An operator’s guide to product strategy | Chandra Janakiraman (CPO at VRChat, ex-Meta, Headspace, Zynga)
Chandra Janakraman, CPO & EVP at VRChat (ex-Meta, Headspace, Zynga, Amazon), shares his operator's guide to product strategy. He outlines a 5-stage, 8-12 week "small s" process for problem-focused strategy and a "big S" approach for aspirational, long-term visions, emphasizing alignment and execution.
Deep Dive Analysis
14 Topic Outline
Introduction to Chandra's Passion for Product Strategy
Defining Product Strategy and Its Importance
Overview of the Five-Phase Small S Strategy Process
Phase 1: The Preparation Phase for Strategy Development
Phase 2: The Strategy Sprint for Decision Making
Phase 3: The Design Sprint for Illustrative Concepts
Phase 4: Document Writing for the Strategy Playbook
Phase 5: Rolling Out and Aligning on Your Strategy
Clarifying Resourcing and Roadmapping in Strategy
Strategy Lessons from Zynga: Clarity and Reinforcement
Strategy Lessons from Meta: Testing Strategy with Execution
Understanding and Implementing Big S Strategy
The Role of AI in Strategy Formulation
Final Thoughts on Strategy Process and Personal Growth
6 Key Concepts
Product Strategy (Small S)
This type of strategy sits between a company's mission/vision and its product plan/roadmap. It focuses on solving present problems, forces choices to deploy scarce resources for maximum impact, and typically operates on an 18-24 month (two-year) horizon.
Resonance (in Strategy)
Borrowed from physics, this analogy describes selecting the 'frequency' (strategy) that, when applied to a product, causes a disproportionate increase in its 'amplitude' (impact) in the market. It signifies finding the perfect fit between product and market to achieve tremendous impact.
Strategic Pillars
These are a handful of key focus areas (ideally three) that hold up the entire product strategy. They are derived from clustering identified problems into opportunities and then prioritizing these opportunities based on specific criteria.
Winning Aspiration
A creative exercise where the team imagines the future success of the strategy, often framed as a newspaper headline two years from now. It aims to define what progress on the strategic pillars looks like and what impact it has on the world.
Big S Strategy
This is an aspirational, future-focused strategy that looks 5-10 years out. It's often led by design and user research teams, involves generating distinct future scenarios, and uses 'concept cars' or prototypes to explore and de-risk big ideas before pushing winning components to live product testing.
Mock Strategies (AI-generated)
These are strategy suggestions generated by AI tools. While often surprisingly good and well-informed, they tend to be comprehensive and extensive, requiring human judgment to down-select and focus on the most critical areas for investment, as AI often lacks the context-specific digital judgment.
7 Questions Answered
Product strategy sits between a company's mission/vision and its product plan/roadmap, forcing choices to deploy scarce resources for maximum impact, ideally including focus areas (strategic pillars), non-focus areas, and the 'why' behind these choices.
The 'small S' product strategy development process typically takes about 8 to 12 weeks, with a recommended payback period of leveraging the strategy for a couple of years.
A 'strategy working group' consisting of product, engineering, design, and data (at a minimum) should collaboratively create the strategy, with input from leadership interviews and user observations.
A product strategy ideally includes a handful of strategic pillars (focus areas), explicitly states areas that are not the focus, and provides the 'why' for both the focus and non-focus areas.
'Small S' strategy is problem-focused, present-forward, and operates on a 2-year horizon, typically led by product managers. 'Big S' strategy is aspirational, future-backward, looks 5-10 years out, and is often led by design and UXR teams.
AI can support the preparation phase through competitive and trend analysis, and by generating 'mock strategies' that provide surprisingly good but comprehensive starting points, requiring human judgment for focus and down-selection.
Ultimately, any strategy is only as good as the results it can produce, meaning it must be tested with execution, and teams need the intellectual honesty and humility to pivot from what isn't working and double down on what is.
20 Actionable Insights
1. Define Product Strategy Clearly
Understand product strategy as the bridge between mission/vision and the product plan, forcing choices to deploy scarce resources for maximum impact. It should include 3-5 focus areas (strategic pillars), explicitly non-focus areas, and the “why” behind these choices.
2. Commit to 8-12 Week Strategy
Allocate 8 to 12 weeks for developing a “small s” product strategy, which typically focuses on solving present problems with a two-year horizon. This investment is justified by the strategy’s two-year leverage and helps manage expectations.
