Product strategy de-mystified

My friend Will Eisner(Sr. Director of Product at Acquia) and I recently did a session on Product Strategy at Product Camp Boston. The session was very well received and I wanted to upload the slide deck and write a blog post describing our main thrust here.

What is strategy?

One of the things that continues to surprise me is the lack of understanding of what strategy is. Most people overuse the term strategic – and add importance to anything and everything by adding the word strategic to it (e.g., job titles such as strategic marketing managers, goals called ‘strategic goals’ etc.).

In one word, Strategy can be called the ‘How.’ How exactly are you going to achieve what you want to achieve? Companies have several goals – some of them financial, others are linked to what they want to be or what difference they want to make in the world. Strategy describes in very concrete terms how they are going to get there. As is described best in the book Good Strategy Bad Strategy, Strategy is the set of coordinated actions that a company takes to achieve its goals.

Not just a plan

If strategy was simply the how, then it can just be a simple plan, right? Most plans miss something key – they don’t recognize which obstacles are likely going to stop you from achieving these goals. Let’s take a couple of examples.

A personal example is when I want to lose weight, I could make a plan that limits portions, adds exercise etc. However that overlooks two characteristics of me: 1. I love dessert 2. When I am stressed I tend to eat more.

Given that, portion control is unlikely to work. How much is too much Hagen Daz French Vanilla ice cream with Nutella?

So what works? Red lines work. Either a food is on my list or its not. Either I am allowed to have as much as I want, or I cannot eat it at all. Thus stuff like Whole 30 diet works for me.

Now let’s take a different example. Of a very different person. Steve Jobs. The man who introduced the iPod, the iPhone, the iPad, the iPooch. But this example is not about innovation. This example is of Steve’s return in 1997. The company was failing. It was a couple of months from running out of cash, and was a minority player in computers. Most people would say that the way to get out of the situation was to innovate, to create new products, new categories. And Steve did innovate –  eventually. But the first thing he did was recognize the obstacle – that Apple had no money to investigate. And had a bloated product line with 15 – 20 models of desktops. So he took immediate steps to address the obstacles – trimming down of product lines to one laptop and one desktop, killing off all printers, striking a $150M financing deal with Microsoft who did not want Apple to go out of business (else they will have more monopoly issues on hand). And then Steve waited to innovate on the heals of an emerging trend – MP3s and MP3 players.

Strategy defines the hills

One very important aspect of Strategy is defining the hills you aim to own in order to be meaningfully different from the competition in such a way that customers value it. Blue ocean strategy is a book that talks about this a lot, and also talks through the case of Yellow Tail wines. This article describes it well so I will not go into the details of the case here.

 

Strategy needs to be designed

Strategy is not derived via a mathematical formula. Just like good software, good strategy is designed, and takes a combination of analytical skills, intuition, creativity and leadership to achieve.

Why is good strategy so rare?

Good strategy is rare not because it is rocket science. It is rare because it requires one to make hard choices, to pick a path, to cut off several options. It means giving up on several attractive, good ideas. In this day of unlimited choice, this seems like an unfamiliar thing to do. The most common course of action is to hedge one’s bets.

Bringing strategy to product management

In order to make strategy useful in product management, you as a product manager need to make sure that you a) Know the strategy well b) Need to be able to communicate it c) Need to be able to align all decisions to it and defend the rationale behind this.

Will’s experience at Acquia is great in this regard. Acquia uses Value points for each story, and how it ties to the strategy. Let’s say that their strategy prioritizes five objectives (could be retaining customers, increasing engagement with the software, expanding within a market segment etc.). Each story that helps these factors is given points for the objectives it helps achieve. This brings the discussion away from what a few vocal customers want or what an executive wants, to what is actually good for business and aligned with the strategy of the product.

Several places I have worked at have had a ‘land and expand’ approach to sales. This has helped strongly influence the strategy of each of the products, and how one logically creates a need for next. A key aspect has been being able to tie in not just the strategies of the product, but how the sales and customer success teams work together to help us get to our eventual goals.

Micro decisions  

A last – but very important – point is that as a product manager you drive a lot of decisions, but there is no way you can be there for each and every decision made about the product. This could be a design decision, a technology choice etc. It is important that you are not just making the right decisions per your strategy, but you are establishing a decision making framework that helps your team make the right decision even when you are not there. Thus you don’t just have to know the strategy, and don’t just have to use it to guide your decisions, you need to teach it so that your team drives the right decisions.

