Product Strategy: Why It’s Hard and How We Get It Right

Product Strategy is yet one of the most misunderstood terms of product management. Yes, product strategy is not the same as business/company strategy.

The business strategy will elaborate on where the company intends to play and what business goals it may have. Product strategy acts in the service of that. 

Think of it as the glue code connecting what the company is trying to achieve and what we are building against those goals. That is crucial for making trade-off decisions on where to focus to invest resources (at the management level) and alignment to help the teams on the ground work on stuff that actually pays into the overall goals of the business.

When I start working with new clients at Product Matters, I usuallywe start with an assessment:

• Conduct interviews
• Review artifacts
• Send out surveys

And a majority of the time, two things keep popping up:

1. Lack of focus
2. Lack of alignment

These 2 things lead to friction between teams and prioritization issues while they try to do too many things at once (which never works out well).

Let’s unpack what product strategy really means and, most importantly, how we do it for our clients, and you can also do it for your business!

The Common Pitfall of Product Strategy – Lack of Focus & Alignment

This is the root cause of most strategy failures. It is always seen that companies are trying to chase too many business objectives at once (which looks more like a laundry list), and I just see those same objectives like:

“Be better at everything. More profitability. Less churn. Happy customers. Happy employees.”

It’s like the same pillars everywhere. And AI just adds millions of other metrics—95% of which are irrelevant. 

So what do we do?

Let us first acknowledge that an engineer cannot build 1 billion dollars. Business goals are often irrelevant to a development team. Thus, we need to start by deriving some actual business goals that are closer to the product but ultimately will contribute to the business outcomes we are hoping for. 

We sit down and define actual, tangible business goals for the next 12–18 months:

Say we have a business goal of “Grow revenue 25%”, maybe we can break this down to something as:

• Reduce new user churn from 20 to 15%.
• Launching a new product line to appeal to younger audiences 18-25 yrs old.

The idea is to find something that connects business and product. Growth is a business goal. But product strategy defines how you’ll get there.

For example:

“15% growth” looks very different depending on your context—maybe it’s new customer acquisition, maybe it’s churn reduction. 

A Classic Example: Amazon in the Late ’90s

Back then, Amazon was an online bookstore. Someone in that room decided to:

• Expand into new product lines
• Expand to international markets

Those were business strategy decisions that defined where Amazon was playing. The product strategy was how they did it.

How to Get Everyone On the Same Page: The Concentric Circles Strategy

Your product team is waiting for something that can get them excited. And getting better at everything isn’t a goal that gets them excited. 

If the objective is to “retain younger audiences,” now that’s tangible. That’s a goal people can rally around.

To get everyone on the same page, we first ask the product leaders to answer a set of questions like:

• What is our product?
• What are the problems that we’re trying to address?
• Who is going to be our target customer for the product?
• What is the solution proposal going to be?
• What’s going to be the biggest challenge for this product?

And some more…

Write it all down. Make it visible. Get everyone starting from the same place.

Introducing: The Concentric Circles Method

To implement this right, I ensure that these product leaders and businesses are calling in their closest allies, employees, and even peers to fill out the gaps in the information.

If you want people to execute a set plan or strategy, making them a part of strategy creation is always a good idea. But I know you can’t involve everyone at the same time. So, that’s where my concentric circles method comes to the rescue.

1. Begin with yourself
   Get clear on your own perspective first.

2. Bring in your team
   Share your draft and iterate based on their feedback.

3. Review with peers
   Gather perspectives and poke holes in your assumptions.

4. Present to leadership and scale
   Share the refined strategy with the entire organization or even publicly.

This turns a personal idea into a shared narrative. People support what they help create.

Bonus Tip:

Go on a “listening tour.” Walk key people through your current thinking and invite their feedback. It transforms the strategy into a collective effort.

Client Story: From Stagnation to Strategic Clarity

I recently worked with a CPO and asked her point-blank about their business objectives and data insights. 

She came back to me and said, “Yes, we do have a strategy, but we never actually got to the part of executing it. Plus, we’re not even sure whether it works or not.”

We began with some foundational questions and quickly found gaps in their data. Their teams thought they had a strategy, but:

• It didn’t move the needle
• They didn’t have a market fit approach
• Execution nowhere matched the market needs

So, we got to a complete realignment phase. 

Here’s What We Did:

• Realigned the entire company around realistic business goals
• Conducted data analysis and hypothesis testing
• Created strategy papers and distributed them

The good thing is that we didn’t just STOP there. Over the next steps, we brought in more & more people from the organization and got their views. We gave them strategy papers to read (sometimes multiple papers).

Then, we had those deep, meaningful discussions.

– Not just throw random ideas on the whiteboard

– Not something that they would just forget tomorrow morning

However, work on the strategy with proper intentions and involvement so that everyone feels like they’re contributing something and that they also have a responsibility here.

The Timing Trap: Why You Need to Start Early

When product leaders ask me if it would be better to have 5 or 10-year strategies, I have a simple answer:

“Yes, you can absolutely have that. But you’ll still need to realign every year to have everyone on the same page.”

Many leaders wait until the end of the year to think about strategy. But here’s the catch:

• In Europe, August is vacation season.
• By September, budget planning and performance reviews begin.

“If you’re trying to frame your product strategy after August, you’re already late.”

And let’s be honest, you can’t really frame a strategy, sit down & discuss ideas, and then get everyone onboard for implementation when your mind is constantly running everywhere. That’s never going to be possible. So you need a new plan.

Here’s What We Do Instead:

• Start early in the year
• Start building clarity before the busy season kicks in
• Prepare strategy drafts that are ready to activate by Q4

That way, when the organization comes back ready to act, the strategy isn’t just forming—it’s already in motion.

This is one of the most powerful leadership skills you can build: Creating strategic clarity before the chaos begins.

Conclusion: This Isn’t Theory (It’s What We Actually Do)

This isn’t just theory or philosophy. Here are some real examples from our clients:

Plantix Client Success Story

Frontiers Client Success Story

More: Success Stories

Strategy isn’t a one-off workshop (and it can never be). It’s a way of aligning people, setting priorities, and executing with intention, so you can’t drop it in 5 minutes of a meeting and expect everyone to follow.

Product strategy seems pretty simple. But doing it well takes commitment. It takes collaboration. And above all, it takes clarity.

Let’s make it happen!