AMA: Splunk Sr. Director of Product Management, Observability, Kara Gillis on Product Strategy

I don't think the choice is binary. You can most likely find the intersection between your future vision and a current pain point that's significant enough to drive adoption now, while positioning you for the larger opportunity as the market matures. Find the immediate job-to-be-done: Using your JTBD understanding, identify if there's a current problem your technology solves, even if it's not the grand future vision. Many successful innovations started by solving a smaller, more immediate proble ...Read More

If the problem isn't growing as fast as you'd like, you need to check several key performance indicators that tell you it's a product strategy or go-to-market problem. Unfortunately, it also could be a little bit of both - but it's important to dig into specifics as much as possible so you solve the right problem. I'd look into: Product usage metrics: Are people who try your product continuing to use it? High churn suggests a product issue, while good retention but low acquisition points to go-t ...Read More

Your product strategy should not be based around trends, but it should be flexible to leverage accelerators like AI. (Side note: IMHO Web3/Blockchain hasn't delivered on a revolutionary promise across too many industries yet due to many barriers in adoption and implementation). Using AI as an example, your product strategy should fundamentally align your business objectives with a solution that caters to the needs of your target market. AI is not the product - it's the (very powerful and revolut ...Read More

The tension between product focus and sales flexibility is natural. Your sales team's desire to sell more broadly isn't necessarily wrong - they're incentivized to close deals. Your job is to create systems that channel their energy toward the right customers. I have often found the desire to go broad is a symptom of a lack of sales understanding the value proposition of the product; otherwise, they would zero in on who has the exact need your product meets to save themselves time and energy. So ...Read More

Clayton Christensen wrote a book about understanding what motivates consumers to buy products. He explains:" Jobs to Be Done is a lens that reveals the circumstances—or forces—that drive people and organizations toward and away from decisions. While conventional marketing focuses on market demographics or product attributes, Jobs to Be Done Theory (JTBD or Jobs Theory) goes beyond superficial categories to expose the functional, social, and emotional dimensions that explain why people make the c ...Read More