The Product Strategy Playbook that Powered Growth at Tinder & TripAdvisor — Ravi Mehta

[00:00:00] Brett Berson: All right. Thank you so much for joining us. 

[00:00:02] Ravi Mehta: Thank you. 

[00:00:04] Brett Berson: So, you know, you've written and shared some, some different ideas about this, but I wanted to start at the top by just sort of asking the question of in your eyes. What is product strategy, maybe? Why does it matter? And what did people people often screw up as it relates to product strategy?

[00:00:22] Ravi Mehta: Yeah, definitely. So, um, I think about product strategy as the connective tissue between what a product team is doing day to day and what the ambitions of a company are. And so there's really three pieces there. The first one is having a very clear understanding of what is the mission and the strategy of the company that you're a part of.

[00:00:42] Uh, increasingly as companies have gotten more and more product oriented and product centric, you know, product strategy accounts for a really big percentage of the overall company strategy, but it's not the whole thing. A product strategy?

[00:00:53] needs to fit really nicely into the broader ambitions of the company.

[00:00:58] It needs to plug into what's happening on the [00:01:00] marketing side, on the sales side, on the ticket. Um, and so it's one piece of a broader puzzle, um, in terms of that overall ambition that the company has. And then there's the day to day execution. There's the roadmap and the, and the goal setting. Um, and oftentimes what I see in companies is actually that those two can be somewhat disconnected.

[00:01:20] Uh, teams can get very much in the mode of, we need to hit our OKR is we need to achieve our goals. Um, you know, some of that can be, um, you know, performance review related and oftentimes. Drive to hit goals, teams focus too much on the goals and not enough on the strategy and whether or not they're making progress on that strategy.

[00:01:41] And so the product strategy is really the connective tissue between the two, and it's meant to tether those two together. So that. As a team is making progress on its goals and creating roadmaps that it's doing it with, um, insight into the broader objectives and in a way that's making progress against those, those [00:02:00] broader objectives.

[00:02:01] And so, um, that really highlights one of the key, most common failure modes that I see for teams, especially today when there's so much data to work with. And there's so much emphasis on goals is an overemphasis on goals and an under emphasis on strategy. And we can, we can get into this a little bit more, but I think oftentimes teams conflate the two.

[00:02:21] Um, you know, if you ask someone what's your strategy, you'll sometimes hear our strategy is increase revenue by 5% or increase retention by 10%. And that's not really a strategy that. A goal. Um, and it's great to achieve that goal. Um, but only if it is actually a creative to the strategy that the company is trying to advance.

[00:02:41] And so, um, you know, I often see teams get into a mode where there's doing anything and everything to move the goal, and they sometimes lose that check. Um, and you know, might actually head in the wrong direction from a strategic standpoint in terms of creating long-term value, um, with the goal of trying to hit their short term targets. 

[00:02:58] Brett Berson: So if you're, let's say you're the [00:03:00] CEO of a hundred person company, you know, there's some level of product market fit and scaling. How, what is their self diagnostic that they're running to understand if they potentially have a product strategy?

[00:03:16] Ravi Mehta: There's a number of ways in which product strategy problems surface, and they don't surface as it at a strategic level. They actually serve. At an execution level. Um, so one of the most common things I see is that teams have a hard time prioritizing. Uh, there will be, uh, as part of the roadmap, a question of, should we Do feature a, or should we do feature B um, and teams have a hard time making that decision, not because of any sort of opportunity sizing around those features, but because there's no context within which they're making that decision.

[00:03:49] So the first thing that I look for is, uh, individual teams that are having a hard time prioritizing. You can sometimes track that back, often track that back to a strategy problem. [00:04:00] Um, the second thing that I see very often is a muddy user experience. And so, um, when teams are really optimizing for goals at the expense of strategy, There comes this sort of tendency to want to put more and more into the products to, um, really, you know, pull the user's attention to the things that are the most important things in terms of those goals.

[00:04:24] And you end up in some products getting sort of a Vegas effect where there's just so many flashing lights, so many signs, so many things for a user to pay attention to because each team in its own isolated way is trying to grab the user's attention, um, that ultimately the overall product experience doesn't, um, doesn't hang together and doesn't provide a clear, elegant experience that is thoughtful about where, um, they want the user's attention to be, so that they're getting maximum value from the product.

[00:04:52] Um, there's other things like difficulty opportunity sizing, um, that are also symptomatic, but oftentimes, you know, when a [00:05:00] company is trying to diagnose that, um, the important thing is not to go high level, but really go deep and understand. What are the teams doing? How are they making decisions? How are those decisions manifesting in the, in the product?

[00:05:12] Um, and does it feel like those decisions are aligned towards that short term? Or does it feel like they're laddering up to a long-term objective?

[00:05:21] Brett Berson: Do you think about the idea of product strategy differently depending on the company's maturity or the tenant's identical? If you're three people building your first product, or maybe a thousand people with seven products.

[00:05:37] Ravi Mehta: I think the tenants are the same, the cycle time is different. So um, you know, the core elements of product strategy, I think starts with a very clear understanding of a company mission and company strategy, and often for a smaller company, this is where the smaller companies Excel, because, you know, at the time that you're starting a company, there's not a lot of data to work with.

[00:05:56] There's not a lot of customers to surface. There's not, [00:06:00] um, you know, specific metrics that the team's responsible for moving, um, for, you know, a quarterly board cycle or, uh, or quarterly earnings. And so teams at that point have both, you know, the luxury and the necessity of focusing at that high level, you know, what is our vision of what the world will be.

[00:06:18] Um, if we change the world with our product and what are the things that we need to do strategic. In order to do that. Um, you know, when a company is small, the only way you can really win and disrupt in a space where there's a lot of incumbents is to think strategically and think about your relative advantages.

[00:06:35] Um, and then, uh, the next step is really to understand, okay, now we know what we're trying to accomplish from a mission and a company strategy standpoint. How does our product fit into that? What is the product strategy? How do we sequence that over, over time? How do we measure whether or not the hypothesis that we've made are the right ones?

[00:06:55] And so the overall process is the same. Um, but the [00:07:00] rate at which companies go through that process and change it, um, can be, can be pretty different. Uh, and so at a startup where you're accumulating a lot of information very quickly about who your customers are, what the user value is that you're trying to solve for.

[00:07:14] Um, then, you know, it makes sense to continually revisit, uh, the mission and the strategy to make sure that it's the right one based on what you're learning. Um, and then as companies get bigger, there's more of an established process. There's an established culture. Um, you know, there's oftentimes quarterly business reviews.

[00:07:30] So then the strategic process, you know, fits within something that has a cycle time, more on a quarter or half year, year basis. Um, but I think the fundamentals are the same. It's really the speed that is different.

[00:07:42] Brett Berson: So you entered this, you hinted at this a little bit, but let's talk a little bit about, um, your idea of the product strategy stack and kind of your answer to, uh, what, what are sort of the pieces of, uh, a great product strategy. Maybe we could sort of start by walking through them.

[00:07:58] Ravi Mehta: Yeah, that [00:08:00] sounds, that sounds great. So, um, I think a starting point is that strategy is often misunderstood. Uh, everyone is, you know, strategist a little bit like growth. Everyone wants strategy, everyone wants, wants growth. Um, and because of that, um, as a result, uh, teams, aren't always crisp about what, what do they mean by strategy and what are the different components of strategy?

[00:08:22] Uh, and so one of the things that, um, I've thought a lot about is, you know, How do you divide the different elements of strategy into distinct concepts that interrelate, um, and create a system that people can use, um, to go through that process of defining mission and then ending up in a clear set of goals that are framed by that mission.

[00:08:39] And so the product strategy stack is, uh, our attempt at Reforge to do that. Um, we published an article, um, I think about a year ago, uh, that defined. The product strategy stack in terms of five elements, the top element is the mission. So the mission is ultimately the change the company wants to bring to the world.[00:09:00] 

[00:09:00] Uh, some companies use both a vision and a mission. I tend to think about those as, um, as similar. And so they, they operate at the same level within the staff that really set the framing, um, then is the company strategy. And so that is the very logical well-reasoned plan that the company has, um, to turn that mission, uh, into being, I think as an industry, we put a lot of emphasis on goals and things that are measurable, um, and strategy is actually much more of a logical process.

[00:09:30] And so it can be measured, but it's also important to appeal, to a sense of reason to be really clear about what are the advantages that a company has. Um, and how are you going to use those advantages to accomplish what you need to, especially in, um, really competitive markets. And so. The company level mission, the company level strategy, work together to provide that overall framing.

[00:09:51] Um, and once you have those in place, then you've got the context you need to have in order to define the product strategy. And the product [00:10:00] strategy is really the plan for how our product, um, will drive its particular part. The company strategy. So how does, it fit within that overall MBA ambition that the company has and then flowing from the product strategy is the next level of the product strategy stack, which is the roadmap.

[00:10:17] And so the roadmap is the sequence of specific features or initiatives that implement the product strategy over time. And an important part of product strategy planning is making sure that the roadmap is sequenced in a way, um, that the company learns as quickly as possible and is able to drive impact as quickly as possible.

[00:10:36] And then the final, the foundation of the product strategy stack, um, are the goals. And those are the outcomes of the roadmap that measure, um, whether or not you're making progress on strategy. And so a controversial point here is, uh, we say as part of this product strategy stack, Goals should actually come from roadmaps rather than roadmaps coming from goals.

