5 Product Vision Mistakes You Should Avoid

The product vision can be a powerful vehicle for creating a shared purpose, inspiring people, and galvanising them. Unfortunately, I have seen many visions that did not fulfil their potential, as they suffered from a number of mistakes. In this article, I discuss five common issues and explain how you can avoid and correct them.

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Confusing Vision with Strategy

For a product vision to be effective, it is best captured by a simple, easy-to-understand statement or slogan. For example, the vision for a presentation tool like Microsoft PowerPoint or Google Slides might be “inform and inspire people.”

What the product vision shouldn’t be, though, is a strategic decision-making framework. It shouldn’t capture elements like the target group, value proposition, and business goals. This would not only detract from its main objective, but it would also cause it to overlap with the product strategy and make it unstable.

A product’s target group and value proposition will change as it develops, grows, and serves a larger audience with more diverse needs. Its business goals are likely to change, too. Initially, the objective might be to acquire users and start generating revenue. But at a later stage, it might shift to maximising profitability. Keeping the vision free from strategic decisions provides it with a clear focus and stability. No matter how much the product and its strategy change, the vision offers continued inspiration and guidance, much like the North Star has been a vital navigational reference for centuries, helping travellers find their way.

I therefore recommend that you clearly distinguish between a product vision and a product strategy. Use the former to state the ultimate reason for offering the product and the latter to describe the approach you’ve chosen to realise the vision and achieve product success.[1] A useful tool for this is my Product Vision Board, shown in Figure 1. You can download the template together with a handy checklist from my website.

In Figure 1, the vision is captured at the top, and the strategy is described in the bottom four sections of the canvas: target group, needs, product, and business goals. This allows you to show the vision and strategy in one place while describing them separately.

Tying the Vision to a Product Idea or Business Objective

The second mistake I see product teams make is to state the solution and/or a business goal in the vision. Take a vision like “be the number one slideware product in the UK” for a presentation software like PowerPoint. Referring to the actual product (slideware) and a business goal (number one in the UK) creates two problems.

First, it makes the vision unstable. As mentioned above, products change across their life cycle. Take PowerPoint, for instance, which changed from a humble presentation tool to a product that offers real-time cloud-based collaboration and AI-powered content and design creation. Second, such a vision fails to provide a meaningful purpose, as it does not state the underlying reason for offering the product. It will consequently struggle to inspire the product team members.

I therefore recommend that you use the vision to capture the positive change you want to bring about and the ultimate reason for providing the product, without referring to the solution and business goals. Focus on the why, not the what. To do this, ask yourself what the world will look like when the product has achieved its purpose. How will it have improved people’s lives? What will have changed for the better?

Using a Vision that Fails to Inspire People

“If you are working on something exciting that you really care about, you don’t have to be pushed. The vision pulls you,” Steve Jobs once said. Creating such a forward momentum is one of the benefits a product vision should offer. Unfortunately, I’ve seen many visions that failed to move and unite people.

To address this issue, apply the following two recommendations: First, involve the key stakeholders and development team members in setting the vision and ensure that everyone is happy with the result.[2] A great way to do this is to run a collaborative workshop and co-create the vision. Applied correctly, this approach maximises the chances of finding a product vision everyone supports. Such a vision is especially valuable when problems and conflicts occur. It reminds people of why they do what they are doing and what unites them.

Second, look for a vision that speaks to people, that generates a positive emotional response. It should ignite their imagination and make them excited about working on the product. Choose words that resonate with people and inspire meaningful action. Does the vision make people feel enthusiastic, proud, or happy, for example? If that’s not the case, adapt the vision or look for a different one that triggers the desired emotions. Without emotion, there is no motion.[3]

Changing the Vision Frequently

Change, they say, is the only constant. It is a mistake, though, to modify the product vision frequently. Like the North Star, it should stay largely fixed and change little across the product life cycle.

To achieve this, capture the product vision as a big, hairy, audacious goal (BHAG), in addition to keeping it free from the product idea and business goals. For example, avoid a narrow vision, such as “help people create great presentations,” for products like Microsoft PowerPoint and Google Slides. Instead, choose a big and ambitious one like “inspire people.” The narrower a vision is, the more likely it is to change.

A big, ambitious vision allows you to evolve the product without having to adjust it. It might never be fully reached. But that’s fine, as long as it points people in the right direction, and you complement it with a product strategy that states how you intend to realise the vision.

Not Aligning the Product Vision with the Company Vision

Having a vision for an individual product that inspires the product team is great. But it’s not enough. A product ultimately is a value-creating vehicle. It exists to generate benefits for the users and customers, as well as the company that develops and provides it. To achieve the latter, you should ensure that the product vision is in line with the company vision: Meeting the former should help you meet the latter.

Let’s make this more concrete and look at Microsoft PowerPoint again. The product vision I suggested earlier was “inform and inspire people.” To achieve the necessary alignment, we’d have to check it against Microsoft’s overall vision, which might be described as “empower every person and every organisation on the planet to achieve more.”[4] Looking at the two visions, I find them sufficiently aligned. When people feel informed and inspired, they should be able to achieve more.[5]

Notes

[1] I am not a fan of using Moore’s template to capture the product vision, as it doesn’t state the product’s purpose. Instead, it describes who the product is for and how it differs from competing offerings. That’s hardly a surprise, as the template was invented to help position a product, not to describe its vision, as I explain in more detail in the article Double Vision.

[2] Use unanimity as the decision rule to agree on the vision. This will ensure that there is strong buy-in and maximise the chances that people will actually follow the vision, rather than paying lip service to it or simply ignoring it.

[3] I’ve borrowed this phrase from Stefan Roock, which also features in the title of a paper by Andrea Gröppel-Klein.

[4] See https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/about.

[5] Note that aligning the product and company visions may not be enough when a product is part of a portfolio, as in the case of Microsoft PowerPoint, for example, which belongs to Microsoft 365. In such a case, the product vision also has to be in line with the portfolio vision. Meeting the former must help make progress toward the latter.

This leads to a vision chain: The company vision guides the portfolio vision, and the latter directs the product vision, much like the business strategy guides the portfolio strategy, which directs the product strategy. For more information, see the article Everything You Need to Know About Product Portfolio Strategy and The Strategy Stack.