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- [00:00]
A
The last time I had SVPG partner Leah Hickman on this show, we talked about why transformations fail, why they stall, and where leaders may struggle the most. Today I want to go deeper on one of the powerful tools we use to break through that initiative, the Strategy Jumpstart. This is a practical conversation about how organizations come together to make real strategic choices, how they build muscles they don't yet have, and how they help teams focus and and execute with confidence. Leah, it is so exciting to have you back on product therapy.
- [00:39]
B
Thank you, Christian. Always great to see you.
- [00:41]
A
Wonderful. Well, let's jump right in and maybe we just start with at a practical level, what is a strategy Jumpstart?
- [00:49]
B
Yeah, a strategy jumpstart is an opportunity for an organization to work with an SVPG partner to basically either create or refine their overall product strategy. So it's basically taking all of the things that we teach in the masterclass and putting them into practice for that organization, specific to their business and to their product.
- [01:13]
A
Oh, I like this a lot. Now, how is this different from we've all been there when we were operators, that traditional strategy of science or like the planning workshops that we always end up doing? How is this different from those?
- [01:26]
B
Yeah, I mean, it's very specific about getting the right people in the room, gathering together all of the insights they have, whether it's from their telemetry, their. Their financial numbers, their industry insights, their user insights, bringing all those insights together and finding the areas of connection and then making really hard decisions about where we're going to focus, and then making sure that we can quantify what success looks like for those areas that we want to go after.
- [01:58]
A
Now you're saying about bringing together the right people in the room. Maybe go a little deeper on that, like who must be involved first of all, for this jumpstart to work.
- [02:07]
B
So keep in mind, the strategy Jumpstart is all about a product strategy. So a lot of times we assume that the corporate strategy has already been laid out. We understand what we're going after from a business perspective. We understand what our profitability targets are, what we're trying to do for the business. This is drilling down at a deeper level at a product strategy perspective. So typically, we like to see whoever's leading product, so the head of product, the cpo, the chief product officer. We like to see whoever's making decisions on technology. So maybe that's the CTO in the organization, whoever's making decisions in terms of how this fits into the overall portfolio. So you might see ahead of design, but I also like to see some other key stakeholders in the room. Typically it's people who worry about things on the commercial side. So that might be someone in marketing. Product marketing, sales. Because a key part of your strategy, your product strategy, is making sure that you can not only build it right and that it's going to solve a problem for the customer, but you can also bring that solution to market. And therein lies why you would want to have those key go to market partners in the meeting with you.
- [03:15]
A
Is there a number that is too much like if you're a big company, I mean, are we talking 50 people in a room?
- [03:20]
B
No. No. You want people who can sit around a conference table. So I would say like the sweet spot is no more than eight to 10 people in the room because we all know like when we're making decisions. But these have to be people who have agency to make decisions. And that's a really critical part. What you don't want is you don't want people in the room who then have to take the output of the strategy jumpstart and then go get approval. You want people who are the decision makers in the room because you want to leave the room with that focused area of decision.
- [03:54]
A
I love that. And you keep using that word focus because you know in this context, what you're hoping to come out of this is what should we focus on right now or next or this quarter? Given the business objective or given the product vision now, is there any time it makes sense for the product teams to be in the room?
- [04:13]
B
Usually the only time that the product teams will be in the room is if it's a unique area of the strategy where leadership might not have the level of detail required. I actually put that in the insight category. So before we ever do a jumpstart, one thing that we do in preparation for the jumpstart is we ask for the gathering of all the insights. The gathering of all the insights usually comes from some of the key product teams and the product managers. So whether they have some sort of artifact that outlines some of the things that we've done, the experiments that we've run, the learnings that we have, maybe they've already done some level of qualitative discovery to validate those top level ideas. So in some strategy jumpstarts, the inputs for where we make those decisions come from the product teams. They should come from the product teams because they're usually closer to the problem and they're usually closer to the ideas that we have around the solutions.
- [05:08]
A
You talk about insights and this is homework. So there's some homework before the jump start and you want them to bring insights and you're saying some of these insights will come from the team, like customer insights, insights from data industry insights. Is there any other homework that you do prior to coming in here?
