As a team grows, there are different teams with different charters they focus on. An immense amount of effort goes into clearly defining those charters, minimizing overlaps, setting success metrics and more.
But no matter what you do, everything is connected:
If you improve monetization, you might decrease retention or acquisition.
If you improve acquisition, you might decrease retention.
If you launch x feature, it can impact the usage of feature y and z.
In a recent Reforge Member event, Fareed Mosavat brought up a good hypothetical to explain this:
"Slack could probably run a pricing test that shows there is double the willingness to pay from current prices. A team might simply conclude we should double the price. But if they did that, it would probably kill or severely hinder the viral loops of the product which is a core part of the growth strategy."
While clearly defined charters, good success and tradeoff metrics, and solid OKRs can help, the effort that goes into them reach a diminishing return. These things are guardrails, but no guardrail is perfect. With enough effort and motivation, anyone can plow through the guardrail and drive off the cliff.
2nd Order Effects
Thats because products are systems. Every change you make has 2nd and 3rd order effects. The solution isn't better OKR's or more documentations but increasing the understanding and education among your team about the system so that thinking about the 2nd and 3rd order effects becomes intuition. Doing that starts with the leaders having clarity of how the system works.
Being "More Strategic"
In a recent conversation I had with Sachin Rekhi, he pointed out that when an individual is bad at this, it often takes the form of feedback "you need to be more strategic." But most individuals have a hard time understanding what that means. They interpret it as "I need to create the strategy" when what they should be doing is seeking to understand the strategy and operate better within it. Advancement in any function requires you to get good at understanding the strategy/system and making decisions within it before creating the strategy itself.
All products are a system. Seek to understand the system and the 2nd order effects of your decisions. Then you can drive impact.
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