[00:10:57] And that's opposite to the way a [00:11:00] lot of companies work. In many cases, companies say our goal is to increase retention by 10%, and then the team will develop a roadmap to try to achieve that goal. But common pattern that I've seen with teams that do that is they end up focusing on the things that will move the needle the most in the short-term, rather than the things that are the right, uh, long-term decision for the business.

[00:11:25] And so, um, we recommend people come up with a roadmap and then figure out the goals that are aligned with that roadmap and an analogy I like to use to help illustrate that point is if, uh, we say, you know, we want to go on a trip, a road trip from Los Angeles to. Vegas. Um, our destination is Vegas. One of the goals, one of the key progress indicators that we'll have on that trip is the number of miles driven, but that's not sufficient in and of itself for us to reach our destination.

[00:11:52] We can move 200 miles in the right direction, but we can also move 200 miles in the wrong direction. Um, and so in [00:12:00] both cases we've achieved our goal, but we haven't necessarily made progress, um, on the ultimate outcome that we wanted. So it's really important to make sure that goals are well-defined relative to the strategy and that the company or the team doesn't, uh, overly focus on those goals at the expense of that longterm destination that the company wants to achieve.

[00:12:20] Brett Berson: How does, how does your worldview fit into sort of the conversation that you hear a lot recently, which is the idea of focusing on inputs versus outputs. And that the ideal way to approach company building is to be much more focused on controllable inputs as, as opposed to be, as opposed to being obsessed with outputs.

[00:12:38] Ravi Mehta: Yeah, I very much believe that, uh, that is an important approach. Um, you know, I like the, this idea that the score takes care of itself, that if you focus. On the fundamentals and doing those fundamentals well, um, then the longterm trailing indicators, whether it's growth, revenue, retention will flow from that.

[00:12:59] But if [00:13:00] you overly focus on winning the game, sometimes you can miss the, the important details that are necessary, um, in order to actually get the team to the point where they can win the game. Um, and so we actually referenced in the product leadership program, um, the, the score takes out the score takes care of itself book as a way to, to highlight that, um, the inputs are really important.

[00:13:22] And one of the things, the product strategy stack is trying to solve for people, um, is to take the emphasis away from the goals away from. The outputs and the outcomes and put it more on, um, you know, what exactly is the team trying to achieve and How do you put together a plan to achieve that? And that's the reason that goals are at the foundation, um, rather than at the top.

[00:13:44] Um, and so the mission, the company strategy are these incredibly important inputs into, um, that process. They provide the context and the guardrails. Um, and what we want to ultimately do is measure our, um, you know, measure our progress [00:14:00] against that, um, using the goals rather than treat the goals or the, those measurable outcomes as the destination themselves.

[00:14:07] Brett Berson: How do you think this, uh, model works? Uh, when you're a mano product company, it sort of makes sense how this might work. How does it fit into multi-product or multi business?

[00:14:20] Ravi Mehta: Yeah, it's a really good, um, it's a really good question. I tend to think at a high level, from a corporate strategy perspective, companies can think about themselves in three different ways. You can think about yourself as. A product company, um, oftentimes Amano product company. And in that case, you know, the mission and the company strategy are really clear.

[00:14:38] They're, they're very similar to the product strategy. The next step is to think about the company as a portfolio. Uh, and in that case you have a portfolio of distinct products, which I think are ideally trying to accomplish different elements of a mission. And so then the mission is defined really nicely relative to the goals of that portfolio.[00:15:00] 

[00:15:00] Um, and so as you know, as a tech industry, I actually think too many companies focus on a product strategy and not enough on a portfolio strategy. Um, I think a good example of a company that's done a great job with a portfolio strategy is match group. Uh, match group is the owner of Tinder hinge, uh, OkCupid, plenty of fish match.com, um, international dating sites as well.

[00:15:22] And so the company. Years ago, made a bet on the online dating sector and said, ultimately more and more people are going to meet online. There's lots of different use cases to solve there. The right way to approach this market is not to create the ultimate Uber product that is going to solve all of those things, but to craft very thoughtfully, a portfolio that solves for different use cases in different regions, with different business?

[00:15:48] models.

[00:15:49] Um, and today, uh, something like 80% or more of the revenue within online dating is generated by match group because of that really thoughtful portfolio. Oriented approach. [00:16:00] And so you have a product oriented approach, a portfolio oriented approach, and I think the final, um, and most powerful approach, um, is a platform approach.

[00:16:08] Um, so with the portfolio approach, you're really saying you as a business are going to be responsible for creating the portfolio of products, um, that ultimately drive, uh, progress for the business or growth for the business. Uh, and then a platform approach approach, I think is the most scalable where you're saying, you know, ultimately we're going to create a platform where other people can actually add value to the products that we're creating.

[00:16:32] And of course the biggest companies are the companies that have done a fantastic job of creating platforms, whether that's apple or Google or, or others. And so, um, you know, that, that process of thinking about, you know, what is our company strategy. Product approach a portfolio approach or a platform approach is really important.

[00:16:51] Uh, and ultimately that's a key thing that will determine, um, product strategy and help people understand, you know, where should we be investing? Because oftentimes [00:17:00] when you're implementing a portfolio approach or a platform approach, um, the right thing is not to optimize for short term goals that can actually undermine, um, that long-term approach that you're trying to create. 

[00:17:11] Brett Berson: So, so just to go off this tangent for maybe a couple minutes, and then I want to come back to the product strategy stack. Um, I'm just curious, just because this is like the theme of the year for me, in terms of a topic that I've been exploring, what, and you're sort of hinting at it. When you talk about platform portfolio, et cetera, why do you think so few companies are good at executing a multiproduct multi business unit kind of strategies as they scale.

[00:17:33] And I'd say what you tend to see is whatever the main thing was when it was a six month old company with early product market fit tends to kind of be the main thing seven years later. And at the same time, when you reverse engineer, the generational companies, they either build or buy. Their way into multiproduct multi business unit.

[00:17:55] And then there are just the most incredible examples of like Microsoft [00:18:00] and others that have done a bit of both. But when you actually look at the business, it's actually quite diversified and in its terminal state, it almost tends to look more like a conglomerate. Um, but so few companies are able to get past their first product and end up sort of being this some version of a one trick pony.

[00:18:18] And I'm curious, kind of what your observations there have been.

[00:18:22] Ravi Mehta: I think, and this is kind of off the cuff, but I think that this has to do with, um, the, the culture around founders, uh, and how we think about founders. And so oftentimes the founders who get rewarded, who are able to grow early, have a specific idea of the thing that they want to build. And so their intuition is really tuned to building one thing in particular, rather than can grading, creating a conglomerate.

[00:18:50] Um, and you, you see that pattern repeat itself. And it's an incredibly successful pattern that the, the founders that have a fantastic intuition about the product that they want to build are [00:19:00] very successful, but. Intuition the rewards that drive that intuition the inputs into really growing that intuition into the biggest possible business.

[00:19:10] Um, don't necessarily lead to a founder saying, okay, now I need to focus on the next thing. Um, and I think this happens even with, with companies that are very big. Um, when I was at, at Facebook, um, mark still spent the majority of his quarterly business review time. Focus on, on Facebook and not as much on Instagram and WhatsApp when it was increasingly clear that Instagram and WhatsApp were big and fast growing parts of the Facebook portfolio.

[00:19:41] And so it took the company a very significant, um, shift to go from being a product oriented business, to much more of a part portfolio oriented business. And that was pretty late. Um, Facebook was always already very large at the, at the time. Um, and [00:20:00] so, you know, I think the founders that have been the most successful in terms of creating portfolios can grow creating conglomerates.

[00:20:08] Um, their intuition is not entirely tied to the product that they want to create. Uh, it's entirely, it's tied to the way that they think. And so I think the very best example of a portfolio driven company and ultimately a platform driven company is Amazon. Um, and so Amazon has. Basically throughout the culture, um, taken Jeff Bezos, his intuition about how to think about product problems, um, and embedded that into, into the culture.

[00:20:36] And so rather than individual teams being tied to one person's ultimate vision for the product, um, they are tied to a way of thinking, um, and that has enabled them to grow their portfolio very quickly. And so I think for founders that are looking to make that shift from being product centric, to being much more portfolio centric, um, it's important to understand their role in creating the [00:21:00] culture and, and really facilitate.

[00:21:02] That culture to start to think differently about, about growth outside of the context of the product. Um, and in order to do that really good founding CEOs, like you need to be very thoughtful about how they think and helping, um, other teams in the company think in that way, rather than being, you know, ultimately the, the decider, um, on key matters, if one person is the decider on key matters, um, oftentimes that leads to a single product mentality. 

[00:21:28] Brett Berson: Yeah, with Amazon, it's also, it's impressive how much they built themselves versus someone like Facebook, who, who has backed into a multi-product strategy, but is, is, is almost entirely through acquisition as kind of another interesting sort of difference between someone like Amazon and someone like, uh, Facebook.

[00:21:46] And I guess, I guess the lesson there is both can work, but it certainly, you know, Salesforce is another example of a company who's bought their way into an incredible portfolio of products and just done such a good job at that. Um, but it is [00:22:00] different and, and kind of all the more impressive what Amazon, um, and, and I I'd argue also what Microsoft has done over the last 20 or 30 years is probably, uh, is probably maybe more underappreciated as it relates to building kind of a diverse set of revenues.