- [05:27]
B
What I typically like to do is I like to have those insights ahead of the meeting. And then what I do is I go through all those insights. And one of the very interesting things that usually comes out is how much muscle memory or skill does the team and the collective leadership team have around identifying those areas of connection, identifying, delivering on artifacts that actually expose those insights. So it actually also becomes a learning opportunity. Because in our masterclass, we talk a lot about strategic context and we talk about product vision, we talk about team topology, we talk about product strategy, we talk about objectives and assigning those objectives to the team when we're gathering those insights, whether it's for a product vision or a strategy jumpstart, you know, that's going to feed the strategic context. The output of that is only as good as the inputs. And so the insights are those inputs. And so it gives us an opportunity to really dig into those insights and make sure we're collecting them from the right sources, that we're coming to the right conclusions about those insights, that we're looking at them without the bias that a lot of organizations have. And I think that's where it's helpful when we guide a team, especially a leadership team through it. Everyone always comes to the table with their own bias. Right? And so this can help mitigate that bias where asking questions about those insights is incredibly. I've gotten feedback is incredibly helpful for the leaders, but also the teams in making those decisions, they almost sometimes want to know what questions to ask around those insights.
- [07:07]
A
And you're calling out that the decisions are only as good as the insights behind or the outputs are only as good as the inputs. Now we kind of talk about strategy in the context of what critical problems should we focus on right now? Why is this focus thing the hardest thing and maybe the most valuable outcome of this whole exercise?
- [07:30]
B
Well, I mean, I think it's even more important now. But focus is critically important because not all ideas and not all problems to solve are yield the same result for your customer and yield the same result for the business. And so as we're weighing where to focus our incredibly valuable resources, it's important that we have a point of view in terms of what we're going to focus on. Now we assume that, and you know, we talk about this a lot as peanut butter product strategy is the same as had not having a strategy. You can take all your resources and spread them across multiple items, but that does not yield the result that you want in terms of impact again, for the customer or for the business.
- [08:14]
A
Leaders struggle with this because they often fear making the hard call. Like, I mean, if you, if I look at an insight or a couple of insights, oh, our customer operations is struggling, our renewal rates is going down, our satisfaction squad. These are all important things and I want to do, I want to fix all of the things, you know, I, I want everything to, to get better. Any, any insight I get that may help my business or is hurting my business feels like a call to action or demands a response for me. Maybe say, you know, you're, you've been in the field doing this. Where do leaders tend to avoid making the hard calls? Are they areas that are very difficult for them?
- [08:58]
B
Again, the, the focus part is the hardest part. I mean, there's a lot of justification that takes place for why we need to do the 15 different things or solve the 15 different, different problems. And usually the justification is we have so many resources, we should be able to fix all of these things. And the problem is, is that not all resources are the same. So we like to put our, you know, our highest skilled team and our most effective teams on the highest priority problem to solve. And the way, the way to think about it is if you could draw the line, let's say you were in a situation where you had limited resources, let's assume that you don't have 500 engineers in your organization and, or, you know, 50 different product teams. What if you only had 10? Where would you focus? Getting them to really focus in on the things that are going to have the most impact. So that's where we get into conversations like, you know, why are you focusing on this particular problem? Well, you know, it affects the 10% of our customer base. And we've always done that, we've always provided that capability. But really creating the criteria, this is where the measurements of success are really important. Holding people accountable to make sure that they're spending their money or their resources on the areas that have the biggest impact. So we might create false constraints so that they really are forced to make those decisions and then making sure that not only they make those decisions, but then are willing to communicate those decisions out. The communication piece seems to be the most difficult part for senior leaders because they can focus. But there's a lot of concern that if A team is not represented in the top priorities, they will believe that the team is not valuable to the business, which is not the case. Product strategy is prioritizing the problems to solve within that particular time frame. And so we should have a point of view. And we do this typically with annual planning all the time. But somehow when we translate it into a product strategy, we tend to just throw everything, you know, in the bucket and not prioritize appropriately.
- [11:10]
A
Leigh, I can imagine if you're coaching a session like this, this probably happens more often, that there's not agreement about what to focus on. I mean, can you imagine a salesperson being in there and like, why is he not my number? You know, marketing? Why is it not our launch of our next product or go to market, maybe tell, you know, give us a sense of how you coach through that, how, how you break through that. Not take sucking the whole meeting, just the argument between leaders on what to focus on. Like, I've got tech dad, we gotta fix it and, you know, we got a new future. How do you break through that?
