Episode 76: Pivot Series, Part 4: Dear Melissa
In this Dear Melissa segment, Melissa wraps up our four part series on pivots by answering some of our listener’s questions on the topic. She talks about pivots as “strategy theater,” how to know when to stay on track versus when to pivot, having back-up pivot strategies in case the first idea doesn’t pan out, and communicating strategies amongst other product teams.
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Q: How often is a product strategy pivot one of the main players in a strategy theater performance? [4:22]
A: Strategy theater is [when you’re] not really doing strategy but you're talking a lot about it, you’re putting together lots and lots of road maps and diagrams and all of this stuff but it's not really a good strategy… Here’s what I look for when you sometimes need to pivot for the right reasons: when a competitor enters the market and starts to take a huge amount of share from you and you don't know if you can compete, you have to pivot something… there are lots of different ways to actually pivot and you need to think through which one of those you’re actually going after. What happens in strategy theater is usually this cycle and I've seen this happen a ton of times, but you'll be looking at your goals and you're like ‘Oh wow, we didn't hit our goals - that means things are not working. Let's pivot.’ [4:32]
Q: What are the best indicators that perseverance will not solve your lack of product-market fit problem? [8:07]
A: It all comes down to customers. Do your customers have a problem? Is it possible for you to solve that problem rather than what's out there right now? Can you create something better? Is it a viable business? And do you have a way of reaching those customers? Those are the questions you have to ask yourself… If you start to go down this rabbit hole though where you built a solution and nobody wants it… that’s a really good sign that your solution or your problem is off. If you can't really figure out why, that's when it's time to maybe not persevere. I find that sometimes it's more about how strong the desire is to have people solve those problems than it is about the problem or the solution itself. [8:15]
Q: Do you line up your next pivots in case this one takes, hoping to find strategies that work? [11:22]
A: Sometimes I do… ‘If this doesn’t pan out, I have other options.’ But you don't want to go crazy here. You want to have options of what you could possibly be looking at. Typically when I'm looking at a strategy, I'm placing this bet with this pivot based on some information… Sometimes the pivot is based on information you have, but you don't know what you don't know until you actually try it. Pivots are about learning and experimentation… You can line up one or two or three experiments to test… but you want to treat everything like an experiment at this point until you find some traction. [11:33]
Q: How do you go about effectively communicating your strategy to a wider organization for product teams? [14:25]
A: You’re not doing this early enough… you need to align on the high level stuff across the broader organization - and it can be very loose, it could be very big goals, then you have to go and refine it. You need to talk through the big stuff first, make sure you're all aligned, go work individually, and then meet earlier. If you spend all of your time designing these strategies without their input and then coming back and being like ‘tada,’ it's very much like when you do a big bang product release without ever talking to your customers. [14:56]
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Transcript:
Melissa:
Hello everybody. And welcome to another episode of dear Melissa. Today. We're talking all about pivots and we are wrapping up our series all about product pivots, pivoting during COVID and how do you change your product strategy? So we just learned from three amazing product leaders over the last three weeks about how they pivoted a startup, a growth stage company, and then also an enterprise during COVID and what they did with their product strategies when they were faced with those decisions. So lots of great learnings came out of here too. Uh, we had a lot of learnings from Colleen Johnson, who is the CEO of scatter spoke, which does retrospectives.
And she talked a lot about figuring out what sets you apart from others, and what's a secret sauce. So she used a lot of the data that they had on retrospectives and started to pivot it so that they could start to move more online instead of doing in person retrospectives, uh, really great insights there. We also had Alex Hefner, who is the head of product at Envoy and Envoy did their pivots during COVID. They were a in person meeting and reception, uh, tool where you, if you saw it, I had it and WeWork. So like you could see it, come in, put your name in and alert somebody you're there. Um, and they did a lot of the office configurations for, in person there when they started to move online. Uh, he really talked about concentrating on talking to your customers, diving deep into what does their world look like now?
