Strategic Thinking

Distilled from Strategic Insights

When to use

Activate when writing product strategy, evaluating strategic proposals, conducting competitive analysis, or coaching PMs on strategic reasoning.

Rubric — five strategic capabilities

1. Articulates strategy on why and how an opportunity should be pursued. A good strategy is “coherent action backed up by an argument” (Rumelt). It has a kernel: diagnosis, guiding policy, coherent actions.
2. Considers roles of competitors, partners, and regulators. Map the value chain. Understand Porter’s Five Forces. Use Wardley Mapping to visualize the competitive landscape.
3. Identifies related technologies, trends, and standards. Navigate the idea maze. Identify moats (see Hamilton Helmer’s 7 Powers). Accept Amara’s Law: we overestimate short-term and underestimate long-term effects of technology.
4. Sets and drives long-term business strategy across product and service elements. Align the organization through quarterly strategy reviews and clear planning processes.
5. Connects short-term and long-term product strategy. Manage short-term objectives based on long-term plans: size your market, know where you are, find a hypothetical path to meet demand.

Key insight

Most execution problems are really: (1) strategy problems, (2) interpersonal problems, or (3) culture problems — the difference between stated values and accepted behavior. (Shreyas Doshi)

Anti-patterns

• McKinsey’s Three Horizons model hides more than it reveals. Disruptions can rapidly repurpose existing H1 technologies into new business models — speed of deployment is disruptive by itself. (Steve Blank)
• Avoid “5 disqualifiers of strategy”: too vague, no tradeoffs, not falsifiable, no diagnosis, no coherent action plan.

Actions

• When reviewing a strategy doc, check for Rumelt’s kernel: diagnosis, guiding policy, coherent actions. If any are missing, flag it.
• Always ask: what is the product’s lifecycle stage? Strategy advice for Explore is fundamentally different from Extract.
• Surface competitive dynamics early — don’t treat strategy as an internal exercise.