How do you develop your product strategy skills?

Question

Kie Watanabe · Accepted Answer

In my previous answer, re: finding the right opportunities + making decisions - I mentioned four lenses (Customer, Business, Market, and Technology) as key components of coming up with ideas and making decisions. The best advice I have to offer is to be intentional about spending time developing your muscles in those areas. It can be as simple as picking a product or service in your day-to-day life and thinking through what inputs might have contributed to the experience you’re having as a user.

Additionally, a lot of product strategy is about being able to identify the opportunity that will maximize impact. How will you hone in on the right problem and arrive at an excellent solution? I’ve found that strong problem-solving intrinsics and the ability to make effective decisions are very valuable.

Here are two frameworks I’ve always found helpful:

* McKinsey’s Seven Steps of Problem Solving - Helps abstract underlying problems/issues
 * Playing to Win - Strategy book by the former Procter & Gamble CEO A.G. Lafley

Lastly, communication is essential for being able to get buy-in and execute product strategy. Work on simple, effective communication.

Sandeep Rajan · Answer

I think of this in two ways best conveyed through a sports metaphor: learning new plays I can add to my playbook, and building reps so that I can figure out what the right play is for a given scenario.

For the first, I enjoy reading about strategy – lots of Stratechery, various strategy books, stories of people navigating hard choices with clear tradeoffs, etc.

For the second, nothing beats live reps: getting to make decisions on the field and getting things wrong and learning from your successes & especially your failures, ideally with good coaching & mentorship. I did plenty of that as a founder and have been lucky to have had many reps as a PM over the last few years as well.

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