Looking outwards — three essential rules of product strategy
The conventional wisdom is that the best chess players win because they are able to see more moves ahead.
So you may be surprised to hear this from world champion Magnus Carlsen:
“You have to take it move by move. It sounds contrary to what most people think goes on in chess. But often there are just so many possibilities you cannot think more than a couple of moves ahead. And if you are up against a strong opponent, he or she will realise what your plans are and prevent them anyway.”
There is a lot to digest in this quote.
It has stuck with me because Carlsen summarises some of the essential ingredients of effective product strategy, which are also often contrary to what most people think.
A conventional framing of product strategy might be to focus on understanding and solving user needs, then setting a clear product vision and success metrics.
But in my own experience, and looking at stories from many successful teams, the common advice often misses three essential rules. Three rules which go beyond your own product and organisation — and look outwards:
Embrace competition
Leverage trends
Plan for change
Embrace competition
“Ignore your competitors”, they say. And sometimes that makes sense, especially when trying to solve a problem in a fresh way.
But it is also naïve and, let’s be honest, a bit lazy.
In the end, products are competing to meet a need. You can’t ignore that competition — in fact, it seems the most successful companies have no qualms about studying, and directly challenging their competitors.
At the launch event for the first iPhone in 2007, Steve Jobs was clear. Five minutes into his presentation, he showed this, and spoke dismissively about “the usual suspects”.
“The problem with them, is really in the bottom 40% there”
Steve Jobs launching the iPhone in 2007
Jobs understood that Apple was entering a competition to be the one device in your pocket.
Embracing the competition means using competitive tactics. Things like:
Investing in strong marketing
Prioritising features that are marketable or will demo well (even if they may be the most used)
This doesn’t mean you should focus on gimmicks. Actually it may well mean the opposite. Product marketing, free trials and demos mostly focus on the core function and value of a product. Most of your development work (let alone gimmicks) won’t get anywhere near your marketing landing pages. Something like improving the speed of your core user flow may well be the most commercially savvy thing to do.
The ideal of course is a new feature that both adds significant value for existing users, and would make it into the everyday sales journey.
These tactics don’t necessarily feel good. As a product person, they go against a lot of quite sanctimonious theories about our role.
But they work. And they belong in your thinking about product strategy and development.
Questions to ask yourself:
What can the product do to support our sales team and journey?
What objections or questions do we face ahead of a sale?
What items on our roadmap would actually make it to the top of our sales pitch or our list of key features?
Leverage trends
Gibson Biddle was VP of Product during the rapid growth of Netflix.
He also encourages an actively, tactically competitive approach to product strategy. His core question is, “How will your product delight customers, in hard to copy, margin-enhancing ways?”
One essential factor in achieving delight (and growth) is leveraging external trends that create natural headwinds, relevance, and efficiencies, especially in comparison to incumbent, legacy products.
Gibson Biddle calls this “riding waves”. At Netflix they rode a number of waves, in particular the rapid growth of internet bandwidth and streaming technology, and the new generation of better, cheaper, smart televisions and devices.
Without the timing of these waves, Netflix would have seen little success, no matter how much it invested in user experience or new content.
They had the right product at the right time. That is always the secret. And you only have control of one, so you must pay extra attention to the other.
For a counter example, watch the documentary General Magic, chronicling the failed attempt to create an iPhone-like device in the early 1990s. A great team, with a great idea — and a great failure.
Concept sketches of the General Magic device
Watching General Magic it struck me that the team were one Wardley Mapping session away from a much better chance of success.
They were so focused on their internal vision of the future, they both missed the opportunity created by the emergence of the internet, and failed to create a great product experience based on the viable technologies of that time.
Wardley Mapping is a tool designed to generate an objective, outward-facing conversation about the user needs being served, the technologies being used, and how both of these will evolve over time.
Perhaps most simply, it helps you to think about and visualise technological ‘waves’ that you might ride.
Simon Wardley shared this image on Twitter. He called it “A very old map of mine … that I used to explain what was going wrong with Kodak.”
Map shared by Simon Wardley on Twitter (link)
The map shows how the need of “Sharing moments” was being met with both analogue and digital cameras. The dotted red lines illustrated the ongoing, rapid evolution of online photos and camera phones, which would transform the market and devastate companies like Kodak.
Whether we think this way or not, almost everyone working on product strategy is already riding the four great waves of our time. The internet, the cloud, smartphones, and software.
What Gibson Biddle and Simon Wardley suggest is a much more conscious approach to this, and a recognition that our job is to develop a product strategy and business that capitalises on wider trends and changes, to generate unique, accelerating advantages.
While we struggle in our specific domains, we mustn’t lose sight of the bigger picture. Your own ideas may be great, but the wider forces at play are greater.
Questions to ask yourself:
What things that were previously high-tech, are now becoming freely or cheaply available in a way that we could use and adapt to our space?
What technologies would a brand new startup use if it was solving this problem today (and how does that differ from what we are using)?
