Visions 2020

A couple of days I spoke at a live virtual meetup called ProductTank. ProductTank brings together the product community in each city. This month’s event was about strategy, and I was honoured to be able to share my thoughts about having a strong vision as a pre-requirement for a strategy.

My talk examined three properties which were fundamental for a great product vision:

1. A vision should focus on the outcome, not the product itself. What’s the benefit to the world that is created because of your product?
2. A vision should align the team. Where is the ‘true north’ that you’re all aiming towards?
3. A vision should motivate and inspire. How does what you’re aiming for resonate with the team?

I then looked at the most popular ways of forming a ‘vision statement’ and showed how they’re flawed, and that the resulting vision statements don’t hit all three of those properties.

Lastly, I covered two new strategies to make a vision statement that does hit all three of those properties, namely Hills and Storytelling.

You can watch a recording of the talk below:

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