Creating an awesome design, product and experience is hard work. Making the RIGHT design, product or experience is even harder. The smartest teams first figure out the “What” before they decide the “How”.
Whether you’re designing a new product or experience, or improving an existing one, you have to first figure out What you’re making before you can effectively execute the How.
Defining and agreeing on What you’re doing first gives everyone much better clarity to focus on executing How to get it done.
Can I get a show of hands from how many people have ever had an awesome idea shot down due to politics or flimsy opinions?
Yep, I’ll bet you’ve been in client or stakeholder meetings finding yourself hit with a bunch of questions and critique about the decisions or recommendations you’ve made. Heck, you might even have a great story to tell and well thought out reasons for why you did what you did. Yet, there you sit, watching all that great work get flushed down the drain right before your very eyes by the highest paid, or the loudest (or both!) person in the room. Often, the discussion turns to things about the product or service that fly in the face of customer needs or even our own company objectives. Watching well crafted ideas get argued away in a single meeting is like squabbling over what to have for dinner while the house burns down around you.
Here’s the good news: killing politics and emotions in your design or product strategy doesn’t have to be an impossible task. By setting clear, well defined goals for your strategy, you can easily sell great ideas, decisions and recommendations without banging your head against the wall.
Download the free 4 point product strategy goal checklist, and we’ll walk through how to use it right here in this post. When we’re done, you’ll be on your way to building a brilliant design and product strategy that solves the right problems for your company and its customers.
