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“You are great at execution, the team loves you, but you need to be more strategic”
Hearing this feedback from your direct manager or your skip manager can be very confusing.
And for highly capable product people who consistently get things done, this theme of “you need to be more strategic” is extremely common. It is perhaps the most common feedback given to otherwise-competent PMs at some point in their career.
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It starts showing up after you’ve rapidly ascended your company’s career ladder up to Sr. PM or Group PM. And once it starts showing up, it just will not go away. That is, until you fix it.
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But here’s the trouble: it is incredibly confusing to know how to act on this feedback. As a further complication, while many managers / skip levels are happy to deliver this feedback, most of them either do not have the expertise or the time to create more clarity on how the employee should act on this feedback.
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So let’s solve that.
First, if you receive the “you need to be more strategic” feedback, it doesn’t automatically mean that you should be looking to take a product strategy course or read a product strategy book.
Product strategy and being strategic are not always the same thing.
In practice, not all “you need to be more strategic” feedback is the same.
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There are 3 distinct categories of this feedback:
1) More Product Thinking: You need to do more Product Thinking and less Project Thinking (see the image below if you’re curious about the differences between Product Thinking and Project Thinking)
2) New Opportunity Creation: You need to spend more time on creating new opportunities and the next big new business for your org & company (instead of being mainly focused on executing on and optimizing the current cash cow)
3) Actual Product Strategy: You need to clarify the vision and product strategy for your product (and make sure that the right people at the right levels in the right functions understand this vision & strategy, and are aligned to execute on it across the company)
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#1 is usually the case for Sr. PMs / GPMs when they want to get to Director level.
#2 is usually the case for Director level folks who need to demonstrate impact above and beyond what would organically happen anyway.
#3 is usually the case for GPM / Director / VP level folks who are very good Operators, but haven’t yet found the time or built the skills to clarify a real product vision and strategy and get the broader org aligned towards it.
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So if in the next perf review season you get the “you need to be more strategic” feedback, I suggest you use this framework to get more clarity from your manager on what you actually need to do to respond to their feedback.
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