My Secret Summary of 30 Real-Life Product Strategies
Revealing the underlying strategy behind interviewing Product Leaders in different companies for my podcast
Over the last 18 months, for my podcast 100 Product Strategies, I have interviewed 29 product leaders, inquiring about their strategy formulation and challenges.
We covered different industries, customer types, company scales, product types, and geographies.
As I shared in the podcast intro, after writing Product Direction, I felt we didn’t have enough examples out there of how people do strategy work and what challenges they face.
My secret project all along was to compile a list of different examples and also tag them accordingly so product leaders could listen to stories they felt were related to their context.
You will now have access to the full summary!
On top of that, I wanted to do a special episode summarizing learnings that you can leverage!
Listen now on Apple, Spotify, Google, and YouTube, and read on for my takeaways and highlights of the episode.
What did I learn?
There were innumerable learnings, and I would certainly recommend you find episodes in the table that resonate with you.
But let’s do a quick summary:
The strategy formulation steps I described in Product Direction (Insights, Selection, Goals, Synthesis & Communication) were present in almost all cases. Even when the tools and activity names were different, the steps were consistently mentioned (All episodes).
Various tools are used to collect insights, like opportunity trees, JTBD deep dives, market trends, and more.
Selecting was also very varied. There was a combination of leaders using prioritization frameworks and others more focused on selecting a differentiating factor or strength to guide the choice.
The timeframe depended on company maturity but was more consistent in the different cases. Startups go for six months, while mature enterprises aim for three years, focusing more on the next 12 months.
Strategy is not a one-off exercise. Across multiple episodes, we discussed not only the frequent reviews (quarterly) but also how strategy may start vague or full of assumptions, and as you move forward, you refine and adapt based on your learnings. While you want stability, you will undeniably learn things that could improve your strategy.
Don’t miss our next episode! Join our substack and be notified when the next episode is published.