David Pereira

How to Overcome the Top 5 Product Strategy Mistakes

Value Rebels

Virtual Identity

limango

Windeln

Evino

Product Coach, Keynote Speaker, Book Author

Often teams fall prey to common traps with product strategy. Let's uncover such traps and get you ready to overcome them

Clarity on what breaks product strategy

You will have real-world examples of product strategy and understand why they work well

Understanding of what a sound strategy looks like

You will learn how to assess how good your product strategy is

Product strategy assessment

A well-defined product strategy accelerates your career. It improves your odds of success. It inspires teams. In this highly interactive, case-based workshop, you'll learn six vital strategic frameworks, plus how to run a product strategy meeting as we simulate a modern-day Netflix Quarterly Product Strategy Meeting at the end of the session. THE CHALLENGES Today, product leaders are constantly challenged to act and think "more strategically." These tools frame their strategic thinking and accomplish work as metrics tied to each product strategy demonstrate. Another challenge is building alignment across an organization. Everyone in a company has a perspective on how a product can be better, even folks with no experience building products. These tools and frameworks enable product leaders to develop a common language and plan that resonates across the organization to build cross-functional alignment. Last, everyone within an organization has a point of view on how and where resources should be allocated. The simulated Quarterly Product Strategy Meeting enables students to participate in a meeting that will teach them to debate product strategy in open, more effective ways within their product organization and to allocate resources intelligently. WHAT YOU WILL LEARN You learn how to:1. Describe the positioning and "something bigger" of your product that helps to build a brand using language that appeals to your customers and is well-understood by your marketing partners.2. Craft a long-term product vision that provides clear direction. This vision also breaks down the plan into shorter, step-by-step "bite-size chews" that maintain flexibility as you encounter speedbumps and roadblocks.3. Define a succinct product strategy—a hypothesis on how you will move your key metrics—by developing hypotheses that will delight customers in hard-to-copy, margin-enhancing ways.4. Articulate metrics and tactics for each product strategy to effectively "align the wood behind the arrow."5. You'll learn to tease out how to prioritize Growth, Engagement, and Monetization, depending on the company's size and goals. You'll define a clear metric for each of these three factors.6. Communicate a quarterly plan using two roadmap formats: a "rolling four-quarter roadmap" and a "Now, Next, Later" approach.7. Debate 2-3 modern-day Netflix cases, demonstrating how these product strategy frameworks help to form a common language that enables better communication and more thoughtful debate. HOW THE COURSE WORKS The first session sets the table by articulating six product strategy frameworks illustrated through many examples and cases. The second session comprehensively applies the models, with applications to startups, B2B/enterprise companies, and consumer-focused companies. This course is very efficient. There are two 2.5-hour classes, and the last half-hour of each class is an optional Q&amp;A session. We'll open up the class fifteen minutes before the start time -- so you can ask questions and begin to get to know each other. Then, we'll review each framework with many juicy examples from Netflix's past and present. The session is sprinkled with many mini-cases where students are asked, "What would you do if you were the product leader at Netflix?" We'll use Slido to build engagement and draw all students into a fast-paced conversation. This is not a boring lecture. It's a lean-in experience, and you will be at the edge of your seat as you dive into the conversation—when you're up for it. At the end of the second session, we'll simulate a Netflix Quarterly Product Strategy meeting, allowing you to see how a world-class product organization thinks about and discusses product strategy. The two 2.5-hour sessions are a lot of fun. There will be plenty of "leave behind" materials. I will also provide pre-formatted Google Slides you can use to define your product strategy. AGENDA Cohort 4: April 1 and April 3 (9-11:30 am PT for both sessions)Cohort 5: October 28 and October 30 (9-11:30 am PT for both sessions) Pre-work- Executive summary of all strategy frameworks (reading)- Intro to Product Strategy video- Netflix strategy example + slides- Positioning and branding videos Session 1 (9:00-11:30 am PT)08:45 Welcome to join early to say "hello."09:00 Intro to Product Strategy09:10 GLEE product vision09:25 GEM prioritization09:50 DHM framework10:15 SMT lockup10:40 Roadmaps10:50 Conclusion11:00 Q&amp;A (optional)11:30 End Optional mid-course homework (B2B, startup, and B2C examples)Each product strategy example below includes a 10-minute video plus slides:- Stripe- Shopify- Square- Instagram- Spotify- Chegg (textbook rental startup, IPO 2013)- Pre-formatted Google Slides for you to build your strategy. Session 2: 9-11:30 am PT08:45 Available to say “hello” and do online polling to get to know you09:00 Intro09:05 Startup and B2B examples09:25 Netflix personalization swimlane09:50 Maven swimlane exercise10:20 Quarterly Product Strategy Meeting simulation10:50 Conclusion11:00 Q&amp;A (optional)11:30 End Post-workshop materialsMaven Product Strategy (startup example illustrated through both video and slides)

Become a "go-to" product leader as you learn to define a product strategy.

