#17: Painkiller vs Vitamin Strategies - with Diogo Novaes, VP Product @Tractive & ex-Runtastic

Depending on your product, a team’s mission can be very clear (a checkout page for e-commerces) or a bit fuzzier. Going back to the old “painkiller” versus “vitamin” problem, many companies will have across their portfolio teams that are an integral part of their core proposition, and others that add value “around” it.

Our guest Diogo was in such a situation, in a very successful product: Adidas Running. Leading the “social” vertical, their contribution to the product experience and value was unclear, and they lacked strong input from upper management. Yet Diogo wanted to create a solid strategy, finding a purpose and a strong value proposition. In this episode we explored how he managed to do so, and his advice is certainly valuable for those looking for purpose as well as for those who have it and want to express it more clearly.

We talked about:

• Where to start when your team's purpose is unclear?
• How to dig insights for products that are not the core value drivers of the user experience?
• How to decide where to focus on, in a very broad problem space?
• How they decided the best KPIs, type of users and critical success criterias when formulating the strategy.
• How the strategy was communicated, shared and discussed across the company.
• The role of "principles" and guiding questions in the execution of the strategy.

And much more!

You can find Diogo on Linkedin and check https://tractive.com/en/hr/jobs for their open positions.

Remember that you can find more info and material on productdirection.co/podcast.

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 productdirection.co (training, coaching, and more)