As product people, we have all heard how important it is to have a clear strategy for our product and business. We need to understand why the product exists, and what is the vision, mission, and goals we want to achieve. Without having a clear understanding of all these points, we might feel lost, or have a product without a clear direction.
But what about the next steps? How do you make that happen? What if the problem is not the strategy definition, but the implementation?
While making a strategy is not easy-peasy, making that strategy come to life isn’t lemon squeezy. Both are quite hard, but essential to make sure that your company our product succeeds.
There are a lot of articles about what strategy is, and how to make a good strategy is and isn’t. So here are my thoughts about it:
It is a set of guidelines and practices that when put into practice by the entire company, allow the company to achieve specific goals.
It seems easy, right? But how to make it happen? Here are some problems and how they can be solved:
People don’t know or understand the strategy
If strategy is not communicated or if people don’t understand what the strategy means there is no sense in having a strategy. When people don’t know the strategy the decision they make in their day to day will not make your company a step closer to the goal. In some cases it might make it far way from it.
How to avoid it?
- Communicate the Strategy regularly
- When your teams present their plans, asked how that will help them achieve company strategy
Strategy is not aligned in the entire company
This can be a consequence of the previous point, or it can be that different areas also have sub-division of the company strategy that are not aligned between themselves. It is not enough to have a company strategy, it is also important to guarantee that your different teams are not working in different directions to try to achieve a goal.
How to avoid it?
- Check the plans for different areas together for conflicts
- Make different to create plans together to achieve a shared goal
- Teams present plans to each other
The strategy is too broad
This is a common one, if your strategy is to do everything and solve all the things, you don’t have a strategy. Focus on a specific thing you want to achieve, either a market or a type of client, or a specific type of product. When you have a strategy that is too broad, you have no strategy
How to avoid it?
This is not an easy one to avoid
- Try to find a niche you want to focus
- Create SMART goals
Other aspects of the company are having more strength than the strategy
Specific projects, people management you name it. It might be relevant reasons that for your company make sense at some point, but don’t be surprised if that doesn’t allow you to get where you want to get.
How to avoid it?
- Rethink the importance of those aspects
- Include those aspects in the short-term strategy of the company
So when defining your strategy don’t forget to guarantee that it can be put into practice. Some recurrent reflection about how the company work is making become closer to the end goal can be a good way to guarantee that you are going in the right direction. So don’t forget defining a strategy is hard work, but don’t forget that the real work and the results come from putting it into practice.