Course syllabus

You're a consumer or enterprise product leader, from entry-level to "Chief."

You're in a product management, project management, engineering, design, or data role, from APM to "Chief Product Officer."

You're a founder in a startup or Head of Product at any stage of a company.

Who is this course for

Apply proven tools, models, and frameworks to define a product strategy in a step-by-step way.

You'll define what your product or service is, the benefit you'll deliver to customers, along with the "personality" of your product and "brand promise."

Positioning

The GLE model (Get big, Lead, Expand) helps you outline steps for how your product will "dent the universe" in the long term.

Product Vision

You'll learn to outline product strategies using the DHM model to "Delight customers in Hard-to-copy, Margin-enhancing ways" to deliver both customer and shareholder value.

To build alignment across all company functions, you'll prioritize three factors—Growth, Engagement, and Monetization.

You'll align Strategies, Metrics, and Tactics. You'll identify proxy metrics for each product strategy and assign tactics to each.

You'll build a roadmap, demonstrating how your product strategies will come to life over time.

Rolling, Four-quarter Roadmap

We'll simulate a modern-day Quarterly Product Strategy Meeting, demonstrating how Netflix defines and debates product strategy on an ongoing basis.

Quarterly Product Strategy Meeting

I provide videos and slides illustrating the product strategy for multiple consumer and enterprise companies, including startups.

B2B, B2C & startup examples

Use the step-by-step approach I developed at Netflix to craft a product vision, align around strategy, and hold product teams accountable.

Gibson Biddle

Former VP/CPO  at both Netflix & Chegg

Cohort 4

Cohort 5

- Transitioning to a New Leadership Role: Sometimes, moving from being a senior manager to a strategic leader can feel like stepping into uncharted territory. This course shows you how to make that transition smoothly and effectively. - Thinking Big Picture: Strategic leaders need to think beyond the day-to-day tasks and see the bigger picture. If you've struggled with this, if you've heard someone say to you: "You need to be more strategic." This masterclass shows you have to be and act strategically! - Setting a Compelling Direction: Crafting an inspiring vision for your team and setting clear goals can be tough. In this course, we'll show you how to create a vision that excites your team and break down those goals into achievable steps. - Mastering Communication: Effective communication is essential, but dealing with tough conversations or getting your message across can be tricky. We'll help you build strong communication skills and handle difficult discussions with confidence. I will share with you the best tips I share with Uber, Cisco, HPE leaders I coach! - Leading Change and Innovation: Leading change and fostering innovation within your organization can be challenging. Our course will equip you with strategies to successfully drive change and create an innovative culture. - Delegation Made Easy: Delegating tasks while maintaining control can be a puzzle. We'll unravel that mystery by teaching you how to identify tasks to delegate, delegate effectively, and empower your team. By addressing these everyday leadership challenges, this masterclass will make your journey from senior manager to strategic leader more manageable and rewarding.

Overcome Strategic Leadership Challenges

8 sessions are cohort Zoom sessions 90 minutes each to allow you to learn with other leaders, build connections and insights. You'll also have pre- and post session action learning assignments!

Tuesdays

This will be the investment of time you make in action learning and other application opportunities at work.

Weekly projects

Course schedule

Managers who want to learn strategic leadership and how it is different from managing the day-to-day business

Senior Managers who want to understand how to get ready for their next career move and how to lead strategically now!

High potential individual contributors who want to learn strategic leadership skills

What you’ll get out of this course

Learn the 7 Top Skills of highly effective strategic leaders and how you can use them to anchor your strategic leadership development plan

The 7 Top Skills of Highly Effective Strategic Leaders

You'll meet leaders from several organizations who share the strategic leadership learning journey. You will learn through real life examples and challenges you or your program peers are facing, share insights and develop strategic leadership skills together.

Professional Peer Group and Network

Acquire the skills to think strategically, make informed decisions, and lead with a long-term vision!

Strategic Leadership Skills

Enhance your ability to communicate persuasively, handle tough conversations, and build stronger relationships.

