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Vision and strategy

Give faster-moving teams the strategic reasoning to make coherent choices, and a way to challenge the strategy with evidence.

Who it is for

Product Teams

Product Team leaders responsible for product strategy and Stream Team objectives.

Business and functional leaders whose investment and capability decisions need to support that direction.

Duration
1 day

Inside the module

What the module covers

This module helps a Product Team write the vision, strategy, and objectives that Stream Teams use to make their own decisions.

The cohort works on its own product all day, moving from a list of goals and features to a diagnosis, explicit choices, and outcome targets that can be challenged with evidence.

By the end, participants have practiced how to

  • Test a product vision against the three common weak shapes (money-focused, technology-centric, vague aspiration) and redraft it around the customer's future
  • Write a diagnosis statement that reduces product performance data, market insights, and competitor positioning to the few challenges that matter most
  • Make where to play and how to win choices, including written statements of where the product will not compete
  • Communicate a strategic priority as DIBBs (Data, Insight, Belief, Bet) so teams can see the reasoning behind it
  • Translate business impact metrics into value stream outcome metrics and quarterly OKRs agreed with each Stream Team
  • Set review points for the strategy, from a weekly roadmap rolled up from team boards to an automatic strategy contest

Module outline

How the time is spent

Each part ends with a short exercise, on your own work where you have it and on a prepared case where you do not. We adapt the examples and emphasis to the people in the room.

  1. A customer-centered product vision

    What a product vision has to do when Stream Teams choose their own solutions, and how to tell a usable vision from a slogan.

    Search and Booking start outside a pale blue band labeled Business strategy. Curved arrows move each team into a separate position inside the band, showing their scopes aligning with the shared strategy while remaining distinct.

    Put it into practice

    Critique your current product vision against the anti-patterns and sketch a first draft of a customer-centered version looking five or more years ahead, for the Product Team to refine after the module.

    Topics covered

    • Strategy, culture, and KPIs as one aligned system
    • Customer journey mapping as the input to the vision
    • Three weak vision shapes: money-focused, technology-centric, vague aspiration
    • Vision formats: statement, vision board, day-in-the-life narrative
    • Vision by committee and internally focused vision anti-patterns

  2. Diagnosing the current state

    Building the factual base for strategy: the challenges holding the product back, the customers to prioritize, and the advantage the organization can use.

    Put it into practice

    Write a one-paragraph diagnosis for your product that names the few challenges that matter most and the critical point among them, and name the customer segment you will prioritize.

    Topics covered

    • Diagnosis statement from product performance data and market insights
    • SWOT analysis and market positioning mapping
    • Customer segmentation: demographic, psychographic, behavioral, geographic
    • Target market selection and internal capabilities (the unfair advantage)
    • Value proposition statement tested with real customers

  3. Documenting the strategy and its bets

    Turning the diagnosis into a written strategy that makes hard choices and shares its reasoning with the teams.

    Put it into practice

    Write your where-to-play and where-not-to-play choices, with at least two lines that name an option you are giving up, and frame the top choice as a DIBBs entry that reuses the data and insight from your diagnosis.

    Topics covered

    • Where to play, how to win, and where not to play
    • Rumelt's sources of power: leverage, focus, proximate objectives
    • DIBBs compared with Playing to Win and Good Strategy/Bad Strategy
    • Positioning layer owned by the Marketing Lead
    • Laundry List, Blue Sky, and Template Thinking anti-patterns

  4. From strategy to team objectives and review

    Connecting the strategy to metrics a Stream Team can move within a quarter, and deciding how the Product Team will check that the strategy is working.

    Put it into practice

    Draft one objective with key results for a real Stream Team, state the assumed link to a business goal, and name the evidence that would make you revisit the strategy.

    Topics covered

    • Effort, output, outcome, and impact metrics
    • Value stream outcome metrics with an assumed link to business impact
    • Quarterly objective setting meetings and OKRs
    • Targets kept separate from forecasts and funding
    • Bottom-up product roadmap and the automatic strategy contest

Practical results

What the cohort leaves with

  • A redrafted product vision written from the customer's point of view
  • A diagnosis statement with target market, where to play, how to win, and where not to play
  • One strategic priority written as a DIBBs entry, ready to share with Stream Teams
  • Draft OKRs for one Stream Team, with the assumed link from its outcome metrics to a business goal
  • A list of review points for the strategy, including the trigger for a strategy contest

Before the module

Bring the current vision and strategy and a one-page summary of product performance. Leaders should agree beforehand which product and which business goals the day will focus on.

The company learning plan

Where this module fits

Part of the Product Teams courses, taken at the Lead the product teams stage of the implementation.

See all company courses →

Product Teams

Explore the supporting documentation