- [11:44]
B
I mean, again, this is where asking questions around the insights are really important. A lot of times when we're digging through the insights, this is where our bias will be exposed. This is where a particular team might already be thinking about a solution to the problem because they have a team that's focused on fixing that problem. And instead of having them focus on a higher order bit that's going to have more impact for the customer and the organization, they kind of want to keep that sacred team off to the side. So it's about questioning those things that have never been questioned before. And quite frankly, as an outsider working with the team, it's a lot easier to ask those questions because sometimes it's naivete. I don't know what those sacred things are, but also sometimes it's just being open and asking the question without fear of, you know, political repercussions within the organization.
- [12:40]
A
I like that a lot. I would tell teams, you know, my focus doesn't mean it's not important, it just means it's not important right now. And here is why, you know, and sometimes I have to explain to people, like, sometimes strategy can feel logical. Like, you know, if I'm building a house and I'm building the foundation and you want to build a roof, I'm like, it's not that a roof is not important to a house, but we don't have walls. Like, you know, can we progress? Like, you know, and in some of those cases, you know, if you're explaining tech debt. You're like, I know you want to build 20 things, but we don't even have the infrastructure, the architecture or the engine to go the distance and sustain it. And those are some of the things you call out insights that help. You know, one of the things I've noticed, Leah, is when you start coaching leaders on outcomes, some people try to weaponize those insights or metrics. You know, they're like, aha, I found a metric that proves that what I want is the most important thing. I'm gonna bring it to this meeting, maybe talk about how you help leaders define an outcome without weaponizing a metric.
- [13:44]
B
I think that's the implied agreement going into one of these jumpstarts is let's try to take our bias, put it to the side. Let's use an open mind. We're going to work through all of these insights so that we can come up with, you know, the prioritized list of problems to solve for the business and for our customers. This isn't about your pet projects, it isn't even about your organization. This is about how can we identify the biggest problems to solve within this particular time frame that's going to set us up for success. And so a lot of it's mindset, right, it's making sure that, you know, we have the evidence to support via the insights in order to make those, those types of decisions. And quite frankly, that bias and that weaponization of the insights usually teases itself out in the documents. So doing the pre work, when we're looking at these artifacts and we're trying to understand it, it's pretty easy to understand, especially when you're not so close to it. It's pretty easy to see where some of the bias might happen.
- [14:48]
A
One of those fussing false constraints of saying, if we only had 10 engineers, will we do all of these things? And you know, some leaders be like, but I have my budget, can I buy more engineers and do more now? You know, one of the things I'm going to sense is that this is also an alignment exercise. What does good alignment look like after a jumpstart? How do I know we had that
- [15:09]
B
good alignment usually that the outputs that you're looking for from the jumpstart are those prioritized list of problems to solve. And for each problem to solve, we have a quantifiable measure of success. And this is another area that's a struggle. Usually people and teams can come up with what success looks like. It might be increased adoption of X or it might be customer delight or customer satisfaction about a perfect thing or attach rate to a new offering or active use around a new capability. What teams typically, or at least the pattern that we see in these jumpstarts is that while directionally we can have a measurement of success, really getting in and quantifying what success looks like is a little bit more challenging and it takes a little bit more digging. So sometimes we might have someone from the analytics team or we need to have access to the analytics. So if we know that, you know, 70% of the people who are offered something will attach to a particular offering, well, that's great. But if we want to increase that, what does success look like? Are we talking 75%? Are we talking 85%? Like getting very, very specific on that definition of success is important from an alignment perspective because as a product leader, I might think success is 75%. But the CFO, you know, based on how we run the numbers, knows that success is really at 85%. Aligning on that is also critically important. That way everyone understands what we're talking about from a magnitude. And then that's when we start identifying, saying, okay, well, if we really need to get to 85%, maybe that means that we're going to have to let go of some of these things that are not on that prioritized list of problems to solve. And that's where the, that's where, I mean, to use the cliche, that's where the rubber really hits the road. Because that's when we're making real decisions as a leadership team to have impact for the business. And those conversations are critically important. A lot of times teams will do this on their own, but you can't do this via an artifact. You need to be in the room. We always talk about tumbling of the rocks. We need to tumble those rocks together because there's going to be friction. And that's okay. It's okay to have that, you know, constructive friction.