Strategic Communications

Craft a compelling vision and set SMART goals that inspire your team and drive results

Clear Vision and Goals

Learn to lead organizational change and foster innovation, positioning yourself as a change agent!

Change Leadership

Master the art of delegation to free up your time for strategic thinking and develop an empowered team.Look at how to use the strategic leader planner to get ahead of the game and set yourself and your team up for success!

Strategic Delegation

Beat the 'not strategic enough' label. Our masterclass shows you how!

Ash Seddeek

Masterclass Facilitator and Strategic Leadership Communications Coach and Advisor

Q125

Cohort 8

The reality facing every senior product leader: shipping features isn't enough anymore. Your roadmap is packed, your team is executing, you've implemented AI enablement but revenue growth is stalling. The gap between building products and driving business is widening. I've seen this pattern repeat across fintech, healthcare, real estate, 4 marketplaces, social, mobile, web3 and AI. The result is that you end up building features that launch but are not enough or your sales/marketing teams don’t know how to position and sell, and your career gets stuck. Instead of business results there is finger pointing and stress. The most successful product leaders solve customer problems and move the business differently. After scaling products to $285M at Braintrust, owning 0-30% of IPO revenue at Nextdoor, and building risk reporting platforms at Blackrock (that 3 teams before failed at), I've developed a system to help senior product leaders: -Transform product roadmaps into revenue engines-Build GTM strategies that drive sales-Create alignment between product, sales, marketing, finance and exec-Turn technical capabilities into market advantages-Design market adoption accelerants-Get noticed by execs and advance their careers How You'll LearnPM to G(T)M strategies is a live, hands on intensive where you'll learn to combine product execution with business strategy. Learn proven GTM frameworks through real case studies. Immediately apply the learnings to your work in boutique peer cohorts which combine group coaching with the power of collective learning and ongoing community. Through my courses and coaching, I've helped product leaders make this shift, and advance the business. Let me show you how to THRIVE in the gap between shipping and impact and unlock your career growth. Each of the four hands on sessions combines frameworks, real world business cases, templates, AMA and AI enablement to help coach you today and build a system for growth going forward.

Make quality business decisions and elevate your career.


Tuesdays & Thursdays

2 hours of lecture, optional AMA and course work.

April 15, 17, 22, 24


2 projects each week to apply course learnings to your immediate work.

Growth-Stage PM You're trusted to ship features and lead projects, but you're hitting a ceiling in your career growth.

New Product Leader Your first management role is exciting, but no one taught you how to speak business and influence executives.

Product Director driving growth in mature markets: Transform your established product lines into new revenue streams.

You'll master proven frameworks to transform features into market opportunities and revenue. By the end of this module, you'll have a GTM strategy for your product, critiqued by peers and refined through my experience scaling and positioning products.

GTM Strategy Design


You’ll learn to build compelling business cases and revenue models that get executive buy-in through real case studies and frameworks. Then you'll create a financial strategy and experiments for your product, with feedback from leaders who've faced similar challenges.

Speak the Language of Finance

Develop skills to align executives, R&amp;D and GTM teams around a unified GTM vision. You'll build and present an executive GTM plan, practice board-level Q&amp;A with me, your peers and build your AI Board negotiation coach.

Executive Presence


Master launching products that drive immediate revenue impact through applicable templates and real-world case studies. Your final project combines your learnings into a complete launch framework, incorporating peer insights and my direct feedback.

Growth Execution Engine


Go-to-market, financial acumen, executive presence and influence  - master business skills that transform great PMs into business leaders.


Elena Luneva

CPO, GM, VP in multiple industries teaching PMs to master GTM and drive growth.

