Executive Vice President, Chief Technology and Product Officer, N-able Inc.
When transforming product strategies, product visions and direction, it’s critical to communicate both internally and externally about where your organization is going. This includes the future state you’re looking to achieve and the benefits that this future state is expected to bring to all stakeholders. One of the trickier parts of this communication pattern is creating enough buy-in toward the future while also providing proof points that you’re operating in a way that will ultimately deliver value.
To be successful, I recommend being upfront and transparent about the product journey that you’re describing. Using the framework of a product journey, you set the expectation that this isn’t going to happen all at once but is something you’ll develop as time progresses.
I recently used this journey metaphor to describe a product vision. I framed this journey as milestones, including the distant, intermediate and immediate horizons. By framing each of these horizons, you can create a “journey plan.” Planning is always important, but having an individual plan for each of the three horizons helps identify gaps you may encounter. It’s often been said that those who don’t plan, fail. Creating a plan for all three horizons—even if it may change—also helps guide transitions between those horizons.
In any journey, it’s important to understand the destination. What’s the objective? It should be the farthest milestone—known as the distant horizon. Gaining clarity and alignment on the future end state helps everyone get on board. Understanding the distant horizon helps you prepare for the entire journey.
This preparation is important, both internally and externally. Internally, the preparation should align the resources and change management exercises with the vision that you’re putting forth. Understanding what the organization can accomplish, the points of resistance and the assets the organization has that lead toward this vision are critical. Externally, preparing external stakeholders for the vision helps them understand upcoming changes and how they’ll be affected. What changes will they need to make? Does this vision align with their destination?
Once your distant horizon is defined, it’s equally important to plan the intermediate horizon. The intermediate horizon is best defined as a set of milestone descriptions. What do you expect to happen and in what order? Time can be a factor, but because it’s a journey, you need to expect the unexpected. Creating milestones for the journey gives a set of markers of accomplishments that can be tackled one after the other. There could be as many as seven to 10 milestones defined, although best practice would be to define no more than five. Too many milestones will create an artificially long and arduous journey. If you can collapse them to five or fewer milestones, even if they take a little longer, it will allow for a more reasonable and presentable plan to be communicated and measured.
The immediate horizon details the near-term execution plans. These will be critically important to both internal and external stakeholders as you look to show progress on the journey. You’ll need strategies to execute the first set of milestones with complete plans. Internally, these plans need to be understood so the organization knows how to work, how to accomplish the first milestones and what the initial definition of success looks like. Externally, sharing these plans for execution on the first milestones shows external stakeholders exactly what the first steps will look like in this journey and when to expect them. They outline the deliverables and, more importantly, the proof points that the journey is underway. Providing confidence during the early part of the journey is critical for all stakeholders.
When using the horizon construct to describe a product journey, here’s how to avoid common mistakes:
• Don’t try to plan the entire journey at one time. Any multi-year product vision and the strategy to accomplish it will evolve. Market conditions will change, which means there will be learning along the way. You don’t need to plot out the exact course.
• Don’t become trapped by deadlines. In any journey, there are unexpected travails. You can’t plan for them, but you must be flexible enough to negotiate them. If your vision is correct, know that there will be obstacles that you need to overcome.
• Expect the milestones to change along the way. Parts of the path might become closed off and new opportunities could become available.
• Don’t forget to communicate the status regularly both internally and externally. Communicating where you are on the journey, the milestones you’ve accomplished and the changes that have been made ensures stakeholders aren’t left behind.
Any product or strategic vision needs a communication framework for external and internal stakeholders. By using the journey framework and providing information along the distant, intermediate and immediate horizons, you can effectively set up the vision for success. The journey concept provides the communicator with a metaphor that’s relatable to the audience. This storytelling framework allows for a personal narrative to engage with as you bring your stakeholders along with your plan.
Forbes Technology Council is an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs and technology executives. Do I qualify?
