EMPOWERED

CHAPTER 37Creating a Compelling Vision

So, what makes a strong and compelling product vision?

Customer‐Centric

The product vision is one of our primary tools for keeping the organization truly focused on what the customer cares about.

Realize that we already have company objectives—typically describing how we want to grow the business and/or reduce operating costs—a company dashboard that shows us the various indicators of the health of the business, and team objectives that tell each product team what company or customer problems we need to solve.

So we generally know how our work is intended to benefit our company, but we also know that none of this will likely occur if we don't solve problems for the customer.

While we need to understand the impact on our company, we need to never forget that all of the benefits derive from providing real value to our customers.

I can't even begin to count the number of failed products I've seen that would have provided real benefits to the company, if only the product had managed to be valuable to actual customers.

When we tell the story of the product vision, we do so from the perspective of our users and customers. The idea is to demonstrate how their lives will improve in some meaningful way.

When I work with a company on their product vision, one of the very first things I do is find a very strong product designer to collaborate with. She may be a senior product designer, or she may be the leader of the design organization. Or if ...