What is your process of setting a vision when you join a new company?

I’m assuming the question is about setting a ‘team’ vision/mission and one doesn’t exist yet. The mission statement is the “What” and the vision statement is an ambitious future state of what the world might look like when you accomplish your mission.

A crisp vision/mission statement serves as a strong identity for your team and guides them during critical moments of decision making, gaining alignment, prioritizing resources etc. Here is a framework that I’ve leveraged in the past to arrive at a vision/mission statement for my teams, collaborating with our cross-functional partners. Have each person in the working group articulate the following in once sentence.

• Understand our role
• Why do we exist?
• What is our purpose?
• What principles drive our product building?
• Understand our customers
• What does research tell us?
• What problems do they have?
• How are we helping them?
• Understand how the future looks like
• What’ll happen if we didn’t exist?
• What does success look like?

Next, create the vision and mission statements based on common themes and ensure it aligns with the company’s vision & mission. These statements should typically be short, start with a verb, strive to be aspirational and endure the test of time. Once the working group of cross functional partners align, socialize with key stakeholders and the broader org. You might want to consider doing a branding splash (new logo, ordering swags) to get people excited about the new vision & mission.

Every new job I've taken has had a pretty specific challenge I was hired to solve, and I was fortunate to have that clarity (at least at a high level). 

When I start in the new role, I focus on the following elements:

• Build relationships with my team and cross-functional partners
• Learn about the industry
• Study competitors
• Explore the product in detail
• Collect as much customer feedback and usage data as I can get my hands on
• And last but not least, find all the skeletons (or as many as I can).
  - What does the sales team wish they had that the product team just won't prioritize?
  - What does customer success wish the product team did so they would get fewer repetitive requests?
  - What does the team struggle with when trying to ship high-quality products with velocity?
  - And I dig into these topics with each cross-functional partner. While I'm doing this, I'm also looking for things that have been tried and didn't work before.

Once I have all that perspective, I pull together some data on the market, industry, competitors, and any other stimuli I think might be helpful for the team to have. I then schedule a brainstorming session. In this session, I guide the team through a series of exercises to uncover common themes we can align our initiatives around. In addition, I make meaningful progress based on the pain points they have all been voicing in my discovery sessions.

Once I'm satisfied that I've pulled every last idea out of this group, I go off and start to create the skeleton of the vision. I ask key members of the team to do the same and schedule a follow-up where we can discuss it. From my point of view, we work together until the vision is complete. This usually means that it addresses many of the pain points and the broader team feels like they have been heard. I make any changes that are requested and then the socialization tour begins because, without alignment, your vision isn't getting very far.

This recipe has worked consistently with slight modifications for each role. Hope it helps!

I like to start by understanding the historical context and how teams arrived at where they are. What decisions were made and why. What worked well and what didn't go according to the plan.

Starting there also enables me to build early relationships with key stakeholders and understand the collective vision for the product area. 

Then, I like to take a fresh look at things by taking an outside-in look. This is when I research market trends and competitor strategies. This helps me learn from others in the industry and have a broader pulse for customer needs. 

The process that I go through when setting a vision when I join a new company is:

• Listen & Learn

• Research & Optionality

• Draft & Edit

• Share

Listen & Learn

It is very hard to write a product vision with no context. When I start at a new company, I try not to make any decisions for 30 days. I start by doing a listening tour around the company. I ask everyone the same set of questions - and always finish with "who else do you think I should talk to?" The goal of this 30 days is to learn:

• The product

• The culture

• The problems that people perceive need to be addressed

• The customer

• The business

• The market

Research & Optionality

After about 30 days - and usually between 50-100 interviews around the company - you can get a pretty good idea of where you want to focus. Once you have some rough ideas of the focus areas, you can start to move into more targeted research. When I am doing a product vision, I usually have 4 main research focus areas:

• Market opportunity (TAM, competitors, differentiators)

• Customer target (who exactly is this vision for)

• Product value prop (what is the key value of the product in the vision)

• Product execution (understand what needs to change in the product to achieve this value prop)

I start with looking into existing research the company has already done, then usually try to do at least 2 new research studies (1) Existing customer interviews, (2) Prospect customer quant survey, and if possible (3) Market / expert interviews. One I get through the initial research, I start to develop the options that we have. Then use the research to help me understand which option i want to recommend.