If you do all this, you might – just might – change the world.

 

 

 

Mental models and context

Imagine two scenarios. Two mothers.

Mother one – when it’s time for her one year old son to go to sleep, she gets him ready and rocks him to sleep. As the baby starts to drift off to sleep, she puts him in his crib. She gently rubs his back while he is still in light sleep, leaving only when he has fallen into deep sleep.

Mother two – when it’s time for her one year old son to go to sleep, she gets him ready to sleep and reads him a book. Then she kisses him good night and puts him in his crib. The son complains, and the mother says some soothing words. She sings him a song. But then she leaves the room wishing her son a final Good Night. The son might complain a little, but very soon he starts talking to his stuffed animals, and singing. After about 20 minutes, he is fast asleep.

Question to you: Which mother is doing the right thing?

Your answer might depend completely on your mental model, which is shaped by the context in which you live.

If you have grown up in a joint family, where there are plenty of people to take care of the child, then option 1 sounds wonderful. You are showing all the love and support to the kid. Why not do that?

If you have grown up in a nuclear family, then option 2 sounds great! There are other things to be done, and besides, aren’t we teaching our kids to be independent from n earlier age?

I came across this situation on my tip to India. And the funny thing is that the parents on either side were fascinated by how the other side handled things. My wife and I were amazed at the patience shown in taking care of kids (me less so since I grew up in India). On the other hand we got regular questions like – ‘Oh did your son sleep so fast?’ ‘No, but he will on his own’ – our reply. ‘Oh wow, its amazing that your kids can do that at such an early age’

How does this affect products?

This is a blog about product management. Why am I going on and on about mothers and kids and fathers and sleep and diapers? There are two important aspects that are highlighted here which we tend to overlook – mental models and context

 

A mental model can be thought of as a filter one applies to the actual truth. It takes the overwhelming complexity of what is going on in the real world and makes sense out of it. It would totally ignore several inputs, and highly bias other inputs based on past experience, deeply held beliefs and what else is going on in the person’s life. I am calling this ‘what else is going on in the person’s life’ as the context in which the mental model is working.

Let’s look at some examples of where mental model and context changes the situation completely.

Wheels on bags

One of the most fascinating product stories for me is very simple – wheels on luggage. The first fascinating part: wheeled luggage was introduced in 1970. Decades after luggage was introduced. Why so? Well the initial context was different – people did not have to walk through large airports carrying heavy bags with them. Trains were more popular than planes, there were lots of porters that could carry bags for people etc.

Then the context changed. Airplanes became more popular, requiring people to carry heavy bags across much larger distances with fewer porters. Yet for a long time people carried on with the previous mental models – bags are meant to be carried.

Even after wheeled luggage was introduced it did not immediately pick up popularity. People stuck to their old mental models – especially men. Men saw themselves as strong, macho guys who did not need wheels to help with bags. Things really changed only after TravelPro introduced rollaboards that became popular with flight crews. These role models ultimately led to mass adoption of wheeled luggage.

Hence such a ‘simple invention’ – putting a freakin wheel on a bag – took so long to gain acceptance.

What is the right meal for me?

 

One of the best examples I have heard of is from Des Traynor in his talk Product Strategy in a growing company. He takes a simple question – what is the right food for a male 35 years old who works in tech?

The context of consumption changes everything. Without understanding the context you cannot answer it. Example – what if this person is going out on a date who he really, really likes to impress? Likely a meal that gives him plenty of time to chat over (likely) alcohol is a good idea. Steak might be optimal. But what if the context is – oh this person needs to eat while working on a presentation for a client due in 1 hour. He cannot waste time, has to multi-task. Pizza delivered to his deck sounds like a much better idea.

Growth

I would argue that one of the biggest determinants on how fast a company will grow is how much the product, marketing and sales of a company aligns with the mental model and context of the user. Anything that makes users have to change either is a speed bump.

There is a lot of software companies now selling predictive apps – applications that can make judgement based on predictive analytics, that are promised to be better, faster or cheaper than human judgement. I used to work for one. A roadblock is making the end user believe that the application is indeed better than their own judgement. We are all inclined to believe apps that predict things we know less about. Take the weather for example. Predictive models have been used for while – we tend to use them rather than looking at the sky and determining how the weather will be this afternoon. However for other purposes not so much. For example, predictive applications in sales – sales people tend to be skeptical that analytics can tell them what their accounts are likely to buy more than they would themselves, despite plenty of evidence to the contrary.