3. Assemble Cross-Functional Strategy Team
Kick off strategy development by forming a small, dedicated “strategy working group” comprising engineering, product, design, and data leads. This group will collaboratively create the strategy document, fostering shared ownership and alignment.
4. Gather Comprehensive Preparatory Data
During the preparation phase, collect and synthesize behavioral insights, user research, competitive analysis, adjacent roadmaps, and user observations into a single “comprehensive preparation readout” deck. This provides a shared understanding of the current state and informs strategic choices.
5. Interview Leaders for Strategic Input
Engage senior leaders early by conducting one-on-one interviews to understand their vision of success, failure, key metrics, guiding principles, and “pet ideas” for the product. This proactive engagement ensures buy-in and avoids late-stage misalignment.
6. Run a Focused Strategy Sprint
Dedicate a 3-5 day sprint, starting with a share-out of all preparatory data, followed by problem generation, clustering into 10-15 problem clusters, and then reframing them as opportunities. This intense period culminates in defining strategic pillars.
7. Prioritize Strategic Pillars Rigorously
Down-select to ideally three strategic pillars by ranking opportunity areas based on expected impact, certainty of impact, clarity of levers (how to solve), and whether the solutions are unique/differentiated to your team/company. This ensures focused investment.
8. Develop a Winning Aspiration
Use the “newspaper headline approach” to collaboratively imagine what success looks like in two years, generating a simple, plain-speak headline that captures the ultimate impact. This winning aspiration provides a clear, inspiring long-term goal for the strategy.
9. Generate Illustrative Design Concepts
Conduct a design sprint to create illustrative concepts and mocks that bring the strategic pillars to life, rather than focusing on feature-ready designs. These visuals help stakeholders understand and “latch on to” the strategy more effectively.
10. Author a Clear Strategy Document
Task the PM with writing a concise (3-4 pages plus appendix) strategy document that weaves together insights, strategic pillars (with “why” and concepts), and the winning aspiration into a cohesive story. Avoid including a detailed roadmap in the main document.
11. Implement a Phased Strategy Rollout
Roll out the strategy by first securing one-on-one alignment with key “gatekeepers,” then sharing with broader stakeholders, and finally conducting small group “roadshows” to land the strategy. The goal is to clarify and defend the core pillars, not to seek major changes.
12. Test Strategy with Execution
Recognize that strategy has no inherent business value until it is tested through execution and generates business impact. Maintain intellectual honesty and courage to pivot away from parts that aren’t working and double down on those that are.
13. Focus on Few Differentiated Bets
Emphasize the power of focus by concentrating on a small number (ideally three) of strategic pillars that represent unique and differentiated ways your company can win in the market, rather than spreading resources too thin.
14. Normalize Strategy Frustration
Expect and normalize the frustration, challenges, and dead ends that occur during strategy formulation, as deeply satisfying outcomes often involve significant effort and self-doubt. This mindset helps persevere through difficult periods.
15. Cultivate Strategy Leadership Skills
For strategy leads, cultivate skills in connecting diverse viewpoints, keeping the team moving forward, and maintaining a low ego. These “integrator” qualities are critical for successfully guiding the collaborative strategy process.
16. Inject Playfulness into Strategy
Given the intensive and long nature of strategy development, approach the process with a lighter touch and a more playful attitude. This helps make the experience more tolerable and prevents team burnout.
17. Embrace Aspirational “Big S” Strategy
Complement problem-focused “small s” strategy with “big S” strategy, which focuses on aspirational, cool components and a 5-10 year future vision. This involves exploring long-term trends, generating distinct future scenarios, and prototyping “concept cars” to inspire and de-risk big ideas.
18. Utilize AI for Strategy Research
Employ AI tools like ChatGPT to assist in the preparation phase by performing competitive analysis, trend analysis from release notes, reviews analysis, head-to-head comparisons, and generating hypotheses on product success. This can significantly accelerate data gathering.
19. Generate AI Mock Strategies
Ask AI tools to generate “mock strategies” as a critical input to the process. While these are often comprehensive and well-articulated, human judgment remains essential for down-selecting and focusing on the most impactful areas.
20. Anticipate Multi-Agent AI Workflows
Look ahead to a future where multi-agent AI models automate different components of the strategy workflow (e.g., strategy, roadmap, engineering agents). The human role will shift to architecting larger product pieces to leverage these agents.
3 Key Quotes
Life's got to be about more than just solving problems.
