Jackie Bavaro

After a little bit of time, I would start to be like, 'Hey, you have your planning committee today. Here are the three questions I want you to go in and get answered at that committee. And if they say this, I want you to ask this and this.' And after a little bit of that, I was like, 'It might be easier if I just go, I might be able save you some time and some energy if I just joined you.'

For your first six months on a product, probably don't worry about strategy. For your six months really, you should be talking to customers, researching your product stuff. Really starting off by saying, 'I'm going to learn the strategy, whatever strategy my company already has, and I'm going to do my research, but I'm going to deliver on that strategy.'

A lot of times you've been assigned a problem where a huge creative solution is a bad idea. If you're in one of the situations, just do the simple thing, get it done really well. And that'll earn you the trust to be able to take on bigger things in the future, but you don't need to be outstanding to make it past the APM promotions. You just need to be doing a solid, good job.

Three parts of strategy are your vision. This is your inspiring picture of what the future looks like. And then you've got your strategic framework. This is where you're saying, 'Here is the market we're going after. Here's what success looks like. And here are our big bets on what we think it takes to win that market.' And then the third part is the roadmap.

I think a good strategy is all about connecting the dots. Connecting the dots from this high level business goal of, 'We want to increase revenue by this much' to, 'This is the feature we're going to do.' And it might have many, many dots in between to help get people from one to the other.

After a little bit of time, I would start to be like, 'Hey, you have your planning committee today. Here are the three questions I want you to go in and get answered at that committee. And if they say this, I want you to ask this and this.' And after a little bit of that, I was like, 'It might be easier if I just go, I might be able save you some time and some energy if I just joined you.'

I would really like at some point in the future to grow into whatever this goal is. What do you suggest that I work on now so that I'll be ready when the opportunity comes up? The reason I love this template is just a really easy way to start off this conversation. I'm framing it in the future so that it's not threatening. And then it brings them onto your side.

A roadmap in strategy is not a commitment. Instead, it's a way to double check if your plan makes any sense at all and is even anywhere near feasible. Because what happens to every team I see do these roadmaps, you put it together and you realize 'We're not going to hit our vision in five years or 10. This is like a 30 year vision, if we keep going at the pace we're going.'