The Ladder of Needs

 Catherine (Kit) Ulrich

A surprisingly simple technique for a rockstar product vision: The Ladder of Needs

I was recently asked, “what’s the most important quality of a product manager?” My answer came very quickly: the ability to sell your team on a vision. Why? Because all the other skills we expect in a product manager don’t matter if you can’t sell the team on your vision.

And, beyond selling your team, the skill that most product managers are looking to develop is setting a compelling product roadmap. So, how do you create a compelling vision and roadmap that drives your product to get stronger over time?

Combining two all-star tools:

To answer this question, I have always loved Clay Christensen’s classic framework of ‘jobs to be done’. What job has your customer hired your product to do? His model boils down to this quote:

“When we buy a product, we essentially “hire” it to help us do a job. If it does the job well, the next time we’re confronted with the same job, we tend to hire that product again. And if it does a crummy job, we “fire” it and look for an alternative.”

This is a fantastic framework to start with, but I have found it to be even more powerful when you combine it with Simon Sinek’s ideas from Start with Why. When combined, these two tools create what I call The Ladder of Needs.

The Ladder of Needs

The ladder has three rungs, read from the bottom up:

Let’s see this framework in action for a few companies by reading up from the bottom of each ladder. [Note, these examples are all for the initial incarnation of the company and represent my own perspective.]

Understanding the why behind your product is the fastest way to sell your vision, but more importantly, it also allows you to plan a more strategic product roadmap. It allows you to consider whether your initiatives are a new ‘what’, improvements to ‘how’, or product extensions that further support your ‘why’.

This ladder of needs also shows a path to some of the more genius product moves we have seen. And luckily, it’s a repeatable technique that you can apply for developing your own product roadmap. Let’s look at Amazon and Rent the Runway for two examples:

What is your product’s ‘why’?

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The Product Vision Board

 

By Roman Pichler

The vision plays an important role in bringing a new product to life: It acts as the overarching goal guiding everyone involved in the development effort. Equally important is the product strategy, the path chosen to attain the vision. Without a shared vision and an effective strategy, people are likely to pull in different directions, and the chances of creating a successful product are slim. While vision and strategy are key, describing them can be challenging. This post introduces the Product Vision Board, a tool that helps you capture the vision and product strategy. 

A Sample Vision Board 

Towards the end of 2012, I was exploring the idea of creating a software-based version of my product canvas tool that integrates seamlessly with other tools like JIRA and GreenHopper. To get started, I created an initial product vision board, which is shown below.

The product vision board above captures my assumptions about the users and the customers of the new tool, the needs the product should address, the key product features, and the value the product should create for my own business, Pichler Consulting. (I explain the sections of the board in more detail below.) 

As you may have noticed, I have kept the information on the board concise. I did not, for instance, write personas and user stories, or create a design sketch. There are two reasons for this: First, I did not know enough about the users and customers at the outset to write personas and to describe the product in more detail. Second, I find that the product details are best captured in the product backlog. 

The board was very valuable: It helped me think through my idea, and it allowed me to share my thoughts with my team, and with our development partner. Additionally, the product vision board helped me investigate the greatest risks by testing my assumptions, as I explain below. I now use the board for any new idea be it writing a new book, creating a new brochure, or updating a training course, and I help my clients apply the board. 

The Vision Board Explained 

The product vision board is the simplest thing that could possibly work to capture the vision and strategy of a product. It uses five sections as shown in the following diagram and explained below. You can download the template from the tools section of my website or by simply clicking on the picture below.

Vision states your overarching goal, the ultimate reason for creating the product, the positive change you want to bring about. Make your vision big and inspiring; use a brief statement or slogan; and ensure that the stakeholders and development team(s) support it, that it is shared. 

Target Group describes the market or market segment you want to address. You should state who the product is likely to benefit, who its users and its customers are. Choose a homogenous, clear-cut target group, especially when creating a brand-new product. 

Needs describe the product’s value proposition: the main problem the product addresses or the primary benefit it offers. The section should make it clear why people will want to use the product or pay for it. Capture what success looks like for the users and customers. If you identify several needs, prioritise them. 

Product summarises the three to five features that make your product stand out and that are critical for its success. These are likely to correlate to its unique selling proposition, and they should address the needs identified. Don’t make the mistake of listing lots of features. Stick to a maximum of five. Capture the product details at a later stage in your product backlog. 

Business Goals, finally, explain why it’s worthwhile for your company to invest in the product. It states the desired business benefits, for instance, increase revenue, enter a new market, reduce cost, develop the brand, or acquire valuable knowledge. The latter can be just as valuable as the former: When Toyota shipped the Prius in 1997, for instance, the car was not earning any money. But it immediately developed its brand (“green car company”), and had gained an advantage in hybrid technology. Prioritise the business goals to create focus and state targets. Otherwise, it’s hard to measure the product performance and apply the right key performance indicators (KPIs). 