- [17:28]
A
Oh, I like that. I've never thought through the fact that just the trying to quantify what a measure of success also forces focus because we realize like the lift you need is significant, then you probably need to put more resources or deprioritize some other things in order to do that. Now, Leah, what should organizations do immediately after a jumpstart?
- [17:51]
B
Take action and communicate the product strategy to the organization. And so going back to just because you're not listed on the priorities doesn't mean you're not important. If you're not important, you wouldn't be funded it just means that's not how the organization is going to be measuring success and prioritizing our focus for that particular period of time. The example I always give, and you've heard this example a million times, so I apologize. I worked for one company where the product line that I was working on was the lowest priority for the entire company. In fact, even the general manager who I reported to would not even report on my outcomes as part of his, you know, quarterly reports to the executive committee. That didn't mean that my organization wasn't important in the organization. It just meant that it wasn't a priority right now. It also didn't mean that I wasn't measuring success for my organization. It just meant it wasn't something that was top priority that was going to drive impact for the business. It was a more nascent business.
- [18:49]
A
Talking about communication, maybe clarify how do I communicate what came out of the jumpstart? And maybe is there a frequency transparency metric or clarity metric? How do I know? People don't want to understand it.
- [19:02]
B
The rule of thumb is, you know, you should do it broadly and often. And so the key priorities are basically going to be the priorities for the organization for that period of time. So a good rule of thumb is every time you have that meeting, every time you bring people together, you know, you put it in a place where everyone has access to it, not just the problem to solve. Right. But how we're measuring success against that problem, and then you track that measurement as time goes on. But the repetitive evangelism of the product strategy is almost as important as the choices that we make in terms of where to focus. And so a product leader has to get really comfortable with that. And, you know, this is an area of growth for a lot of product leaders, whether you're on the product side or the engineering side. Another thing that's critically important is, you know, the head of engineering, the head of product, the head of design, the head of sales, we're all aligned on the product strategy, and we don't have our own definition of what that is. That's where a lot that anti pattern around churn really makes the organization suffer. If you have a CTO who has a prioritized list of problems to solve, and they're all focused on tech debt architecture, refactoring, and then the product leader has a different set. So when we have situations where we have huge technical challenges, guess what? That head of engineering, that head of product, those it's one priority list across the organization. And that's also something that you can tease out in one of these strategy
- [20:40]
A
jumpstarts this idea of common and shared objectives and we are aligned together. You know, I always tell you why you communicate broadly and frequently. I always say you have to coach it individually too. You know, nobody raises their hand and be like, I don't understand or that's a dumb strategy. Nobody will say that. But then they will respond in that manner. And obviously once you have that alignment, you go through your next one on one. Ensure alignment, I always say. So tell me what the priorities are, tell me what the focus are. See how well your communication has made its way down because you're testing that out with your group. Now, Leah, this is the real world, okay? And we know no strategy survives contact with the real world or a plan. But you've just gotten a group to align on the critical problems to focus on and in this period of time and they come out all aligned. One of the things many teams complain about is changing parities. How do you help people build the muscle or, you know, like maintain that discipline or rigor of like keeping the focus or the main thing? The main thing in the real world,
- [21:47]
B
the only thing that should change your strategy is when you have data that warrants a change in strategy. So what evidence or data do we have that's going to make us reprioritize? So we need to have flex and it's a balance, right? We need to have flexibility. When there is an existential crisis or new data comes in, whether it's a new competitor or a new startup gets funded or a new technology change that we're, you know, similar to what we're seeing right now, when that happens, you might be warranted to go revisit that strategy and say, okay, do we believe in what we believe in based on the new information that we have? Is this an opportunity for us to refresh our strategy? So even though most of the product strategies that I've worked on span the course of a year, I still get in the exercise or the routine of re looking at that strategy on a formal basis every quarter. Because every quarter is when you're looking at the objectives, how we're tracking against those objectives. Is our hypothesis still true about these priorities that we've committed to? Do we need to change anything? Do we need to take anything off the list? Getting in that rhythm is a way that we can mitigate it. However, if something major happens and we really need to revisit the strategy, we're not going to wait for that planning cycle to take place. We're going to look at it and we're going to say, all right, we might need to pivot, because right now all of our resources are focused on these priorities, and that's not going to help us address this. This critical need. So it's flexible enough, but don't just do it on a whim. Like, you need to make sure that there's evidence and data to support that change or that pivot.