[00:22:16] Ravi Mehta: the other difference I noticed. During my time at match versus at Facebook or, uh, other companies like TripAdvisor, is that the, the way in which the CEO is think about the business and their interface into the business is different. Um, you know, at Facebook, the CEOs and executives interface into the business, and this is true of most tech companies, um, is primarily oriented around product metrics.

[00:22:38] Um, whereas at match and at IAC, the interface into the business was primarily oriented around financial metrics. Some of which were of course, you know, driven by, by product metrics, but there was this like subtle shift in what are the things that we talk about. And as a result, there was a shift in how do you optimize for those?

[00:22:56] And if you're really focused on product metrics that leads you [00:23:00] to think about the solution in terms of the product that you're working on. If you're focused on financial metrics that leads you to think about, you know, what are the things that we can do to, um, expand, not just a single product business, but expand that portfolio. 

[00:23:12] Brett Berson: So looping back, coming back to the product strategy stack that you outlined in terms of company, mission, company, strategy, product strategy, product roadmap, and product goals. Could you bring it to life and kind of tell us a story about what this looks like when it's done really, really well.

[00:23:30] Ravi Mehta: definitely. So the, the thing that starts to lead me to defining these ideas in the way that they relate together, um, was a project that we worked on at TripAdvisor, um, in around the 20 15, 20 16 timeframe, TripAdvisor had gone through, um, a few different strategic, uh, transitions, really as part of a sequence of moving from a very review oriented content driven business to much more of a [00:24:00] transactional marketplace.

[00:24:01] And so TripAdvisor had added the ability to book hotels directly on the site had 

[00:24:07] Brett Berson: you mind for those that aren't as familiar with TripAdvisor? It's, it's a pretty fascinating company, but maybe talking a little bit more detail about what it was, what it start at, what it started out as in terms of reviews and that just so that people have that, that base level context.

[00:24:18] Ravi Mehta: Yeah, absolutely. So TripAdvisor is one of these interesting examples of a web one business that has just had, you know, fantastic, um, durability over, over the years. Um, the company was started, um, in 2000, right before, uh, right before September 11th, um, and was founded on the insight that, you know, people were going to start to, um, you know, go less to travel agents and make more of their travel purchases, um, online, um, The company went through a really tough time after September 11th, similar to, to the pandemic where the travel industry can drafted really quickly.

[00:24:54] Um, and so Steve, the CEO and the founding team needed to figure out like, what is the really unique [00:25:00] problem that we can solve for people. And they had an insight that if you go into a travel agent's office, um, and asked to book a hotel, you're going to get three brochures. They're going to be different prices, but all of the pictures are going to look the same because every single property is going to be presenting themselves in the best light.

[00:25:19] And there's almost no signal about, you know, why one property is more expensive than another, every single one of the brochures is beautiful and glossy. And so Steve's insight at the time was that. The internet will allow us to make that decision, not just based on what the hotels say about themselves, but based on the reviews and opinions of travelers all around the world.

[00:25:44] And so TripAdvisor shifted to building assists one of the original user-generated content systems that allowed anyone to review any place that they visited when they were traveling. Um, this also turned out to be. [00:26:00] A fantastic driver of SEO. Um, people were creating content on the TripAdvisor platform that TripAdvisor was then indexing through Google.

[00:26:10] Um, and that led to a massive amount of organic traffic coming into the platform. Hundreds of millions of people, um, still come to TripAdvisor, um, every, every month, uh, to read those reviews and opinions, the way that the company monetized was, um, by essentially selling leads to the online travel agents like Expedia and booking.

[00:26:34] And so during the history of TripAdvisor, it was actually acquired by Expedia. And so this business model worked really well with Expedia. They had TripAdvisor as a way to get top of the funnel traffic and that ultimately, um, they could take that traffic and convert it into hotel bookings. Um, In, uh, I think it was 2012.

[00:26:55] Um, TripAdvisor was actually rolled out independently from [00:27:00] Expedia. And so as a result, TripAdvisor could start thinking about its strategy as an independent company, rather than as part of the Expedia group. Um, and. Became quickly clear that one of the things TripAdvisor could do to drive even more growth was, um, to not be so reliant on Expedia or booking.com or others, um, for people to book hotels, but actually to enable people to book directly on the platform.

[00:27:30] And so when TripAdvisor rolled out as an independent company that led to, um, a multi-year transition from. A review oriented, lead oriented company at the top of the funnel to, um, the, the company building out a transactional marketplace where you could go all the way from early consideration on your travel plans to booking, not just hotels, but also flights and restaurants and, um, attraction.

[00:27:57] So a really interesting example of how, [00:28:00] um, changes in competition changes in ownership, uh, can lead to two very different strategies. And so, um, you know, at about the time of this case, uh, around 2016, when we were really doing a lot of work to define the product strategy map, um, one of the teams was responsible for developing.

[00:28:20] The trip planning functionality on TripAdvisor and trip planning was this notoriously difficult problem. There were many startups that tried and failed to create great trip planning software. Um, what seemed like the case was no matter how much value you provided to people when they were planning their trip.

[00:28:37] Um, their instinct was to go back to just, you know, their notebook or, you know, their Google doc and plan their trip that way. And as a result of people, uh, basically planning. Off of TripAdvisor or, you know, not in any sort of central place. Um, Google was really the intermediary during a person's travel planning process.

[00:28:56] And so people would type in a search result, come into TripAdvisor, read some [00:29:00] reviews, then go back to their trip plan type in some search results, uh, and, um, come back to TripAdvisor. So we were seeing people come in and out of TripAdvisor through Google four or five times a day and not, um, really retaining to the product.

[00:29:14] And so Google was intermediating a lot of the usage of the product. And so what we wanted to do from a strategic standpoint is create a trip planning product that would enable people to plan their trip on TripAdvisor and get them coming back. Um, direct this also dovetails really nicely with, um, the company's mobile strategy, but we also knew that it was a really difficult problem.

[00:29:35] And so as part of solving for that, we, uh, Initially, we're very clear about what was the, what was the company strategy? Where was the company going? Why was it going in this direction? What were some of the key factors around changes in SEO that were driving? What were some of the things that we wanted to solve for in terms of ongoing engagement with TripAdvisor?

[00:29:57] And then that framing was something that the team [00:30:00] ultimately used to develop the product strategy. And before we develop the roadmap and the goals we as a team took about six weeks to say, look, we're going to develop, rather than going straight into features, we're going to develop a product strategy document.

[00:30:15] That's going to be our deliverable. And we put together a cross-functional team that included design engineering product, uh, and they put together about a 40 slide deck that included high level wire frames of exactly what the trip, the trip planning, um, experience should look like. Not today, not in the next six months, but in a three or four year time, time horizon.

[00:30:35] Um, and by doing that. Things in that way, we were able to craft a longer term vision that actually turned out to be much better informed, much better tied to what the company was trying to achieve. Um, then we would add if we had just kind of jumped into the roadmap and started trying to get more people to plan their trip on TripAdvisor.

[00:30:53] Brett Berson: So in that case, can you help me pick apart the difference between. The product strategy [00:31:00] there and the product roadmap, or another way we could kind of explore this is if we, if we use TripAdvisor as a case study, can you walk through what mission company strategy, product strategy, product roadmap and product goals looks like in, in terms of this kind of real-world example?

[00:31:17] Ravi Mehta: Yeah, absolutely. So um, so if we had, I think taken the normal normal process, the instinct for the team would have been to, um, look at how people were saving places, um, and try to get people to save more places. Um, and then try to ladder that up into people, being able to take those safe places and create trip itineraries.

[00:31:43] Um, and so what it started from a very bottoms up, um, sort of approach that, you know, may or may not have laddered up to a clear, um, useful strategy that actually solved for the underlying use case that, um, people needed when they were planning a [00:32:00] trip by starting at the company strategy level and the product strategy level, we took a step back and rather than just jumping straight into.

[00:32:08] Let's work on this problem. Let's start committing to goals and moving those goals. Um, we spend a lot of time talking to customers. So we did, um, a survey with 700 different people to understand trip planning process. We did a lot of one-on-one conversations. Um, and what we found were two really important insights.

[00:32:27] So one insight that we found was that, um, people. Didn't approach trip planning as a single player activity, it was an inherently multiplayer activity. And so, um, whether it was, you know, multiple people adding things to a trip plan and going back and forth, or just a single person needing to get the opinions of other people that they were traveling with, ultimately other people needed to be involved in the trip planning process.

[00:32:51] And a lot of the other companies that had attempted attempted trip planning started with trip planning as a single player activity. And it just didn't work. So, you [00:33:00] know, as soon as someone needed to share that with other people, they basically stopped using that planning tool and went back to how they were doing things previously.

[00:33:08] So we realized, um, out of the gate that from a product strategy standpoint, We needed to prioritize social that needed to be on, on the early roadmap. The second thing that we realized was that people, as part of their planning process are actually compiling lots of different things. They're not just compiling lists of places.

[00:33:28] Um, and specifically they're not. Compiling lists of things that are on TripAdvisor. They want to be able to, if they find a really cool attraction, that's not on TripAdvisor, they want to, um, be able to put that on their plan. If their friend sends them a really great list of things to do in Puerto Rico, they want to have that on their plan.

