How do you build a good product strategy? A rather classic, default formula is described above. You analyze the competition, you study the market, talk to some experts and persona some customers. Then build and test and role out and pivot and all that tiresome stuff. This is horrible.
Why is it horrible? Because it is the same as a high school essay. You get a prompt, reflect on your life, maybe read a couple books for inspiration, and then cobble together an essay with 5 paragraphs. You probably start writing a terrible paragraph in the beginning, get more succinct as you go along, then rewrite the intro to align with everything else. In the end you have a coherent product. The downside is that you wasted a lot of time reinventing the "why."
There is nothing wrong with this approach. But is standard across the industry because for two reasons - it tends to work - and of equal importance, almost anyone can do it. Most universities are not training students to be product managers. It is a generalist discipline. They are trained in business, or computer science, marketing, social science, or humanities. They become product managers because they see an opportunity to supply their broad knowledge with a specific process. They have some level of authority within an organization. I would argue that most people who are product managers do it because they love the idea of the job, and they might also like the product, but probably not as much as the job itself.
There are other ways to do this. One should indulge in divergent research. While the image below is amorphous to interpret, it captures the same details as the standard product management model (above) though with a focus on materiality. This element is key. Products are not ideas. They are things. Digital software is a product. Products are intentionally crafted materials that function as a point of change for the user(s). An insurance policy can be a product, because the specific language of that policy was carefully crafted to determine how a person's life will function in relation to a catastrophic event. The distinction between 20 paid physical therapy sessions or 30 can have a major impact on the person's future. A piece of software is no different - if you must spend time searching for features, are uncertain when you need the tool, or ignore half of the software components - the product might not be well designed for you.
The questions of product development go far beyond immediate usability. They are questions of market fit, acquisitions, and adaptation. How will demand for this product change over time, and who will have that demand? Under what conditions will the product be successful, and when will it not be successful. How much should it cost to build? How and where do people physically acquire it and at what price?
The answers are not easily distilled, nor should the answers be determined lightly. While a simple conversation might inspire a range of insights - everything should be treated as a hypothesis. But the constant focus on documents fails to capture the material future of the product, and the only way to reconcile the gap, is to immerse oneself into the environments, the populations, and the materials wherein the prospective product will reside.
So do the work. Immerse yourself. Make things physical. Quit waving your hands. Stop trying to talk to everyone and spend more time identifying the conversations that matter. Stop trying to be clever, and get personal, become a part of the problem you are hoping to solve. Do you have this problem in your life? Do you actively benefit from this product? If your answer is no, then you are probably the wrong person for the job, or you aren't doing your job right.
Product management that matters is a matter of ingress and egress. Like a good anthropologist, you need one foot in the world of the customer and one foot out. How do you know when you made it? Usually because you broke something "in the system" - you crossed a line of distinction, and are no longer an outsider in the eyes of the stakeholders. You are part of the problem. It is uncomfortable. You might be in jail. You might be injured. You might even just be bored, but now you it the line and it is time to pull back one step.
Do not wave your hands and apply a generic formula for generic people to generic customers. Embrace the magic that flows through the world, dig into the the problem, become the world's greatest expert on the problem from all points of view, and let the solution realize itself through you. Let it awaken.
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