The Unglamorous Work of Strategic Momentum
Strategic momentum dies slowly through neglect, not dramatically through bad decisions. The problem is that no one actually sits down and decides to stop following the strategy, it just stops being the thing that determines what work gets done.
I’ve seen this happen in different ways, but the mechanism is usually the same. The strategy exists, people can tell you what it is, but when you look at what teams are actually working on, there’s no clear line between the strategy and the work. Projects get started because someone senior likes the idea, or because a customer asked for it, or because it seemed like it would be quick to ship. None of these are necessarily wrong reasons, but if they’re not connected to what you said actually matters, you’re just accumulating work.
I distinctly remember how our product strategy at a health-tech company veered wildly off course because the loudest voice in the room kept on prioritising outside of our strategic roadmap. We believed (incorrectly in hindsight) that this particular ask would not derail us too much from our core work.
In reality it consumed us and months later so much of what we’d planned had remained untouched. Never underestimate how a discussion that morphs into execution can slowly make you forget where you were going in the first place!
What Actually Maintains Momentum
Maintaining strategic momentum requires someone to consistently connect the work being done back to the strategy, and to stop work that doesn’t connect. This sounds straightforward but it’s surprisingly uncommon because it requires saying no to things that might be good ideas in isolation. Looking back at my time in the example above it is easy to see how putting the brakes on the incoming meteor of misinformed misdirection could have prevented the loss of many months of runway (into the millions in the end!)
The teams I’ve seen do this well have a weekly practice of looking at what shipped or what’s in progress and asking whether it moves them towards their strategic goals. Not as a scoring exercise, just as an honest assessment. When the answer is no, they either stop the work or they update the strategy. What they don’t do is shrug and assume it’ll sort itself out.
I like to sit quietly on a Sunday evening and muse over what we’ve been shipping or the team are working on. Sometimes I’ll let things slide – there might be a small ask from a stakeholder that can easily be accommodated. Being able to sense check these things is born out of experience and an inner understanding of t-shirt sizing these distractions. When I think that something is moving beyond this accommodation level then I’ll quickly put an end to it – sometimes even removing a feature from market.
It is like holding loose reins but then yanking them when you need to! But you’ll need data to back up your decisions – just killing something because you ‘think’ it is the right thing to do won’t quite cut it with the team. Come prepared and show WHY you’ve decided to pivot, advance, adjust or remove.
Why It’s Hard
The reason this doesn’t happen more often is that it requires having uncomfortable conversations repeatedly. Someone’s excited about a feature, or a customer’s asking for something, or there’s a “quick win” available, and you have to be the person who asks whether it actually matters. This makes you unpopular, or at least makes you feel like you’re being difficult when everyone else is just trying to get things done. But as I said above, by removing yourself from the equation and presenting data as the decision maker can help loads.
The other problem is that leadership often undermines their own strategy by making exceptions. A senior person says yes to something that doesn’t fit because it seems urgent, or because saying no feels politically difficult. Once leadership makes exceptions, everyone else assumes the strategy is negotiable. How many times have I seen this!
I have of course had to make exceptions – sometimes the strategy that you’ve developed might not be gaining traction with users, the research and data points that seemed so true months ago don’t seem to be delivering. When financial circumstances necessitate a pivot then you’ll have to be brave and end of life your product or feature and adjust. Sometimes you’ll get it wrong – but being blind to external factors can also be as damaging as sticking to your strategic guns.
What This Looks Like in Practice
The leaders I’ve seen maintain momentum well tend to ask the same strategic question in most conversations. Not as a tick-box exercise, but as a genuine filter for whether something should happen. They also tend to kill projects more readily than other leaders, even when those projects are progressing fine, because they’ve decided those projects don’t matter enough.
They also tend to be more boring than you’d expect. They repeat themselves a lot. They bring the conversation back to the same priorities even when it’s tedious. They’re comfortable being the person who says “that’s not what we’re focused on” multiple times a day.
Some tips
- Visibility: Build a dashboard that can at a glance shine light on your strategic bets ‘We believe that by doing X we can reduce churn’
- Be boring: Repeat the business goals often. Bring everything back to them. If something isn’t quite working (e.g. growth in MAUs) then try something else. But keep the drum beating daily, weekly, monthly – this helps focus and shift other interruptions out the way.
- Say No. Publicly. The biggest threat to product strategy are not often bad ideas they are great ideas that have nothing to do with the current goals. Every person is a visionary product strategist, sucking up precious time when you could be cracking on with the stuff that really moves things forward. Don’t be afraid to say no!