What are the opportunities? What are the gaps they need to fill? And they were able to successfully understand those and create solutions around them to create this new version of Envoy, which really helps you manage, uh, hybrid workplaces, which is pretty cool. And then we also heard from John Shapiro at Wayfair and about how, you know, they had an interesting situation where they took off during COVID, right? Like they went gangbusters, cuz everybody was over here buying furniture like me, uh, and trying to nest and make our homes great. So Wayfair had a really interesting journey, but they also were hit with lots of stuff like supply chain issues, um, and not being able to do furniture configurations and the houses. So he talked a lot about having a really good, strong, broad vision and Wayfair's vision and what they do did not change, but they had to be flexible in the details and not we to the first ideas that they had that clearly were not working in our new situations. So really great takeaways there. Um, we talked a lot about cross functional, uh, brainstorming, bringing in a lot of people from different areas to figure out where
To go next. Uh, a lot of highlights about deeply understanding your customers and their problems. And a big part of this too, is about really effective product strategies and making sure that we're creating them and deploying them in a way where if we do get hit with something crazy, hopefully not as extreme as COVID again, but something crazy out there, um, that will make us change our product or will have to change the product. We are able to do that, right. We are able to be flexible as a company and we can respond to change. So that kind of leads me into our questions that we're gonna get into today, which are all about product strategy pivots. So I asked you, what do you wanna learn? And here's what you asked me. So we're gonna dive right in first question.
First question, dear Melissa, how often is a product strategy pivot? One of the main players in a strategy theater performance, uh, strategy theater, uh, strategy theater. I talk about this a lot. And what do I mean by strategy theater? I mean, we're not really doing strategy, but we're talking a lot about it. We are, uh, putting together lots and lots of road roadmaps and diagrams and all of this stuff, but it's not really a good strategy. And I've seen this happen a lot. I will also say when you see a product strategy pivot, you do have to ask yourself, are we just doing strategy theater or are we actually pivoting for good reasons? So here's what I look for when this comes out. Uh, you sometimes need to pivot. Let me just start with that. As we saw from our three guests over the last three weeks, pivoting is not bad, but you wanna make sure that you're pivoting for the right reasons.
Uh, here are good reasons to pivot when you realize that the problems of your customers have changed and you are no longer solving them in ways that work great reason to pivot when a competitor enters the market and starts to take a huge amount of share from you. And you don't know if you can compete, you're gonna have to pivot something, pivot your solution, pivot something sometimes, uh, you've outgrown your old solutions and they are just not interesting anymore. Good time to start to think about pivoting and there's different ways that you can actually pivot too. I really like how David bland outlines this in his book about assumption mapping and where he talks about making pivots. But you can pivot on problem. You can pivot on customer or market. You can pivot on the solution and you can pivot on business models. So there's lots of different ways to actually pivot.
And you need to think through which one of those are we actually going after now, what happens in strategy theater is usually this cycle and I've seen this happen a ton of times, but we'll be looking at our goals and we're like, oh wow, we didn't hit our goals. That means things are not working. Let's pivot. So then we go out there and we take all these teams and we throw them at something else. And we say, start building something new. We gotta make, we have to make goals. Couple things are usually happening there. Uh, one in those situations, I usually notice that the top layers of strategy are solutions and they're not broad, like the strategic intents. We talk about all the time on this podcast. They're not problem oriented, they're solution oriented. And when you pivot from the top at that point, and just pivot on the solutions, you disrupt everything that's going on.
You stop people, you move 'em onto something else, but you're usually not diving into why is it not working? Why are we pivoting? Like what's causing us not to reach those goals. That's what happens a lot when, uh, when we start pivoting and we start moving people around. The other thing too, is you might not be tracking your goals correctly. Uh, so you don't, you have no insights if they're working or not. You might just be feeling like, Hey, that's not working, but you have no reason why or what it's, uh, attributed to great way to do strategy theater cause a pivot.
Oh, another thing with strategy theater two is that a lot of times were peanut buttering in those situations where we're spreading everybody really thin across multiple initiatives that are super high level and it takes a really long time to produce anything. So when we don't see results, we go, oh, let's pivot change direction. Now when you're changing direction, like really big direction too, we forget that it takes people so much more time to get up to speed with what's the new direction. What's the new vision what's going on here. Like there's so much work that goes into that, that you can't expect people to really be able to react to that or move with that super quickly. Uh, you have to make sure that you've got your visions in place your, uh, strong strategies in place to be able to make pivots like that. And I think we did hear that from our guests as well. So those are things to look out for if you are in this situation and you're like, Hey, is this strategy theater or are we actually pivoting correctly?
