Can you give an example of a bad product vision statement? What would you do to improve it?
Vision statements are critical for products, product portfolios and companies. Firms with clear vision statements are able to adapt, evolve and focus on solving problems that their customers face, better than competitors and in a manner that brings forward all their strengths. Firms without clear vision statements and products without one become stale, one-hit wonders or worse, seasonal crazes like beanie babies
Here are vision statements from two financial services firms
1) “aspire to be the best, execute superbly, build a great team & winning culture”
2) “serve as a trusted partner to our clients by responsibly providing financial services that enable growth & economic progress”.
The first statement does a good job of conveying the firm’s values and its culture but does not offer any color on the business, the problem it is solving or the value to its customers. The second firm does a better job of touching upon the business and the type of impact it wants to create but it is still too vague to be a vision statement
Here is a good vision statement - ‘Make financial progress possible for everyone’. Credit Karma does this by offering information & tools to each of its customers to understand where they are in the credit & financial products journey.
A bad vision statement is one that is either too narrow or too broad. It is hard to get a vision statement right, but you need it to be ambitious, but believable. It needs to address what you are trying to achieve.
Few reasons why it can be a bad vision statement include:
Too long. You want the vision statement to be memorable, not an essay. Pick what is relevant.
Trying to solve all problems and not providing a direction.
Trying to sound good instead of talking about what your product should try to do.