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Dino
- 1. Great Product Strategy (How do you know you have a strategy worth executing?) Dino Talic
- 2. About Me Experience Over 10 years in Product Management Work Head of Product at OpenAgent VP Product at hipages Product Manager at Freelancer Reach Out Linkedin: dinotalic
- 6. Why is it important for us Business Strategy Product Strategy Execution
- 7. In Product-Lead Organisations Product = Business Strategy Execution
- 8. Strategy Every company has one Few have a good one
- 9. A Lot of Businesses We want to be #1 in vertical X We’ll put the customer at the centre of everything we do The big initiative is [insert AI, data, etc] Vision Approach Plan
- 10. Why should it matter to you Business Success Team happiness, empowerment, productivity and engagement
- 11. How do you get to the holy grail of a great strategy?
- 13. ...and specific to your circumstances
- 14. ...but I’d like to share some of my key learnings
- 15. 3 Key Learnings Inputs Understand the Economics of Customer Problems A Helpful Framework
- 16. 1 Inputs
- 19. 1 Inputs Deep Understanding = Time Industry Competitors Products Business Models Suppliers Value Chain Trends Distribution Margins Partners
- 20. Market and Competitors *based on a sample of 150 LinkedIn accounts Average Industry Tenure of a PM in Sydney
- 21. Market and Competitors Average Industry Tenure of a PM in Sydney *based on a sample of 150 LinkedIn accounts 2.1 years
- 22. Market and Competitors When done well is like a cheat code for your team
- 23. Market and Competitors When done well is like a cheat code for your team ● Problems others are solving ● Which new ideas are actually working ● Business structure and charging models ● Partnerships ● Power Customers
- 24. Market and Competitors Time with Customer Time spent in Industry ≈
- 25. Market and Competitor Ensure you’re spending enough time outside of your business
- 26. Market and Competitor Ensure you’re spending enough time outside of your business Some short cuts ● Overseas companies ● Investors ● Power customers (B2B)
- 29. Customer Finding problems worth solving
- 30. Customer Finding problems worth solving (that are defensible)
- 31. OpenAgent
- 33. Homeseller Journey TL;DR High anxiety ● Inexperience ● Largest asset Lack of information High cost
- 34. Homeseller Journey TL;DR High anxiety ● Inexperience ● Largest asset Lack of information High cost Consideratio n Choose agent List Sell Settle Stress
- 35. Homeseller Journey TL;DR High anxiety ● Inexperience ● Largest asset Lack of information High cost Consideratio n Choose agent List Sell Settle Stress
- 36. Do you have problems worth solving?
- 37. Problem worth solving? $7 bn Property Sales
- 38. Problem worth solving? $7 bn Property Sales
- 39. Problem worth solving? $7 bn Property Sales Where do you have the highest chance of success? Create a defensible position
- 44. Problem Worth Solving High anxiety ● Inexperience ● Largest asset Lack of information High cost Consideratio n Choose agent List Sell Settle Stress
- 45. Break Down Further Prospecting Mailbox drops Email Newsletter Billboards Print advertising Local sponsorship Online marketing CRM Spreadsheets Paper brochures & preparation Phone negotiation CoreLogic & APM data Collect reviews Promotion and Lead Gen Prep for Sale Sale Admin Email enquiries Office walk-ins Cost Activity Paper contracts Open home mgmt & reporting
- 46. Break Down Further Prospecting Mailbox drops Email Newsletter Billboards Print advertising Local sponsorship Online marketing CRM Spreadsheets Paper brochures & preperation Phone negotiation CoreLogic & APM data Collect reviews Promotion and Lead Gen Prep for Sale Sale Admin Email enquiries Office walk-ins Cost Activity Paper contracts Open home mgmt & reporting Another big opportunity
- 48. Three Horizons of Growth Horizon 1 Horizon 2 Horizon 3 Keeping the Lights On Future Businesses Imagining the Future
- 49. Some Important Lessons Horizon 1 Horizon 2 Horizon 3
- 50. Extending the OA Example Horizon 1 Horizon 2 Horizon 3 Help vendors chose the right agent Help agents better service all vendors Freelance digital agents
- 51. The Most Common Problem Horizon 1 Horizon 2 Horizon 3 ❌
- 52. Freelancer.com Example Horizon 1 Horizon 2 Horizon 3 Financial products for freelancersFreelancer marketplace All Jobs (Local)
- 53. Freelancer.com Example Horizon 1 Horizon 2 Horizon 3 Financial products for freelancersFreelancer marketplace All Jobs (Local)
- 54. Funding Horizon 1 Horizon 2 Horizon 3 70 20 10
- 55. Funding != Time Horizon 1 Horizon 2 Horizon 3 70 20 10
- 56. To Finish Strategy is super hard
- 57. To Finish Strategy is super hard Three things that have helped me Inputs Economics of Customer Problems Solid Framework
- 58. Thank you
Editor's Notes
- Thanks Nick. Comment on his experience. Strategy is such a broad topic and a hard thing to talk about in 25 mins – but it’s so critical to Product and execution. I feel like if you organisations do a decent job of that it sets PMs up with a much better chance of success. [joke on breadth of topic] I ran this deck past a colleague of mine at work to get her feedback and she said you should have chosen the decline of the Roman empire. It would have made for a more compact subject matter.
