Five Deadly Sins of Product Strategy (And How to Spot Them)

Your product strategy is probably committing at least one of these sins right now. Maybe all five.

That's not an insult — it's a pattern. After working with dozens of product organizations, I've seen the same five strategic failures show up everywhere. They're not obvious. They feel like good strategy. That's what makes them deadly.

Sin #1: The Strategy of Yes

The most common sin and the most damaging. Your strategy says yes to everything.

New market opportunity? Yes. Big customer request? Yes. Competitor feature? Match it. Sales team wants a new capability? Build it.

The result is a product that tries to serve everyone and serves no one well. I've written about this before — a strategy that doesn't force sacrifice isn't a strategy. It's permission to do anything, which means permission to do nothing well.

The fix: Write down what your strategy says no to. If you can't list three things, you have the Strategy of Yes.

Sin #2: Strategy by Analogy

"Netflix disrupted entertainment. Let's be the Netflix of our industry."

Strategy by analogy feels smart. It borrows credibility from a successful company. It gives your team a mental model. And it almost always leads you off a cliff.

Because analogies hide context. Netflix had specific market conditions, technology advantages, timing, and cultural factors that don't apply to your situation. Borrowing their strategy without their context is like wearing someone else's prescription glasses — the frames fit, but you can't see anything.

The fix: Every strategy must be built from your own customers, your own market, and your own competitive position. If your strategy deck mentions another company more than once, you're importing someone else's answers to questions they didn't ask.

Sin #3: Strategy by Committee

Everyone contributed. Everyone's voice was heard. Everyone's priorities made it into the document. And the result is a strategy that commits to nothing because offending someone would require choosing.

Strategy by committee produces documents like: "We will focus on growth AND retention AND platform scalability AND market expansion AND customer satisfaction." Five priorities is zero priorities.

This happens because organizations confuse inclusion with consensus. Inclusion means everyone's input is heard. Consensus means everyone's input is included. The first is healthy. The second produces strategies designed to avoid conflict instead of create focus.

The fix: One person owns the strategy. They gather input from everyone, but the decision is theirs. If nobody owns the final call, nobody made a strategy — they made a compromise.

Sin #4: Strategy Without a Kill Switch

Your strategy has goals. It has OKRs. It has success metrics. But does it have survival metrics?

Most strategies define what success looks like. Almost none define what failure looks like — or when to stop.

Without survival metrics, your strategy is immortal by default. It can't die. It can't be killed. It just keeps absorbing resources until someone senior enough asks "wait, is this still working?" — which usually happens six months too late.

The fix: Every strategic initiative needs 3-5 tripwires defined before work starts. What would make you stop? Pivot? Invest more? If you can't answer, you're executing with no exit plan.

Sin #5: Strategy as Sacred Text

The strategy was written in January. It's now September. The market shifted in April. A key competitor launched in June. Your biggest customer churned in July. And the strategy hasn't changed a word.

Strategy isn't scripture. It's a hypothesis — your best bet given what you know right now. When what you know changes, the strategy should change too.

This is Product Calculus applied to strategy: the answer changes as the inputs change. A strategy that can't evolve can't survive.

The fix: Schedule quarterly strategy reviews. Not annual planning sessions — quarterly gut-checks. Is the strategy still alive? Are the assumptions still true? What's changed?

The Common Thread

All five sins share the same root cause: avoiding the discomfort of making strategic choices.

The Strategy of Yes avoids saying no. Strategy by Analogy avoids original thinking. Strategy by Committee avoids conflict. No Kill Switch avoids admitting failure. Sacred Text avoids revisiting decisions.

Good strategy requires all five of those uncomfortable things. It requires saying no, thinking originally, making someone unhappy, planning for failure, and being willing to change your mind.

That's why good strategy is rare. Not because it's intellectually hard — because it's emotionally hard.

Start Here

Pull up your current strategy document. Score it against these five sins. Be honest.

If you're committing even one, you know what to fix. If you're committing three or more, you don't have a strategy — you have a strategic comfort blanket. And comfort blankets don't make decisions.

Is your strategy committing these sins?

In my Eigen Questions workshop, Product and Engineering teams cut through strategic ambiguity to find the one question that unlocks alignment. We identify which sins your strategy is committing and build a focused, revisable strategic frame your team can actually use.

Book a Clarity Call — 30 minutes, no pitch. Just clarity on whether your strategy is actually working.

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