Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth - An operator’s guide to product strategy | Chandra Janakiraman (CPO at VRChat, ex-Meta, Headspace, Zynga)
The conversation highlights the perceived mystique around product strategy and the belief that some are naturally better at it. Chandra Janakraman, a seasoned product leader, shares his five-step process for developing a product strategy, which includes preparation, strategy sprint, design sprint, document writing, and rollout. This process, taking 8-12 weeks, is designed to create alignment and clarity within teams, focusing on solving problems and setting strategic pillars. The strategy should be a collaborative effort involving a cross-functional team, ensuring that the strategy is not just a PM's vision but a collective one. The discussion also touches on the importance of having both a small-scale, problem-focused strategy and a larger, aspirational strategy to guide long-term vision. The role of AI in strategy formulation is also explored, suggesting that AI can assist in research and generating mock strategies, although human judgment remains crucial for final decision-making.
Key Points:
- Product strategy is not innate; it can be developed through a structured process.
- A five-step process (preparation, strategy sprint, design sprint, document writing, rollout) helps create a clear, aligned strategy.
- Involve a cross-functional team to ensure the strategy is a collective vision, not just a PM's.
- Balance small-scale, problem-focused strategies with larger, aspirational ones for long-term vision.
- AI can assist in strategy formulation, but human judgment is essential for final decisions.
Details:
1. 🔍 The Mystique of Product Strategy
1.1. Perception vs Reality
1.2. Skill Development in Product Strategy
1.3. Actionable Insights for Practitioners
2. 🚀 Developing a Winning Product Strategy
- Product strategy focuses on solving problems with a 'present forward' approach, typically operating on a two-year horizon.
- A five-stage process is utilized to develop an effective product strategy, which includes assessing current market conditions, identifying customer needs, defining clear objectives, developing a comprehensive action plan, and continuously monitoring and adjusting the strategy based on performance data.
3. 🎯 Importance of Strategic Vision
- Strategic vision development takes about eight to 12 weeks, underscoring the importance of alignment, which is deeply rooted in human psychology. Familiarity and personal involvement in the development process increase acceptance, making implementation smoother and more effective.
- Approaching strategic vision as more than just problem-solving is crucial. This aligns with the idea that businesses should aim for broader goals beyond immediate challenges, providing a long-term roadmap for success.
- For instance, companies that integrate personal involvement and alignment into their strategic vision processes often witness improved team cohesion and clearer direction, leading to more sustainable growth.
4. 🎙️ Introducing Chandra Janakraman and His Approach
4.1. Chandra Janakraman's Professional Background
4.2. Chandra's Strategic Approach
5. 🛠️ The Role and Impact of EPPO in Experimentation
- EPPO is a cutting-edge A-B testing and feature management platform, developed by experts from Airbnb and Snowflake.
- It is widely adopted by leading companies such as Twitch, Miro, ClickUp, and DraftKings for enhancing their experimentation processes.
- Experimentation is vital for growth and assessing new feature performance, and EPPO significantly boosts experimentation speed and depth of analysis.
- The platform stands out for its advanced statistical methods, allowing for efficient experiment setup, troubleshooting, and comprehensive performance analysis.
- Compared to other tools, EPPO offers unparalleled capabilities in rigorous analysis, making it a preferred choice for top-tier companies.
- Success stories from companies like DraftKings illustrate how EPPO's features have led to more informed decision-making and accelerated growth.
6. 📊 Advanced Statistical Methods and Experimentation Use Cases
- EPPO significantly reduces experiment time, cutting weeks off the process, which enhances productivity and decision-making speed.
- The platform's user-friendly interface allows for in-depth performance analysis, making it accessible to a broader range of users.
- With out-of-the-box reporting features, EPPO streamlines the analytics process, minimizing the need for extensive data manipulation.
- EPPO promotes collaboration and innovation by enabling easy sharing of experiment insights across teams.
- The platform supports a diverse range of use cases such as product development, growth strategies, machine learning, monetization, and email marketing.
- Users can accelerate their experimentation velocity by utilizing EPPO, as highlighted at geteppo.com/lenny.
7. 🔗 Airtable's Product Central: A Unified System
- Airtable's Product Central is designed to unify product organizations by integrating all tools and teams into one platform, reducing the need for context switching.
- The platform is customizable to fit the specific workflows of any team, built on Airtable's no-code platform, ensuring no limitations or compromises in functionality.
- It covers a comprehensive range of product management tasks such as resourcing, voice of customer, roadmapping, and launch execution.
- Airtable's Product Central is positioned as a flexible alternative to rigid point solutions, acting as 'mission control' for product leaders.
8. 🤝 The Importance of Strategy Alignment and Collaboration
- The segment emphasizes the significance of developing a strategic playbook to enhance company operations and employee performance.
- Having a well-defined strategy can significantly improve the way a company operates, leading to more effective collaborations and better outcomes.
- The conversation highlights a personal anecdote, illustrating the long-standing passion and commitment towards creating effective strategies, dating back 10 years.
- The insights suggest that continuous improvement and sharing of strategic approaches can benefit the broader community and enhance collective knowledge.
9. 🔑 Developing and Implementing Product Strategy at Headspace
9.1. Strategy Development at Headspace
9.2. Strategy Implementation and Feedback
10. 🧩 Making Strategy Accessible and Inclusive
- Identified a communication gap as many team members did not understand the rationale behind projects, indicating the need for a clear strategy explanation.
- A board member identified the need for a written product strategy, leading to Headspace's first documented strategy.
- The new strategy prompted a re-imagination of the product, resulting in the 'next generation Headspace', marking significant product evolution.
- The strategy was effectively communicated to the team, improving understanding and alignment across the organization.
- The new strategy led to measurable improvements in product development cycles and team cohesion.
11. 📝 Understanding and Structuring Product Strategy
- The development of the Next Generation Headspace expanded the product from a meditation app to a comprehensive health and wellness service, demonstrating a strategic shift in company direction.
- The new product offers a personalized home experience and includes motivational elements, which enhanced user engagement and broadened its market appeal.
- This strategic pivot significantly transformed the company, placing it on a new growth trajectory and resulted in the promotion of the speaker to Chief Product Officer (CPO).
- The strategic transformation was initiated by a detailed analysis of user needs and market demands, influenced by a personal crisis moment that underscored the importance of a robust product strategy.
12. 🔄 Big S vs Small S Strategy: Execution and AI's Role
- Strategy is not an innate skill but can be developed through a systematic approach, making it accessible to more individuals.
- Implementing a clear, repeatable playbook for product strategy allows teams to build effective strategies consistently.
- Understanding the 'why' behind tasks is crucial, as many teams lack clarity on their purpose, which AI can help clarify by analyzing data and providing insights.
- AI's role in strategy execution includes enhancing decision-making processes by offering data-driven insights and automating routine analysis tasks, allowing teams to focus on higher-level strategic thinking.