How to talk to your customers with Brian Casel [#37]
Top 10 Avoidable Mistakes SaaS Startups Make with Rob Walling
Being expert enough with Nick Loper [#40]
Pro-Level SaaS Marketing with Corey Haines [#39]
Building with your audience with Brennan Dunn [#38]
Every billion-dollar company started with 10 customers. Those first few customers are crucial. They help you refine your product, mould your messaging and positioning, and create vital social proof.
The First 10 Podcast interviews business builders on their First 10 Customers – who they were, how they found them, and what effect they had on their business, so that you can learn what worked, and what didn’t.
As a former director of strategy for the incubator Cofound Harlem and a product strategist for the agency Philosophie, I’ve had the experience of keeping track of the strategy of various types of companies.
I’ve had to understand their past, present and future.
And in my last role, as the director of product for Informed, I moved from advising companies to building our own process. I had to ensure we execute whatever strategy the leadership and I come up with.
It isn’t enough for me to execute; the team has to, as well. As much as I can work on controlling myself, at the director level, it stops being about me. It’s about the folks I have the pleasure of leading.
You need a process to cover the gaps of your team’s capabilities, so you can make company strategy exist on more than Google Docs.
How can you do that?
This article gives you two tools to ensure you are moving forward with your team and growing a long-term strategy — not just standing still.
Let’s start with a mental model; I think Lean works well here.
Lean methodology
Lean methodology is a mental model that uses the term “Build-Measure-Learn” to create a feedback loop.
Although it is generally used for product development, I’ve found it useful as a starting point for building processes in tech companies.
Why? Lean is a known quantity in many product teams, and it’s always easier to build on a foundation that exists. There is one part of the methodology on which teams under-index. Read on.
Now we have a mental model. What’s next?
Life in product management is about priority, so let’s pick what we want to prioritize. It is my experience that there is one of the three parts of the feedback loop you need to focus on to help build a team that is better at executing on strategy in the long term.
That is learning, which is under-indexed at most companies. That is a shame.
The strategy isn’t just about the next sprint. I believe a good strategy helps grow the team, as they try to hit the goal. That is why tools, such as OKRs, when properly done, force your team to stretch.
Executing strategy well makes your team better, and over-indexing on learning will leave your team better than when you arrived.
My experience in dealing with other companies has led me to see what happens if you “Lean” too hard on the first two words of the phrase in working with teams to execute. You’ll miss the boat. Here is why:
Building teams constantly execute
Build-Measure-Learn
Execution is excellent, except when you find yourself six months into a vision with nothing to show for it.
Let’s make it real with a marketing example:
A visible sign this is happening is in New York City subways. Nothing says a fresh round of funding like a subway ad campaign that just “exists.”
You know what I mean when you see them. The ads have some quirky saying, whisked from the mind of a newly minted top-15 MBA ready to show the world how smart they are.
This approach could work if you’re Coca-Cola, as you already have trust and influence. If you are Series-A Whatchamacallit, who cares, other than the team, when they get on the subway? I’ve been inside companies like this, and what happens is: They are given a strategy, and they are cranking things out.
Here is a quick way of finding out if you are in this situation with your strategy: Ask yourself if you’ve ever just stopped.
The remedy? Retro (retrospective) now and forever. You need to see if what you are doing is working, because my bet here is: The customer never gets a chance to make a promise, because your team is building too much to give them a chance.
That means you miss the boat.
Measure-focused organizations may be worse
Build-Measure-Learn
Instead of working on things, they are making sure they get the right KPIs. This comes in the form of triple checking and quadruple checking. In organizations, this looks like another focus group, another listening session or yet another internal iteration.
No one executes on anything, because they are worried about covering their asses (CYA). CYA tells me you aren’t there yet. CYA tells me you will measure forever. CYA means you won’t put work out in the world when it needs the feedback it deserves.
Our work doesn’t count until someone who isn’t paid by the organization can see it in the wild. We don’t know how this thing works, because we haven’t given it a shot.
