Crafting Collaborative Product Strategy From Scratch
War stories from a career of leading and managing upwards
Building product strategy can be one of the most challenging yet rewarding aspects of being a product manager. The task isn't just about crafting a vision—it's about aligning stakeholders across various levels of the organisation while backing up your strategic choices with solid data and evidence. This complexity is even more daunting when you're new to your role, where the pressure to deliver is high but the path forward may seem unclear.
From my time working in both early startups to late-stage scale-ups and enterprise, I've encountered five key reasons why building a product strategy is so challenging from the get go:
Misaligned stakeholder expectations – Different departments often have varying goals, making it impossible to create a unified product strategy that satisfies everyone.
Conflicting business priorities – Balancing short-term revenue goals with long-term product vision can create tension, especially when leadership demands immediate results (e.g., be profitable, now!).
Lack of reliable data or metrics – Without access to strong data, product managers are left to make assumptions, which weakens the justification behind strategic decisions.
Pressure to deliver short-term wins over long-term vision – The need to show quick results can lead to compromises on the broader, future-oriented strategy.
Navigating organizational politics and power dynamics – Internal politics and the influence of key stakeholders often overshadow data-driven decisions, making alignment harder to achieve.
The importance of strategy cannot be understated. The fast you develop your strategy, the faster you avoid being stuck in what I call the “Strategy Misalignment Spiral”.
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The Unfortunate Case of the Strategy Misalignment Spiral
When a business or product lacks a clear strategy, teams often find themselves caught in a horrible downward spiral that leads only to the demise of team morale, productivity, and product performance.
I’ve now seen this spiral in different forms through my career, both as a consultant and as a product manager and leader. The spiral looks something roughly like this:
Reactive Decision Making
Without a clear product strategy, teams make decisions reactively, constantly shifting priorities to address the latest stakeholder demands or firefighting urgent issues. This leads to…
Wasted Resources
Reactive decision-making results in focusing on features and initiatives that do not align with long-term goals or deliver significant value. As a result, time, money, and talent are wasted on projects that do little to move the needle. This leads to…
Stakeholder Misalignment
As more resources are wasted on low-value efforts, frustration grows among stakeholders. Different departments push for their own priorities, leading to misalignment and conflicting demands across teams. This leads too…
Short-Term Wins Over Longer-Term Vision
In response to misalignment and growing stakeholder pressure, product teams focus on delivering short-term wins to appease immediate concerns. This compromises any long-term planning and perpetuates the cycle of reactive decision-making. This leads to…
Erosion of Team Morale
Constantly shifting priorities and delivering low-impact results take a toll on team morale. The product team and their stakeholders can feel disconnected from a larger purpose, leading to disengagement and burnout as they struggle to find meaning in their work.
Increased Reactive Decision-Making
As team morale declines, the product team becomes even more vulnerable to external pressures and firefighting. The lack of proactive strategic direction forces them into deeper reactive decision-making, perpetuating the downward spiral.
Avoid The Downward Spiral By “Leading Upwards”
There are some concrete ways to catch your teams from heading further down the spiral. I break this down into five key steps:
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