Product Therapy – "Coaching Focus"

Host: Christian Idiodi (SVPG)
Guest: Elias Liberech (SVPG)
Date: December 22, 2025

Episode Overview

This episode dives deep into one of the most crucial yet routinely misunderstood aspects of product leadership: organizational focus. Christian and Elias unravel why focus is so hard to achieve—especially within product organizations—exploring the behavioral, cultural, and practical challenges that teams and leaders face. The discussion provides hands-on coaching tactics, tested frameworks, and real-world stories to help listeners recognize, restore, and scale true organizational focus.

Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Why Is Focus So Hard in Product Organizations?

• Human Nature and Organizational Complexity
  • “We all come from the right place, but then we end up with just too much choice. … We just can’t say no. And that is definitely something we all see in our own lives. But the bigger the organization, the more versatile the ideas and the harder they say no.” – Elias [01:19]
• Culture of Pleasing and FOMO
  • Christian describes leadership anxiety and a culture where “every CEO I have talked to…they see every opportunity as an opportunity and every threat as a threat.” [02:07]
• Strategy as Saying Yes – and No
  • The essence of strategy is what you choose not to do, not just what you pursue.

2. What Does Real Focus Look and Feel Like?

• Clarity and Alignment

  • “Teams I’ve worked with had a laser focus…because they knew what we’re trying to accomplish. … They will literally try to go through walls to get there.” – Elias [03:19]

• Common Signs of Focus:

  • Clear direction from leadership
  • Teams able to articulate what they’re building, for whom, and why

• Symptoms of Lack of Focus:

  • Constant replanning and course corrections
  • Roadmaps as stakeholder wish-lists rather than intents [07:25]
  • Chronic drama around prioritization – “you don’t have a prioritization problem, you have a lack of focus problem.” – Christian [08:30]

3. The Limits of Frameworks and the Problem of ‘Best in Class’

• Frameworks (OKRs, prioritization offsites, etc.) Are Not Enough
  • “People call us and say, can you fix my prioritization? …Sometimes I feel like Mr. Wolf from Pulp Fiction.” – Elias [09:00]
  • Leadership offsites tend to just condense exhaustive lists to slightly shorter ones rebranded as “big rocks” or “pillars”—without meaningful focus. [11:14]
• Best in Class Is Not a Strategy
  • “Many leaders confuse movement with progress.” – Christian [05:11]
  • “Focus means you are picking 1, 2…some companies argue…3 things to focus on.” [12:10]

4. Practical Tools for Coaching Focus

• The ‘Written Narrative’ Exercise

  • Have each product leader (and ideally individual team members) write down:
    • What are we building?
    • Who are we building for?
    • What is the value and the solution?
    • What data backs this up?
    • Key unknowns and risks
  • “It’s a fact-finding thing…If we get to the user section and can’t articulate it, that’s a signal.” – Elias [12:10]

• The Grandparent Test

  • Skip-level conversations to test how much context and focus percolates through the organization [16:38]

5. From Written Narrative to Alignment

• Alignment Is as Crucial as Focus
  • “You need to align with stakeholders, align up with leadership.” – Christian [20:19]
  • Coaching focus is inseparable from coaching alignment.
• Concrete Steps for Alignment
  • Chisel down to one or two business goals as ‘seed direction’
  • Get “handshake agreements” with CEO/board and across teams
  • “Once sales, marketing, and product see their perspectives in the work, you gain license to focus.” [24:00]

6. Story: Driving Alignment Through Relationship and Evidence

• Building Trust and Buy-in

  • Example of a CPO who traveled to engage the sales team, built relationships, and grounded the product narrative in shared evidence. [21:12]
  • Results: Immediate focus on conversion rates led to measurable improvements and cross-functional celebration.

  “When he came back…he already had a happy sales team…they started to write down a perspective on strategy…we buy ourselves license to focus, and to say no.” – Elias [23:10]

7. Saying “Not Yet” Versus “No”

• Tradeoffs and Temporal Prioritization
  • “Most of the time, the answer is never ‘no,’ the answer is ‘not yet’…Now you can have the tradeoff conversation.” – Elias [28:20]
  • The ability to articulate impact helps teams push back on noise and protect their time.

