Product Strategy 101: Building products your customers love

- Hi, everybody. In this video we're gonna talk about product strategy, and how to use product strategy to build products your customers love. Product strategy divides the winners from the losers. And that's why a company like Clubhouse does so well, because they have decided on a product strategy that really fits with their company goals.

But strategy can be confusing, maybe sometimes even a little bit intimidating. So that's why I'm going to tell you a story which you can use to explain strategy to anyone. And strategic thinking is the number one skill that turns junior product owners and product managers into senior strategic thinkers.

Ready? Let's go. (upbeat music) Hi, Arthur, and I'm the founder of Workshop Wednesday, and I've helped more than 60 organizations to define their product strategy, and to build a fantastic team to achieve that strategy. So let's start with what product strategy actually is. And the best way to do that is to make use of this article.

"WTF is Strategy? " It describes how strategy helps you to connect the mission and the vision of your company with the roadmap and the execution and the day-to-day tasks. The article is linked down below. But in this video, I'm gonna walk through each of the five steps and I will show you what you can do in each step to achieve the best possible product strategy.

So strategy is the part that connects the mission and the vision of the company with the roadmap and the execution. Execution are the things you and your team do on a day-to-day basis. And because of that, they are really feasible. And the more up you go, the more fake and abstract it gets. And that's on purpose, because the mission is a long-term goal, a really long, long-term goal.

So maybe not even 10 years but the 100 years from now. And it's impossible to guess what you're doing at that period of time. But what is possible is to connect your mission with your execution. And I will show you with an example what I mean by that. So let's say our mission is to climb the top of this mountain.

A mission is the bigger problem you're trying to solve, and also who you're trying to solve it for. So is it only me going up to the mountain? Is it the whole team or my customers coming along? This is something that's defined in the mission. But it's still fake. You don't know how long it would take you to get there.

You don't know which paths you will take. So we need some more guidance for that. And that's where the vision comes in play. The vision is more concrete. It's the ideal solution that addresses the problem you've articulated in your mission. So in this case, we have defined our starting point as the blue dot in the bottom right corner.

And we want to get to the point where the star is. So it could be that area. It could be that specific spot. We don't know yet, because we haven't seen the place, and we're not sure yet what there is. If you compare this with the mission there you can see that the starting place has a lot of impact on how your journey will go.

In this case, because we're starting at this side of the river, we need to figure out how to get over the water. Okay, now let's see how our strategy can connect the mission and the vision to our execution. So let's say the red crosses are the spots in our journey we want to avoid. And if we want to define the best possible routes, maybe it's for us to start crossing the river because that's something we have never done before.

So at this point of time, that's the riskiest part of our journey because have never done it before. We don't know if we can actually do it. Maybe we need a lot of materials for that. Or we can better do it at the start of the journey, then in the middle or nearing the end. Because if we fail then, then all the way up to that point has been for nothing.

So that's the strategy. And then we go through the roadmap, and that's actually the turn-by-turn directions. And with the knowledge we have now we think this is the best possible journey, but what you will learn with execution, with the actual progress, is that new things will pop up along the way. You will learn new things and maybe new skills, and maybe because of that, you can take a shortcut or maybe because of that, you want to reach a different destination.

So it's really important to keep inspecting and adapting your product strategy. Most of the times your roadmap and your execution are the things that will change. And your mission and vision are the ones that stay the same. But let's connect this again with product strategy. I will show you in a bit the roadmap of Clubhouse, but let's start at the mission.

Because the bigger mission is the mountaintop you want to climb. It's the problem you're trying to solve. And you want to inspire others into coming along with you on the journey. It can be your customers. It can be your own team. Great way to inspire others is with the golden circle of Simon Sinek.

The why, the how and the what? You've probably heard of this before, but only a few companies are really executing well on inspiring others to action. For example, Hey, the email surface of Basecamp, they have described really well what their mission is. And in this way they have inspired others to take action.

But a lot of companies are failing to do this. And because of that, they are missing out a lot of opportunities. So watch the video again, because this is why others will follow you on your journey. So we have our mission, and if it's not perfect yet, that's also okay because what you will learn with your execution, it will inform the other steps bottom-up as well.