Ask yourself this: When is the last time we launched?
The remedy? MVPs. We’re hitting the go button on X date. We are putting something out in the next 2 weeks. We’re getting data.
Your team never made a promise to the customer, because you are too scared to give them a chance.
You can’t go on a journey if you never get off the dock.
What about learning-focused organizations?
Build-Measure-Learn
It is my opinion that, if you are focused on learning, the rest handles itself. Learning-focused organizations never seem to have the need to call in help. Learning-focused organizations focus on two things: reflection and iteration.
Reflection: Ask yourself this question: Have you had a retrospective lately? Also known as “retro,” this gives you the place to pause and reflect on what has happened and how you plan to avoid it next time. It’s a balancing act. Great retros, when running well, have the participants ready to move forward while feeling their grievances have been addressed.
Iteration: What is the next step? Iteration is all about getting to the next step and executing it. How do we take what we’ve built and measured, take its flaws (hello retro), and build it into the next step? Iterating while executing makes sure your team gets aligned with the strategy.
Promises made lead to learning
There is a push-pull with building and measuring that leads to learning. The right metrics and getting product out are both critical, but unless we sit down to discuss what we’ve learned, and how far away it is from where we need to go, we’re not maximizing our teams.
Ask yourself: When is the last time you “learned” anything with your team, and when was the last time you took that learning and put it into the product?
If you can’t come up with an answer, it’s time to get back to the basics. You are building too much or measuring too much, and my guess is the strategy is bad.
What happens isn’t about measuring 10 times before you cut or cutting 10 times before you measure. It’s about executing the long-term strategy, so you can make things happen.
Lean on learning, and adapt the other two for a better process, and execute a better strategy today.
We all know that product is hard, so here are some themes from a very playful activity that will help you get better at it.
Shipping products is rough, full of false starts, lousy execution, and a lack of will to kill products quickly. But a bad strategy creates a state of false hope, and can leave you and your team punched in the face after months of work.
As a product executive, I deal with the strategy all the time. One of my favorite jobs was as a product strategist at Philosophie. Philosophie focuses on innovation work in the enterprise, where ambiguity is the norm, not the exception. My job there was to focus my energy on finding the best strategies to create positive outcomes from the ambiguous problems of our clients, who usually didn’t have the time to deal with them.
Every engagement was different, and I had to learn how to apply different strategies to solve those ambiguous problems. The great thing about strategies is they translate well to other areas. They aren’t one to one, something I used to help a startup could potentially help a fortune 100 company, and vice versa. That translation is a good thing because to become a better strategist; one must implement a strategy. Like all product work, it doesn’t happen in your head. This wasn’t the first place I learned this, however. It goes back to one of my first loves, wargaming.
Wargaming is a hobby where people gather to simulate combat from different time periods. A game usually has a team trying to achieve an objective, using a rule set, dice and lead figurines to do so. In short, it is a bunch of people gathered around a table “pushin’ lead” and having a good time. Like wargaming, success, no matter how impressive your strategy, is not guaranteed. However, like wargaming, the right concepts can help any product manager increase their chance of success.
The great thing about wargaming is when there is a challenging scenario, both skill and luck play a role in finding success. Doesn’t that sound rather like product management?
We may get lucky with building something. With that said, if you want your product to make a recognizable impact on someone’s life, strategy is essential. If one isn’t in place, the team will fail, given enough time. Good news! I think there are some quick heuristics that I’ve learned playing wargames that can help you make sure that your product strategy is well rounded.
I’ve picked out three that have helped me think about my next steps, shape overall vision, and communicate effectively with the teams I’ve worked with to help us execute successfully.
1. Rules Affect Implementation, not Direction
You better know the rules if you want to execute, with that said though, your strategy shouldn’t be strictly based on the rules.
In wargaming, the rules exist to bring in some order. We have to know what system we play in to make sure the scenario is clear and fun. At the beginning of the game, the person in charge, known as the game master, goes over the set of rules for the game.
