
Product Strategy Means Saying No - ruswick
http://insideintercom.io/product-strategy-means-saying-no/
======
beat
Reminds me of something I learned from doing art. I've often said, "People
think I'm a great photographer. Really, I'm a great editor." I only allow the
world to see 2-3% of my output. Working with less experienced subjects, they'd
often want several versions of the same basic shot, because I took several
good ones. Me, I only want the _best_ version to see the light of day.

~~~
seanconaty
It seems that people are afraid to "throw away" work, which means they hold on
to things they've built (even when they shouldn't) just because they've
invested time in them.

But the throwing-away of work is crucial to building something lasting,
similar to editing the photos you show to the world. At the very minimum you
gain a better understanding of the problem. The thing you keep probably
wouldn't be as good without having done the throw-away work.

This also kinda reminds me of the Picasso Principle [1]:

    
    
        The famous Pablo Picasso was at a party. A woman
        recognized him and approached the Master. She asked,
        “Will you create a sketch for me?”  Picasso agreed,
        and, as he pulled out his sketchpad, asked her for a
        subject.  “A bird in a tree will do,” she responded.
        So Picasso spent about a five minutes doing what
        Picasso does on the sketchpad. Finished, he ripped the
        sketch off the pad, handed it to the woman and said,
        “That will be $10,000.”  The woman was floored. “Ten
        thousand dollars! Why, it only took you five minutes to
        draw that sketch!”  To which, Picasso replied, “No,
        madam. That sketch took me a lifetime.”
    

1\.
[http://www.ideasicle.com/Ideasicle_Site/Blog_%26_Podcast/Ent...](http://www.ideasicle.com/Ideasicle_Site/Blog_%26_Podcast/Entries/2010/10/4_The_Picasso_PrincipleAnd_The_Value_Of_Genius.html)

~~~
gohrt
Picasso was famous for bartering sketches:

[http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100916104440AA...](http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100916104440AAByWVJ)

------
adammil
You'd better maximize your listening skills before hurrying to sharpen your
'saying No' skills. Half the time I've heard people say "our problem is we
can't say No", it was simply a rescue blanket for their pride because they
couldn't/wouldn't face the real problem.

------
tosh
I like to think about products as stories. Some things fit into a certain
story and some don't. Some stories work well for some audiences and don't for
others.

You can imagine and tell any story (build any product) you want. The art is
rather to build a great story and often leaving things out even if they sound
like a good idea makes the story way better.

Here are great insights about how Pixar creates great stories:
[http://www.prdaily.com/Main/Articles/Pixars_22_rules_of_stor...](http://www.prdaily.com/Main/Articles/Pixars_22_rules_of_storytelling_14473.aspx)

Obviously not directly applicable to Product Management but I'm pretty certain
that being a great story teller is one of the key skills for Product
Management.

~~~
tosh
e.g.: I love this hack:

"When you're stuck, make a list of what wouldn't happen next. Lots of times
the material to get you unstuck will show up."

~~~
haraball
Sounds similar to the McDonald's theory:

"I use a trick with co-workers when we’re trying to decide where to eat for
lunch and no one has any ideas. I recommend McDonald’s.

An interesting thing happens. Everyone unanimously agrees that we can’t
possibly go to McDonald’s, and better lunch suggestions emerge. Magic!"

from: [https://medium.com/what-i-learned-
building/9216e1c9da7d](https://medium.com/what-i-learned-
building/9216e1c9da7d)

------
wasd
I think this is great but as a person who has never lead product, when is it
time to say yes?

~~~
mijustin
Great question.

For our team, _we say yes to whatever solves the biggest pain, for most of our
users_.

We discover this by reaching out to customers, and doing a lot of listening.
We're trying to answer two questions:

1) What is your biggest pain in your daily work?

2) What is your biggest pain in our software?

#1 usually leads to new features.

#2 usually leads to revisions of what we have already.

~~~
jkaljundi
The question here is how many of the potential customers you've already
reached? How do you define the target group? How do you limit it, especially
in very early stages?

At first, startup has 0 customers. Apple has a bit more. Both define customers
differently.

~~~
mijustin
For new products, we try to validate the idea with at least 10 people that are
wiling to pay. We start with a narrow niche (as narrow as we can make it).

