In this episode we spoke with Marc Abraham, Product Leader at Intercom and author of Managing Product = Managing Tension and My Product Management Toolkit.

We explored where are the biggest tensions when creating a product strategy, and discussed how to deal with them and the role of the product leader in navigating the different tradeoffs.

We talked about:

How Marc approaches the strategy problem: having a concrete vision, establishing where you are now, and working backward identifying the problems and opportunities you need to overcome and in what order (with a nice hurdle race analogy).
Sorting opportunities with the Kano model.
The challenge of finding criteria to select which hurdles to take first: Marc believes that ultimately you need to take a stake in the ground
How tension increases as you involve more people from different perspectives.
To tackle the tension that arises when discussing how “valuable” each opportunity is, clearly expose the facts or expectations for each initiative.
Tension arises not only from discussing the strategy topics but also from the different beliefs that people have about what strategy is (and the role of the product leader in clarifying it).
Where are we going to play, how do we think we can win, and what choices are we going to make.
Why product is in a very good position to facilitate the strategic conversation.
The importance of being very explicit in calling out the necessary trade-offs. How to apply decision frameworks to drive a decision among different stakeholders.
How the time horizon of the strategy can affect how much time and effort we invest creating it.
Align everyone before the meeting by having them express their one goal. Not everyone would have it clear!
When to go for sessions with multiple participants versus discussing in 1-on-1 sessions. The impact of the size and politicness of the organization.
How to effectively ask stakeholders to disccuss and make a decsion when the strategy hits a roadblock.
Marc’s recommendation of Never Split the Difference

And many other things!

You can find Marc on twitter, Medium, Linkedin, and marcabraham.com. And check out Marc’s books!

Remember that you can find more info and material on 100productstrategies.com.

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 nachobassino.com (training, coaching, and more)

Fast Money 04/01/19