All right, here's our second question, dear Melissa, what are the best indicators that perseverance will not solve your lack of product market fit problem? This is a great question. And honestly, it really all comes down to customers. Do your customers have the problem? Is it possible for you to solve that problem? Then what's out there right now. Can you create something better? Is it a viable business? And do you have a way of reaching those customers? Those are the questions you have to ask yourself. Uh, and I mean, if you're internal to a company, sometimes reaching those customers, it's a little bit easier, but if you're a startup, that's a big issue. Like, can I get out there? Do I know how to do that? Do I know how to track those customers? Um, what I've seen is when you are pivoting and trying to figure out how do I find product market fit?
Is this actually a thing? Uh, a couple questions come into play. Usually if your customers have that problem and you can come up with a solution that they really love and they're like banging down the door for it. Um, but it's more of an execution problem. Like let's say your UX is a little funky and they don't love it. Uh, but they're still using it cuz it solves their problem. Or your business model that you created originally is just not working for you. Those are usually fixable things where you just have to get creative and start persevering. If you start to, go down this rabbit hole though, where you built a solution and nobody wants it. Uh, maybe a couple people want and let me put it that way. You've signed up. Some people, sometimes it's friends and family. Sometimes it's like a couple companies, uh, and more and more people are just like, no, I don't want this.
Or it's really, really hard to get the next customers. That's a really good sign that your solution or your problem is off. Now, if you can't really figure out why that's when it's time to maybe not persevere. Um, I find that sometimes it's more about how strong the desire is to have people solve those problems than it is about, you know, the problem itself or the solution itself. It's like how willing are they to go and solve that problem? And you have to find that willingness and you have to get people in there. And that's usually the thing that would make me stop or make me reconsider. Is this a product market fit problem or is my solution just bad? And I gotta figure out a new solution or a new problem type thing. So that's what I would look at. And you have to be super honest with yourself.
Uh, Colleen talked about this a lot at scatter spoke too. Um, but be curious and be honest. Uh, I've seen so many people out there building companies or new features and they're like, well, this person wants it. I'm like, great. But like where's the rest of them. And if you can't find a wide enough pool of people with their problem or wanting your solution, it's a really good indicator that it's time to maybe move on to something else. Um, a different problem, a different solution, something like that. So don't be afraid to like take a couple steps back and just say, Hey, you know what, we're going in the wrong direction here. But also I'll call back to, uh, David Bland's thing when you are trying to figure out like, do I have product market fit or what's the problem really break it down into those areas again, you know, your business model, your customer problem, your, uh, possibility to solve it or possibility to finance it. Um, and then also how do you get in front of those customers? Huge. So many people have great ideas, but they just have no idea how to get out there. Uh, really break it there, break it down there and try to figure out which one of those issues is the one causing this, this problem here.
All right, next question, dear Melissa pivots are big bets, risky, but less risky than doing nothing. Do you line up your next pivots in case of this old one tanks? Oops. Do you line up your next pivots in case this one tanks hoping to find strategies that work? So this is a, also a good question. I keep saying that, but like these are good questions. Um, sometimes I do, sometimes I have lined up, okay. If this doesn't pan out, here's some other options, but I think there's, you don't wanna go crazy here, right? You want to have options of what you could possibly be looking at. So typically when I'm looking at a strategy, looking at where we're going, I'm placing this bet with this pivot based on some information. Um, if that information is wrong, maybe there's like a loose backup plan of, Hey, maybe we should try this next because it could go either way.
Like maybe there's a, you could see an, a plan or a B plan right there because of the information you have. But sometimes the pivot is based off information you have, but you don't know what you don't know until you actually try it. So that's a big thing. Uh, pivots are really about learning right? And experimentation and uh, taking these leaps. It's really about learning. So what you're going to do in a pivot, and this is what, you know, Alex really talked about with Envoy, that they did. They prototyped it, they showed it to customers. They did small experiments or they brainstormed what they could be doing after doing tons of customer research, did the small experiments, put them out there and then learned from it and iterated on that. That's what you should be doing. So it shouldn't be about lining up like 18,000 tests that you're going to do just to see which one sticks it's about deeply understanding is this the problem that we're trying to solve here?