~~~
skarmklart
Can I interview you for my book?

info@howtofindsaasideas.com

------
jkaljundi
Reading this, as I prepare my list for tomorrow's product management meeting,
having to decide our product's next ~6 months development priorities. Around
100 feature requests and our team's ideas we have to order, of which may be up
to 5 major ones and/or 20-30 small ones can be actually developed. An easy
task? Definitely not.

So it's a good question, when is it time to say yes?

It definitely depends on the product's stage and having reached or not reached
a good product/market fit. There's also the question, have you already
discovered a local maxima or is it a global one? And there's a mix of product
owner's gut feeling and long-term vision vs proved market feedback.

------
tzury
Off topic? Not sure.

This post brought into my attention Intercom[1], which seems like a great
product, which perhaps was and is still built with that "The Art of Saying No"
philosophy, and which can help you communicate with your users and say yes or
no to their requests.

[1] [https://www.intercom.io/](https://www.intercom.io/)

------
ckluis
Simplistically on target. Well written & good visuals. Agreeing with @wasd
that it feels like half the discussion.

------
coenhyde
It is important to view your product from a holistic/macro perspective. With
all the various metric tracking available it's easy to derail your product's
focus by optimizing features rather than the product.

------
jami
So much wisdom. I don't know what the author does for a living, but I hope if
it's product management, he get the piles of cash for it he very clearly
deserves.

------
gz5
Terrific post.

"Yes" to anything not absolutely critical also carries a below-the-sea-part-
of-the-glacier opportunity cost to focus on the most compelling part of your
offer.

------
mrgreenfur
Product posts are always fun here. This "no" strategy is awesome, but only
works if you've got support from the C suite. If not, you have sales goals and
whoever runs sales will always convince people that they can get more sales
with "feature X", which is of course almost always just deflecting
responsibility (and is sometimes true for large features that open up new
markets).

------
Beckmania
Fantastic post! The iceberg analogy is one I have used for myself and with my
teams many times - the downstream complexities are unpredictable and often
large. A great post on this topic by Kris Gale, VP at Yammer:
[http://insideintercom.io/product-strategy-means-saying-
no/](http://insideintercom.io/product-strategy-means-saying-no/)

------
krmmalik
This was a fantastic post, and though i havent implemented the service
personally i _have_ used it and the discipline shows.

very insightful article.

------
keithpeter
Well presented work.

If the product in question is an application or Web service with well defined
purpose/workflow, then I agree.

If the product is something like an _operating system_ then I disagree.
Visualise different users needs as a series of overlapping circles in a Venn
diagram. OPs approach would result in truncating the Venn diagram at the
intersection, thus satisfying nobody.

Am I wrong? How?

------
rwallace
That very much depends. Are you saying no because the requested feature
doesn't match _your vision_ , or because it doesn't match _what the user
needs_?

If it's the latter, great! You're on track to a first-rate product.

But most designers make the mistake of going with the former. That's why most
products are second-rate.

~~~
byamit
If a feature request doesn't align with the product's vision, it's perfectly
fine saying no. If the vision itself is flawed, then the product is not likely
to succeed.

~~~
rwallace
Every vision is flawed, because we are fallible. The question is what we do
about that. Do we keep the product nailed to the flawed vision until the last
user has gone elsewhere, or do we use feedback from reality, from users
telling us what they need, to improve the vision?

------
jrochkind1
A related essay recently posted on HN too (not sure how to find the HN
comments thread...)

[http://firstround.com/article/The-one-cost-engineers-and-
pro...](http://firstround.com/article/The-one-cost-engineers-and-product-
managers-dont-consider#)

------
dpolaske
Excellent post! And great example of how to say no at the end.

------
darrellsilver
The best part of this post is definitely "candi_awesome1988@yahoo.co.uk" from
"BUT MY COUSIN’S NEIGHBOUR SAID…"

------
worksaf
#Accurate #Description of the #Industry

#Great#Job

#Thanks #Team

------
dakimov
Another repetition of that commonplace. If you're stupid and untalented, it
won't help you, if you're smart and talented you do not need those generalisms
and their points are not important to you.

