Strategic alignment in product - Martin Eriksson (Product Partner, EQT, Mind the Product)
Dec 6, 2023
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Join Martin Eriksson, EQT Product Partner and Co-founder of Mind the Product, as he unveils The Decision Stack, a model for effective decision-making. He explores the importance of strategic alignment and the role of principles in guiding product teams. The hosts discuss feedback and response to the mental model, highlighting its flexibility and facilitation of conversations.
The Decision Stack model helps product teams align their actions with the company's vision and strategy, providing clarity on objectives, opportunities, and principles.
Principles in the Decision Stack guide decision-making, help prioritize choices, and align actions with the overall strategy, fostering clarity and reducing debate.
Deep dives
The Decision Stack: A Mental Model for Product Strategy
The podcast episode discusses the concept of the Decision Stack, which is a mental model for product strategy. The speaker, Martin Erickson, explains that the Decision Stack helps teams align their actions with the overall vision and strategy of the company. It consists of five steps: vision/mission, strategy, objectives, opportunities, and principles. The vision/mission sets the direction, followed by developing a strategy to achieve it. Objectives and opportunities are then identified to guide decision making, and principles are established to provide clarity on how to make trade-offs. The speaker emphasizes the importance of clear strategy and the role of product leaders in pushing for strategy clarity and fostering alignment across teams.
Benefits of Using the Decision Stack
The Decision Stack, as a mental model, helps teams make more informed decisions by providing a framework for structuring information. It brings clarity to the decision-making process, reduces debate, and aligns teams with the company's goals and strategy. By having a clear vision, strategy, objectives, opportunities, and principles in the Decision Stack, product teams can focus on what matters most and avoid wasting time on conflicting priorities or unclear direction. The model also facilitates communication and understanding between different levels of the organization, ensuring that everyone is working towards the same goals.
The Role of Principles in the Decision Stack
Principles serve as an essential component of the Decision Stack, providing guidance on how to make decisions and navigate trade-offs effectively. Unlike values, which are often broad and less actionable, principles in the Decision Stack are focused on specific trade-offs relevant to the company's strategy. These principles help teams prioritize their decisions, make consistent choices, and align their actions with the overall strategy. The speaker emphasizes the importance of principles in the decision-making process, highlighting that they should be actionable and help teams understand the reasoning behind their choices.
Challenges and Solutions in Implementing the Decision Stack
Implementing the Decision Stack may face challenges, particularly in organizations where strategy clarity is lacking. However, these challenges can be overcome by fostering open conversations with leadership, challenging the status quo, and asking critical questions to uncover and articulate the company's strategy. By engaging in discussions centered around trade-offs, companies can identify the overarching goals, objectives, and opportunities that align with their strategy. The Decision Stack provides a valuable tool for product leaders in navigating these challenges, fostering alignment, and ensuring that teams are working towards the same vision.
Join us for an insightful conversation with Martin Eriksson, EQT Product Partner and Co-founder of Mind the Product. Martin unveils The Decision Stack, a model to empower product teams in making more effective decisions.
We dissect the five steps of this model, demonstrating the power of a defined vision, cohesive strategy, and an understanding of objectives, opportunities, and principles.
Featured Links: Follow Martin on LinkedIn and mas.to | Martin's website | The Decision Stack | Buy 'Product Leadership: How Top Product Managers Launch Awesome Products and Build Successful Teams'book | Opportunity Solution Tree model feature by Teresa Torres
Our Hosts Lily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.
Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager’s Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon’s music stores in the US & UK.
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