- [23:29]
A
I like that the transparency there breeds the trust in the strategy.
- [23:33]
B
Totally breeds the trust. And quite frankly, like most, you know, I've always been on the product side, but most of the engineering leaders that I've worked with, their biggest gripe is that you can't have multiple P zeros, right? That's their biggest gripe. Like, how can everything be a top priority? It can't be, right? And so going through the exercise and actually identifying those priorities, and in some cases, you might even rank those priorities. Their issue is not that we have multiple priorities, it's that we have multiple P0 priorities. So help me understand why that's the. The case. So working together and being collaborative about that, I think is really, really important.
- [24:12]
A
In my last operational job, I used to write this quarterly Business Outlook document, like the Insights. And it was, you know, it became one of the most powerful documents in the company that was circulate because everybody looks to that document to see if they were represented. So, you know, it's kind of like engineering sees all of their items. Sales, marketing. Well, you know, I kind of go through these are all the data, all the things we've had, all what have we learned over the last few months? And then at the end, you know, everybody scrolls to the bottom, you know, and it's either saying something like, based on all of this learning, we are choosing to focus on these three things, or we are still maintaining our focus on those things we went to before. And it never, I realized over time, like, the first parts where people were very critical looking for their items in it. After a while, people just got used to the fact, like, somebody is doing the homework of thinking holistically about all of our issues and choosing what we should focus on. And it was a big trust document. You know, you want to see, like, do they know we have tech debt? Oh, they know. Do they know we have marketing? You know, you're like, it's in there. But we are still choosing to do this, and here is why. And I think people forget the. The empowering part of strategy is not even the choice on what to make, but the Fact that you can defend, you're making that. It's what empowers a lot of teams. You're like, they are stubborn on it, like, this is the right thing for us right now because they know why.
- [25:37]
B
And I mean, I don't think the goal of these things is to make everyone feel great and make them feel represented because there are going to be times where we need to pivot and change and. But that trust is based on the doing your homework, leveraging those insights, making thoughtful decisions, not based on your own agenda. And that's where the collaboration is really important because it's, it's really for that higher purpose. Right? It's not about an individual team or part of the organization. It's about, you know, we all succeed if the organization succeeds and our customers are delighted.
- [26:11]
A
We've gone through this whole exercise and we come out and the CEO says, I have a project. I want this done. You know, how do you coach that? How do you people respond to that? Do you inform your CEO? How do you maybe share up? You've talked about communicating out to the teams, but do we get buy in? Do we get ownership?
- [26:28]
B
So usually when, when I'm doing these with clients, what I'll ask to do is meet with the CEO immediately after this strategy jumpstart. And it's just a great way to informally debrief what worked. And this is of course only in the situation where the CEO is not part of that strategy jumpstart. But it's a great opportunity to reflect on it. And then, you know, I'll also share observations almost in an assessment after the fact that. But for a product leader who's running one of these jumpstarts, that instant communication is also very effective. Having a debrief about what worked, what didn't work, what were the aha moments, what is the team willing to let go of doing that communication. It's the job of the product leader to make sure that they're in that constant contact so that we have that alignment. And that's the whole goal. We're trying to drive alignment in the organization to eliminate the waste and more importantly, eliminate the churn in the organization that takes place when we don't have that alignment.
- [27:27]
A
Maybe. Last question. Leah, you've run many of these. If I were asking you, what are some of the biggest lessons you've learned doing this? What comes to mind?