8. Protecting Team Focus

• Filtering Stakeholder Noise
  • Take all requests seriously, but assess the real urgency and context. [31:07]
  • Make tradeoffs visible—reconcile conflicting requests transparently.
• Strategy Narratives and Product FAQs
  • Christian describes writing a quarterly narrative highlighting learnings, choices, and tradeoffs to keep alignment visible and reinforce context. [33:06]
  • Product FAQs for “elephants in the room”—acknowledge difficult tradeoffs, even if no perfect answer exists. [35:04]

9. Focus as a Habit; Building the Muscle

• Iterative, Concentric Circles of Alignment
  • Start with one person, then expand focus consensus out to key partners, leadership, then teams. [45:15]
• Short and Long Loops of Accountability
  • Immediate wins: tackle small pilots to prove direction.
  • Built-in review cycles—quarterly, annual—for refreshing alignment and keeping focus alive.

10. Rapid Advice and Coaching Tactics

• If you’re a Product Leader:
  • Stop: “Back-to-back meetings all day.” – Elias [51:33]
  • Coaching Question: “Who is this for?” [52:12]
  • Christian: “If you cannot answer, ‘What is the business objective?’, ‘How will it be measured?’, and ‘Who is the customer?’—don’t do it.” [40:01]
• If you’re an Executive/CEO:
  • “When was the last time you had a hit that was intentional?” – Elias [53:27]
  • Christian: “You are trading clarity for comfort—and that’s a bad deal every time.” [52:43]

Notable Quotes

• On Focus and Human Behavior

  “The bigger the organization, the more versatile the ideas and the harder it is to say no. …We just can't say no.” – Elias [01:19]

• On Alignment and Narrative

  “If you don't have a clear answer in your mind, you have no business turning around to a big organization and telling them. Because that uncertainty is just going to multiply.” – Elias [14:54]

• On Organizational Dysfunction

  “You don't have a prioritization problem. You have a lack of focus problem. You don't even have a lack of focus problem. You have a lack of strategy.” – Christian [42:38]

• On Tradeoff Conversations

  “Most of the time, the answer is never no, the answer is not yet.” – Elias [28:20]

• On Strategic Internal Tools

  “If you’re just saying, ‘we're just cranking along, no one cares, we're an internal team’—well, maybe we could think about a code review tool as the productivity for the entire company…” – Elias [41:17]

• On CEO Impact

  “The company cares about what the leaders care about or what the CEO cares about. Absolute power in the whole aspect of focus.” – Christian [53:32]

Memorable Moments & Timestamps

• [09:00] Elias as “Mr. Wolf” – called in to “fix” prioritization, but underlying issue is strategy, not frameworks.
• [12:10] The “written narrative” exercise for diagnosing organizational clarity.
• [16:38] Christian’s “grandparent test”—testing how much strategic context reaches the frontline.
• [21:12–25:20] Case study: CPO travels to build relationships, resulting in cross-team focus and significant business results.
• [31:07] Tactics for leaders to filter stakeholder noise and foster focus.
• [33:06] The power of a regularly updated, transparent strategy narrative.
• [35:04] Introducing a Product FAQ to build transparency and co-creation.
• [45:15] How to cultivate focus as an organizational habit.

Actionable Takeaways

• Begin with Clarity: Write a product narrative to force precision and self-awareness.
• Build Alignment, Not Just Consensus: Co-create strategy by involving key stakeholders and making tradeoffs transparent.
• Foster Trust Through Evidence and Relationships: Engage skeptics, show your work, and do your homework with data and direct engagement.
• Protect Teams’ Focus: Filter and clarify stakeholder input, make tradeoffs explicit, and maintain context at all organizational levels.
• Institutionalize Focus with Regular Reviews: Short cycles (sprints, quarters) and long cycles (annual strategy refresh) keep teams intentional and adaptive.
• Internal/Platform Teams: Don’t disappear—frame your tech/product work as core business enablers.

Final Thoughts

• Focus is not a one-time decision; it is a disciplined, organizational habit that leaders must model and cultivate.
• Alignment, trust, and context are foundational to meaningful prioritization and progress.
• Start now: ask “Who is this for?” Write it down, share it, and make your focus contagious.

For more resources, visit svpg.com and check out workshops, articles, and newsletters from the SVPG team.

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