Elon Musk (quoted by Chandra Janakiraman)
We may be wrong, but we're not confused.
Tomer Cohen (quoted by Lenny Rachitsky)
There's a tremendous amount of craftsmanship between a great idea and a great product.
Steve Jobs (quoted by Chandra Janakiraman)
2 Protocols
Small S Product Strategy Development Process
Chandra Janakiraman- **Phase 1: Preparation (~4 weeks)**: Form a Strategy Working Group (minimum: engineering, product, design, data). Kickoff meeting to outline the process and assign deliverables. Aggregate all behavioral insights (meta-analysis of past data analysis and feature performance). Synthesize all UXR insights (meta-analysis of user research, customer service, social channels). Conduct leadership interviews (ask about success/failure, measures, principles, and 'pet ideas'). Perform competitive analysis (understand comparables, competitors, and their investment angles). Summarize adjacent roadmaps from other teams. Conduct user observations (interview or watch users to build empathy). Output: A comprehensive Preparation Readout deck.
- **Phase 2: Strategy Sprint (3-5 days)**:
- **Day 1 (Share Out)**: Everyone in the working group shares their collected insights, and all participants take notes on identified problems holding back growth or creating suboptimal business outcomes.
- **Day 2 (Decision Making)**: Generate a comprehensive list of individual problems. Cluster related problems into 10-15 problem clusters. Flip each problem cluster into a positively framed 'opportunity framing' (e.g., 'difficulty finding things' becomes 'discovery'). Down-select from these opportunity areas to ideally 3 strategic pillars by ranking them on four criteria: expected impact, certainty of impact, clarity of levers (how to solve it), and whether the levers are unique/differentiated to the team/company. Generate 2-3 'how might we' questions for each selected strategic pillar.
- **Day 3 (Winning Aspiration)**: Conduct a 'newspaper headline' exercise where each team member imagines a newspaper article headline two years in the future, describing the success and progress of the strategic pillars. Blend these individual headlines into a single, cohesive winning aspiration statement for the strategy.
- **Phase 3: Design Sprint (~1 week)**: Led by the design lead, using the strategic pillars and 'how might we' questions as input. Generate a variety of illustrative concepts (mocks or prototypes) that bring the strategy to life, focusing on generative ideas rather than feature-ready designs. These concepts help people visualize the strategy's potential outcomes.
- **Phase 4: Document Writing (1-2 weeks)**: The Product Manager takes the lead in writing the strategy document, leveraging all collected materials. The document typically includes broader context, key insights and analysis (user, behavioral, competitive), the strategic pillars (with explanations and illustrative concepts), the winning aspiration, and alignment questions. The appendix includes the full ranking table from the strategy sprint and additional illustrative concepts.
- **Phase 5: Rollout (2-3 weeks)**: Conduct one-on-one 'pre-flight' meetings with 2-3 key gatekeepers (senior leaders) to gain their alignment and blessing. Share the strategy with a larger group of key stakeholders (functional leaders) either asynchronously or through a group review. Conduct team 'roadshows' (sessions with 8-10 people) to present the strategy conversationally, clarify questions, and build broad organizational buy-in without seeking major changes to the core pillars.
Big S Strategy Development Process
Chandra Janakiraman- **Preparation**: Start with the company's mission and vision. Conduct groundwork research on long-term cultural, social, competitive, and technological trends to set the backdrop for future thinking.
- **Leadership Interviews**: Conduct interviews with leaders, focusing on generating long-term futures. Ask questions like: 'What does the day in the life of a user look like in five years?' or 'Why is the world better in 10 years?'
- **Distinct Futures**: Cluster all the input from interviews and trend analysis into three cohesive, distinct descriptions of potential futures (e.g., fully autonomous travel, extreme speed travel, virtual travel).
- **Prototypes ('Concept Cars')**: Generate prototypes for these distinct futures, treating them like 'concept cars' in the automotive industry. These prototypes are for inspiration and learning, not immediate commercialization, and aim to identify key technologies or features.
- **Research & Testing**: Conduct research with potential users using these prototypes to answer key questions and uncover elements that resonate. Eliminate non-winning ideas, combine promising components, and establish winning elements. Push these winning elements into live product testing to de-risk and validate them at scale.
- **Roadmap Integration**: The insights and validated elements from the Big S strategy work flow into the overall product roadmap, often running in parallel with Small S strategy efforts, merging into a single, comprehensive plan.