Product Leadership Strategy Best Practices

In our 2021 Product Excellence Report, we found that product leaders are 58% more likely than their teams to report that they have a clear product vision and strategy.

How do you get the whole team to think like a product leader, always keeping the product vision and strategy in the back of their mind no matter what it is they’re working on? It takes unique leadership skills that can inspire your entire organization. It’s not a simple task, but we’re here to help.

And we know it’s extremely hard to find examples and best practices in the real world, so we’re sharing the inner workings of our product team and beyond in our new ebook: the Product Leadership Handbook.

In it, we’ll take you through four key areas — building clarity around your vision, structuring a product team that scales, the best practices for onboarding new members to that team, and building stakeholder alignment — all based on how we do it ourselves at Productboard.

Let’s dig in.

Building clarity around product vision and strategy

It takes clear, consistent communication to get everyone on the same page and working toward that vision and strategy that you as a product leader live and breathe every day.

How do you do this, exactly? We’ve got a few tips:

1. Run an internal marketing campaign
2. Repeat yourself
3. Meet your stakeholders where they are
4. Leverage storytelling to inspire

The clearest, simplest strategy is meaningless if no one knows about it. You’ll have to repeat yourself many times to be sure everyone not only hears you, but understands you. Don’t let too much time go by without updating your executives.

Structuring product teams that scale

Do you have the right people in place to execute your plan? How long will your existing structure stay in place? These are tough questions to tackle and there is no one-size-fits-all answer – but there are some guiding principles we’ve found the most successful product leaders follow:

1. Organize around the problem space
2. Organize around the solution space
3. Organize around customer segments or personas
4. Mix and match different product team structures

Different guiding principles will work best for different teams at different growth stages too, so don’t be afraid to reevaluate as your team grows along with your organization.

Bonus advice in the ebook: 3 tips for avoiding reorganization chaos!

(Want more on this specific topic? Check out Structuring Scaling Product Teams to Prevent Silos.)

Onboarding best practices

Getting onboarding right is crucial to setting new team members up for success – ideally they learn how they fit into the product organization and build the habits and relationships that will help them hit the ground running.

Here’s the hiring best practices we swear by at Productboard.

1. Write a success brief
2. Provide and reinforce context
3. Share your processes and oddities
4. Let them unlock achievements at the outset

The biggest key when designing your onboarding process is to consistently ask yourself what you wish you’d known when you were starting and how you can give that to your new hires.

(Want more on this specific topic? Check out 5 onboarding best practices for product management leaders.)

Building stakeholder alignment as a product leader

Product leaders who are able to create strong alignment are ultimately able to build more successful products and bring those products to market faster.

We have a few best practices we swear by for this, too:

1. Start small by integrating stakeholders into your existing planning
2. Grow by shaping your org around product goals
3. Supplement discussions with transparent tooling

Just remember that the very best tools are no substitute for in-depth conversations. Use feedback as a way to dig deeper into the why of what you’re building so you don’t fall down the rabbit hole of endless information capturing.

For more, download the full report.

You’re a product leader – but how do you make the rest of your team think like one? Check out Productboard’s free new e-book: The Product Leadership Handbook.

In it we’ll take you through:

• Tips for building clarity around product vision and strategy
• Principles for structuring product teams that scale
• A collection of onboarding best practices
• Best practices for building stakeholder alignment as a product leader