- Include the but about my experience with scale ups and startups here for relevance
- [pre-amble] I want to start my talk on strategy by looking at the core Product skills. But I I feel like I need to start with a disclosure first. It’s a real privilege for me to stand up here and speak to so many of my colleagues in Product. The Product community in Sydney is not that big and I think a good chunk are in this room today. And rather than using my talk to just present some frameworks or examples from my work – I wanted to use it to talk to some observations and start a conversation and have a dialog with my peers on a topic that I feel doesn’t get enough air time in our industry – strategy. It’s an aspect of product that I think we're almost starting to lose. I’m not that old but I’m probably relatively old in Sydney Product terms. A lot of PMs I speak to or interview today are sort of becoming a hybrid of iteration managers and customer survey experts. And as an industry forum and in front of my colleagues I’d like to raise that as a discussion. Product Management can be defined in many different ways. But a common way to describe it is as the confluence of UX, Tech and Business, And these are the 3 key skills a PM should have.
- When I think about UX, Tech and general practice around execution - it’s evolved a lot since I started my career. HCD, Design sprints, agile development methodologies as well as technologies like AI, big data have evolved Product Management. A a great deal is also written about both of these and both continue to evolve.
- One aspect I feel that hasn’t kept pace and does not get discussed to the same extent is the Business side of Product. And what I’m seeing from PMs coming through now is that they are losing the business acumen key to Product. I’ve focused a lot of my talk on this topic as I think it’s a key component particularly in strategy. I also think that reams and reams have been written (by people way more qualified than me) on building agile teams, self-empowered teams at scale, HCD and customer centricity in companies and teams.
- Why is it important for us? Well, it’s the thing that drives execution. And whilst there is a feedback loop there - it’s critical that you set the right platform for the team to execute from. We in product have a great focus on process - and rightly so The best plan without execution is worthless However - optimising a team and organisation for execution without a great plan/company strategy is equally doomed
- Even more important for Tech and Product-lead organizations - I would argue the Business Strategy is almost indistinguishable from the Product strategy. And if you point the ship in the right direction at least – the chance of execution and getting to your destination is significantly increased. [show of hands here] Has anyone ever been given a strategic product initiative and you thought to yourself – geez I’m not sure this is a great idea? Has anyone ever been half way through a strategically really important project just to then be told to work on another really important strategic project and then same again?
- This is massively simplified but a lot of companies I see once you peel back all the layers the strategies are something not too far from this Vision – often expressed in more visionary terms like “Empower all Australians to control their financial wellbeing” Approach – [read] – Great Plan – is to invest in the next big thing Often than I’ve seen great Product teams set out on something that really needed more thinking and understanding from at the planning/strategic level
- It’s relevant to both PMs and Heads of Product. It doesn’t just drive business success but also company morale and culture. I would argue that a lot of times the symptoms we observe downstream with teams often stem from a poorly thought out strategy Particularly at medium-sized and growth stage companies Things like: Empowerment And particularly for individual PMs the ability to drive their plans and strategy Cohesion Being able to turn insights into action at an individual contributor level Reason is: leaders need unfiltered information so go to the low level Without conviction there is no desire to over-commit The strategy are a set of BAU tasks that won’t be a game changer for the
- Reams have been written on strategy and there are lots of great frameworks out there you can use. Like the lean canvas, Dan Olsen’s product market fit, etc Thiga for example - who are here today - put out a book on Agile PM - great book with lots of great frameworks and practical advice on building a prodct strategy. I want to share some tips on some specific topics Ithat I as a practitioner have learned through mistakes.
- Have the right inputs to your strategy Understand the Economics of Customer Problems A Good Framework to pull it all together and communicate within the orgasnisation
- Generally 3 key inputs to your strategy All critically and equally important.
- I’d like to start with Market and Competitors as I think reams have been written about how to do great Customer Research by people way more skilled in the field than me,
- The first thing to note Industries and and markets are complex. The fundamentals can be relatively simple to grasp – but to understand the nuances like trends, value chain and distribution is complex. I don’t want to go into what all the components are here but it’s critical that you’re an expert in your industry in order to product and drive good strategy. And this deep understanding requires time. It is something, looking back on my career, I’ve underestimated in terms of investment.
