Simon Joliveau Breney

Some of the questions I repeatedly ask:

• Can we re-frame this in terms of the customer’s problem?

• What’s the soonest we could get this done?

• What would you need to get this done tomorrow instead of next week?

• What would we need to do to get twice as many customers? Ten times as many customers?

• How does this relate to our goal? Is this the most

Because planning forces you to understand the landscape. This background knowledge will help you consider your options when (not if) things don’t to plan.

The typical time horizon for a product team’s north star, or long-term vision, is three to four years out. Usually it’s a document describing like what the world will look like and what the user experience should be like and what’s different from today.

Once you’ve set goals, you need to reinforce them everywhere. Constantly restate the goal and how it maps to your vision and strategy. Ask how every initiative contributes. The first order effect is to make sure your team is working on the most important things. But the second order effect is to ensure your team is applying the goal to the thousand

Without question, technology can increase our capabilities. But there is much that technology cannot do: deal with the unpredictable, manage uncertainty, construct a soaring building, perform a lifesaving operation. In many ways, technology has complicated these matters. It has added yet another element of complexity to the systems we depend on and