[00:33:44] And so a travel plan is not a collection of places, as much as it is a collection of all of the different information that a person has gained about, um, about a particular destination that helps them go into, um, that destination feeling like they have the information to have the best [00:34:00] possible trip. And so the second thing that we realized, which we wouldn't have realized otherwise, um, was that the travel plan needed to be open.

[00:34:07] You need to just be able to put links, um, and, um, and notes and things like that into the plan. And if it was only a list of places that you could do. Ultimately that wouldn't meet the use case and people would go back to using a Google doc or using, using a notebook. Um, so those were a couple of examples of where going really deep with customers helped us define strategic principles, like the focus on social, like the focus on being an open platform that ultimately enabled us to create a travel planning solution that actually worked for people's needs.

[00:34:37] Um, and I think we had a very different outcome than we would have had had. We started with the goal of getting more people to save and create trip plans, um, which ultimately would've led us to, you know, focus a lot on acquiring people into that product, but that product would not have been anywhere near as useful.

[00:34:54] Um, and as a result, not have the level of retention, uh, that it had as a result.

[00:34:59] Brett Berson: So in this [00:35:00] case, can you kind of just do maybe the, the kind of brief explainer of, of a TripAdvisor at the time you ended up with mission company strategy, product strategy, product roadmap, product goals, like how that all fit together in sort of this case study.

[00:35:14] Ravi Mehta: Yeah.

[00:35:14] definitely. So, um, the mission of. TripAdvisor was, um, to be a place where people could, I forget exactly the terms that we use, but to essentially be a place where, where people could come rely on the reviews and opinions of other travel travelers and ultimately plan the best possible trip. And so a key part of the mission was this idea of people powered trip planning, um, that ultimately, you know, when people take a trip, there's a lot of pressure associated with that.

[00:35:43] It's an expensive activity. It's something you don't get to do all the time. People want to make sure that when they're making decisions, um, they're making decisions that are going to really pay off. And one of the ways that they can do that, that was uniquely something that TripAdvisor could deliver was the reviews and opinions of other people.

[00:35:58] And so, um, [00:36:00] at a company mission standpoint, that was really critical in that underpins, um, trip planning. And so instead of thinking about it, just as general trip planning, we really thought about it as people powered trip planning, um, the strategy for the company at the time was to enable people. Book, um, various activities across lots of different things.

[00:36:19] So not just hotels, but also attractions and restaurants. Uh, and so in some ways, uh, the company was creating almost like an Amazon for travel, where you could shop for anything that you would need, um, during your trip. And so that idea of being able to book across a diverse breadth of different types of places was an important part of the company strategy.

[00:36:39] The product strategy was defined by this idea of being inherently multi-player out of the gate, as well as being an open platform that people could come to and didn't feel like they needed to stop using if they wanted to save something or add something that was outside of the TripAdvisor ecosystem and then the roadmap and goals flowed from that.

[00:36:57] So, um, you know, interestingly, in this case, one of the [00:37:00] first things that we realized, um, from a roadmap perspective was we didn't need to work on enhancing the safe system on TripAdvisor, um, because not enough people were using. But the people who were using it were actually booking at much higher rates.

[00:37:13] Um, and so, you know, our early hypothesis was can we get more people to save things? Um, and can we, you know, as they save more things, get them to, um, book at those higher rates that we're seeing today. So the first step in our roadmap was pretty similar to, I think, what the first step would have been, um, had we not gone through that process, but we thought about that first step, not as a destination in itself, but really as part of a sequence in a much broader set of things.

[00:37:40] And so we knew, you know, based on that first step where we want it to grow and we've created, um, a pretty clear roadmap of things that, um, the team built out over the next few quarters. Uh, and you know, if I go back and I look at that strategy doc that we built in 2016 and the trip planning products today, that's in the TripAdvisor app, they're [00:38:00] pretty similar.

[00:38:00] There's definitely been, you know, continued enhancements, but taking that time to really think about this product strategy stack enabled us to. I have a set of central hypotheses that prove to be more durable than I think a lot of the, the typical product that you get from a more experimentation and iteration oriented, um, type of approach, which is not tethered to strategy 

[00:38:23] Brett Berson: Maybe we could kind of explore another example that was super helpful. Maybe, maybe you could sort of share 

[00:38:23] Ravi Mehta: know. 

[00:38:23] Brett Berson: how this kind of concept of the product strategy stack shows up as you're building Reforge itself and kind of how mission and company strategy and product strategy kind of fit together.

[00:38:23] Ravi Mehta: Yeah, definitely. So, um, so for people that aren't familiar, uh Reforge is a company that is focused on helping mid career professionals in tech level up. Um, the company was started by Brian Balfour, um, who originally created Reforge with, uh, Andrew Chan and the first, uh, program that they created was the growth series.

[00:38:23] And so what they were seeing, um, I forget exactly the timeframe. I think this was also around 20 16, 20 17. Um, they were saying that there was a lot of, uh, energy around growth as this new specialization within product. And marketing. And so, uh, people were discovering new ways to grow new ways to think about growth.

[00:38:23] Um, they were moving away from this more funnel oriented way of thinking about marketing and to a more loop driven way of thinking about how to grow a product in a compounding way that ultimately leads to exponential returns. Um, and so Andrew and Brian created a cohort based course called the growth series, uh, which was really focused on capturing the latest, thinking about how to approach growth.

[00:38:23] They ran that first cohort. Um, they had early product market fit, uh, so right away, um, they were really successful out of the gate and they had figured out that they had solved, um, you know, not just a really interesting problem around growth, but a really interesting way to think about how to help people level up.

[00:38:23] So a lot of the early innovation around. Cohort based courses was something that, um, the, the founding team developed and a particular approach to cohort based courses was something that, that reforged developed. And so now today, as the company scales out, um, not just, uh, to help, uh, growth leaders really, uh, you know, get better at their craft.

[00:38:23] They've also got programs on, um, product engineering, marketing, and continuing to add, uh, programs for all of the different functions that are part of a high-performance tech organization. And so there's a handful of things that have really informed how, um, the company has approached, uh, building out that type of a program materials.

[00:38:23] The first one, um, really comes from, uh, that initial Genesis of the growth series. And one of the things that made the grocery is different than a lot of other cohort-based programs at the time was that it was really operator driven. Um, Andrew and Brian at the time were operators at HubSpot and Uber. Um, and the thinking that they had developed was based not on, um, you know, not on academic theory, but really on what they were learning day to day.

[00:38:23] And so one of the key things that has driven the company strategy is to create a really, um, rich community, not just of members who are looking to learn, but also operators who can, uh, who are staying up to date on the latest, uh, best practices in the industry, um, and who are there to help. Pull those best practices into programs and help lead those programs. So that at every step of the way, both in terms of the learning, as well as in terms of the live sessions, as well as in terms of the community engagement, um, it's helped being shaped by people who are basically in the trenches and, and learning how to, how to grow. Um, and so there's, there's other elements as well that are part of that product strategy.

[00:38:23] And you see that reflected, um, in the way that Reforge approaches its products, where there's a lot of emphasis on content. There's a lot of emphasis on making that content as, um, easily consumable as possible, but also getting to a level of, of depth that I think is, uh, is pretty rare. Um, and then there's emphasis on creating the cohorts in a way that it's, it's not just a passive entertainment oriented kind of learning experience.

[00:38:23] It's much more of a, um, active case oriented experience where people are getting the opportunity, not just not just to learn, but also, uh, Um, and so that has really influenced how the company's approached product development, content development, recruiting of, um, the EIRs who are the operators who lead the programs, um, as well as, uh, the things that the company now is doing today to, uh, create tighter communication, um, or tighter connections in the community, in the community.

[00:38:23] Brett Berson: So if I were to look at things like mission and company strategy and product strategy for Reforge itself today, could you kind of explain what that, that looks like to kind of further bring this framework?

[00:38:23] Ravi Mehta: yeah. So the mission of Reforge is to help, uh, mid career professionals, uh, level up with, um, the best. Operator driven ideas, concepts, and frameworks in the industry. And so that sets the overall stage. Um, one of the key things from a company strategy perspective is, um, up until 2020, or sorry, up until 2021.

[00:38:23] The company monetized on a cohort basis. And so people would, um, attend a cohort. It was at a certain price point. Um, and so there was a lot of engagement with Reforge during a particular six week period. Um, and that if people wanted to attend a different cohort for different program, they could do that.

[00:38:23] But if you were in a cohort that was focused on retention and engagement, um, and you were not in the product strategy cohort, you couldn't necessarily, um, you know, you, you couldn't access the material. And so one of the things, the company different were companies strategy perspective, is it moved from a cohort based model to a member model.

[00:38:23] So today you get a yearly membership to Reforge, um, that gives you unlimited access to all of the programs all year unlimited access to, um, the community and the forums. And then as part of that, people can attend, um, the live sessions that happen in the spring and the fall. And so that moved from a. Uh, from a cohort based model to a membership model, um, was of course an interesting business model decision, but it was ultimately a strategy decision because one of the things that Brian and the team realized was that a key part of leveling up, um, is the ability to not just go deep in one particular area, but to actually create connections in that area to other areas of knowledge.