In product, it may be the opposite. The market, stakeholders, and team dynamic make the rules. No one talks about them publicly, and you often have to figure them out as you go along. No matter though, either way, if you don’t know the rules, they can send you right to a confusing failure if you aren’t careful. With that said, you can’t let the rules dictate your strategy. If you are overly worried about a “morale roll” or a “stakeholder,” you can lose sight of the ultimate objective.
Remember: Strategies = Sets of rules. Knowing the rules changes your strategies on implementation, not the strategy.
2. The Goal Comes First, Everything Else is ego
At the end of the game, no one is going to care if your tank survived or you took Persia – did you win? In both product and wargaming, sometimes the name of the game is resource allocation. Questions like, “Where can I reinforce my attack?” or “What workshop can I do to improve alignment?” are always going in and out of your head. You can’t, however, forget that ultimately, every answer should serve the objective.
Sometimes, in wargaming, that means letting a territory go. In product, that may mean a feature has to die. If you don’t have a clear objective, every decision afterwards is tainted. If you have to stop and reorganize, do so. With that said, moving forward without your goal is a losing proposition.
Do whatever it takes to remember the goal in all things, even if that means you take the brunt of the punishment. Failure often happens because people get far too worried about what things “look like” and ego instead of the objective. Remember: Objectives = Vision. Sometimes we care about the aesthetics or the beauty of the code… in reality, we have an objective, and your job is to connect all the pieces together so the goal wins over everyone else.
3. Get Your Ideas out of Your Head, Then Commit
Talking with your teammates means focus and focus wins. When you huddle with your team, the best idea has to win. Ego leads us to believe that we have the best ideas. As a product manager, you may think that means your ideas are best. They aren’t, so don’t fall into the trap of having your title determine the strength of your ideas. That’s what happened to Napoleon at Waterloo.
Everyone has something to contribute, so get your thoughts out of your head. More importantly, facilitate other people to get involved. More ideas are better than fewer, so after they are out on the table, commit to the best idea.
The key to good teamwork is high-velocity communication. It means you listen, use your judgment to sift out bad ideas (even your own) and once the team has weighed in, decide and commit. Operationally this means that you should get your ideas out on the table and see what lives. Once they are out there, find the best option and commit to it.
Commitment doesn’t equal blind fanaticism. The landscape changes and leaders are malleable. Product is all about finding shifts and exploiting them.
Listen to your team and keep people updated. Don’t be afraid to take a break to understand next steps. Sometimes continuing to work for the sake of “progress” will leave an army, or product, dead in its tracks. Remember – decide and commit. You don’t have the best idea all the time, and one way the best idea is going to win is high-velocity communication.
Key Takeaways
Product is about helping teams to visualize a direction and execute to make it happen.
As Dwight D Eisenhower said, no plan survives first contact with the enemy. You’ll make mistakes along the way, especially when the “game” is on the line, much like when you are in crunch time with a product. The world is ambiguous, and your job is to help see that through. Strategy gives you flexibility and a position to pivot from, as well as a method to communicate with your team.
Remembering that rules affect implementation, not direction, that the goal comes first, everything else is ego, and that you should get your ideas out of your head and commit, helps you, as a product person, keep communication and trust high. As a result, you’ll ship well and more importantly, with consistency.
Product is a constantly shifting environment. Understanding the rules, knowing your resources, and communication can be the difference between success and failure.
A good strategy is a way for us to stay consistent and make sure that we keep our teams prepared for what comes our way. Even though it doesn’t guarantee victory, it does help us grow a community and build trust with our teams.
So, go out there and roll some dice. Your team will thank you later.
![[Lean] Building an internal growth process for your teams](https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1536392706976-e486e2ba97af?ixid=M3wzOTM3OTV8MHwxfGFsbHx8fHx8fHx8fDE2OTc4NjUwNDJ8&ixlib=rb-4.0.3&fm=jpg&q=85&fit=crop&w=2560&h=1707)
