What can Pablo Picasso teach us about Product Strategy?
In 1945 Picasso created probably his most famous set of bull drawings, called “The Bull”. The collection of 11 pictures starts with a series of drawings that start gaining detail and realism in the first iterations. But after the third, it starts moving towards cubism, dissecting the bull part by part, making each piece more abstract until it can be drawn with just a few lines but keeping its essence.
Disclaimer: I am by no means an expert on art. But after going through a few rounds of Product Strategy definitions, I felt the artist had mastered a process that may help product leaders.
The Product Strategy “Stages”
There isn’t a single way to define product strategy (at least not a broadly standardized process). Nevertheless, in any way a company or team may define it, it probably goes at least through some necessary steps:
1. Gather
Gathering information about the business, the market, competitors, macroeconomic conditions, etcetera is an ongoing process. You need them not only for strategy but also for everyday decision making.
It is not uncommon though, that when you are going to make strategic decisions, you prepare a summary of this information and even try to tap into new sources like the latest industry reports and research.
2. Find opportunities
After having the appropriate information, you need to find insights about where opportunities are.
Tapping both into analysis tools and using guided brainstorming based on the previously generated information, the team will open a set of possibilities to pursue.
3. Select
In essence, we want to create a strategy that can move us closer to realizing the product’s vision. Based on high-level drivers and prioritization tools, the team has to select among the existing paths and opportunities, which may be more “important” for the next terms.
Time horizons are crucial: you will be building things to have short term benefits, but also investing in something that will (hopefully) guarantee long term success.
Like Elon Musk’s secret Tesla strategic plan:
1. Build sports car
2. Use that money to build an affordable car
3. Use that money to build an even more affordable car
While doing above, also provide zero emission electric power generation options
Don’t tell anyone.
4. Synthesize
Finally, you need to put all this information in a coherent format that can be explained to any member of the organization.
There are tools and techniques for synthesis, but it would still be an art that highly depends on the organization, the stakeholders, and the “depth” of information to be shared.
Even when you end up with a strategy document or a slide deck, you still need to have something short and memorable (like Elon’s Tesla strategy).
Draw, re-draw, re-draw, re-draw
The strategy usually evolves over time. When teams absorb the initial documentation or deck, new pieces of information (and questions!) that were not considered before are now included. The strategy gains higher levels of detail and comprehension, pretty much like the first iterations of the bull.
But that detail goes against a clear focus and fluent communication. Even when your strategy is very insightful and “complete”, if you are not able to imprint it on the organization, it will not have the desired effect, and it will not be successful.
At this point is when master-cubism comes into play: you need to master the art of simplifying the strategy and get to the very essence of it. Like “The Bull”, this requires going through it over and over again, making it easier to tell in each iteration but without losing the critical components of it.
How can we achieve it? There is no silver bullet. consider these 3 quick tips as starting points:
- Adopt an MVP (minimum viable product) mindset: include only the essential and force you to justify everything you consider adding.
- Use the concept of strategic drivers: instead of going down to the actions of the strategy, group the actions into drivers and assign well-thought titles that reflect the types of actions you will have for each of them. This also has a secondary impact: more people on the organization will be thinking other strategic actions that may help further advance each driver, aligning and improving your speed of impact.
- Be visual: if you have a set of bullet points, transform them into a diagram, and even consider “icons” to each strategic driver more memorable.
Note: this story was originally published in LeanExperimentation.com. If you enjoyed it and want to receive more tools & tips to improve your product, you can subscribe here and join +1200 readers!
