Mission → Vision → Strategy → Goals → Roadmap → Task
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First, some definitions:
Where should you start?Normally you start with your mission—why does your team (or company) even exist? What are you trying to achieve? What is your purpose? Some examples of great missions:
VisionNext comes your vision: What does the world (or your product) look like when you’ve achieved your mission? Some examples of great vision statements:
If you start with your vision before your mission, that’s totally OK. Elon Musk likely started with a vision of the world he wanted to see and then developed his mission around that. No problem. Don’t overthink it. StrategyOnce you have your mission and vision, this is where strategy comes in. Your strategy is simply your plan to achieve your vision—your plan to win. I’ve written about getting better at strategy, and, to boil it down, a strategy is essentially a short description of your plan, with 3 to 5 concrete investments that, if you get right, will bring you closer to winning (i.e. achieving your vision). Here are some templates to help you frame your thinking. Here are some high-level examples of strategies:
Additional examples of great real-life strategies:
Teresa Torres’s opportunity solution tree framework is a great way to think through, and communicate, your strategy: GoalsNext, you can begin to define your goal. Goals are simply a way to measure the progress of your strategy toward achieving your ultimate vision. Some examples of visions and their associated goals:
Here’s my advice on setting goals and on choosing your North Star metric. RoadmapAnd finally, once you have your goals, you can align around and prioritize a roadmap. Here’s a template you can use. Within the roadmap, you break out individual tasks, the atomic unit of work for your teammates. Why do you need goals before you align around a roadmap and prioritize tasks? Because when prioritizing the many ideas your team has, you look at the ROI—the effort vs. the impact. The impact you’re prioritizing against is based on how much you expect the project will impact your goals. That’s basically your plan as a product team, from the 10,000-foot mission to the day-to-day work of your team. As an example, here’s how it all fits together in the case of Tesla: And finally, let’s look at another “real-life” example: Mission → Vision → Strategy → Goals → Roadmap → Task, as taught to us by Oceans ElevenMission: Rob the Bellagio, Mirage, and MGM Grand casinos, and get back at rival Terry BenedictSubscribe to Lenny's Newsletter to read the rest.Become a paying subscriber of Lenny's Newsletter to get access to this post and other subscriber-only content. A subscription gets you:
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