There are, of course, other helpful tools available that help you capture your ideas, including Ash Maurya’s Lean Canvas and Alexander Osterwalder’s business model canvas. I may well be biased, but I like the simplicity of the product vision board: I find it beneficial to consider the target group, needs, key features and business goals when exploring an idea before thinking about monetisation and the business model. 

You can also watch me explain the product vision board in the video below.

Research and Validation with the Product Vision Board 

The product vision board is not only a thinking and communications tool, it also allows you to test your assumptions, and capture the newly gained insights. To get started, I find it helpful to identify the greatest risk or biggest uncertainty on the board. This creates focus, and it enforces a fail-fast: figuring out quickly what works and what doesn’t, which assumptions hold true, and which don’t. 

When I was working on my digital canvas idea, for instance, the greatest risk was initially misunderstanding the user needs, and potentially building a product that does not provide much value. I consequently decided to test my user needs assumptions before exploring further what features the tool should provide, or how the product should be implemented. I hence started carrying out a series of problem interviews, structured conversation with a prospect to understand the individual’s problems and goals without referring to the solution, and engaged in a few direct observation sessions. 

These measures helped me understand the target group better, and assess how much value a product canvas app with JIRA integration would provide. It also made me update and change the board to reflect my latest thinking, as the following picture shows:

I suggest you follow a similar approach when you work with the vision board: Identify your biggest risk, and attack this risk first. Don’t be afraid to fail: Making mistakes is part and parcel of creating something new. What’s more, early failure facilitates fast learning and it can save you time and money. 

Product Vision Board and Business Model 

While a strength of the product vision board is its simplicity, it does not detail how the business goals are achieved and it does not capture the business model including the competitors, the partners, the channels, the revenue sources, and the cost factors. Describing and testing your business model ideas is particularly important when you develop a brand-new product and when you want to make bigger changes to an existing product, for instance, to take it to a new market (segment). 

To capture your business model ideas you can either complement the product vision board with the business model canvas or use its extended version, the product vision board extended, which is shown below. The extended board is inspired by the business model canvas. You can download it for free from the tools section of my website.

8 tips for creating a compelling product vision

Creating and managing a successful product requires a lot of time and energy. In order to be fully committed, you have to be convinced that what you are doing is right and have a clear vision of where to take your product. This post shares eight tips to help you create an effective product vision that inspires the development team and the stakeholders. 

Describe the Motivation behind the Product 

Having an idea for a new product is great. But it’s not enough. What you need is a vision that guides everyone involved in making the product a success: product management, development, marketing, sales, and support. The product vision is the overarching goal you are aiming for, the reason for creating the product. It provides a continued purpose in an ever-changing world, acts as the product’s true north, provides motivation when the going gets tough, and facilitates effective collaboration. 

To choose the right vision, ask yourself why you are excited to work on the product, why you care about it, what positive change the product should bring about, and how it will shape the future. One of my favourite vision statements comes from Toys R Us. The company’s vision is to  “put joy in kids’ hearts and a smile on parents’ faces”. The statement concisely captures the intention behind the company’s products and services and describes the change the users and customers should experience. 

If you choose the company vision for you product, then that’s fine. Otherwise make sure that the two visions aren’t in conflict other but aligned. 

Look beyond the Product 

Be clear on the difference between the product vision and the product and don’t confuse the two. The former is the motivation for developing the product; the latter is a means to achieve the overarching goal. 

Say that I want to create a computer game that allows children to choose and interact with characters, select different music tracks and worlds, choreograph their own dances, and play together with friends. This might be a nice idea, but it is not the actual vision. 

An effective product vision goes beyond the product and captures the change the product should instigate. A vision for the game would be “Help children enjoy music and dancing”. 

Distinguish between Vision and Product Strategy 

Your product vision should not be a plan that shows how to reach your goal. Instead, you should keep the product vision and the product strategy – the path towards the goal – separate. This enables to change your strategy while staying grounded in your vision. (This is called to pivot in Lean Startup.) 

At the same time, a vision is the prerequisite for choosing the right strategy. If you don’t have an overarching goal then you cannot decide how you best get there. This is nicely illustrated by the famous conversation between the Cheshire Cat and Alice in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Asked which way Alice should take, the cat replies: “That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.” “I don’t much care where –,” says Alice. “Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” responds the Cheshire Cat. 

A handy tool for describing both the product vision and the product strategy is the Product Vision Board. Its top section captures the vision, and the ones below state the strategy to realise the vision.

