I used to think that getting better at product strategy meant writing better strategy documents. I polished slides, refined frameworks, tried to look strategic. Then I realized: the document isn’t the point. The insight is.
Many PMs want a strategy doc that “gets approved,” not a strategy that actually works.
Building the Foundation
Writing a beautiful document is the final step, not the first. You need three core habits before the doc comes:
1. Live in your users’ reality
Don’t just read reports or survey. Dive in.
I spent a week integrating our SDK into a small project myself. A “simple” flow I thought would take 20 minutes took four hours. That visceral friction taught me more than months of research ever could.
2. Map the competitive terrain
Beyond feature checklists - look for the trade-offs others accept. See what they avoid because of constraints you wouldn’t. The shadows of every strength tell you where to find opportunity.
3. Develop domain expertise
Go deep. If your space is SDKs, protocols, APIs - read RFCs, changelogs, migration guides. The real shifts hide in those places no one pays attention to. Insights come from context, not abstractions.
When you truly understand users, trade-offs, and domain, the strategy document almost writes itself. What used to take you days might now be a two-hour draft - because your thinking is already in place.
Beware of the “Strategy Theater”
Those two-day offsites, template sprints, and strategy workshops often feel productive-but they’re often just decoration. They let us feel like we made progress. But they don’t replace months of real work. Strategy documents don’t create insight - they reveal it.
You can’t shortcut foundational work in a brainstorm session. You’ll end up polishing ignorance, not creating clarity.
What to Do Now
- Stop polishing early. Don’t prioritize the document. Prioritize the learning.
- Get your hands dirty. Build small prototypes, use your product, test friction points.
- Read deeply. Learn your domain’s undercurrents: specs, logs, technical debt.
- Map constraints. Understand what others in your space cannot do and why.
When you do the messy, invisible work first, the strategy becomes clearer. You won’t need to dress it up. The insight stands on its own.
This is what I focus on now: doing less decoration, more foundation. It’s slower, it’s unglamorous, and most people won’t notice. But that’s the only way to build something that actually lasts.