If youre three people building your first product, or maybe a thousand people with seven products, i think the tenants are the same. The cycle time is different. It's really the speed that is different. And so at a start up where you're accumulating a lot of information very quickly about who your customers are, then it make sense to continually revisit the mission and the strategy. As companies get bigger, there's more of an established process. There's n established culture, ne there's oftentimes quarterly business reviews. So then this strategic process fits within something that has a cycle time more on a quarter or a half year basis.
Today’s episode is with Ravi Mehta, who is formerly the Chief Product Officer at Tinder, and taught product strategy as an Executive in Residence at Reforge.
In today’s conversation, we dive exceptionally deep into product strategy, starting with what Ravi sees as the most common disconnect between product strategy and what product teams actually work on day-to-day. In the bulk of our discussion, we walk through the core tenants of what he calls the product strategy stack, which includes the company mission, company strategy, product strategy, product roadmap, and product goals.
Next, he unpacks his alternative approach to OKRs, called NCTs. He makes the case that outlining narratives, commitments, and tasks sidesteps some of the most common headaches when it comes to OKRs, and gives suggestions for implementing NCTs within your own product teams.
Strategy is often misunderstood and has come to mean all sorts of different things. What struck me about Ravi is how clearly he’s able to articulate these amorphous ideas like “mission” or “vision.” He’s also got plenty of examples from his own career at TripAdvisor and Tinder, plus his work as an advisor for other fast-growing startups.
You can follow Ravi on Twitter at @ravi_mehta.
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