How can you create effective company and product strategies? In this Speaker Series event, Patreon Fmr VP of Product and Growth Adam Fishman breaks down the approach to creating both product and company strategy in an approachable and structured way and provides a framework for strategy creation. This talk is based on one of his most popular newsletter posts ever.
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Show Notes:
- Strategy is your plan to win – it’s how you create value for customers and monetize that value consistently over time.
- Strategy sits at the intersection of intuition, customer knowledge, and market understanding.
- Company and product strategies should be memorable, specific, and measurable.
- The most important part of strategy is explicitly laying out what you won’t do.
- Strategy is a team sport – it doesn’t matter if you’re an executive or individual contributor.
- Overcommunicate the strategy until everyone gets it, then communicate some more.
- Continually reiterate and explain the strategy in every conversation.
- Survey people internally to understand if they remember and understand the strategy.
- Communicate the strategy to all new hires as part of onboarding.
- Break the strategy down into smaller initiatives and roadmaps with timelines.
- Continually reevaluate if you’re working on the right initiatives.
- Don’t change the strategy too frequently.
- Balance short-term goals with the long-term vision in the strategy.
- Differentiate between UX, market, and generative research.
- Use market research to understand new opportunities.
- Use generative research to explore undefined areas.
- Use UX research to test solutions and steer execution.
- Debate initiatives to derive alignment across the company.
- Monitor progress through monthly/quarterly reviews.
- Be aware of major technological shifts.
About the speaker
Adam Fishman is a Product and Growth advisor to fast growing startups and public companies. He held executive roles at Lyft, Patreon, Imperfect Foods, ResortPass. He is a Reforge EIR and Program Partner and co-created the Growth Leadership Series. He writes a newsletter called the FishmanAF Newsletter and hosts a podcast about fatherhood with well known leaders in tech called Startup Dad.