"How do you understand value in a less ambiguous way?"

"1) Focus on outcomes"

"you’ll see that we’re far better off articulating ‘value’ in terms of a set of outcomes — “measurable changes in customer/user behavior that generate business value.”"

"The way I personally like to define outcomes is by looking for the intersect of your customer pain points/opportunities and your organization’s strategy."

"Using data and discovery as inputs, list out all your biggest opportunities or problems you have with your product right now — it could be customer-related (i.e. usability) of product-specific (i.e. conversion, retention, technical debt) — this is really just your opportunity backlog."

"The next step is to overlay all those opportunities with your product group/department/organization’s strategy. Where the two intersect is likely what you should be focusing on first."

"This is the crux of product strategy, the alignment of solving the right customer problems to drive product outcomes, and consequently organizational outcomes (often referred to as ‘impact’)."

"Product Strategy = customer opportunity + organisational opportunity."

"2) Prioritize opportunities, not features"

"Teresa Torres brilliantly said that product teams should be “prioritizing opportunities, not solutions”."

"“A product team’s job is to create value for the customer in a way that creates value for the business. This is rarely done by fixating on a ranked idea list.”"

"Just as we’ve already explored, Torres also suggests starting with the desired outcome you want to achieve and then work from there."

"of Outcomes < of Opportunities < of Solutions"

"The tighter your product strategy is, the more defined your desired outcomes will be, and the easier it’ll be to define and prioritize only those opportunities that align with it."

"3) Increase confidence"

"Rather than trying to focus on value, focus on gaining confidence"

"When you shift your thinking away from the ‘what’, to how confident you are, you begin to approach things from a different angle."

"The only way you’re going to increase your confidence is by getting out of the building and speaking with customers. As such discovery becomes a confidence-building process, as well as a confidence destroying one too."

"Discovery is a confidence-building process."

"You start with multiple problem spaces and as you go through discovery you’ll narrow them down too but a few. As you shift into the solution space you will also have a number of potential solutions and converging again, dwindle them down too but a few (perhaps just one) based on your confidence in them."

"Many practices in Product Management is really about de-risking. We use techniques like discovery and iterative delivery to derisk by gaining confidence in our bets, or if we’re losing confidence we pivot."

"I often find where places struggle with prioritization it’s not a “prioritization” problem per se, but rather a strategy one."

"Instead of thinking about “value”, think about outcomes and then look to gain confidence that you are solving those outcomes in the best possible way."

"“If I had an hour to solve a problem I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and five minutes thinking about solutions.”"

"A roadmap is more akin to a plan. It details how you intend to achieve your strategy and/or goals — but it cannot replace having a strategy."

"I define strategy (heavily influenced by the works of Roger L. Martin and ‘Playing the Win’) as “a set of choices”."

"Where strategy plays in the realm of the unknown, plans on the other hand, try to bring certainty and order to the chaos."

"Confusing the two, ‘strategy’ and ‘planning’ is a common mistake."

"As Mike Tyson famously said, “Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth”…think about strategy as how you’re going to deal with being punched in the mouth."

"Your roadmap is a form of plan."

"Rather I see strategy as a spectrum. Every single person in the organisation are making choices (strategic decisions) all the time, just at varying levels."

"So rather than thinking of strategy vs tactics as one-vs-the-other, consider it as a continuum, from big hairy choices to small ones, with varying degrees of impact."

"So to help you turn something messy, unclear and intangible into something a bit more ‘real’ let me give you some examples."

"1. What are our broad aspirations for our organization & the concrete goals against which we can measure our progress?"

"2. Across the potential field available to us, where will we choose to play and not play?"

"1) Roger L Martin would define strategy as answering these 5 questions:"

"3. In our chosen place to play, how will we choose to win against the competitors there?"

"4. What capabilities are necessary to build and maintain to win in our chosen manner?"

"5. What management systems are necessary to operate to build and maintain the key capabilities?"

"Tenets — This is a very Amazon thing where every action has some clearly define north star. There are a lot of ways to word these. Generally, they are inspirational pillars that the rest of the plan sits on top of (go with me on this one)."

"3) Even a Lean Canvas is a form of strategy:"

"Because no one can predict the future (not that I know of at least!) making key choices — your strategy — is inherently uncertain. This means that how you come to your strategy in the first place is crucial as well as your ability to adapt to new information as it presents itself."

"Rather the best strategies are based on data and informed by research."

"Rather, it’s investigating the market, your competitors in-depth, their positioning, doing interviews and resonance testing on alternative value propositions, pricing and financial modelling, etc."

"Using information to try and get your strategy in a good shape to begin with is the first step, but responding to new information and adapting is second."

"Short of inventing time travel or peering into a crystal ball, at best your strategy is an educated guess. This isn’t a bad thing, this is why strategy is so hard. But what it does mean is that strategies are emergent."