The 'Be More Strategic' thing..
How to give the 'BMS' feedback more effectively; and what to do if you get it..
TL;DR
- Being told to ‘Be More Strategic’ (BMS) is unhelpfully vague, but also an indicator that you need to change how you operate in order to get to the next level.
- The starting point is to get much more specific - and there are four ‘flavours’ of ‘strategic’ that can help you focus (whether you’re getting or giving the feedback)
- You should read a bit to get your understanding of what strategy is up to scratch. But don’t fall down the rabbit hole.
- The secret to avoiding burnout is to gradually shift more and more of your time towards ‘high leverage’ activity.
BMS: an itch you can’t scratch
By far the least useful feedback that you can give to a product manager is that they: ‘need to be more strategic’ (let’s just call it ‘BMS’ for the sake of brevity’).
It’s unhelpful, because it points to a truth and an important need to change, but unless you qualify it (and people rarely do) - it’s incredibly difficult to act on.
It’s rather like giving someone an itch, but not letting them scratch it.
Those who get the ‘BMS’ feedback are often strong performers when it comes to the day to day execution of product management, they know their domain, they get great reviews - but they’re finding themselves stuck on the same rung of the development ladder.
To paraphrase the title of Marshall Goldsmith’s brilliant book about stepping up as a leader ‘What got them here..isn’t going to get them there’
Think of them as great runners, who now have to become triathletes. There’s no more hours in the day, but somehow they have to master swimming and cycling as well, while making sure their running performance doesn’t drop off a cliff.
Meanwhile those who give the feedback often mean well - but don’t quite know how to articulate something more than a general ‘vibe’...
Let me try and help.
What “Be More Strategic” really means
The first thing is that ‘BMS’ is rarely just about the mechanics of developing a product strategy.
The feedback is normally about the level you operate at. And In practice, it usually maps to some combination of these four different flavours of ‘strategic’
1. Strategic altitude: operating at the wrong level
You’re thinking in weeks instead of months, months instead of quarters. You’re optimising one feature when you should be looking at the whole product experience. You’re delivering - but it feels like a list of stuff, not a cohesive program that’s focused on a clear outcome. Your manager wants you to step up to a higher level of abstraction. Annoyingly though, they want you to do this without dropping the ball on the day to day work.
2. Strategic influence: not shaping the agenda
You’re executing well on what’s handed to you, but not effectively questioning if it’s the right thing. You’re in the room but not steering the conversation. You might disagree, and you can definitely hold your own, but you can be perceived as a blocker and so over ruled. Too often your expertise is being called on to work out whether someone else’s ideas can be delivered in time. What they want is for you to influence what gets done not just how and when.
3. Strategic judgment: decisions too narrow
Your calls are good tactically, but they don’t factor in the wider picture: broader commercial impact, fit with the long-term direction of the company, cost of ownership.
You can talk convincingly about output, but less about outcome. You consistently leaning too far either towards pace at the expense of ‘doing the right thing’ - or vice versa. What they want is evidence you’re playing chess, not checkers. You shouldn’t need someone to look round corners for you.
4. Strategic leverage: impact not scaling
You’re delivering results, but only in proportion to your effort. You’re the bottleneck. What they want is impact that compounds. You feel you need to be everywhere in order for everything to be just right, when in fact you need to be working out ways that things can happen without you.
So - what to do about it?
1. Give/ Get some clarity
Whichever side of the table you’re sitting on, the most important thing you can do is to get beyond the simple ‘BMS’ to something more concrete and actionable.
Perhaps the four flavours above help, or perhaps there’s something else you. The point is you need to get past this high level feedback and start to make it much more focussed and trackable.
If you’re on the receiving end - you can talk about the four flavours - or you can just ask some questions along these lines..
- “When you say strategic, what specifically do you want me to do differently?”
- “Can you give me a recent example?”
- “Who does this well?”
- “What would good look like in three/ six months?”