Create a Shared Vision 

You can come up with the most beautiful vision for your product. But it’s useless if the people involved in making the product a success don’t buy into it. To leverage the vision as the product’s true north, to create alignment, and to facilitate effective collaboration, the product vision must be shared – everyone must have the same vision. Without a shared vision, people follow their own goals making it much harder to achieve product success. 

A great way to create a shared product vision is to employ a collaborative visioning workshop. Rather than formulating a product vision and then selling it to the key people you create it together. Use the product idea as an input and ask the workshop attendees to capture their motivation for working on the product. Then compare the different visions, look for common ground, and combine the different goals into a new one everybody agrees with.

You can employ a similar approach for an existing product: Invite the right people, ask them to write down their vision, and compare them. If the visions are the same or very similar, then that’s great. If not then you have some work to do. 

Choose an Inspiring Vision 

“If you are working on something exciting that you really care about, you don’t have to be pushed. The vision pulls you,” said Steve Jobs. Your vision should therefore motivate people, connect them to the product, and inspire them. 

I find that a vision focused on creating a benefit for others provides a particularly deep motivation and a lasting inspiration. It guides me when I am feeling doubtful much more than a money- or self-centric vision can. There is nothing wrong with making money, of course, and every product needs a viable business model. But I find that people excel because they believe that they are doing something meaningful and beneficial. 

Going back to the computer game example used earlier, an alternative vision for the game could be “Diversify and grow the business”. But such a vision is not inspirational and motivating enough in my mind. It would not lift me up in moments of doubt. Rather than stating business goals in the vision, I like to capture them in the product strategy (using the business goal section of the Product Vision Board). 

If you are not sure then I recommend that you include the beneficial change the product should create for others and for your business without trying to quantify or detail those benefits. Otherwise your vision may no longer be able to guide you when you pivot. 

Think Big 

Make your product vision broad and ambitious so that it engages people and it can facilities a change in the strategy. The vision of the computer game example “Help children enjoy music and dancing” is a broad and ambitious vision, for instance. It does not refer to the actual product idea or a specific target group, and it is not satisfied with creating a fun gaming experience. It aims for more. 

If it turns out that the idea of developing a computer game for children is ill conceived then there are still alternatives to make the vision come true. I could, for instance, decide to open up a dance school or create a virtual dance course. (Given that I am an exceptionally bad dancer, I seriously doubt that I’d be good at either. But at least I have some options.) 

Keep your Vision Short and Sweet 

As your vision is the ultimate reason for creating the product, it should be easy to communicate and to understand. Other artefacts including a product strategy, a business model, a product backlog, and a marketing plan provide the necessary details. Your vision should be short and sweet, it should be easy to memorise and recite. I like to employ a simple slogan to capture the vision. It can take me several iterations to get to such a vision but I find it worth the effort. As Leonardo da Vinci said, “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” 

Use the Vision to Guide your Decisions 

Use the vision to guide your product decisions and to focus everyone on the ultimate reason for creating the product. While the vision alone is certainly not enough, it is a first filter for new ideas and change requests: Anything that helps you move closer to your vision—be it a new feature, a change of direction, or a new technology— is helpful and should be considered; anything that doesn’t, is not beneficial and should probably be discarded.

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Mission & Vision Statements: What is the difference between mission, vision and values statements?

Each statement may be part of the strategic planning process but have a different objective.  These statements may be written for organizations or for individual departments.  

A mission statement is a concise explanation of the organization's reason for existence. It describes the organization's purpose and its overall intention. The mission statement supports the vision and serves to communicate purpose and direction to employees, customers, vendors and other stakeholders. See SHRM's Company Mission Statement Examples for a variety of samples. Questions to consider when drafting mission statements could include: 

• What is our organization's purpose?
• Why does our organization exist?   

A vision statement looks forward and creates a mental image of the ideal state that the organization wishes to achieve. It is inspirational and aspirational and should challenge employees. Questions to consider when drafting vision statements might include:

• What problem are we seeking to solve?
• Where are we headed?
• If we achieved all strategic goals, what would we look like 10 years from now?

A values statement lists the core principles that guide and direct the organization and its culture. In a values-led organization, the values create a moral compass for the organization and its employees. It guides decision-making and establishes a standard against which actions can be assessed. These core values are an internalized framework that is shared and acted on by leadership. When drafting values statements, questions to consider might include:

• What values are unique to our organization?
• What values should guide the operations of our company?
• What conduct should our employees uphold?

In conjunction with a values statement, a code of ethics puts those values into practice. It outlines the procedures in place to ensure the organization's values are upheld. Questions to consider when creating codes of ethics might include:

• What are common ethical issues in our industry?
• What should someone do if he or she sees a violation of our values?

