus's last advice about strategy: “don’t bite more than you can chew”. How much time this global strategy exercise takes. Recommended book: Rise of the robots. Among many other things! You can connect with Jesus on Linkedin or follow him on twitter. Remember that you can find more info and material on 100productstrategies.com. If you are eager to know more about product strategy, check out Product Direction: How to build successful products at scale with Strategy, Roadmaps, and OKRs You can also contact or follow your host, Nacho bassino, at nachobassino.com (training, coaching, and more)

Your product vision is a position you aspire to have in the future: be the best solution for a problem a set of customers care about. That should drive your strategy. And I had the fortune of discussing positioning in detail with April, the biggest guru. We started in a very controversial way: you should not base your strategy on your positioning! Wait, what? Positioning is an exercise to formulate how your current product is the best for a specific customer need. Strategy is not about your current product! It is about the value you want to create in the future. Confusing those can get you in trouble. But there is a catch. Product Strategy is about “how you will achieve your Product Vision.” However, if your vision potentially goes 3, 5, or 10 years into the future, your 6, 12, 18 months strategy is getting you closer to smaller milestones that still need to be differentiated and sellable! These milestones have a “positioning thesis,” and your strategy needs to build a product that can deliver on the promise you aim to make. Resources AprilDunford.com April’s newsletter and podcast Obviously Awesome book Sales Pitch book

Strategy and its role in connecting vision to execution is one of those n-dimensional problems that is hard to think about, let alone describe in a chart. Fortunately, Martin Eriksson, the author of the decision stack, did just that. In his work, he describes a mental framework for navigating this challenging space and how you can think about connecting the decisions and artifacts of your vision, strategy, objectives, and opportunities. In this episode, we navigated the hard questions about this mental model: common pitfalls, what to do as a PM if you don’t have a Vision or Strategy, what is the right level of strategy definition to enable empowered teams, and much more! Find the Decision stack at: https://www.thedecisionstack.com/

Alignment is one of the hardest challenges of strategy. Conflictive goals, every department fighting for their priority, opposed world views and interpretations of how the future will unfold… Luckily, Bruce McCarthy is an expert on the topic, and in this episode, he shares many tactics and tips on how to surface these conversations, use the right artifacts, and create alignment. Resources New Book: Aligned ProductCulture.org Follow Bruce on Linkedin / X

We all know Strategy is complex, cumbersome, and foggy. We strive to navigate and make strategic decisions in this environment, which usually leads to opinionated battles and stakeholder misalignment since we can all interpret the signals in different ways. Remarkably, Dan Olsen, my guest in this episode, created simple tools and one-pagers that help you crystalize your thinking, find the opportunities that can truly make a difference, and have more meaningful conversations with stakeholders. I’m amazed by how Dan brought complex situations down to their essence and explained how framing and structuring them can truly make these daunting challenges approachable and almost easy to resolve. Important note: In a few moments, Dan shared a screen, so if you can watch while you listen, it could be helpful to get a visual reference (but it is not required to understand the concepts discussed). You can find Dan at dan-olsen.com

Ready for some strategic wisdom? In this episode, I had the honor of delving into the depths of product strategy with Marty Cagan, a true luminary in the field. I asked the hardest questions and tried to explore topics beyond what you would normally find in Marty’s writing. From the pitfalls of neglecting strategy to the necessity of ongoing adaptation, Marty's insights are a game-changer for product leaders. We explored controversial topics, such as why strategy trumps discovery and the critical role of top-level input in shaping successful product strategies. But that's not all—we also discuss the significance of understanding team scope, capabilities, and experience, the role of strategy in budget allocation, and the importance of seeking guidance from experienced mentors. Every part of the episode has actionable advice, which Marty very eloquently shares. Where to Find Marty’s Work: svpg.com, where you can find the newsletter Transformed is Marty’s newest book, and Empowered contains many topics we explored in the episode.

There are infinite ways to define strategy. Most involve finding a critical challenge and defining the big strokes of how to solve it. This can be an intimidating task to any leader! Furthermore, if we spend the high effort involved in putting it together, and communicating it as our brilliant strategy for the next 12 months, chances are that the organization will not be super receptive to feedback, learning and iteration on this critical strategic bets. This is a very complex and nuanced topic, but I had the fortune to speak with Jeff Gothelf, not only an expert in the topic, but someone who can articulate complex problems in simple ways. We covered how Jeff defines a “lean” strategy, how connecting strategy to OKRs help you learn fast about your hypothesis, and how leaders should take a more humble (and smarter!) approach to explicitly calling out uncertainty and willingness to learn. Where to find Jeff: JeffGothelf.com, where you can find the newsletter Linkedin Jeff’s upcoming book, “Who does what by how much”

Strategy is messy. It’s happening simoulteaneously at different levels, with different lenses, different time horizons, among many other stakes at play. My guest in this episode, John Cutler, has a remarkable ability to bridge the world of theories with what we actually face down the road when executing. Together, we unravel the intricacies of the 'messy middle,' that challenging space between lofty company aspirations and the day-to-day grind of teams. The conversation was extremely valuable to me, because it brought actionable ideas to complex topics like: helping team think bigger and wider, what is important to define to have a solid strategy, how to (or not to) align, and many more topics.

We often talk about strategy diagnosis and insights as if they were something we go through in isolation when defining the direction of our product. However, those insights come (or should come) from our discovery efforts. Unfortunately, this connection is often missing, and to be fair, it can be pretty messy. That’s why I had a wonderful conversation with Teresa Torres, one of the top voices on product discovery, and we went deep into the hard questions of connecting these two worlds: How involved should leaders be in Discovery? How do we validate our strategic assumptions with users? How do discovery at different levels interconnect? and much more. Teresa shared multiple tips on tactics to overcome the typical pitfalls. Where to Find Teresa’s Work Product Talk - Hundreds of valuable articles and resources. Product Talk Academy - All training options. Continuous Discovery Habits book To join the product leaders’ monthly sessions, email [email protected]

While strategy is always difficult, large corporations add complexities into the mix: dependencies, politics, complex budgeting processes, and more. In this episode, I spoke with Phil Hornby, a Product Coach with vast experience in different contexts, and we discussed his experience with the product strategy for a business unit within Continental, a large German automotive company. Phil shared great examples and tips on how to gain alignment, deal with politics and dependencies, handle risk, and much more! More takeaways at https://productdirection.substack.com/ Where to Find Phil’s Work LinkedIn Phil’s site: For Product People