- With that in mind, I was curious about this question – what is the average industry tenure of a PM in Sydney I have a data person through Freelancer.com that I use for side-projects from time to time. In preparing this presentation I asked them to pull 150 profiles of PMs, Head of Product, CPO. He pulled 150 profiles from Linkedin and classified them. I looked at average time in industry not in the role – which is a little trickier as the LI industry classification is not the best. But I’m confident the result is fairly close to the truth. Any guesses as to what the average is?
- 2.1 years It might be in practice slightly longer when accounting for career breaks and side gigs A seasoned CEO in the renewables industry who is a mentor of mine would always tell me you need 10 years to understand an industry. I won’t speculate on the exact number and I won’t sound holier than thou -, for me it will be 2 years next month in my current role – which is not in the same industry as my previous role. But it’s something I’ve been reflecting on. Now, there is a lot to be said for breadth in experience of an individual and there is strength in that. What it needs to be balanced against is the need to deeply understand the industry and market you operate in - to be able to effectively manage product and lead. Everyone needs to make their own decision about how they want to structure their skills and career but I do think that is something to keep in mind as a Product practitioner whether to take your career in a deeper or broader direction. Or when you might need to bring that into the team or ensure it’s there The reason longer tenure in the industry is helpful...
- Deep understanding of your indusry and market is like a cheat code in product. Not just fundamental input for your Product strategy but you will be able to shortcut some things potentially in your execution. What is actually working What is not working What are some interesting ideas others are trying Partnerships Funding and exit opportunities
- Deep understanding of your indusry and market is like a cheat code in product. Not just fundemantal input for your Product strategy but you will be able to shortcut some things potentially in your execution. What is actually working What is not working What are some interesting ideas others are trying Partnerships Funding and exit opportunities Partnerships = you may actually not need to build a new idea to test it. You can potentially partner with another provider.
- I would argue most of us don’t do enough of it. I know I certainly underinvested in it. Time spend understanding the industry and industry dynamics should be almost as much as you spend understanding customers within it.
- To Finish a couple of final tips. Something we should be doing ongoing not just when we need to put the strategy together - then it’s too late Make it part of your work and a habit. As a Product Leader if you don’t do it - generally nobody else within your org (other than CEO) will.
- I know we’re all starved for time and most of our calendars these days are back to back, on top of family commitments and other life chores. But here are a couple of tips on how to short-circuit the knowledge gathering Oversas cmpanie – will generally freely share Investors are great as they are great mavens for info. Particularly great are investors who had a career in that industry Power customers – mostly applicable to B2B. But advanced customers have deep knowledge and good access to information as they are customers of many in the industry
- The second topic I’d like to talk abut are the Economics of Customer Problems
- This is looking at the customer needs and problems part of the equation in strategy. But from an economic lens. [A lot has been written by people way more capable than me on understanding customer needs.] Once we’ve got a deep understanding of the customer needs and pain points. The next question is
- And in particular Finding problems worth solving. Is it big enough to warrant the investment and will anyone pay for it.
- And ideally doing that in a way that is defensible. Can you pull it off and create sustained revenue stream.
- I’d like to take an example here from OpenAgent. OpenAgent’s vision is to make it easy to sell your home. How it does that today is through sophisticated data that informs customers on who the best agents are to sell their home. OpenAgent also helps guide a customer through this process.
- This is the typical homeseller journey.
- The Tl;DR of that is It’s a process of high anxiety driven by a few fctors Lack of experience with the process. The avg Australian sells every 12 years – so effectively we’re doing it for the first time each time It’s also for the vast majority their largest financial asset – which adds pressure to getting it rifght There is also often a lack of transparency (for example how much a home is worth, fees, etc) And an overall high cost to the transaction
- Looking at a very simplified journey of selling a home. There are 3 clear spikes of stress in the process. at the consideration stage (to sell or not and what next) Choosing an agent to sell with And then selling (accepting an offer)
- From a product strategy perspective these are then 3 potential opportunities to go after and create a better experience for customers. But which to focus on first?
- One critical thing to address at this point – before you throw yourself at solving the problem – is whether you have a problem worth solving
- First step. And everyone does this – so no news here – is to look at the overall market size Property sales in AU is a 7bn market with around 400k property transactions annually.
- Good we have a market to go after.
