Vision vs. Strategy: Aiming & Deciding on the Future

Vision and strategy are potent ways to lead.

Both are future-oriented practices that take foresight and planning to get right. Both vision and strategy attempt to make some sense of the future under conditions of uncertainty.

Unfortunately, many product people equate vision with strategy, but that’s a mistake.

So before you take the first shot, clarify the differences between vision and strategy because you will need both to take your product team into the future.

Vision and Strategy Defined:

Vision tells you where you want to be. It is a goal-setting and visioning activity and describes a future state. But contrast that with strategy. Strategy is how you get there. Strategy is a problem-solving activity in nature, and it outlines a set of choices.

Both are future-oriented terms, but they do do different things.

[image from Vision vs. Strategy: Setting Goals & Reaching Them on YouTube by Jeff Humble]

Where you are versus where you want to be. It’s hard to know what the future looks like. That’s what a vision helps with.

It’s a guess at that future state; it tells us where we will be at some point in the future. The strategy is how we get there. That’s how we achieve that in the state that the vision outlines.

While it might be tempting to focus on the differences, you need both.

A product vision is a fundamental element of a product strategy because every strategy needs a goal. A product strategy is critical to providing a path to reach your product vision, because visions don’t give you the “how to get there,” only the “where you want to be.”

[image from Vision vs. Strategy: Setting Goals & Reaching Them on YouTube by Jeff Humble]

Vision without strategy is just a dream; strategy without vision is a path to nowhere. Together, they can be powerful theories for achieving long-term business goals.

Product Vision & Product Strategy Example

[image from Vision vs. Strategy: Setting Goals & Reaching Them on YouTube by Jeff Humble]

Let’s look at an example so we can get super sharp on the differences between vision and strategy.

So, let’s say you’re a product manager who is being pulled by the sales and customer service teams. Sales will be bugging you to come up with fancy new features to make them more commissions while customer service will want you to fix what you have already released, rather than come up with anything new.

If you’ve ever been pulled in multiple directions like this, you know how frustrating it can be. If you have a vision, you can ensure you’re going in a product team direction, not just a sales or customer service direction.

So, let’s create a design vision for this design team. The product vision here is that our users are completely self-serve, meaning they can fix their issues without customer service’s help. Since we’re getting drowned in requests, let’s move towards a future where all our customers can handle their problems alone.

The team loves the vision. That’s where they want to be. That’s your future desired state. But how are you supposed to reach that future state? Without a strategy, it’s not clear.

Let’s take our design vision. It’s going to be our starting point for a design strategy. But we need to answer how. How do we make our users completely self-serve? That’s what a strategy should answer.

So, after researching and figuring out the best way to make our users self-serve, we come to this. We’re going to prioritize automation. That way, once we fix a problem, we won’t have to worry about it again.

[image from Vision vs. Strategy: Setting Goals & Reaching Them on YouTube by Jeff Humble]

At least, that’s the hope. This product strategy is a great decision-making framework for the product team. It helps them focus and make decisions. As soon as they develop a strategy, the product team starts thinking of things they can do.

And it’s a strategic set of choices. So, we’re prioritizing automation only, nothing else.

That leads them to prioritize automation features over any other new feature. It inspires them to redesign user flows as infinite loops and invest in automation tools.

Of course, the product strategy is still unproven. You must go through these tactics before knowing if it’s working. Hopefully, you will see you get closer to that self-serve vision.

[image from Vision vs. Strategy: Setting Goals & Reaching Them on YouTube by Jeff Humble]

As you can see, vision and strategy can be powerful all on their own, but when they work together, magical things start to happen.

Hire Jeff to help with your product strategy or vision

Want to create a product strategy or product vision for your company?

Book a consultation call with me and let me facilitate you through the process of designing a strategy from scratch.

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