1. What to Communicate

This guide outlines effective communication and alignment of product strategy within an organization. It builds on key practices for synchronizing product direction with broader corporate objectives, ensuring clarity, cohesion, and a shared understanding among stakeholders.

What to Communicate: Core Concepts

Before diving into product strategy, you must understand the corporate strategy. Product strategy should be closely aligned with the company’s larger goals, not developed in isolation. Your product planning should reflect the company’s vision and objectives.

Corporate Strategy vs. Product Strategy

• Corporate Strategy: Generally long-term, defining the company’s vision and overarching goals. It rarely changes and is primarily set by senior management in response to investor expectations.

• Product Strategy: Translates corporate strategy into actionable goals for the product team. This often includes a long-term product vision—clarifying what the product is and is not—and a short-term planning cycle, usually quarterly or biannually, where specific goals and priorities are defined.

Effective communication between corporate and product strategy minimizes misalignment and prevents frustration among teams.

Key Components of Product Strategy Communication

1. Investor Expectations: Investors focus on financial performance with limited visibility into product-specific or user-oriented aspects. Senior management consolidates investor priorities into a strategic direction.

2. Role of Senior Management: They interpret investor goals and long-term corporate strategy, then relay these goals to the product leadership. Senior management is responsible for balancing high-level expectations with the company’s operational strategy.

3. Product Leadership’s Role: Product leaders receive the corporate strategy and develop product plans that reflect these larger goals. They determine priorities, set a clear product vision, and work to align product teams accordingly.

4. Ground-Level Planning: Product managers, including General Product Managers (GPMs), take the broader product vision and adapt it to their specific context, focusing on tactical execution and operational alignment with the long-term vision.

Effective Communication Channels

Communication is often imperfect, with messages filtered through layers of expectations. Strategic decisions made by senior management may not always include all available information, potentially leading to unexpected priority shifts.

For instance:

• Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) may change priorities suddenly, often without detailed explanation.
• Regulatory changes can shift resources without clear justification to all teams.
• Competitor Actions may require a quick response that’s not initially explained.

This filtering can lead to misunderstandings or perceptions of “top-down” decision-making that feel disconnected from the data available to product teams.

Strategies for Navigating Communication Gaps

1. 1:1 Meetings: Create open, trust-based conversations with leadership. When possible, ask for clarification on priorities and decisions. These meetings build empathy and transparency, fostering better alignment.

2. Ask for Support: Directly inquire about support for your initiatives and clarify reasons for prioritization decisions.

3. Transparency on Restrictions: Leaders should be candid when certain information cannot be shared, reinforcing trust and showing that strategic choices are well-considered even when details are withheld.

4. Data-Driven Approach: Rely on data and factual evidence in all communications. When sharing plans or proposing changes, use data to back up your recommendations. This approach builds credibility and aids in aligning product strategy with measurable outcomes.

Planning Product Strategy Across Teams

Effective product strategy requires collaboration across departments such as Marketing, Sales, Legal, and Operations. Since products rarely exist in isolation, interdepartmental coordination ensures that product goals are supported at every stage, from design to deployment.

Universal Tips for Product Planning

• Good Neighbor Policy: Allow room in your planning for contributions from other departments. This reciprocity fosters stronger support for your initiatives.

• Idea Sharing: Instead of presenting a finalized plan, engage other teams early by sharing preliminary ideas. This invites constructive feedback and buy-in.

• Consistency and Credibility: Follow through on commitments to other teams. Keeping promises builds credibility and encourages future collaboration.

• Mutual Expectation Setting: Ensure your team’s interactions reflect the support you hope to receive from others. Reciprocal cooperation strengthens the product's development process.

Data and Fact-Driven Planning

Every product decision should be grounded in data. A fact-based approach not only strengthens your planning process but also makes your arguments more persuasive to other stakeholders.

Case Study: Memed Product Strategy

Background on Memed

Memed is a digital prescription platform allowing doctors to prescribe medications and tests online. At the time of the planning exercise, Memed was facing pressure from investors for both growth and monetization, as well as needing to modernize its outdated technology platform.

Memed’s Strategy and Approach

1. Modernization with UX Enhancement: The team committed to a six-month platform modernization, improving both the underlying technology and the user experience to better serve doctors.

2. Allocation of Resources: They balanced their focus by dedicating 20% of development resources to monetization efforts, 10% to growth initiatives, and the remaining 70% to core product improvements.

3. Balancing Stakeholder Needs: Memed negotiated with various teams:

   • With Marketing: To implement quick wins that supported growth efforts.
   • With Sales: To maintain a stable pipeline during the six-month development freeze.
   • With Technology: To streamline the modernization process without complete code rewrites.

4. Flexible Planning: Memed’s strategy allowed for both short-term stakeholder needs and long-term platform goals. This balanced approach helped mitigate challenges associated with rapid changes and investor demands.

Key Takeaway: The 70/30 Rule

Memed followed a 70/30 allocation rule, dedicating 70% of resources to core product improvements and 30% to stakeholder-driven initiatives. This balance allowed Memed to stay focused on its strategic goals while remaining adaptable to stakeholder needs.

Conclusion

Successfully communicating product strategy hinges on understanding the corporate context, fostering interdepartmental cooperation, and building trust through transparency. With clear communication and thoughtful alignment, product teams can effectively support corporate objectives and drive meaningful impact across the organization.