If you create a great strategy and communicate it properly, and have good people to execute it, what can possibly go wrong?  Well, as you can imagine, multiple layers of complexities can get in the way.  In this episode, Randy shared two stories where different company intricacies made good strategies fail. The learning will help you view your strategy process from a wider perspective, and help you avoid these pitfalls. Randy is the author of What Do We Do Now?, host of The Product Experience podcast by Mind the Product, and Coach and Consultant at outofowls.com. In this episode, we talked about: 2 stories about good strategies failing The complexities of funding your strategy Build or Buy decisions in strategy High-level stakeholder alignment How to build trust for decision-makers And much more! 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)

The world is full of hard problems, which led to opportunities to tackle them using groundbreaking innovative products.  Bigger companies are in an interesting position: they can invest in exploring new problems related to their core mission, but which can be years ahead in terms of helping them expand their business. Yet, for many reasons, they fail to innovate. And the first problem is how they strategize in this context. Luckily, in this episode, Andrew Skotzko shares a great story about such a situation and what we should do when facing it.  I previously wrote about the differences in execution for this type of strategy, but Andrew gives a great example from the trenches, full of details and advice you can leverage if you feel your strategy needs to be more far-fetched. You can find Andrew’s content and services on https://www.makethingsthatmatter.com/, and subscribe to his daily 2-min tips at: https://www.productleadershipdaily.com/ 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)

If you are a product leader joining a new organization, or if you have recently been promoted within your organization and are tasked with creating a strategy, where should you start? How do you align on what strategy is? How do you collect the existing knowledge and past decisions and combine them with new trends and goals? Besides years of product leadership experience, Tobias has helped many organizations and leaders create their product strategies and answer these questions. In this episode, we talked about: What are the symptoms of lacking strategy? How do different artifacts (objectives, strategy, vision) play together, and what should go first? Diagnosing your current situation. What is inside a good strategy? The written narrative approach. How to test your strategy, and what to with conflicts? And much more! You can find Tobi on Linkedin or on his website: https://www.tobiasfreudenreich.de/. 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)

How do you navigate the intricate balance between the rapid-paced weekly sprints of agile software development and the long-term planning cycles inherent in hardware components? In this episode, I spoke with Dominik Busching -Head of Product at Tado- and unveiled how they create innovative solutions that not only enhance user satisfaction but also contribute to the sustainable transformation of the energy industry. In this episode, we talked about: What are the challenges of Strategy in the intersection of Hardware and Software. How they went from a tacit strategy by their founders to a fully-fledged Product Strategy using written narratives. How they identify trends in a complex space. How they test hypotheses in the hardware world. And much more! You can find Dominik on Linkedin. 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)

In this episode, I spoke with Nils Janse, CEO and co-founder of Delibr, a tool to help Product Managers organize and structure decision-making across the entire product flow. We covered amazing insights, going from crafting a value proposition, followed by how to select the focus areas and how to be stubborn on the vision while flexible on the execution based on customer feedback. Pay special attention to Nils’ definition of the “three interacting trees” (minute 20 approx). He uses three interacting models: an opportunity solution tree for specific outcomes, a higher-level JTBD-tree, and a Product-tree focused on the components. Amazing discovery to balance all the different opportunities you may need to handle. The conversation was a bit “meta” since we discussed their process and, at the same time, Delibr’s strategies to support the process!  In this episode, we talked about: How Delibr made its way to a Product Management tool, starting as a tool for “structured decision making.” How to differentiate in the product management tooling space Starting your strategy by identifying your ICP How to mix the “upstream” vs. “downstream” opportunities Not trying to fit all your opportunity space into OSTs, and other trees can be used. How LLMs can be extremely helpful in so many text-intensive PM tasks And much more! You can find Nils on Linkedin, and do check out his book Epic Alignment. You can check Delibr and ask for a demo.  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)

The role of strategy in pre-market-fit startups can sometimes be unclear. How would we focus or double down on a path when we have so much uncertainty and risk? We would likely pivot many times before finding what we need to double down on, and doing a deep strategic exercise is a waste of time.  But when we neglect strategy, the consequences can be worse. Not having clarity on what we are trying to achieve and testing random things has crashed many startups. Luckily, there is a middle ground. In this episode, I spoke with David Pereira, an experienced product leader and strategist, who told us (with very detailed examples!) how to create strategies that help startups find Product-Market Fit and connect them to an iterative execution that drives success. In this episode, we talked about: Where to start when defining strategies in the seed-stage startup context How to find the right problems in a new or unknown market How to align on the expected result How a strategy for a seed-stage startup can look like How to connect strategy with the fast-paced execution of a startup And much more! You can find David on LinkedIn, and read his material on dpereira.substack.com 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)

Playing to Win is a strong framework, but it can create some confusion during its implementation, like making your winning aspiration “be the #1 of X”. I spoke with Stuart Congdon, a strategy veteran, who has used it many times and walked us through a complete example with my typical annoying questions to get to the root of their strategic decisions! In this episode, we talked about: A real implementation of the Play to win framework Using Customer Journey and Service Blueprint to identify opportunities How to find your niche for the “where to play” How to differentiate and don’t make a strategy that could be the same as any competitor Recommended Book: Superstrings. A Theory of Everything And much more! You can find Stu on Linkedin. 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)

Many strategies come from a need to grow, or start by reviewing many opportunities to find the ideal ones. But what if we have a unique asset that we can leverage to create a strategic advantage? A recent example could be how Disney used their unique IP to create a winning streaming platform in an already competitive market.  In this episode, Joe Jenvey from Sedex shared a more “down to earth” example: using their unique supply chain data to create new value propositions for their customers.  Joe explained (among *many* other things) how they started from the business need and did a discovery process to understand the customer problem they could solve and how to solve it.  We talked about: How their process started with a business need and developed into a product-led customer discovery. How they interacted between different areas of the business The tools they used to collect and share data How they validated their strategy How do they manage vision, roadmap, goals, and checkpoints And much more! You can find Joe on Linkedin. 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)

Strategy in B2B has serious power dynamics. There often seems to be a fight between PMs and Sales, when in the end, hopefully, they are trying to do what's best for the company. Adam Thomas has used multiple hats in the past and brings some advice on working with the different sides of the organization to create a trusted and focused strategy, and how to keep validating your strategic investments with survival metrics. In this episode, we talked about: How to formulate portfolio-level strategies How Product and Sales interact, why we always struggle, and what to do about it The importance of focus (and consequently trade-offs) for strategy The but - therefore storytelling rule Survival metrics How “Product Strategy” roles interact with Product leaders and teams And much more! You can find Adam on theadamthomas.com, and also on Linkedin or Youtube. 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)

One of the key elements of a solid product strategy that generates growth based on your product success, is building and sustaining strong differentiators. But finding, validating and aligning on that differentiation is hard work. In this episode we explored strategy creation with Leah Tharin, Head of Product at Jua.ai and Product Led Growth expert. We covered many aspects of strategy creation, starting with the importance of determining your target user, how to identify opportunities that you can later select for your differentiation, and all the way down to how to summarize it in an inspiring one-pager. In this episode, we spoke about: How Leah strives for a strategy one pager The importance of defining your audience and unique value proposition How she explores the opportunity space and decides what to focus on Selecting based on facts rather than opinion or influence What is needed for a Product Led Growth strategy Recommended book: The Earned Life And much more! You can find and connect with Leah’s content on leahtharin.com. 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)