Is Your Product Vision Moving People in the Right Direction?
A meaningful, motivating product vision enables teams to advance to a purpose-driven mindset.
People care about themselves and their problems. Product Leaders face this universal truth daily:
- Sales wants to close more deals.
- Customer support wants to reduce stressful customer calls.
- Our CEO wants to look good at an upcoming Board meeting.
- Engineering wants to speed up development.
- Product wants to work on the “right” thing.
Product Leaders spend much of their time navigating these competing needs. Can’t we all get on the same page?
Yes, we can. And we must.
Because
Vision without action is a dream. Action without vision is a nightmare
Not exactly a Japanese proverb, but close enough.
As a product leader, your job is to create a better future. Better for customers and the company. A better future depends on vision and action. Not just any vision will do. You need a product vision that is meaningful and motivating.
Why do product leaders need a meaningful, motivating product vision?
A product vision that is meaningful and motivating cuts through the internal noise to align your company toward a better future. It also enables you, as a product leader, to spend more time building that future instead of explaining it.
Why must your product vision be meaningful?
Meaning speaks to the mind. The mind wants answers to factual questions such as
- How big is the market?
- Who are our target customers?
- Why are they dissatisfied?
Testimonials, statistics, analogies, and examples are the key ingredients for meaning in your product vision.
Why must your product vision be motivating?
Motivation speaks to the heart. The heart wants to care about the customers. It needs to feel the pain of their dissatisfaction. It craves being excited about future possibilities. Knowing something isn’t enough to make you want to do it. You need to feel it’s worth doing. The story of conflict and resolution is the key ingredient for a motivating vision.
Your audience (often employees and investors) needs to experience a series of emotions in the story you share:
- compassion for the customers, their needs and goals,
- anger at the inadequacies of their current available solutions, perhaps even
- shame that we haven’t done better to meet their needs sooner
- optimism that we understand and now can fulfill their needs
- hope that we can and will improve their lives
A meaningful, motivating product vision enables employees to zoom out from a self-interested mindset (“how can I make my job better?”) to a purpose-driven mindset (“how quickly can we make our customers’ lives better?”).
How do product leaders communicate a meaningful, motivating product vision?
While a helpful starting place, the “Product Vision Statement” is a product value proposition, not a vision. A value prop alone is not enough to communicate your product vision for 3 key reasons:
- It lacks meaning and motivation to be a catalyst for action (see above)
- It lacks the story of cause and effect, which is essential for your product vision to have 6.7x greater probability of being retained and internalized by your employees.
- It’s not visual. Many of us process information faster from pictures than text. I implore you to use video to accelerate understanding of your Product Vision.
I think of it this way:
A Product Value Proposition is the plot summary.
The Product Vision is the preview of the movie where
The customer is the hero,
The status quo is the villain who cast an evil spell on the hero, and
Your product is the magic potion that enables the hero to become who they’ve always wanted to be.
Once again, as an outline:
- HERO: Clear customer with a
- HERO’s GOAL: Meaningful, measurable problem/need yet have
- EVIL SPELL: painfully inadequate solutions, so the
- MAGIC POTION: visualized future solution
- HERO’s SELF-ACTUALIZATION: that fulfills on potential
- WHY US: employees and customers are emotionally connected and inspired to be a part of it
What is an example of a meaningful, motivating product vision?
Sadly, as critical as product vision is, there are few public examples in what I believe to be the most effective format: video. Here is one that falls short and a few that get it right.
Microsoft: Workplace Analytics
Workplace Analytics vision video
HERO: Unclear
HERO’s GOAL: To know what their employees are doing?
EVIL SPELL: Unclear
MAGIC POTION: Workplace Analytics?
HERO’s SELF-ACTUALIZATION: I don’t know
WHY US: I don’t know
This product vision video falls into common pitfalls — it is company-centric, not customer-centric. It doesn’t describe who the customer is. It doesn’t explain the problems they encounter. It doesn’t engender empathy. It’s neither inspirational nor wholly logical.
But here are three that get it right.
1. Asana
The Future of Asana video
HERO: Anyone on a team with a goal
HERO’s GOAL: Reduce the work about work — meetings, scheduling, updates, confusion about who’s doing what, lack of progress transparency
EVIL SPELL: project management software, nagging for updates, manual updates on key results
MAGIC POTION: Asana — automating time-sucking menial work
HERO’S SELF-ACTUALIZATION: high-performing teams doing fulfilling, important work
WHY US: employees and customers are emotionally connected and inspired to be a part of it
2. GE Healthcare
Making MRIs less scary for kids vision video
HERO: Sick children
HERO’s GOAL: Get well
EVIL SPELL: scary, noisy MRI machines that require kids to remain perfectly calm and still
MAGIC POTION: Kid-friendly adventures and designs from GE Healthcare
HERO’S SELF-ACTUALIZATION: enjoyable experience that helped expedite their treatment
WHY US: GE Healthcare, hospital employees and parents are emotionally connected and inspired to be a part of it
3. The Girl Effect (Non-Profit)
The girl effect: The clock is ticking
HERO: 12 year old girls in poverty
HERO’S GOAL: Stay in school, HIV-free and child-free until adulthood
EVIL SPELL: childhood marriage, sex slavery as their survival options
MAGIC POTION: The Girl Effect
HERO’S SELF-ACTUALIZATION: healthy, educated, calling her own shots
WHY US: donors are emotionally connected and inspired to be a part of it
In these example vision videos, each story conveys a meaningful, motivating vision with key supporting evidence and visuals to urge the audience to take action.
When will you use your meaningful, motivating product vision?
Here are just a few of the opportunities you’ll have to get a return on your product vision investment:
- Hiring: Recruiting employees, onboarding employees. The fact that you know where you’re going and why is already a massive competitive advantage in hiring great talent for your team.
- Operational meetings: Product strategy meetings, Roadmap reviews, Project kick-offs, All-Hands, prioritization debates. Having something to point to that everyone is rallied around can make tough decisions into easier conversations.
- Customer and prospect meetings: Roundtables, sales calls, customer advisory meetings. A vision for the future that customers identify with and positively respond to empowers everyone around the same goals.
Anytime you have a meeting where people need to align and make choices about how they spend their time, your product vision can be at the center of critical decision making.
Do you have even better examples of meaningful, motivating product visions? Let me know and I’ll add them to this post to be helpful to other product leaders.
A version of this post originally appeared in Ask Women in Product: What does a great product vision look like?
Hope Gurion, founder of Fearless Product, is a Product Leadership coach, helping new product leaders build their confidence and competence.
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