Management cannot create a new values statement or ethics code and expect immediate change. For an organization to have an effective values statement, it must fully embrace its values and ethics at all levels of the company and use them daily to guide its attitudes, actions and decision-making. Refer to What does it mean to be a values-based organization? for more information.

Compass

This framework is based on an article from the Harvard Business Review, December 2011 (link) titles “The Power of Collective Ambition,” by Douglas Ready and Emily Truelove. It profiles, among others, the Four Season’s Hotel chain, who survived the latest recession remarkably well. The authors argue that these companies found a sense of purpose based on collective ambition, spelling out a number of elements that they see as critical to success:

• Purpose: your companies reason for being. 
• Vision: the position or status your company aspires to achieve within a reasonable time frame.
• Targets and milestones: the metrics you use to assess progress toward your vision.
• Strategic and operational priorities: the actions you do or do not take in pursuit of your vision.
• Brand promise: the commitments you make to stakeholders concerning the experience the company will provide.
• Core values: the guiding principles that dictate what you stand for as an organization, in good times and bad.
• Leader behaviors: how leaders act on a daily basis as they seek to implement the company’s vision.  Not revolutionary new stuff, but I find the visual to be a nice way to document all these key things. Brand promise ranks highly, and not surprisingly, the companies portrayed in the article include Four Seasons Hotels, Sephora, HSBC and Danone. For B2B companies, this element is probably somewhat less important, although it should not be ignored altogether. One other important element that the article talks about is the concept of “glue and grease:” Shaping a collective ambition is not only about a nice visual. Companies should undertake efforts to engage as many people as possible (the glue), but also launch initiatives focused on disciplined execution (the grease). 

How to Set the Right Goals and Make Them Work for You

Are you starting to lose focus on your goals? If so, you’re not alone. This is the time of year a lot of people lose their focus.

The problem is that annual goal-setting doesn’t work. You can’t plan an entire year and know in advance all the goals you will need to achieve. It’s likely that many of your goals are no longer motivating and many no longer make sense.

If goal-setting hasn’t been working for you, here’s how to set the right goals that will get you where you want to go:

1. Always keep your vision in mind while choosing goals.

The point of setting goals is to support you in moving toward your vision. Without a clear vision, your goals might not take you where you want to go.

There’s a big difference between a vision and a goal. Vision is your destination. Goals are the milestones that mark your journey. They quantify and define the steps you take along the way.

Where your vision is broad and big, goals are tangible and specific. They answer questions like “when?’ and “how?” and “how much?”  SMART goals are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-bound. Here are three guidelines to keep in mind when choosing goals:

• Look for high-leverage goals – those that will allow you to leapfrog forward.

• Consider goals that will have a long-term payoff, even at a short-term price. For example, you might choose some inexperienced high potential players for your team, with a plan to help them gain the skills and experience.

• Look for goals that will give you some quick wins. This will help you see progress and stay motivated.

2. Be willing to reset your goals.

Don’t get so focused on your goals that you forget about your vision. Change is inevitable. It is said it takes 1001 mid-course corrections to reach the moon.

The trick is to stay focused on your vision, and, as in sailing, “tack” to your destination. Change your course depending on the winds and other conditions.

3. Revisit your vision frequently.

Sometimes teams drift off course without realizing it. And so can individuals. To avoid waking up one day wondering how you got so far off course, revisit your goals frequently and use them as an early warning system to detect when you are off course.

4. Set up systems and practices that support your goals.

On a personal level – what structures and routines do you need to set up to develop the habits that will support your vision? – regular exercise time?

For a team, look at your formal and informal ways of working together. Consider processes for communication, accountability, training and rewards. For example, if teamwork is one of your goals– are there rewards for team performance or is the focus on individual contributions? Systems that are not aligned with your vision and goals will derail you and your team.

5. Set goals for relationships as well as tasks.

The journey is as important as the destination. Are your actions consistent with your values and where you want to go? Make sure you have a good feedback system in order to know.

6. Set goals as you go.

Vision is about COURAGE.  Goals are about TAKING ACTION.

As soon as you identify your vision, start to live it.  You can’t create a vision for a healthy life and continue a diet of junk food. As a leader, not only must you say what’s important, you need to demonstrate it – consistently. People watch what you do more closely than what you say.

Taking action means not waiting for all the details to be worked out. When you are clear about where you’re going, and have set goals for the next steps, the entire path does not be clear. As long as you keep your vision in mind, the next steps will become clear as you accomplish your goals.

6 TIPS TO SET GOALS THAT WILL GET YOU WHERE YOU WANT TO GO

Here’s a more in-depth explanation of the relationship between vision and goals and how to make your goals work for you.

Brand vision