One Knight in Product

Most PMs Aren't Good At Strategy - Enter The Decision Stack! (with Martin Eriksson, Co-founder of Mind the Product & Creator of The Decision Stack)

Feb 2, 2025

Martin Eriksson, co-founder of Mind the Product and author of "Product Leadership," discusses the common pitfalls in company strategies and emphasizes the need for clarity and alignment. He reveals that many companies lack coherent strategies, which hampers product development. The decision stack framework is introduced as a solution for strategic alignment. Eriksson also critiques vague company values, advocating for more specific principles that support decisive actions, and stresses the importance of compelling vision statements to inspire teams.

01:07:48

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Episode guests

Martin Eriksson

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Quick takeaways

A clear company strategy is essential for aligning all employees and ensuring effective execution across teams and initiatives.

Many organizations struggle with vague vision statements and an aversion to making choices, severely limiting their strategic capabilities.

Product managers must navigate organizational dynamics and build trust to balance long-term goals with the short-term priorities of sales teams.

Deep dives

The Importance of Product Strategy

A strong product strategy is crucial for guiding decisions within a product team and ensuring alignment with broader organizational objectives. Many companies lack a defined product strategy, which hinders their ability to prioritize and execute effectively. Informed by data and customer insights, a well-crafted strategy allows product managers to engage with leadership and advocate for their vision. By fostering this dialogue, product teams can develop a cohesive narrative that aligns with the company's mission while addressing market needs.

Intro

2min

Navigating Product Management in Venture and Equity

15min

Mastering the Decision Stack

11min

Crafting Compelling Vision and Mission Statements

8min

The Essence of Strategic Alignment

26min

The Inefficacy of Fluffy Company Values in Decision Making

4min

The Essence of Strategic Decision-Making

3min

Martin Eriksson is the co-founder of Mind the Product, and co-author of the "Product Leadership" book. Martin has worked with a multitude of companies and has been heavily involved in the VC side of product management. These days, he's advising and coaching companies as well as trying to help us all make good decisions by writing a new book, "The Decision Stack", alongside its supporting website.

Episode highlights: 1. The vast majority of company employees don't know what their company strategy is...

It's important for everyone in the company to be aligned on what's important, where the company's going and how they're going to get there. It's crucial for product and business leaders to do the work; both to create a vision and strategy and to share it with everyone who is needed to execute it.

2. ... but, worse still, the vast majority of companies don't even have a strategy to speak of

Strategy is about making a coherent set of choices about how we're going to achieve our goals or make our company vision real. But, too many companies have fluffy, vague vision statements that could mean anything, and leaders who want to do everything all at once and don't want to make choices. This limits their ability to actually achieve anything.

3. It's hard to create a product strategy if you don't have a company strategy, but you should do it anyway

A product strategy should support the company strategy and vision but, if there's no company strategy or vision, it's hard to create or defend such a strategy. On the other hand, you should still do the work to create one; either you'll get to go and execute the strategy or you'll have a straw man proposal to provoke further discussion around what the strategy should be.

4. A lot of product people are pretty bad at strategy, and we need to get better

Back in the day, a lot of product managers were expected to write specifications and get stuff done. They weren't even expected to be strategic, and many still aren't to this day. These skills are learnable; product people need to do their best to up their game, and company leaders need to get more comfortable both delegating responsibility and coaching their employees to have these skills.

5. The answer is not "Founder mode"

"Founder mode" can be used to justify just about any behaviour, invites "hero syndrome" and can lead to micromanagement and single points of failure. Good leaders absolutely need to be deeply involved in their business, but this should not be at the expense of creating strong, aligned teams that can take many day-to-day decisions without them.

Contact Martin

You can catch up with Martin on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/martineriksson
You can also check his website: https://martineriksson.com
Keep up-to-date with The Decision Stack: https://www.thedecisionstack.com/

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One Knight in Product

Most PMs Aren't Good At Strategy - Enter The Decision Stack! (with Martin Eriksson, Co-founder of Mind the Product & Creator of The Decision Stack)

Episode guests

Podcast summary created with Snipd AI

Quick takeaways

Deep dives

The Importance of Product Strategy

Navigating Organizational Dynamics

The Role of Founders in Product Strategy

The Value of a Well-Defined Vision

Leveraging Data for Decision-Making

Remember Everything You Learn from Podcasts