Connecting Discovery and Strategy: Insights and Tactics with Teresa Torres
Connecting Discovery and Strategy: Insights and Tactics with Teresa Torres
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We often talk about strategy diagnosis and insights as if they were something we go through in isolation when defining the direction of our product.
However, those insights come (or should come) from our discovery efforts. Unfortunately, this connection is often missing, and to be fair, it can be pretty messy.
That’s why I had a wonderful conversation with Teresa Torres, one of the top voices on product discovery, and we went deep into the hard questions of connecting these two worlds:
How involved should leaders be in Discovery?
How do we validate our strategic assumptions with users?
How do discovery at different levels interconnect?
and much more. Teresa shared multiple tips on tactics to overcome the typical pitfalls.
Listen now on Apple, Spotify, Google, and YouTube, and read on for my takeaways and highlights of the episode.
Takeaways
Teresa started highlighting the link between diagnosis and discovery: you get feedback from the users and market that informs your evaluation of the situation.
When discussing how leads should get involved in discovery, Teresa spoke about how discovery plays at different levels: vision, strategy, and opportunity—each level feedback into each other, top-down and bottom-up.
We need to embrace the mindset that our vision and strategy are a first draft and that we evolve it as we learn. More communication is needed since we must constantly update everyone about these evolutions.
Beyond coaching the team on good discovery, product leaders should also be talking to customers because they need to answer different questions!
The strategic discovery will cover steps to validate the hard questions around our value proposition, the right customer segment, how we reach them, and what relationship we will build.
To do discovery on strategic assumptions, you can’t just isolate assumptions. You need to test in the context of your value proposition. In the 90s, you couldn’t simply test “Would users give us their credit card information?” We should test if they will be willing to give it in exchange for the value we provide that outweighs their fear.
To make this top-down - bottom-up feedback loop work, you must create a learning organization and information exchange at all levels. Teresa shared a great tip: start with the simplest solution possible and iterate from there.
Where to Find Teresa’s Work
Product Talk - Hundreds of valuable articles and resources.
Product Talk Academy - All training options.
To join the product leaders’ monthly sessions, email support@producttalk.org
Resources mentioned in the episode
You can see a list of all episodes to date here.