If you’re on the giving end - you should get ahead of these questions by giving specific examples. Better still cut the phrase ‘BMS’ and instead focus on the specifics (’We need to see you factor in broader company goals as your building out your roadmap’)
One of the most important things a manager can do at this stage is to focus on a change in behavioiur for a specific initiative or events (eg: for a planning session that’s coming up in a few weeks, or a new project that you’re just kicking off).
2. Get to know the basics of ‘strategy’
There’s way way too much written about product strategy. Some of it good, some of it less so. But, I think you can get 90% of what you need from just two pieces of work.
Pretty much everyone book I’ve read that talks about product strategy, or strategy generally - refers to Richard Rumelt’s book, Good Strategy, Bad Strategy.
It’s one of the few books I’d say everyone should read. So read it - or find one of the dozens of summaries/ reviews on YouTube. Just get to know the basic points he makes. It does an excellent job of removing the fluff and flannel from discussing strategy.
And on top of that - I recommend this essay by Jackie. Which is just good solid advice.
Honestly - that’s it.
Maybe something else will work for you. But reading or watching 10 x more won’t make you 10 x better, it’ll just give you 10 x less time to actually do some work.
The point is
Do know what a strategy is - and isn’t
Don’t get tangled up in the dozens of different frameworks and methodologies for product strategy
Do read/ listen to a limited amount of stuff and think about how you can apply it.
Do think about the behaviours you need to change day-to-day, in order to be perceived as ‘more strategic’
Shift to higher leverage work.
OK - now we’re getting to the gritty bit.
People who get the ‘BMS’ feedback are often insanely busy - feeling like they’re at peak plate-spinning capacity - that’s part of what makes them good at their current role.
Being told they need to ‘Be More Strategic’ will send them hurtling towards burn-out as they suddenly now try and fit in ‘strategic’ work alongside their day job.
The misconception here is that ‘strategic work’ happens separately to your day job. The truth is you’re being asked/ challenged to change your day job
And the key to this is to focus on **doing higher-leverage work**.
This concept of the ‘leverage’ of your work comes from Andy Grove’s _High Output Management_. Which he defines as ‘the output generated by a manager’s actions, relative to the time and effort spent.’
Here’s some examples of high and low leverage work.
High-leverage activities
- One conversation that unblocks three teams for a month
- One hard stakeholder chat that stops a load of churn/ friction between your teams
- Coaching someone so they can make similar decisions independently
- Doing high quality preparation for an important exec-level meeting
- Defining clear principles that guide hundreds of decisions
- Getting your team/ squads permission not to do something that you know will prove to be a wasted effort
- Creating a framework that saves hundreds of hours of debate
Low-/negative-leverage activities
- Sitting in meetings just to be informed
- Reviewing work others could review
- Personally doing things you’re great at, but others should learn
- Firefighting problems instead of preventing them
- Being the go-between for stakeholders who should talk directly
Before you start clearing your diary - you don’t get to suddenly stop doing the low leverage work - what you need to do is gradually reduce the %age of time it’s taking up each week.
If you need help - here’s a few prompts
1. Which 3–4 things must I stay close to because that’s where my leverage is highest — and what can I let go?”
2. Who do I need to meet with regularly in order to help my teams/ squads be more effective?
3. Which meetings can I avoid/ go to less frequently/ delegate to someone else?
4. How can I organise my work so that I do the high leverage stuff when I have the most energy?
5. What am I doing because I really enjoy doing, but could really delegate to someone else?
6. How can I clear 1 hour a week to take stock of how I’m spending my time and make sure I stay on track?
And the kicker - this is a team effort
Every manager who gives the ‘BMS’ feedback - or variant of it - has an obligation to help see it through.
While some of this will be guidance in specific behaviours, the crux of it is likely to come down to exactly this challenge of helping someone work out how best they should allocate their time.
For the individual, shifting the nature of your work isn’t something you can just do in isolation. It might mean changing the nature of how you work with your engineering, design and product peers. And initially at least, they might not appreciate your change in priorities.
So if you’ve given the feedback, make sure you follow up frequently and constructively.
If you’ve been given it…don’t fly solo. Work with your manager as you start to shift the way you work, and where you put your effort.