Working Through a Product Strategy Challenge

Recovering from a disconnect with business objectives

It's nothing new that organizations need the highest profits from every product in the portfolio.  Recently organizations have been examining lower-margin products carefully.  More and more product managers are on the frontline of explaining the profit and loss of their products.

The challenge in this product-by-product P&L examination is product dependencies.  Poorly performing products might be enabling highly profitable products.

It is up to product managers to align their products to their organization’s business objectives.  When there is this alignment, then product dependencies are a technical issue and not a financial issue.

Product managers become laser-focused on their own product challenges.  As a result, they frequently lose sight of the changes in their organization's business objectives.

What do you do when your product strategy is disconnected from your organization's business objectives?  Let's dig into recovering from this mistake.

Signs of a Disconnect

Pausing to reflect on your recent challenges can connect the dots so you can see your product from a different perspective.  You can start with a list of recent stressful events.  A few examples are:

• Your manager had to step in to explain why you are making an investment request

• Your explanation of recent sales declines is not acceptable

• You are getting many questions about product spending and customer acquisition costs

• Open disagreement on the direction of your roadmap

Think hard about the root causes of these events.  Some of the root causes are under your control.  Typical root causes for product managers are:

• Limited collaboration with stakeholders

• Lack of customer engagement

• Underestimation of the financial impact of a product decision

• Roadmap is too ambitious

• Delayed response to competitive threat

Now that you connect the dots, you can see the disconnect between your product strategy and business goals.  This is not the time to hide the disconnect!  Better to be open about the situation.