Chandra Janakiraman: observation

Transcript context

…started as a problem generation exercise, each of the clusters also has a name that is a problem, and so the next step is to flip it into an opportunity framing. Let me give you a couple of examples. Let's say there's a bunch of problems around people don't really know where to find different things in our product, and they don't really know where to go, where to find a certain feature or a certain experience. There's let's say a lot of problems in that area, so difficulty finding things becomes the cluster, the problem cluster and discovery becomes the opportunity sort of framing of it. It's sort of the more positive framing of it. Another example could be that people get a lot of content that they don't like. They see a lot of stuff that they don't like, and so they disengage with the product. The opportunity framing of that would be relevance. It's basically stuff that really matters to me. Maybe if it's a social product, then maybe people are finding it difficult to find friends and they are lonely because of that. The opportunity framing would be social connection. Flipping all of those problem clusters into positive framing and opportunity framing is the next step. Then you're in a great spot because now all you have to do is you have to down select from those 10 to 15 opportunity areas into ideally three, maybe five, but I would recommend three because it creates more clarity and focus. The way to do that is really sort of ranking them on, I would say four or five key dimensions or criteria, and the first is expected impact. Let's say you actually tackle that area. What is the expected impact to whatever matters to you as a company, as a business, as a product? The second dimension is certainty of impact. Certainty of impact is basically how concrete is the evidence that this is a problem? Sometimes you have really hard data, sometimes you have more anecdotal evidence, and so the confidence really depends on how big the problem's sizing and frequency is. Expected impact, certainty of impact. The third one is also very important, which is clarity of levers. Do you actually have an idea of how you would solve it? If you don't, it's going to be really difficult to move the needle on it because you should kind of know that, okay, I can imagine these solutions could actually move the needle. I can actually launch this sort of nudge system that can help people find things. I can recommend people. I can recommend friends so that people can form friends quicker on the platform. You should have a sense of how you would solve that particular space. Is there clarity on levers? That's the third dimension. The fourth dimension is super important, which is are the levers unique and differentiated to that particular team or company? Which is that if another team or company could build it better than this particular team or company, then it's probably not that differentiated. It's probably going to be pretty generic once you launch it. It's a combination of sort of like, is there a lot of impact here? How confident are we of the problem? Do we have a sense of the solutions? t's probably going to be pretty generic once you launch it. It's a combination of sort of like, is there a lot of impact here? How confident are we of the problem? Do we have a sense of the solutions? And basically, are we the team or company that has the capabilities and the skills to uniquely build it where other teams cannot? Once you have that, and sometimes what happens is you don't have too much data, and so it's okay to have qualitative scores on this like high, medium, low, T-shirt scores, whatever that is. The key is you're doing it together as a strategy working group, and you're debating the scores and you're reasoning why it should be higher versus lower. There's a ton of alignment and collision that's happening when you're doing that, which is very healthy for the eventual outcome. Once you do that, basically you can do a simple sort of addition of the scores and a sort, and what you have is basically the top three and you have the remaining 7 or 12 that are basically not the focus. That's the core of the process, is getting those opportunity areas and getting to a shared sense of how do we prioritize them and why? Okay, and this is all done in a week. I know there's more to it. There's a couple more items that help you move from what you just said to the next step, but I love that this is the core of the biggest element of the process, and you do it in a week and you're only able to do it in a week because of the work you did ahead of time. Again, highlighting the importance of that prep step. Just to share what you've shared so far, and then we'll finish the strategy sprint step. It's basically do the share out so everyone's on the same page about all the information that, all the inputs essentially. Enumerate all the problems, like individual small problems and then cluster them into 10 to 15 problem clusters. Flip it from here's the problem to here's an opportunity we have. Rank them based on, basically there's these four attributes you shared, which I'll actually, I wrote these down. Impact potential, confidence that it will have the impact, clarity of levers and are they differentiated unique levers? Is there something different from what other folks are doing? Those are ways to rank these ideas and problem clusters. You essentially come up with, here's three bets basically we potentially should take. Okay, and then I think that's where you stopped. Is that right?…

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