Final words

Context and your user’s mental models changes everything. Understand them well – ignore at your own risk 🙂

Red Cross – better site for more blood donations

Yesterday I got a Voicemail from Red Cross asking for urgent blood donations. Given the fact that I visit India once a year or so and then cannot give blood for a year, right now is a golden opportunity. It’s been over a year since I visited and one month to go before I visit again.

So I go to Red Cross’s website on my phone, find a site and drive where I can register, and then what happens? It asks me for my username and password.

 

 

What are the chances I will remember this? Zero. So I ask for it to reset my password.

Then I get an email with my new password.

 

Of course I am on my phone and so have no way of copying and pasting the password. So I put it off till I get in front of a computer. Now I remembered to complete this anyway because I was going to blog about this :). But how many people never finish this transaction and how much potential blood donations does Red Cross loose every year? Come on Red Cross. The web experience matters. Stop doing more calling efforts etc. and just make it easy for people to sign up and donate blood. It will be money well spent.

 

 

Slack vs. Email the context

I have noticed something strange. For some reason, I prefer to read updates in Slack vs. reading emails about it. This is despite the fact that slack updates are often one liners, not as well written as emails, and lack a lot of details. Why so then?

It’s all about the context.

Think of the last meeting or presentation you went to where someone went on and on about something. And you had no idea what they were saying.

Many times when that happens, it is because the person forgot to set context. Often called the curse of knowledge. Specifically, the person might just be following up a discussion from a previous meeting, but he or she might be so immersed in the details, that he assumes that you are too. Hence you will understand everything immediately.

Not so.

One of the most important things I learned at McKinsey – start a meeting with a recap. Take three minutes to state where we are.

But what does that have to do with Slack? With slack, you are clicking on a channel. In that brief period of about a setting you are mentally setting context that this conversation is about X. At Tamr we use Slack extensively. When a slack channel is about a project, I know what the conversation would be about. When it is a channel called random, I expect gifs, jokes, and articles only somewhat related to work.

Meanwhile an email subject line might be ‘Update.’ There is no previous conversation at times to fully scan. Hence slack as a preference – lowers cognitive load, and keeps the conversation going!

Taking perspective: an essential PM skill

The other day I was in a meeting with one of my teams. There were people from various groups – Customer Success, Design, QA and Engineering. And I found myself debating with every one of them.

Later I thought – why am I debating with everyone? Do I not agree with anyone? What is wrong with me?

But then I realized – ah that wasn’t so bad. You see, I was taking perspective.

One of the master PM skills is representing who is not in the room. I was often playing the role of the customer. In other cases I was not representing people who were not in the room necessarily, but advocating for people in the room who were not speaking up (or maybe they might have if I had given them a chance :)).

Anyhow I found this happens more often than not recently. So I must be doing something right – or messing up entirely.

Lack of functionality an advantage

Recently my wife and I started subscribing to the Boston Globe. And no, not the website or the iPad app. But the newspaper. Why would anyone do that in the age where all news is available on your fingertips via the internet, for free, and in the most current form?

This is the case where the limitations of the product actually has benefits. The product is news on paper – and just the news. No facebook app, no music, no glowing screen. Much less functionality, and somewhat worse form factor.

Why is it better? Because it does not attract our children. The screens of iPad/computer attract our children like bees to honey. They pretty much don’t care about a piece of paper. Which means Kerri and I can read it in peace. The lack of functionality is actually a distinct advantage for us.

Where have you seen a functionality gap to be a disadvantage? Please do comment

A confession – I am addicted

I have a confession to make. I am an addict.

There – I said it. It feels like a weight has been lifted off my shoulder.

And my addictions are many. But the biggest one is email.

What else would you call it?  The first thing I do when I get myself out of my bed? Check email.

But it is getting better. It used to be the last thing before I went to sleep. And the first thing even before I was out of bed. And then there was Facebook.

Now things are slightly better. There is no Facebook app on my phone. My 90 days without Facebook really helped.

Email no longer puts in a red notification on my Phone. That helps.

As all addicts, I have hope that I will overcome. And be fully present with the people that I am with, not checking my email, checking if someone else in the world had something to say to me.

Tell then….woo 3 more emails! I must be important!