[00:38:23] And so now, as a result of a member, having unlimited access to the programs, a person can take something like product strategy and realize that they have a gap in a particular element of product strategy that might be growth, or it might be thinking about how expect, how to expand product market fit.

[00:38:23] And then when they've identified that gap, they can actually go to another program and go really deep, um, in the area where that there's that gap. And so that's an example of, I think, are very strategically driven. Business model transition, um, that came out of an insight about the value that Reforge was driving for, um, for its members, um, that, you know, I think, uh, other companies would have had a hard time making that almost burned the bridge type of a decision because Reforge went from essentially, um, a, a seven figure business to zero when it made the transition to, um, the membership model and has built back up from there, but did it, because it was very clear based on the understanding of the mission and the strategy that that was the right thing to do.

[00:38:23] Um, and because of that transition, that transition to a membership model has informed what the company has worked on from a product, uh, roadmap perspective and how the company thinks about its goals as well.

[00:38:23] Brett Berson: So to kind of take a sort of slight turn here, let's say a CEO comes to you and you know, she's running a 50 person company. They have kind of early signs of product market fit and are starting to scale. And the, like our plot, our product planning process and kind of overall the way that we think about strategy is kind of a.

[00:38:42] We, we read what you wrote about the product strategy stack, and we want to implement it. We're going to go do this. What are some of the perspectives or advice you might give her to do this really well? And when you think across these five component, [00:39:00] parts that ladder into each other, what are the things that people should be careful of or mindful of as they actually go and try to do this at their own company?

[00:39:12] Ravi Mehta: I think the first thing is to not assume that certain things are complete in order to develop a really good. Solid strategy that starts at mission and ends at goals. It's helpful to take a fresh look at it, um, because oftentimes what what's the case is even if a company feels like they have a really good strategy, there may be gaps that the team is hitting.

[00:39:39] So, you know, I recommend if a company feels like they're doing this exercise for the first time and they feel like their product strategy is a mess, um, start from scratch. So start from first principles, um, and then build, uh, your product strategy from there. That can sound really overwhelming. Um, but it doesn't have to be, in fact, I've seen the best product strategy exercises.[00:40:00] 

[00:40:00] You can go from essentially a blank slate to a really clear set of goals for the next couple of quarters, um, in about four weeks. And the way that I've approached that in the past is using a sprint like process where as part of that sprint process, you go, and you start at the top of the stack. You start with the mission.

[00:40:21] And then you define all the way down to the goals for the next couple of quarters. So the first thing is to start from scratch, treat it as something that, um, you know, where you've got a blank slate, you don't need to be tied into any of the work that's been done before. And so you can shed, um, any of the overhang from that old product strategy process.

[00:40:41] That might be a little bit messy. The second thing is to think about it, not as a boil the ocean process. Um, I would say, you know, both time box it and then content box it. So give it a certain amount of time. You know, I think four weeks is plenty for a larger company for a startup. You could even give it, um, you know, two [00:41:00] to two to three weeks and make that a really key thing that you're focused on intensely during that period of time.

[00:41:08] Um, so that everyone knows that over the next. Three to four weeks. The thing that's most important for the company is not hitting some goal or shipping some project, but is defining and documenting our product strategy in a clear way. The next thing is to say that. We're going to have a very particular approach from a content perspective, we're going to come up with a product strategy document that captures our strategy, not just at a high level, but also at a very specific and concrete level.

[00:41:35] Um, and that document doesn't need to be more than a certain, certain length. Um, you know, I think Amazon has done really well with, with their six pagers. Um, you can accomplish really great things that are documented in a very clear way. Um, in a small amount of content, the process I've used is more slide based because I think wireframes are an important part of product strategy and I can get into, get into why.

[00:41:59] [00:42:00] Um, and so the, the product strategy documents that I've created, both at TripAdvisor and, and Tinder and I've helped, uh, startups create are usually anywhere from like 25 to maybe 40 slides. Most of those slides are our wire frames to really help the company take abstract strategic ideas and think about how to render those ideas into an interface for.

[00:42:22] The user in terms of what that, um, document should cover. The first one is to have a really clear, um, slide on the company mission. Um, so, you know, ultimately, you know, it's not a, an executable thing. It's not a measurable thing, but having a clear aspirational mission that people get emotionally excited about solving is a really important part.

[00:42:45] I think of channeling people's energy. Then I recommend having like one or two slides on the company strategy, which is a very clear logical plan for how is the company going to achieve that mission? The strategy doesn't need to be pages and pages. You know, you [00:43:00] can have a really tight strategy on a single slide if you're very clear about what the plan is.

[00:43:06] And if that plan is as well reasons, um, I think it's helpful to have one slide or one page on the target user and the key use cases to make sure that that strategy is really tied back to. The customer needs. Oftentimes with these strategy processes, another common failure mode is for the company to focus too much on itself and what it wants to achieve and not enough on the user.

[00:43:28] So having that one dedicated section to the target user and the key use cases is important. Um, I recommend having, um, sort of like 10 to 20 wireframes and the reason I recommend having wireframes is because really good product strategy. It's not broad and vague. It is it's big, it's conceptual, it's ambitious, but it's also specific and concrete a really good product strategy.

[00:43:54] It's something that the team needs to be able to execute. And as part of executing that they need to be able to go back to the [00:44:00] strategy and make decisions. And so, um, you know, it's really easy to come up with a text description of a strategy that everyone walks away from and has a different perspective of what the company?

[00:44:11] is trying to achieve.

[00:44:13] Um, and when that happens, that the exercise is of limited value. And so ultimately for most products, for many products, um, the way that the customer interfaces through to the product is through pixels and wire frames are a great way to capture. The strategy implies for what the product should look like at a high enough level that you're not making decisions about exactly where certain buttons are placed or how they're colored or what the look and feel is, but you are making some structural decisions in a visual way that makes it really clear.

[00:44:44] Um, what those decisions are. A classic example of, of this is, um, you know, you can have a really broad strategy and, you know, today a lot of products are on mobile. And one of the key things that you need to solve for, from a mobile product [00:45:00] perspective is what are the four or five things that you're going to have on your navigation bar?

[00:45:04] You can't have more than that. There's just not the physical real estate. And so companies need to make a strategic decision. Yeah. How do we want to organize our product? And what are the most important things to put in front of the user? Oftentimes, if you just described strategy as text, um, then teams don't actually, the teams can walk away with very different understandings of what those trade-offs are and when a team needs to define their navigation bar, um, they do it, um, without, you know, th they do it without having a clear understanding of what those assumptions are.

[00:45:33] If you instead say as part of the product strategy, we're actually going to wire frame things out, and we're going to define, you know, what our core navigation is for the product. Then you're not just defining a strategy, but you're also providing a way for the team to think of. How to implement, um, that strategy in a structured and concrete way.

[00:45:53] So once those wireframes are in and they serve as sort of a north star of how do you actually render that [00:46:00] strategy into, into product, the next step is to develop a roadmap. And so those are kind of 90 to 100 day priorities, depending on whether the company is larger or smaller. Um, that is the initial sequence for how you're going to start to build out towards that north star for what the product looks like.

[00:46:17] Um, and then I think the final piece is goals. Um, so those are goals for, um, you know, the next quarter. So how are you going to measure progress against your product strategy? Those goals don't necessarily need to be metrics. They can be things like, um, you know, understanding a particular market that can be things like building out a particular feature or launching a feature.

[00:46:38] Um, so progress on strategy is not necessarily always, um, in terms of metrics and then a really key part of this is what are the non goals? So what are we saying explicitly as part of the strategy we're not going to do, that's really helpful for adding that final level of concreteness, um, to the product strategy doc, and I've done this, uh, process at multiple [00:47:00] companies I've found it's worked well in a repeatable, repeatable fashion.

[00:47:03] It's a little bit different than how people typically think about creating product strategy. Wireframes are not normally part of that process, but I found it incredibly effective, um, to do that and something that. Um, you can make a lot of progress in a relatively short amount of time. And then that becomes a foundation that then that 50 person company has and can turn to whenever new hires come on board whenever they grow, um, and likely that four weeks we'll pay multiple years of returns in terms of clarity and focus for the company.

[00:47:32] Brett Berson: And what's the cadence on this. Once you run it once, is it you, you're sort of doing mission as every few years, companies, strategies, annually, and then product strategy, roadmap and goals are done more frequently at what sort of like the operating cadence of implementing this.

[00:47:48] Ravi Mehta: Exactly. So I think that's the right, the right cadence missions tend to be something that, um, extended over, over multiple years. Um, you know, a lot of times startups start with a mission that feels [00:48:00] completely out of reach and that's great. That's important as a way to, um, harness the energy of the company towards a big, important problem.

[00:48:08] Um, so you don't need to change your mission and oftentimes companies don't and when they do, um, they're changing it because of something that's changed about the world, both Facebook and Microsoft, um, have, uh, have changed their missions. Um, but they changed their missions largely because they were able to accomplish their first mission.

[00:48:24] And so now they needed to, to reframe it. So missions don't need to change, they can change, um, but they can be durable for many years, if not forever. Um, company strategy companies typically, uh, I think when you're at a larger company revisit on a yearly basis, that doesn't mean you have to change the strategy, um, on that basis, it just means it's an important to regularly take stock of.