April GTM Aces

May GTM Masters

Most product teams struggle with constantly shifting priorities and cross-functional misalignment that derail roadmaps and frustrate everyone involved. Product strategy can take weeks to months to develop and get everyone to agree to, and it may no longer be relevant by the time you’re done. Finally, tracing your team’s hard work to business value can be difficult.&nbsp; We’ve experienced all these challenges many times, and seen where ineffective strategies end up looking like: ❌ Constantly shifting priorities, even after a roadmap has been presented and agreed upon.❌ Conflict between Sales, CX, Marketing, and Engineering teams, never able to agree on overarching priorities.❌ Failing to connect the product work to company goals and financial metrics After many years of facing these challenges at startups and scale-ups, we developed a repeatable 5-day sprint framework to quickly align your entire organization on a product strategy to guide your roadmap and decisions. Now, your teams can easily prioritize product decisions and build an aligned roadmap, knowing that the tough trade-offs have already been agreed on. As a leader, you can focus on the big picture instead of constantly putting out fires and resolving misalignment conflicts.&nbsp; WHAT YOU WILL GET: ✅ Master the 5-Day Strategy Sprint - Learn to facilitate a proven process that aligns your organization on strategic priorities in just one week.✅ Connect Product Work to Business Value - Apply our metrics-based approach to make strategic trade-offs that directly impact company goals.✅ Lead Alignment Workshops with Confidence - Practice facilitating the 16 exercises executives respect and respond to.✅ Walk Away with a Complete Toolkit - Get every template, script, timeline and workshop exercise needed to run your own sprint. This is an interactive course with 9 hours of live instruction. During our Zoom sessions, we’ll cover case studies, discuss your challenges, and practice facilitating several product strategy sprint exercises that you can use immediately.&nbsp; The course also includes:- Case studies&nbsp;- Real-life examples&nbsp;- Interactive exercises&nbsp;- Templates and scripts- Bonus: Office hours&nbsp; Plus, homework to put what you learn into practice.&nbsp; WHO WILL BENEFIT MOST FROM THIS COURSE: Product leaders and experienced Senior or Principal Product Managers looking to significantly impact their organization, drive change, and move from execution to strategic leadership.&nbsp; - You feel like your current product strategy either does not exist or is inadequate- You feel like you are spending too much of your time trying to align your leaders without avail- You feel like every person in your company has a different definition of a product strategy, and you want to change that- You want to transition from execution to strategic leadership- You are an ambitious, self-aware, and open-minded product leader- You have a significant sphere of influence in your org and want to increase it even further WHO THIS COURSE IS NOT FOR: - You are somewhat new to product management or have less than 5 years of experience- Your sphere of influence at the company is relatively narrow- You are not responsible for the strategic direction of your product area&nbsp;- someone else sets it for you- Your startup is still defining product-market fit&nbsp;- You are a product strategy expert&nbsp;

A compelling product strategy unites leadership and achieves business goals

Introductions, why 5-day sprint, breakout discussions, Q&amp;A.

Monday, May 12

These are live sessions where we'll dive into each sprint day, practicing facilitation, reviewing exercises, and discussing challenges.

Tuesdays, May 20, 27 & Thursday, May 22

Bonus office hours. Bring your questions, challenges, and ideas.

Thursday, May 29

Homework to put what you learn into practice.

Product Leaders responsible for strategic direction. Your title might be GPM, Head/Director or VP of Product, CPO.

Senior/Principal Product Managers looking to shape product strategy. You may be the only PM at your company.

Functional leaders who are driving Product in the absence of a PM leader. You could be a design or engineering leader.

We've been in the trenches many times and learned from many mistakes as IC PMs, PM leaders and Chief Product Officers for real companies (not just the FAANGs with unlimited resources). We're here to give you a practical plan rooted in both theory and real-world experience.

A repeatable one-week framework to achieve cross-functional alignment on product strategy 

 

Most product strategies don't connect outcomes to business goals because it is challenging. We’ve struggled with this so many times until we created a reliable time-tested approach for using business metrics and goals to make every tough strategic trade-off decision a no-brainer.

A unique method to create product strategy rooted in business metrics

Leading any workshop is hard on its own. It requires a lot of preparation on top of our daily work as product leaders. We’ve done this work for you and created a series of interactive Miro exercises that help you lead your cross-functional heads and execs to strategic alignment.

16 interactive exercises you can use immediately 

 

While most PMs practice facilitation at work often, leading a discussion as a product leader takes this skill a level up. We are creating an environment for you to use real-world examples to facilitate the exercises with course participants and instructors to help your practice.

Live opportunities to practice facilitating

 

Running a product strategy sprint requires templates, scripts, emails, timelines, and more, which are time-consuming to create. We’ve done the hard part for you and turned all the assets into a repeatable process so that you can walk away with tools you can use right away.

Every single artifact you need to run your own product strategy sprint

This is an excellent opportunity to position yourself as a strategic leader who drives organizational alignment, not just product execution.&nbsp;

Advance your career in a strategic direction

 

Apply a proven framework that transforms conflicting priorities into a cohesive product strategy your entire organization supports.

Vicky Irvin

Katia Suchkova

Chris Nicol

This spring cohort will be three weeks and contain multiple modules and five virtual events. 

Lightning Lessons

How to Overcome the Top 5 Product Strategy Mistakes