In this way, you can get new insights and it will help you inform to formulate a better mission, especially for early stage companies. So let's move through the vision. The vision is where we have the idea of a solution that addresses the problem that we've articulated in the mission. So we want to start somewhere and we want to end somewhere.

How do we do that? A great way to create your product vision is to make use of the Lean Canvas. And I've made a video of that before. I will link it in one of these corners. And it's in the description down below as well. But basically, it's a canvas which you can use to capture your product vision.

You can make use of the nine boxes. And in this way, you have a starting point for your product. So where you wanna start, and you also have a more clear end state in the form of a solution. Oh yeah, and of course, the value proposition also helps to describe the end state. So now that we have our mission and our vision, let's move to the strategy part.

Strategy is where we design the best possible routes. If you have certain spots we want to avoid. And we know there's a risk, in this case we cannot swim, for example. So we wanna get across the water as early as possible. Then we can think of the best possible way to go. A great way to do that is to make use of objectives and key results.

I also made an earlier video about that. It's also in this corner of the description below. But what's great about objective and key results is that it helps you to set a shorter term goal, three months. So let's say it will take us three months to cross this water. It gives us a clear focus for the coming period.

So we know we want to focus on this part of the journey in the coming three months. And what's also great about objectives and key results is that there are measurable milestones, so key results. And in this case, you could say that a measurable milestone could be that 80% of our team, of our crew, is at the other side of the river at the end of three months.

And now that we have our strategy, it's time for the turn-by-turn by directions in the form of a roadmap. So are we crossing the water by building a bridge? Are we flying over the water or we're making a tunnel or we're using a slingshot to get across the river? You get the point. So this is where we make our strategy concrete for the common period, with the knowledge we have now.

Let's have a look at the roadmap of Clubhouse. What they are doing now is because they have a lot of investors in it. They have the room to do this. So what they do now, they have an invite only structure. And this way, they are trying to hype their product, and to get as many users on their platform as possible.

Like I said, they have a lot of money backing them up. So it seems that it could be a right approach for them, also because there's now a lot of news coverage about the app. Clubhouse has topped 8 million global downloads. It's generating a lot of buzz and a lot of people want to get in, because what we have seen with other social platforms is when the network effect kicks in, when a lot of users are on the platform, then it's easier to find a monetization method and it can be in the form of ads or it can be paid content or whatever they come up with.

Probably they've already thought about it at Clubhouse, how they want to monetize, but it's not set in stone yet. And it can be because in three months from now, they have way different learnings. They have new insights which they didn't think of at this moment of time. And because of that, they are choosing a different direction than they initially thought of.

But of course, for this strategy and for this roadmap, you need enough money to get through that point. So it's not a strategy that works for everyone. And that's the challenging, and at the same time, the interesting part of product strategy, because you have to connect the business goals with what the user wants and also what your team can do, and then make the best possible decisions.

So let's finish with the last step, execution. This is the actual progress that you're making. Ideally, this is the solution that you can put in the hands of your customers that really helps them to solve a problem. A great way to narrow your execution is to make use of Scrum, especially for software products.

I will talk about that more in a future video but basically what it does is to break down the bigger plan into smaller parts, into smaller goals, so that you are making sure that your execution stays connected with the roadmap and the bigger plan. One more example also from the article "WTF is Strategy?

" And the example is from Tesla. Tesla's mission is to accelerate the world's transition to sustainable transport. Tesla's vision is to reduce vehicle carbon emission by selling electric vehicles. And their strategy all the way at the beginning was to start with a sports car, The Roadster. Use the money from selling that car to build an affordable car.

Use that money to build an even more affordable car. And then with that, provide zero emission electric power generation options. And of course their fifth step was to don't tell anyone. So what is next? This was product strategy in a nutshell, and it's one of the most powerful things you can do when building products.

A great agile tool to capture all the five steps in the framework is to make use of user story mapping. User story mapping is a great way to connect your mission and vision with the daily execution. It's a living backlog of work that your team uses to make the right decision and to build the right things.

And as we speak, we are working on our new online course around user story mapping. If you want to be the first one to know then sign up for free, become a member of the Workshop Wednesday community, at workshopwednesday. co. We are doing a pilot launch with only the members of our community before releasing it to the bigger public.

So if you want to be in the pilot launch, sign up below and I will let you know when the course is there. That's it for now. Thanks for watching and see you in the next one. Peace. (upbeat music)