[00:48:47] You know, based on the current environment, based on the things that we're really good at based on the things that our competitors are really good at, should we change, um, our company company strategy, importantly, it's not every quarter. Um, so you know, companies that are changing [00:49:00] strategy every month or every quarter are probably thrashing, and they're probably in this, um, in this.

[00:49:05] mode of treating goals too much as strategy, um, and not having a clear enough context for the work.

[00:49:12] Um, and then in terms of the roadmap and goals, I think it's really, um, a function of how quickly the company is working with the cycle times are quarterly, feels like, you know, for an established company, um, that has, uh, you know, a large business that's operating. You know, that feels like a good pace, but for a startup, I think, um, You know, thinking about your goals and your roadmap on a monthly basis has beneficial.

[00:49:35] Okay.

[00:49:36] Brett Berson: You mentioned this in passing. Can you talk a little bit more about the idea of non goals and why.

[00:49:36] Ravi Mehta: I think one of the hardest things that happens with these strategy processes is, um, people come to them with their own expectations about what they want to see from the company and what they want to see from the product. And when the strategy document is not specific enough, everyone walks away with a different opinion of what the strategy is informed by, um, their perspective on what they think is important.

[00:49:36] And So by saying what the strategy is, you're adding an element of concreteness. Um, but as part of that concreteness you've made choices. And as part of documenting what those choices were, it's not only important to say we're doing a, but also really important to reinforce that we're not doing B, um, that creates a lot more clarity, um, for people making.

[00:49:36] Uh, I think clear that when people are walking away from this, they know what's going to get done and not going to get done so that, you know, six months from now, when people are executing on the strategy, they didn't make an assumption about, you know, what was, what was included in particular. I think non, um, goals should cover, uh, elements or questions during the product strategy process that were particularly controversial.

[00:49:36] Um, so that it's very clear about what the decision was that was made. Um, and part of defining the product strategy document is being clear that the team disagreed, but it's now committing to a particular direction and we're committing to a, not B. Um, and that part of making choices for. The company is really important.

[00:49:36] I think, you know, as product leaders, every choice we make as a company, as a choice that we save our users from making, if we're not clear about what we want our product to do, often we ship that lack of clarity to the user. Um, and they have to make the choice. They need to figure out what are the important things in the app to use.

[00:49:36] They need to figure out, you know, whether to click on this button or that button. Um, and so it's really important to have a clear set of choices, make sure everyone understands what those choices are and make sure that you're delivering something that is, um, clear and opinionated to the customer.

[00:49:36] Brett Berson: So for someone's for someone that's listening and wants to go implement this and take your idea of, of run a two to four week sprint with this sort of being the, the output who should be involved in that process on, in internally at the company. And are there any other rituals or things that in that two or four weeks people should be doing?

[00:49:36] Ravi Mehta: So I think that the specific people that are involved it should depend on the size of the company at a smaller company. It should include the CEO. Um, and very importantly, It's important that the CEO is, uh, the decider. Um, and so that if the team gets stuck, as they're going through this process, that they feel like empowered to come to the CEO and say, look, we need your help making a decision.

[00:49:36] Um, so very important to have that, that CEO level level input at a larger company, it might be the business unit manager or someone else that's responsible for, um, whatever is within strategic scope for the particular product strategy that a person is creating. I think importantly, it should have members of all of the different functions, part of the process.

[00:49:36] So design, product engineering, uh, user insights, data science, marketing sales, anyone who's going to be touched by the product strategy. There should be at least one leader involved. Um, Yeah, that means that there's a lot of cooks in the kitchen. Um, and there's ways I think, especially with the decider to make sure that that doesn't lead to unopinionated decisions, but ultimately a product strategy is going to succeed or fail based on the support.

[00:49:36] It gets not from the pro, not just from the product team, but also more broadly from the company. It's really important for people to feel like that company perspective has been integrated into the product strategy and it, and what comes out of it is something that everyone supports. Um, one of the reasons I think wireframes are, are such an important part is because it forces teams to get design involved.

[00:49:36] It forces teams to get engineering involved. You're starting to make some pretty big assumptions about what the product is going to look like and how it's going, going to work the teams do anyway, but it's good to do that explicitly and have them involved from the get-go. Um, I think an important ritual during this, this process, we did this at Tinder.

[00:49:36] We did a four week product strategy process was, um, we had teams in the beginning of the day, be really clear about what the objective for the day was. It might be defining the mission and it might be working on the wire frames for a particular part of the product. It might be defining some principles that we're going to use for the product.

[00:49:36] Um, and so. Starting the day with a really clear idea of what the deliverable by the end of the day was important. Giving people time and space during the day to have alone time to actually think through those things, um, was also important. Not everything, not every idea needs to be developed in a conference room or on a whiteboard.

[00:49:36] Sometime people do their best thinking when they're able to think, um, alone and really process information. And then at the end of the day, we would come together and put those ideas together, as well as do a recap and do a lead into. The next day. Um, a lot of what I've done around a product strategy sprint is informed by the Google sprint process, which, um, which is defined in a book called, called sprint.

[00:49:36] There's just, uh, reams of, uh, beautifully, uh, well articulated ideas in, in that book that I found are, are helpful. Not just if you're running a five day design sprint, but if you're doing?

[00:49:36] anything where you're putting a lot of people in a room and you're trying to get them to think creatively, as well as make decisions and get to an end product that is beneficial for the company, uh, is clearly articulated and something that the company can execute on.

[00:49:36] Um, so highly recommend that book I've been inspired by it. Um, as part of running these, these product strategy sprints. 

[00:49:36] Brett Berson: I guess this sort of close out, kind of this part of the conversation, I'm curious in kind of running this process and working with a bunch of companies on this process, you kind of have an interesting data set of watching people do this. Um, and so because of that, I'm curious, what do you, what do you notice when you're watching people do this?

[00:49:36] That often leads to the most confusion trip ups or things that are. Not necessarily mistakes that a leadership team might be making as they're doing this, but just maybe harder than one might imagine as you're doing this work.

[00:49:36] Ravi Mehta: There's a purely tactical one around. Nobody wants to dedicate the time to this. Everyone's really busy. Um, and so the idea that we're going to spend two weeks or four weeks, we're going to take up a large part of the day. Having these conversations, documenting the results and moving through a really well-defined process, um, is sort of antithetical to how people's schedules are working on a daily basis.

[00:49:36] And So getting people to actually take the time away and dedicate the time is one of the most challenging things. That's one of the reasons that CEO level sponsorship is important for something like this. It's important, not just for that person to be the decider, but also for the person to say, look, this is the most important thing that we could be working on. let's spend two to four weeks doing this in a really intensive way so that we're not doing this in a less intensive way over the next two years and working off of something that's, that's less clear. Um, so that I think is just, you know, tactically, one of the challenges, um, another challenge is that.

[00:49:36] Nobody feels like it's going to work when it's tarred. So I've seen this over and over again. Um, you know, especially with this idea of using wireframes as a key way to communicate product strategy, it feels very foreign, um, to, to people. And so getting people just to suspend their doubts and go through, um, the process is really important.

[00:49:36] Um, I think another thing that, that this often happens on teams that are not functioning well or where there's some, uh, there's some cultural overhang, um, People come into it with, well, this is just, you know, this is just product kind of driving, driving the bus. And, um, you know, this is going to be like things that we've done in the past where maybe I'm not going to be that involved.

[00:49:36] Um, so I think especially for the product leaders involved, making sure that everyone has a seat at the table. And if there is that kind of cultural overhang and making sure that you're resetting at the beginning is really important. And so if you can get people to clear the time to be, um, open about the process and open about the outcome, um, and then to devote their full attention to the process and to go through the process and, uh, in a rigorous way, I've seen multiple times now teams come out of it after, uh, you know, a three to six week period feeling really great about the product strategy really energized about, about the company.

[00:49:36] Um, everyone having a very clear understanding of what that strategy implies, um, and being, you know, ready to jump into, uh, the first piece of executing that strategy.

[00:49:36] Brett Berson: So let's flip over and talk about maybe how this work connects with OKR is and goal setting and some of the mistakes that you've seen, particularly around the OKR process. I also feel like more recently, there's been kind of this backlash against OKR and kind of questioning of them. And they kind of, you know, were invented by Andy Grove at Intel.

[00:49:58] Then John Doerr brought them to [00:50:00] Google and they kind of, um, fanned out over the technology ecosystem. And I feel like a lot of people are questioning whether, uh, whether they're right for their company or their working and, and maybe questioning whether they ever really worked. Right. I think you kind of get into this interesting question of are companies successful because of the thing that they did, or in spite of the thing that they did.

[00:50:04] Um, and so I just feel like there's more questioning of OKR is more recently. So curious to hear kind of what you've learned around the OKR process and maybe how that ladders into this product stack idea.

[00:50:13] Ravi Mehta: Yeah, definitely. And so know, ultimately I think the, the OKR process or the goal setting process for a team is a really important part of the strategy process because ultimately it comes down to we've defined a strategy. Now we need to make progress against that strategy in a way that is measurable and valuable.

[00:50:31] And so some sort of goal setting process is important for that. Um, I've had a long history with, with OKR is, you know, I actually really like, okay, ours. I think if you get smart about, okay, ours, they work really well. Um, the first thing that I think people miss is that goal-setting and OKR has in particular are both a skill and a habit.