What's the qualifications about the problem that we're trying to solve? What do people not have right now that we might be able to tap into? All of those different opportunities are what should be designing your product strategy, pivot. So you should be taking all that data and all their information and using it to design your next way of going and then testing that and getting feedback early to make sure that you're pivoting in the right direction. So that's really what I would be looking at. And sure you can line up like one or two or three experiments to test and have like, you know, Hey, if this one's not really working, we might try this instead, but you want to treat everything like an experiment at this point, until you find some traction, you really wanna make sure that you're the feedback iterating on it and learning along the way, not just setting up a whole backlog of experiments, um, to try and just running down them based on little bits of information that you currently have, right?
Like you only know what you know right now. So now we gotta go figure out what we don't know by testing. And then we should be going back into our backlog of experiments, adding new ones, taking away old ones, whatever we're gonna do. Like don't, don't try to put 40 experiments in a backlog based off what you know today, test some things first and then go and design new experiments. You're just gonna be like wasting your time building a big backlog of experiments of 40 of them. So it's okay to have a couple options, not okay to have 8,000 options. So really stay in tune with your customers, learn from them, experiment, treat it as a hypothesis. Like we always talk about all right, this is gonna be our last question. Dear Melissa, I've been pretty effective at forming and evolving strategies within a team or an organization.
But one thing I always find most difficult is communicating my strategy. So other product managers and other folks outside of my direct organization can find it quite often. You don't find out a strategy is flawed or has overlapped or conflicts with other strategies until you're well into executing. How do you go about effectively communicating your strategy to a wider organization for product teams? So this is important too, when you're pivoting and trying to explain these strategies at scale. But the one thing I can get from this takeaway and from this question is you're not doing this early enough. Like, it sounds, it sounds like your whole company is doing this and I'm not calling you out effectively. Like, it it's sounds like everybody's doing this. You need to align on the high level stuff across the broader organization. And it could be very loose. It could be very big goals, right?
Uh, and then you gotta go and refine it, but you need to talk through the big stuff first, make sure you're all aligned, go work individually and then meet earlier and earlier and earlier, if you spend all of your time designing these strategies without their input, and then coming back and being like, ta-da, it's very much like what we talk about, you know, doing a big bang product release without ever talking to your customers. So treat it like that, go to your product teams, uh, that you're working, you know, cross functionally with across the organization and say like, Hey, what are we all aligned against? What are you guys doing? Can we set up, uh, a recurring meeting so that we can review these things? Uh, I have this new thing I'm working on. Can I get it in front of you earlier? Rather than later, it's not super baked, but I wanna make sure that it's not gonna be completely conflicting. Uh, this sounds more like a communication issue than anything, and it's gonna be solved through, uh, meetings, right? So you're gonna wanna do meetings. I would also suggest maybe having some kind of transparent Wiki where you can align all of your strategies and the work and the data and stuff that goes into it.
So you could just pop in and see what other people are working on. Uh, but try to form that community with other product managers across the organization. So you get together and talk about this super regularly. That's what's going to solve this. This is how other companies do it really well. You get together and you talk about it and you don't wait, you know, until it's super formed. And he did all this work and then it's like, oh, that's not gonna work. Cuz uh, Gary, over there, he's gonna do something different. You know, you don't wanna wait that long, just like we don't wanna wait that long to get customer feedback on our products when we talk to customers too. So treat it the same way early and often feedback. All right. That's it for dear Melissa this week also really fun little thing, uh, that we're doing for dear Melissa's.
We're gonna try something called, uh, leave me a voicemail on our website. So where you go to dear melissa.com and usually submit your questions for us. You can also leave us a voice question, um, so that we can stitch you into these podcast recordings. Uh, just like a little phone in which is kind of cool. So I hope you would take advantage of that and leave me a voicemail. I'd love to hear all of your voices and hear who I'm talking to. Uh, it's very fun to read these, but it's even more fun to hear your voices. So please go to dear melissa.com. Leave me future questions. I would love to see them and we will be back next Wednesday with our next episode of the product thinking podcast. Make sure you subscribe and also like us, if you enjoy listening to this so that more people can follow us, we'll see you next week.