💎 How to build a culture of strategic thinking

In the ever-evolving landscape of product development, fostering a strategic culture within your organization can be the differentiator between success and mediocrity. This approach not only propels your product forward but also cultivates a motivated, innovative, and engaged team. Here are four key strategies to embrace that will help elevate your product's success and, even more importantly, the people within your organization.

1. Leverage business cases

Identifying a new opportunity is always exciting. Whether it’s an improvement to your current offering or developing a new and novel product altogether. However, doing so without the proper validation can be destructive. Instead, help your team bring product ideas forward by leveraging customer insights and business metrics. Every idea starts with a goal in mind, and from there being able to accompany it with both quantitative and qualitative insights will help create more alignment towards what matters most. This approach also enhances your team’s skills along the way.

2. Annual > Quarterly Roadmaps

Most companies focus on maintaining their current quarter, which is understandable. However, failing to share how this quarter fits into the next year breeds only short-term thinking. Sharing an annual roadmap with the team and revisiting it often helps projects being worked on now to be seen in the context of where the company is heading. As a result, decisions made today will be weighed with their longer-term effects in mind, leading to better outcomes. An annual roadmap brings your mission to the forefront, offering a broader horizon rather than being confined to quarterly projects. Knowing the long-term direction generates ideas to strengthen future opportunities well before they arise.

3. Mission-driven

It’s no surprise that companies were created from a compelling vision the founder had for the world. However, many companies treat this as an inception story and fail to revisit the mission regularly. Using your mission in meetings, town halls, and product ideation fosters a deeper understanding of how your product can serve the world. This perspective encourages strategic thinking about how customers will change over time, where the market is heading, and the dynamics affecting your customers. Relating your mission to these factors unlocks bold strategic thinking. Without a mission-driven approach, the team may become project-focused, losing sight of the greater purpose.

4. Company-wide ideas

There’s nothing worse for an employee than feeling like ideas are solely top-down. This erodes morale and leads to disengagement. Empowering employees to contribute ideas connects them more deeply to your mission and leverages the benefits of diverse perspectives, which often result in better product outcomes. Listening to all ideas, whether they come from executives or frontline employees, fosters a culture where everyone sees their contributions making it onto the roadmap. This inclusive approach has the benefit of shifting your culture to be more product-focused now that everyone can see their contribution making it onto the roadmap.

Strategic cultures can elevate not just your product's success, but more importantly, the people within. Embrace the power of leveraging business cases, showing annual roadmaps, being mission-driven, and collecting company-wide ideas. This is the recipe for a culture of strategic thinking.

If you’d like to chat more about deploying these strategies, let’s connect and discuss how we can collaborate to achieve your roadmap success.

Onwards,