Draft & Edit

I then draft the options and the recommendations with supporting evidence from the research. For vision work, I like to work with design to have some visual elements to make the vision more tangible. Then I share the work as early as possible in draft form with key stakeholders. This helps to make sure that people have a chance to feel like part of the process, as well as get their expert opinions. I make edits to incorporate their feedback where it makes sense.

Share

Once I have edited the vision with feedback and updates (this helps with the alignment process) - I share with stakeholders in order of importance. By importance, I mean in order of importance to the next step of the sharing. I would start with CEO, then executives, then product and eng leadership, the revenue leadership, then managers, then the company. And check at each stage how the reaction is before moving to the next phase. Then repeat and make the vision as visible and connected to the work as possible. This helps to ensure the vision doesn't just go into a drawer and not have any impact. You want people thinking about the vision on a regular basis. Some ways to do this are: Start every all hands with a slide on it, ask people how their product plans will help reach the vision, set goals that are related to the vision, use the same language from the vision in product initiatives.

I joined Anima recently, and here’s the approach I used during onboarding:

• Understand the Product and Market: Review product features, the roadmap, customer feedback, and analyze the competitive landscape to identify opportunities.

• Assess Development and Metrics: Evaluate development processes, methodologies, and key metrics to identify gaps and areas for improvement.

• Refine the Product Vision: Collaborate with the executive team to align the product vision with company goals and ensure it reflects customer needs and market trends.

• Engage with Customers and Market: Conduct customer interviews and stay updated on market and competitor movements to validate the vision.

• Execute and Iterate: Develop a clear roadmap, track progress against metrics, adjust the strategy based on feedback, and foster a culture of continuous improvement.

Tying this specifically to Anima:

When I joined Anima, I first focused on learning the product. Anima’s original vision was to automate design to code. The company began 7 years ago, serving designers using Sketch and Adobe XD to quickly create demos, marketing materials, and landing pages—primarily for designers with minimal development experience.

As the company evolved, Anima pivoted to supporting Figma and bridging the gap between designers and developers. Designers and developers often face frustration because their tools and methodologies differ, leading to code that diverges from the original design vision. This led to a new focus on catering to developers - a brand-new persona for Anima, with different requirements.

Despite Anima’s strong reputation within the design community, it was less known among developers. Additionally, the rise of AI presented an opportunity to automate some of the tedious tasks frontend developers face, such as converting design elements (fonts, colors, etc.) into reusable CSS.

We researched the developer persona, talked to customers and prospects, and uncovered key insights about their use cases, pain points, and needs. We realized that to succeed with developers, we needed to meet them where they work, which is not in Figma. This led us to plan and build a new product in VS Code to help with the translation of design to code.

Throughout this process, validating the new direction with key stakeholders, including the founders and the board, was essential. Setting clear metrics and regularly reviewing progress ensured we were on the right track.

Lastly, staying closely connected to customers, design partners, and prospects while building the vision is crucial. As product managers, it's easy to fall in love with our ideas, but the right solution must always address the customer’s real needs.

Right off the bat, the very first thing here to do would be a deep dive into market trends, competitive landscape, and internal data. You need a holistic view of where the company stands and where it needs to go.

Then, involve senior leaders, cross-functional teams, and relevant stakeholders early on. This isn’t about consensus but ensuring alignment on pain points, goals, and opportunities.

When everyone is on the same page, build your vision around what the company does best. Look for key differentiators that give the company an edge and anchor your vision there. This vision should stretch the team but remain grounded in reality. Balance ambition with the resources available and the company’s market positioning. You dont want too much tech debt or wasting resources.

This step now is what separates good from great products. RELY ON YOUR GUT AND FUTURE VISION NOT JUST USER FEEDBACK.

AirBnB wasnt born in focus groups. It was build because of the founder's bold vision. Then they iterated based on users' feedback.

Then, tie every decision, product initiative, and strategy back to this vision to keep everyone aligned. You need to have key parties involved in the process like the GTM team, sales team and CS for the most part because those teams have enough data that you can leverage in your strategy.

Once thats done, its time to execute. But dont get hung up on providing deep insights on how youd achieve your vision. Just a high-level OKRs is enough because youll never know how your team or the product dev cycle would actually turn out to be. Having a wiggle room is great :)