Being a strategic product designer? —Nr. 130
A strategy is a plan to win. When a basketball coach puts a strategy, they have a plan to win the game. Professional gamers also put a strategy to win the game. A product team needs a strategy to win.
You’ll hear this from time to time in your career.
A strategy is a plan to win. When a basketball coach puts a strategy, they have a plan to win the game. Professional gamers also put a strategy to win the game. A product team needs a strategy to win.
Win what exactly? To win whatever you need to accomplish in this moment. Usually, the company has a mission, and your role as a product team is to determine the steps to progress on that mission.
Being strategic starts early in your career as a product designer. At first, you will support this strategy. That means you need to understand what’s the strategy. As you grow into a more senior role, you’d be expected to establish the strategy. Either way, having this strategic mindset is critical.
Tesla has a mission to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy. But how? The how to win is the strategy. Their strategy is to build a sports car, then use that money to build an affordable car, and then use it to build an even more affordable car. You can read Elon’s note. https://www.tesla.com/blog/master-plan-part-deux
No matter what’s your role, having a strategic mindset is critical. In this article, let’s discuss four steps to understand or structure a strategy.
4 steps to think about a strategy
If you’re not involved in defining the strategy, you will need to understand the strategy to make informed decisions. If you’re responsible for crafting the strategy and solving the problem, structuring your thinking will be crucial. Either way, here are four steps to understand a strategy:
Step 1: What is the current situation?
This is the current situation you’re dealing with as a team. Maybe you realize your users are not adopting the new feature you’re launching. Usually, it’s the symptom.
Step 2: What is the complication?
Then, understand what’s the effect of that situation. If we don’t solve this, then what? If no one is aware of our feature, then we can’t deliver value to users, and we can’t increase retention. There are two layers here: (1) Understand the complication for the users and (2) get a sense of the effect on our internal team (metrics, monetization, morale, and so on)