- The next question then is where do you have the highest chance of success And how to create a defensible position
- There are many ways to slice that question but one thing I like to do is to look at the revenue pools of the industry. This just basically means going deeper on market sizing. And the theme here generally is just to keep going deeper on the market to the next layer and next layer in terms of analysis. The 7bn market size and 400k in transactions, means an average home sale offers roughly 30K of revenue, and that breaks up into several sizeable verticals you could go after: Direct and Indirect Direct revenue is composed of Indirect
- (Indirect - not defensible without a strong core – so I’ll leave that out for simplicity here) The two largest revenue pools in the direct revenue pools are advertising and agent comms. So which one to go after? This has narrowed our problem in terms of size of opportunity. But can we succeed in it and and have a defensible position?
- Again many ways to do this. One obvious place to start is to look at industry fragmentation. A&M – 2 players Domain and Realestate.com.au Agent – Many. 30k agents and around 7k agencies
- Large revenue pool Highly fragmented Problem worth solving Potential;ly Defensible START HERE
- If I can help customers selling a property find the right agent and reduce stress in that journey there is a great product opportunity. That’s a super simple example. But it illustrates the work needed after customer journey mapping to get to a good Product strategy.
- You can in fact break the problem down even further and look and the cost and activity that composes the Agent Commissions revenue pool. I don’t want to go over this in detail – as it’s not the point but I want to show how you can always go one layer lower and get valuable insights. So for example, you can see that actually close to half the cost is in promotion and lead gen for their business rather than servicing buyer and sellers and selling homes. And there is a raft of complex activity that underpins it.
- Looking at that you might say that’s another big opportunity. A very high cost to agents. Lots of disparate activity and tools being used.
- So far we’ve looked at how to get the right inputs into your strategy and how to find problems worth solving. The next question is how do you pull that all together into a singular strategy that can easily be communicated. , I’d like to share with you a framework that I’ve found really helpful in thinking about strategy and communicating to teams.
- [Has everyone heard of it? Hopefully everyone has.] Developed by McKinsey a couple of decades ago. And it categorises investments across 3 horizons: Core Future businesses Disruptive or break-out innovation I’ve assumed that you’re all familiar with it so I won’t describe the theory behind it – suffice to say it’s just a google search away. This is a fantastic framework and I recommend you use it if your organisation isn’t already. I find this is a great way to think about your overall Product Strategy and it maps nicely to how you aim to solve customer problems. It also should map nicely to your overall business strategy. So it says – here is how we’re looking to further strengthen and expand our core business How we will take our core competincies and use those better solve customer problems and create entirely new business And finally this is how we’re re-imagining the future of the industry and the customer experience. I want to share some learnings and subtelties in using this framework and how to increase your chance of success,
- The first mistake I made and lesson I learned – and something Googling this framework won’t tell you is that: Activity in one horizon must be leveraged to support the success activity in the next horizon. H2 and H3 activities are inherently highly risky. They can also be the first to be starved of resources. To give them the best chance of success it’s important to leverage activity across horizons. This means that you give them an advantage by leveraging not just core competencies – but also Leverage audience and capability from the previous horizon.
- Best agents are empowered to work for themselves, with the best tech at a fraction of the cost to the customer Leverage audience and capability
- Most common problem I see actually is not having a viable horizon 2 Which means that they’re not successful to grow beyond their core. Ths misconception here I think is that there is not enough investment from these business in horizon 3 or disruptive ideas. It’s generally that they don’t successfully branch outside their core and create sufficient distribution and audience to give their disruptive ideas a shot at success.
- Example: Freelancer I can use this as an example as this was our strategy at one point and I had a hand helping shape it. [Freelancer overview] Core is marketplace where you can outsource work Then we thought there is an opportunity to provide Fin product to Freelancers. Most Freelancers are from developing countries and simply products like a bank account was something most didn’t have. So we thought they’re earning here we can provide that for them. And then why not do all jobs. We envisioned a future where customers could use Freelancer to get any kind of work done – from getting a website built to somebody walking your dog. Local jobs.
- Example: Freelancer Activity in one horizon must be leveraged to support activity in the next horizon. 1 -> 2: Leverage audience and extend capability. Audience was there but capability not 2 -> 3: Horizon 2 does not accelerate to H3. Audience not there. Did not have an audience of freelancers in developed countries. Otherwise there is a high risk of failure.
- The rough rule of thumb around investment across the different horizons is 70/20/10 This depends on the circumstances of your business – start up vs mature and industry trends [talk a bit here]. But as a rough rule of thumb it’s probably about right.
- What I think the misconception sometimes is how much time is spent in there. Leaders across the business but especially Product leaders should be spending a much higher proportion of time in H2 and H3. This is because these are the riskiest activities and need the most nurture from leadership – both in terms of customer and market expertise but also just to ensure they don’t get starved of funding.
- Strategy is super hard. It’s harder than execution I would argue - and such a critical part of it. Whilst I’m a big proponent of the test and iterate approach - a great strategy will help you get set up for success early.