The Essential Questions That Lead to a Great Product Strategy

“The wise man doesn’t give the right answers; he poses the right questions.” — Clause Levi-Strauss

John Utz
Product Coalition

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There I sat in a sterile office conference room, long before the days’ Google and We Work forced creativity into the workplace, stumped. The CFO of our division just asked me, a new management trainee, why I thought the company was pursuing the strategy he laid out. I honestly had no idea. My mind was blank and I was mildly embarrassed.

Asking questions rather than waiting to be asked a question would have been a better strategy. Yet, there I was — microphone in hand, dead air hanging like a thick fog. Finally, I came up with a pretty corporate answer (which I don’t remember) but followed it up with a question. “Why do you believe a merger is critical to the strategy?”.

While there are many quotes about asking the right questions, Claude Levi-Strauss sums it up nicely. Although I didn’t consider myself wise at the time, the question led to a lot of head nodding and a thoughtful answer. And it dawned on me that asking a good question was as important as answering a question well.

It starts with asking the right questions

The solution to almost all problems in business starts with asking the right questions. This is especially true for product strategy. It’s impossible to create a winning product strategy without asking basic questions. — why, what, how, when, and who- and the more complex questions, for example, “What’s the user acquisition strategy?”. Therefore, as you kick off your product strategy, put aside any urge to dive right into the work and skip past questions.

Acknowledge commitment bias and assumptions

Equally important, and this one is hard, you must recognize any commitment bias you may have. In other words, preconceived notions and assumptions. It would be best if you approached product strategy with an open mind.

I find it helpful to write down commitment biases, preconceived notions, and assumptions I have before I dive into a product strategy. I also come back to these biases often as a reminder to continually refresh my awareness.

Warren Buffet says it well,

“All of us want to read new information and have it confirm our cherished beliefs. I mean, it is just built into the human system. And that can be very expensive in the investment and business world.”.

So as you ask questions, let the data guide you. Consider all sides. Strive towards objectivity.

Why questions are critical

After those encouraging words, let’s start with a question. “Why do I need to start with questions?” — see what I did there?

Anywho. What’s the goal of starting with questions? It’s simple — questions open your mind. Asking the right questions reduces the downstream risk of wasting the time and talent of the product team by finding issues or areas to address early on. Bottom line, heading off the questions pre-build and addressing them in the strategy reduces later rework that result from gaps in your thinking.

Another mistake as a result of jumping in too quick

I can tell you story after story in my career where I would have saved a significant amount of pain by asking the right question upfront, product strategy project or not. I need look no further than my time as a consultant for another example. My client wanted to productize and monetize its brand and its intellectual property. Rather than asking why I assumed. And was I off. My assumption — they were looking for additional revenue. It made sense; why else do you productize an internal capability — external revenue.

As it turns out, we completed about 1/3 of the engagement before we realized how much we missed the mark. Their goal was to bring in more patients. Not to make money. The money was a means to an end. This mistake could have been avoided by asking them why they chose productization as the path. Unfortunately, once we knew the real goal, the product strategy needed a reboot, but at least the path was clear.

Questions to start with

“Ok, so what questions do I start with?” I’ve compiled a list of some of my most used below. These questions represent a core set I find maps well to most industries, companies, and situations after years of consulting. Whether you use them or not, what’s important is starting with a set of questions that you feel will increase speed to acceptance and understanding of the product strategy while putting it on solid footing.

Getting the right answers

After you have a set of questions or if you want to use those above, the question becomes how to get answers. I follow a few rules to drive to clear, concise, valuable answers.

  • Question everything again. Well, maybe not everything. But as a reminder, add to the questions based on your industry, company, and products. What else would be helpful input? Talk to key leaders to understand what they would expect from your product strategy and what questions they have.
  • Ensure you understand the company’s strategy and objectives. Repeat it back to leaders and see if they agree with your understanding.
  • Collaborate. Collaborate up, across, and down. Collaboration will lead to better answers. When doing so, your job is to listen, add perspective, debate, and synthesize the answers in a way that informs your product strategy.
  • Research. Spend time looking at the market. Talk to buyers. Connect with users. The goal is not to go deep into any analysis. It is to get a high-level understanding and perspective. Share the research with leaders, peers, the product team, and others and see how they react.
  • Spend time reflecting, thinking, and brainstorming. What other key assumptions, statements, facts, or information should you include in your product strategy based on the answers? What additional questions do you have?
  • Extend your brainstorming to your product team. Pull together colleagues on the team — product strategy, product management, design & UX, marketing, sales, etc. Brainstorm together based on the assumptions, statements, facts, and perspectives you have as a result of the answers.
  • Iterate. Test, learn, and modify. Just be sure to time box iteration on the questions and answers to a few weeks at most, or you won’t reach an endpoint.

The output of the questions should be a FAQ that provides context to the team and serves as the basis for your product strategy. You should share the answers with the product team, don’t tuck them away in your digital files. The answers will reduce the number of questions from the product team on the strategy and provide context.

Always start with the right questions

I want to leave you with two critical questions. First, does your team leverage questions to build the product strategy? Second, if they do, are the answers clear, concise, valuable, and understandable to those working on or with the strategy? Remember, your audience is not only the product strategy team. Your audience includes design, engineering, finance, marketing, sales, and many others. A solid product strategy always starts with the right questions.

📌 Follow me on:
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-utz/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@prodlabio/featured
Twitter: https://twitter.com/prodlabio

Special thanks to Tremis Skeete, Executive Editor at Product Coalition for the valuable input which contributed to the editing of this article.

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Customer obsessed digital product and strategy leader with experience at startups, consulting firms and Fortune 500. https://tinyurl.com/John-Utz-YouTube