Pancakes & Product Strategy

I know what you're thinking - what could breakfast food and product management possibly have in common? The answer is simple...they both belong in a stack!

In a previous newsletter, we shared our thoughts and some tips on how to skillfully onboard yourself in a new role. A critical component of that onboarding is understanding how your product strategy ladders up to overarching business objectives.

Enter one of my favorite frameworks: Reforge’s Product Strategy Stack

This framework defines explicitly the relationships between mission, strategy, & execution in a way that helps us identify gaps between them and see how they all “stack” together.

As product people, it is our job to understand how our products can drive business outcomes. We need to be able to look at the second and third order impacts of decisions about our roadmap & priorities - this is difficult to do if we don’t know the relationship between our product and the company’s overarching business strategy.

Next time you find yourself questioning if your goals make sense given broader strategy - try drawing out your own product strategy stack! Do the relationships make sense or do you have gaps to address?