[00:50:52] So there's some things that are important to learn about. You know, what's an objective. How do you define it really well? What's a key result. How do you define that really well, [00:51:00] that are important to go through an effective OKR process. I also see that teams, um, tend to want to be great at goal setting and graded OKR is out of the gate.

[00:51:11] And if that first quarter doesn't go exactly to plan, they keep tweaking and they just turn and turn on the process and eventually, um, points the finger at OKR and say, look okay, ours are not working for us. Um, and so, you know, it's a little bit like going into an exercise program and doing one rep, um, of an exercise and saying, look, that didn't work.

[00:51:30] I haven't gotten any more muscle. Let me go on to a different, different exercise. Um, and so consistency, um, and clarity about what you're trying to accomplish and how to approach. Is important. Nevertheless, I've, I've never seen a product team that has, um, Happy with our carers and not felt like they needed to modify their own the process in some, in some way.

[00:51:54] Um, and so over time as I used OKR is in multiple reps in multiple, multiple, [00:52:00] multiple companies. I realized that there were some common. Problems to solve the first one, is that the way in which a lot of teams define objectives is not really tied back to strategy. Very well. Objectives are usually terse.

[00:52:14] They're kind of like a few words. Um, and they often don't look that different than key results. Um, and, uh, for people that are really. At OKR is, um, you'll often hear that, um, the objective is more important than the key results, but if the objective hasn't been defined in a very clear way, and it's not that meaningfully different than the key results, then that's not helpful.

[00:52:35] Um, the other thing is I've seen that, you know, teams focus a lot on metrics-based key results. And so this leads us into that, um, behavior of treating goals as the destination, rather than strategy as the destination. And so when teams go in and they spend all of this trying and trying to achieve their key results and move metrics, um, and then they come out of that process, not feeling like the product is great or not [00:53:00] feeling like it solves an important need for the customer.

[00:53:02] Oftentimes they'll blame. Okay, ours for that process. The other challenge that I've seen with OKR is, is that, um, the best practice is to set, okay. Ours is aspirational. So a quarter is successful. If 50 to 70% of OKR is, are completed. I found this is really difficult for product teams to operationalize. Um, this makes okay.

[00:53:23] Probabilistic. So there's a probability that certain things will get done at the end of the quarter, when what teams really want is a goal setting process that's deterministic. Um, and then the last thing that I've seen is a real challenge with OKR is, is, um, okay. Ours, you know, I think rightfully assume that teams are really.

[00:53:42] Um, thoughtful and effective. And if you give them clear goals, they'll figure out how to get those goals done. And so oftentimes teams spend a lot of time defining their OKR is, but not a lot of time defining it, how they're going to achieve those okay. Ours. And so they go into a quarter [00:54:00] cold. Um, and so they have these really ambitious goals that they need to hit, but they haven't actually planned out what are the tasks that we need to do to hit those goals.

[00:54:06] So, you know, they've defined the outcomes, but they haven't defined the inputs really well. Um, and so that's another common problem that I see with, with OKR is after seeing this problem multiple times, um, we, we developed a, a framework that we first used at TripAdvisor to try to solve for some of these things.

[00:54:26] It doesn't mean that this framework is better than OKR is, but it does encapsulate some of the solutions that I think are important. And the fact that we're using different terms, um, I think helps people think about it differently. So. We documented this framework in the product leadership program at Reforge, um, it's called NCTs.

[00:54:44] And so, uh, the idea is that as part of the goal setting, the team needs to find three things, the narratives, the commitments, and then the tasks. So the narrative is similar to the OKR, um, but teams are specifically recommended to actually make a narrative longer. [00:55:00] So use, you know, a few sentences to describe what is the strategic narrative that's underpinning, the thing that the team is wanting to accomplish.

[00:55:10] And so the goal there is to create a really clear linkage between the goal that's being set, um, and the strategy that that goal is a part of, uh, the second thing is a commitment. So the word commitment is used very deliberately. So commitment is, um, you know, generally for a narrative there's three to five objectively measurable commitments.

[00:55:32] Um, the commitments are meant to be done. A hundred percent target accuracy. So they're meant to be deterministic. Um, so that your team knows what they're committing to at the beginning of a quarter and is doing the things that they need to in order to achieve those commitments. Also important for commitments is commitments can be, um, you know, KPIs, but they can also be things that are more deliverable oriented.

[00:55:55] And so as part of, um, NCTs we define three different [00:56:00] types of commitments. You can have a thinking commitment, which is really about taking time within a quarter to understand and scope out a problem. You can have a building commitment, which is taking time within a quarter to build an initial version, a prototype, or an MVP for a product.

[00:56:16] And then you can have a launch it commitment, which is about launching, um, that, uh, that product and learning from experiments. Even if you won't necessarily. The results back. And so, you know, having the idea.

[00:56:27] of a quantitative commitment or some of these more qualitative commitments gives teams a broader vocabulary of ways to set goals that are not so myopically focused on less let's move a metric.

[00:56:39] And then the final piece is tasks. So TA tasks layout, what work might need to be done in order for the team to achieve its commitments and make progress on the narrative. And so, uh, importantly here tasks are the most fungible piece. They're really there to give people a warm start on making progress on their goals. And [00:57:00] you know, if at the end of a quarter, a team has done. All of its commitments, so achieved all its commitments, but done none of the tasks. That's a successful quarter. Those tasks are really just there to provide shape. But if on the other hand, a team has completed all of their tasks, but achieved none of their commitments.

[00:57:16] That's not a successful quarter. Just checking things off the box, uh, or checking, checking boxes is not, um, not success, really success needs to be evaluated in terms of what the team committed to achieve. So there's three pieces work together to solve some of these common problems that I see with OKR as being used on product teams.

[00:57:34] Brett Berson: And it does this cascade up and down in the way that OKR is, are supposed to, in the sense that there are company OKR is Timo carers individual. Okay. Ours on, or does it, does it fit into an organization differently?

[00:57:48] Ravi Mehta: I think it fits in differently. So the cascading OKR is I think are a good way to think about, you know, personal goals and, uh, And squad level goals and then department [00:58:00] level goals, but it can get complicated. And that's one of the areas where I see, um, companies really struggle based on my experience on product teams.

[00:58:09] The level at which goal setting is the most powerful is at the squad level. And so it's really important that that squad, you know, whether it's a two pizza team or a squad or a pod have a clear set of, um, goals around, you know, what are they committing to achieve and what is that going to do for the product strategy?

[00:58:28] And so specifically NCTs are designed to be set at the squad level, um, and individuals on a team don't have NCTs and then, um, you know, collections of squads don't have NCTs. Um, so it really designed at that level of an organization to make that piece of goal setting, um, very clear, uh, a. A team that consists of multiple squads.

[00:58:51] We'll have NCTs for each of the squads. And so collectively you can look at what those NCTs are, summarize what they are to give a, you know, a tribe level view [00:59:00] into what, um, a group of squads are doing. And so it, you know, you could certainly use them in that way, but the, the clarity, the focus on this being a tool for product teams, um, was one of the things that I think helped get us to a framework, um, that is more actionable for product teams and, and solve some of these common problems that product teams have, um, when they implement OKR S which is more of a generalized goal framework.

[00:59:24] Brett Berson: And so are there not NCTs for the company itself? This is sort of much more localized at the, at the product.

[00:59:24] Ravi Mehta: Yeah, this is much more localized at the product team level. So the squad is ultimately the atomic unit of, um, of work that that is getting done to make progress on the company strategy. And so, you know, it might be that the company has some, some top level goals. One of the other failure modes that I see is product teams.

[00:59:24] Going straight to assuming that their goal should be accompany goal, but oftentimes goals at the company level are more trailing indicators than they are leading indicators. Um, so, you know, setting a goal on revenue is, is great. Um, it's important. It needs to be done at a company company level. Um, but having a revenue based goal is not always helpful for a product.

[00:59:24] team, which instead of focusing on the outcome or the output of revenue really needs to focus on the inputs of what are the levers that we understand that drive revenue.

[00:59:24] Um, And so the NCTs allow those teams to make commitments based on what those levers are or what they need to do in order to understand those levers rather than to focus on these high level company goals, which might leave the team, um, somewhat rudderless, so important to make sure that these trailing indicators like revenue or retention or being, um, uh, that the company's making progress on them.

[00:59:24] But even more important is to understand what are the inputs that are actually driving those trailing indicators.

[00:59:24] Brett Berson: And could you walk us through an example let's, you know, either real or fictitious example, your, a squad and you're getting together and you're putting together your narrative commitments and tasks and kind of what that looks like.

[00:59:36] Ravi Mehta: Yeah, definitely. So if we go back to the TripAdvisor. Trip planning example. Um, one of the, the narrative commitment task groups that we had, um, for the first quarter was to say, um, you know, trip planning really begins with people saving, um, today, uh, saving, uh, items to a, to a person's wishlist is [01:00:00] not something that a lot of people are doing.

[01:00:01] And so we want to increase the prevalence with which people are saving items. And by doing that, we expect to see people coming back to TripAdvisor, um, more often. And so the narrative was ultimately about, you know, what is the first thing that we need to do to, um, have a person engage with TripAdvisor in a way that, um, lasts over time and is not limited to engaging with TripAdvisor in a single single session.

