What if there's no business strategy?

Product strategy is downstream of business strategy. Unfortunately, business-level clarity isn't always present. Most often this looks like a business "strategy" that is not actually a strategy at all, avoids hard tradeoffs, and provides little useful guidance to the product org.

Occasionally, for legitimate reasons like M&A, leadership is deliberately holding information back. Other times, they have a strategy, but it isn't working, or was never clearly communicated. And sometimes, sadly, they're just missing in action.

If the business strategy or objectives are missing or unclear, you are still on the hook for creating a product strategy—and you can. You'll have to fill the gap by making some educated guesses and assertions. The primary place you'll need to backfill is when crafting the value thesis at the core of the product strategy.

A business strategy is usually pursuing some mix of these objectives:

• Compounding value: deepen the core value of the product; strengthen defensibility and competitive advantage.
• Growth: grow revenue; grow market share; fulfill more demand in current markets; expand to new markets and/or use cases.
• Profit: raise prices; lower costs; improve lifetime value (LTV); get more out of existing resources.

With those in mind, dig up whatever directional artifacts you can access: memos, slide decks from all-hands meetings, quarterly reviews, board updates, and your notes from meetings with sales, marketing, or other GTM partners. Think about what you see going on in the business and in the market. Try to extrapolate longer-term intentions based on what you see: what do you think the business strategy is?

Take your view to one or two supportive stakeholders to verify you've read the business direction accurately. Are you on the right track, or can they help you course correct? Do they have information to add? Have zero ego about this.

The flip side of a missing strategy is a fake one: goals masquerading as strategy. "Grow 25% in enterprise" sounds strategic but skips the why and the how. Goals should measure progress within a strategy, not be a substitute for one.