Episode 236: Most PMs Aren't Good At Strategy - Enter The Decision Stack!
An interview with Martin Eriksson, Co-founder of Mind the Product & Creator of The Decision Stack
YouTube Link | Podcast Link (all platforms)
Who is Martin Eriksson?
Oh, come on, you all know who Martin is… he co-founded Mind the Product and is responsible for the famous Product Manager Venn Diagram that everyone uses without attribution these days:
I’ve been lucky enough to have had the chance to hang out with Martin from time to time in London and was delighted to have a chance to have an in-depth chat with him about one of my favourite subjects: Product Strategy (and why so few companies have them). He’s currently in the latter stages of writing his new book on the subject, “The Decision Stack”, and we spoke about all of that and more.
Episode highlights:
1. The vast majority of company employees don't know what their company strategy is...
It's important for everyone in the company to be aligned on what's important, where the company's going and how they're going to get there. It's crucial for product and business leaders to do the work; both to create a vision and strategy and to share it with everyone who is needed to execute it.
2. ... but, worse still, the vast majority of companies don't even have a strategy to speak of
Strategy is about making a coherent set of choices about how we're going to achieve our goals or make our company vision real. But, too many companies have fluffy, vague vision statements that could mean anything, and leaders who want to do everything all at once and don't want to make choices. This limits their ability to actually achieve anything.
3. It's hard to create a product strategy if you don't have a company strategy, but you should do it anyway
A product strategy should support the company strategy and vision but, if there's no company strategy or vision, it's hard to create or defend such a strategy. On the other hand, you should still do the work to create one; either you'll get to go and execute the strategy or you'll have a straw man proposal to provoke further discussion around what the strategy should be.
4. A lot of product people are pretty bad at strategy, and we need to get better
Back in the day, a lot of product managers were expected to write specifications and get stuff done. They weren't even expected to be strategic, and many still aren't to this day. These skills are learnable; product people need to do their best to up their game, and company leaders need to get more comfortable both delegating responsibility and coaching their employees to have these skills.
5. The answer is not "Founder mode"
"Founder mode" can be used to justify just about any behaviour, invites "hero syndrome" and can lead to micromanagement and single points of failure. Good leaders absolutely need to be deeply involved in their business, but this should not be at the expense of creating strong, aligned teams that can take many day-to-day decisions without them.
Contact Martin
You can catch up with Martin on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/martineriksson
You can also check his website: https://martineriksson.com
Keep up-to-date with The Decision Stack: https://www.thedecisionstack.com/
Related episodes you should like:
The Five Dysfunctions of Product Management Teams (Saeed Khan, Founder @ Transformation Labs)
Commercialize! Get your Productized Services to Market (Eisha Armstrong, Author "Commercialize")
Chris Locke's Hot Take - Product Leaders Need to Adopt a VC Mindset (Chris Locke, CEO @ Aspire)
Heartily agree with this one!