What do inevitable changes (like faster internet speeds, or the next more tech-savvy generation of users) mean for our market over the next 5 years?
Plan for change
When you look at examples like the iPhone or Netflix, it can feel as if the best products appeared almost inevitably as a result of a perfect, pre-determined plan.
Steve Jobs certainly liked to make it feel that way.
If you are responsible for product strategy, you have probably written a product vision — with aspirations to ‘nail it’. You’ve probably stood up in front of a lot of people and told them what is going to happen in the next 12 months (doing your best TED Talk impression).
You might now be torn between the plan you shared, and the reality you are facing. The new opportunities you wish you could jump on. The nagging doubts you wish you had mentioned earlier. (Maybe even a completely unanticipated situation like a global pandemic!)
We all understand that best laid plans will change. But at the same time, there is this idea that working on strategy means setting a long-term plan, and being the oracle that sees many ‘moves ahead’.
The reality is often illustrated with images showing how the intended route from A to B actually pans out.
A popular depiction of the journey from A to B
But even this can be unhelpful, because it still suggests a fixed focus on the original goal. The kind of blinkered vision that cost the General Magic team.
You shouldn’t just be iterating on how you get from A to B. You should also be iterating on what B is. Because product strategy is not one fixed, predestined ascent.
If you want an example, read Ken Kocienda’s book on the ups, downs dead ends and breakthroughs that actually went into the creation of the iPhone.
Or look at Gibson Biddle again, who describes “high-cadence experimentation” is at the heart of product strategy, and happily shares examples of big bets that Netflix got wrong.
Richard Rumelt writes brilliantly about this. He talks of strategy as ideally a “non-annual, opportunity-driven process”, and says:
You can’t get rid of ambiguity and uncertainty — they are the flip side of opportunity. If you want certainty and clarity, wait for others to take a position and see how they do. Then you’ll know what works, but it will be too late to profit from the knowledge.
He describes how the ‘kernel’ of a good strategy should include a clear diagnosis of the challenge, and a guiding policy for dealing with it.
But that guiding policy is still a broad, overall approach, that should allow for (and even be predicated on) a very opportunistic plan of action.
Again this is about looking outwards, being curious, swallowing your pride, seeking new advantages, accepting unknowns, being ready not necessarily for one big ‘pivot’ — but for many small ones.
In my own work, I am increasingly clear with colleagues about the unknowns.
For one previous project I made a roadmap of ‘possible futures’, which showed how we might choose various paths of complementary features, in order to specialise in solving one of three main ‘jobs to be done’.
A redacted version of my ‘Possible futures’ roadmap
Rather than a Gantt chart or timeline, our current roadmap at ScholarPack is a narrative document that starts with a strategic overview, before breaking down each product area into two sections headed:
“Current priorities”
“Longer term we are thinking about”
For more substantial commitments the roadmap includes a section on “Why build [x]?” which explains the rationale including the commercial context.
To put it simply, the roadmap focuses on the current Why and the What, not the How and the When.
This may not be as clean and easy to plan around as some people would (quite fairly) like. But it gives us a better chance at a better product. And it also drives engagement, because it recognises and capitalises on the value that colleagues can add when sharing ideas, feedback, and opportunities.
When the Apple Watch was launched in 2014, Tim Cook described it as three things, in this order:
A timepiece
A communication device
A health and fitness companion
Tim Cook launching the Apple Watch (video link)
Now, in October 2020, the Apple Watch homepage looks like this:
Apple’s product vision has evolved. Both in response to initial feedback and engagement, and now the Coronavirus outbreak. In many ways the three things listed in the original launch were ‘possible futures’ — and health and fitness has proven to be the winner.
Nobody would accuse Apple of a lack of focus or discipline in their product development. But the story of the Apple Watch shows how they too are experimental, responsive, and opportunistic.
Questions to ask yourself:
Does my strategy and roadmap include space for experimentation and change?
Do we consistently seek and respond to feedback from users and the market?
Do customer-facing colleagues influence the product?
If I could go back and edit our current annual plan, what would I change?
Has our product, roadmap or vision changed in response to Coronavirus?
Back at the chess board
In his book, Richard Rumelt says “being ‘strategic’ largely means being less myopic”.
The rules above are all about breaking our natural propensity, and the pressures we face, to over-plan, resist change, and underestimate external factors.
Which brings me back to Magnus Carsen and his game of chess.
“Often there are just so many possibilities you cannot think more than a couple of moves ahead. And if you are up against a strong opponent, he or she will realise what your plans are and prevent them anyway.”
The vision in chess is to win the game. The strategy might be to attack early to disrupt your opponent’s opening. The tactics might be a mix of planned moves and known exploits.
But all of this could change after the first move.
So the great grandmasters are the ones who can handle this balance. The need for a great Plan A, and the detailed knowledge of the game and their opponent. But then — the situational awareness, the ruthless opportunism, and the flexibility of mind to respond to change.