- [27:36]
B
One is doing the homework ahead of time. So I've run these where I'm looking at the insights fresh within the jumpstart and the jumpstarts don't take that much time. It's usually two half days is the typical time frame for a jump start. But doing the homework ahead of time and getting everyone to review the insights ahead of time saves a lot and you can accomplish much more. So that was a big lesson for me. And then the second thing is making sure everyone's coming into it with the right mindset is huge because, you know, people, especially in large scale organizations, get a little uncomfortable. The end of the spectrum on that is defensive in terms of, you know, why are we making these decisions, why are we having this kind of conversation? You know, I have funding for my team and this is what we're focused on. But this is about those senior leaders playing the role of executive and not necessarily leader of a team. And as you know, anyone who's in that senior level has to straddle both of them, those things. And so this is about, okay, you're not going to put on the hat of leader of your team. You're going to put on the hat of key stakeholder in the organization who wants the customer to succeed and also wants, you know, value for the, for the company.
- [28:54]
A
I love that framing a lot because you can imagine if I'm, I can come into that meeting as a leader and think about my priorities, my team's goals, what I'm measured on and want to impose kind of that onto the strategy or like we must do the things I want versus I like the framing of you're a key stakeholder of the company. You know, and we've got 10 resources and we are choosing what's best for all of us right now. Now, Leah, have you, have you ever had one of these fail? And maybe what does failure mean? Or why and why did it fail?
- [29:28]
B
There's always moments in time in these strategy jumpstarts where things get a little tense because we have competing agendas, people have biases, they're coming to the table and working through that is probably the most challenging part of it. And because there's people involved, there's personalities involved, there's bias involved, there's relationships involved. And you always talk about like every problem is a people problem. Same holds true. You know, when you get a lot of smart people in the room and you're trying to make decisions, you're going to have conflict. And you know, again, that's where the mindset is really important to kind of level set on that. You know, we're all in this to have a good result and we're all in this to make the right decisions because we all succeed when we make those decisions. So that's the hardest part, I would say. And sometimes when you're in the middle of that rock tumbling, you know, you feel like us, are we really going to get to that prioritize list of problems to solve and in some cases we don't. Some cases, you know, we need to follow on and then that usually is symptomatic of something else going on in the organization. And so usually there's going to be more follow up work, there's more reflection to be done. But yeah, it happens on occasion.
- [30:45]
A
The more you describe this, the more I'm like thinking to myself, boy, we need somebody, a neutral in the room like yourself, with no skin in the game that knows what good looks like. Because you're almost, you're seeing the politics, the personalities, the mindset gaps. You're almost like a referee, a coach, a therapist, you know, because there's, there's a whole lot of dynamic in there that I can imagine. How do I know I need one of these things? Many companies don't develop the muscle because alignment is hard by nature of us being different. Dysfunction is going to happen. We all have different ways of interpreting data, seeing things. Ego. There are so many aspects that you will have to navigate and this was probably one of the hardest things I struggled with as a, as a product leader in my career because I to make everybody happy. And now I have to figure out how to not make some people happy by choosing some things. And when I recognize that this is the best thing I could do for the company is actually choosing how well we use our resources and the leverage we have to win in the market or industry. Despite, you know, the personalities and the ego, it really changed.
- [32:00]
B
I totally agree. I mean if, if your goal on the outset is to make everyone happy, you're probably in the wrong role. It was that favorite.
- [32:09]
A
See Joe's foot.
- [32:09]
B
If you want to make everyone happy, go sell ice cream.
- [32:12]
A
Go sell ice cream. Don't be a leader. Don't be a leader. Leah, this was fantastic. I enjoyed this conversation tremendously. If I ever had a chance to run a company, I want you doing my jumpstart. I think it's an amazing, amazing technique of helping people build a muscle they are not used to. Thank you for being a guest again on Product Therapy.
- [32:33]
B
Thank you, Christian.
- [32:34]
A
Want to learn more? Until next time, Please check out svpg.com Sign up for our newsletter that Mary Kagan puts out. Join us for one of our workshops near you and get access to all of the articles and content we put out. And thank you to everyone for joining us. Until next time, have a good day. A quick Disclaimer While this podcast is named Product Therapy, it is not hosted by licensed therapists or mental health professionals and it is in no way a substitute for professional mental health services. We recognize the importance of mental well being and encourage anyone facing personal difficulties to seek support from qualified professionals. See www.findahelpline.com.