[01:00:28] Um, and so enhancing the saves feature had that strategic narrative. I'm not getting exactly the word, the words, right. But that was the gist of it. And then the team had a set of commitments. Um, some of those commitments were around. Um, there was some, some of the, some of the code was, was older on saves.

[01:00:44] It hadn't been touched for a lot of years. So some of the commitments were really around the technology and around building, um, a better saves infrastructure. Um, but there were also the team within the quarter felt like.

[01:00:52] they could commit to a couple of metrics. And so they made, um, a commitment to increase the number of unique people that saved [01:01:00] something to a saves list.

[01:01:02] Um, And Yeah, this was not a commitment that we knew we could hit, but the team also wanted to make a commitment that they felt like they could increase the retention for savers. So if they got more people to save that they could actually, as a result of doing that, get more people to be retained to the product.

[01:01:17] And so that set of commitments actually, um, you know, it was interesting in the sense that, you know, it started with things that the team was 100% knew that they could do, um, were more qualitative where things that needed to be done in order to enhance the safety feature. Um, and then the team took on a couple of stretch commitments, um, to move metrics within the quarter, knowing that, look, we're going to try to do it if we can't do it, um, then we're going to focus on that in the next quarter.

[01:01:44] And so, you know, not every commitment has to be at a 100%, but knowing what the team is really deterministically, um, able to commit to and what the team is stretching to commit to, uh, is an important distinction that you don't, uh, get typically with OKR.

[01:01:59] Brett Berson: [01:02:00] And once you sort of establish, uh, these kinds of, uh, different elements that we've been talking about, um, how do you communicate and update them throughout the quarter or the. and we talked a little bit about the, the sort of key output of this first part of the product strategy stack, which is the product strategy doc.

[01:02:22] Um, but maybe when you kind of, you know, you leave the sprint process, your product team develops their, uh NCTs then what happens and what then happens throughout the year to make this, um, both operationalized and to also avoid kind of the, I think a common thing in most companies, which is you do some level of planning and then you kind of forget it or check in at the end of the quarter and see what happens versus using it as a tool to guide your work on a daily base.

[01:02:56] Ravi Mehta: Yeah.

[01:02:57] absolutely. So one of the nice things, and this is true about, okay, [01:03:00] ours as well, but about NCTs is, um, you know, it turns out NCTs are a great template for weekly status reports. And so if your status report is nothing other than here's the narrative, here's the commitments. And here what's, here's, what's changed from week to week.

[01:03:13] Um, that gets a lot deeper than a lot of status reports and it makes sure that the work that you did to plan what you're doing in the quarter is something that people are reminded of at least on a weekly. Basis. And then in terms of reporting on, um, NCTs, I think there's two critical things to report on one is, you know, what is the progress?

[01:03:36] So, you know, teams can estimate, you know, are we, are we 50% there for deliverables? Um, or if it's a quantitative metric teams can, um, you know, can actually measure how much progress they've made towards that metric. But in addition to measuring progress, which could be an estimated, it could be. Um, you know, very specific depending on, on the commitment.

[01:03:59] I think it's also [01:04:00] important to color code each of the commitments by confidence, anywhere from red to yellow, to green, depending on how confident the team is that they're going to be able to hit that commitment by the end of the quarter. And so the combination of a progress estimate plus confidence gives an interesting vocabulary for the team to be able to communicate the status, um, that provides both insight into, you know, how things are moving right now and how we expect things to move in the future.

[01:04:30] And I found that, that, um, that way of communicating works nice, nicely in a bunch of different contexts. So, you know, one of the challenges with, um, With qualitative commitments is that they often are not easily measurable within a quarter. There's no linear relationship between the amount of time that's passed in a quarter.

[01:04:50] Um, and how far, uh, you've made in terms of progress. So it's a little bit hard just by saying that something is 50% on or 70% on to actually see where the task [01:05:00] is. But if the team is also each week making an estimate of how confident that they are, that they're going to be able to achieve that commitment by the end of the quarter, then that can become, um, a, a signal that teams can use to say, look, you know, actually our confidence is eroding.

[01:05:16] Over time, even though our progress is improving, what's going on here? Do we maybe make a commitment that was well, that wasn't well formed or is there some other thing that's happening, where in other cases you might have, um, you know, your, your progress is really low, but your confidence is really high.

[01:05:31] You know, why does the team have confidence that they are going to be able to hit the goal? Um, and so it creates a really nice set of ideas to be able to talk about what's happening with a goal and start to debug that within, uh, within the quarter, ultimately with the goal of saying, you know, look, we're not going to hit every commitment.

[01:05:48] No team team is perfect every time, but the, the most important thing to do in addition to setting very clear goals, um, is to track how they're proceeding in a quarter. And to course correct if we, if we need to. And [01:06:00] sometimes the course correction is like, you know, we didn't make the right goal. That was the wrong thing to, to commit to, um, you know, our confidence is eroding on it.

[01:06:07] We're not making a lot of progress. Let's actually eliminate that commitment and focus on something, something else where it could be the team made great progress. They were able to achieve what they needed to do very quickly. Now maybe they can add another commitment to the quarter. And so that, that weekly cadence of looking at that confidence and that progress is a really good way, um, to make sure that this critical conversations are happening. 

[01:06:30] Brett Berson: I'm curious when you look across kind of the frameworks that we explored and kind of how they fit together. Um, and you've been kind of teaching and implementing these ideas with lots of companies. Are there specific downsides to adopting this methodology or have people critiqued it in a certain way that you tended to agree with that, that maybe somebody should just recognize going into it?

[01:06:30] Or is it just holy good.

[01:06:30] Ravi Mehta: Um, yeah, it's not, it's not wholly good. I don't think any process is, wholly good.

[01:06:30] Um, I think with anything processes are trade-offs and, um, it's important for teams to understand that there's no perfect process and the way to make a process better is often not by tweaking it, but by building up your reps around it and making that process a cadence or a ritual in the organization so that you get into a habit around it.

[01:06:30] Like if every quarter people are learning. What's different about our planning process or what's different about our goal setting process and you never get into a habit on it, then you're going to feel like any process that you're using is a bad one. Um, but if you know, you're using okay, ours and your company is really good at it and you built a habit around it and it's working really effectively, then it means, okay, ours are a Great. process.

[01:06:30] And you shouldn't try to try to do necessarily try to do some of the things that we talk about with, with NCTs. The goal of these frameworks is to give people a starting set of tools that they can then use within their organization, um, to get a headstart, um, to Maybe solve for some problems that they didn't realize were there to do it in a way that, um, you know, is, uh, can lead to really good, good results.

[01:06:30] Um, and then ultimately to, to either customize those processes for how, um, the company likes to work and then, and then build a habit around around them. So. I know there's definitely some, some downsides here in terms of how to, how to think about this. Um, I think the most controversial thing is the fact that, uh, goals flow from roadmap rather than roadmap flowing from goals.

[01:06:30] That's really antithetical to the way a lot of companies work. Some companies are very goal driven and so, um, treating goals in that way feels like it goes against, uh, against the culture. And so I think each company has to adapt, um, ultimately with Reforge and, and with these ideas, the goal is not to say that this is dogmatically the way to do things, but to say here's a set of ideas that are very specific, that are structured, that a well thought out that if you want, you can take and you can put into practice as is, but if you want, you can also customize them or even not even customize them, just learn from them and factor them into your own processes.

[01:06:30] Brett Berson: Great. Maybe we could just wrap up, I'm interested. Um, what, what reading has books, people who is kind of informed a lot of these ideas the most are if people want to go deeper, other than obviously we're going to link to the show notes in terms of some of the writing that you've already done, but are there kind of adjacent, um, adjacent things that you've read that have really informed or been helpful in the way that you think about all this?

[01:06:30] Ravi Mehta: I think one of the most important books that I've I've read on this topic is good strategy, bad strategy, um, by Richard Rumelt, um, he does a fantastic job of defining what strategy is and looking at some cases of companies that have done a really good job with their strategy and companies and cases of, of companies that haven't done a good job defining it.

[01:06:30] Um, I highly recommend that as a read for everyone. That's looking to, um, learn more about strategy and learn to think more strategically. Um, so that I think is a really good, good baseline. Um, the, the book on, okay, ours is really good as well. Um, I think it's measure what matters and that, you know, if you go through that and you've really go deep into the, the recommendations that they're making there, it solves for many of the same things that we're solving for, um, for, uh NCTs and then I think there's just a great set of.

[01:06:30] Of people that aren't necessarily publishing books, but, um, you know, who are, we're constantly thinking and talking about this?

[01:06:30] Casey winters has a, has a fantastic, um, a fantastic set of writings on these topics. Um, LendingTree rich Iskey has a fantastic set of writings on product. Um, one of the things I think he's done a really good job with is, is talking to people in the industry and putting together benchmarks so that you can take these ideas out of the kind of conceptual framework and put them more into specifics around, you know, how do we set the goals?

[01:06:30] What are some things that we can expect in terms of what we're seeing for our particular domain? Um, and so, you know, those are, those are the people that I continually turn to and some of the books that I continually turn to. 

[01:06:30] Brett Berson: Awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining and, uh, exploring this ideas with us. We so appreciate it. 

[01:06:35] Ravi Mehta: Absolutely thank you for having me.