What is a product vision, and how do you write a good one?

0:00 Why you need a product vision

So you already know that it's impossible to have a great product strategy without a great product vision. And this is what we're gonna talk about in this video. What is it, what does it look like, and how to come up with one. But first of all, for those who don't know me, my name is Cyril Le Roux, I've founded Produxity, and I build Scaffold, which is an AI-native product strategy platform that helps product managers like you to come up with a great product strategy.

0:25 What a good product vision looks like

So, what does a good product vision look like? Well, there's a good description from Simon Sinek in his book Leaders Eat Last. He says, a good vision statement explains in specific terms what the world would look like if everything we did was wildly successful. So you see the first purpose is to make your destination clear. Where are you going with your product? And this aligns your stakeholders on what will be true when you've completed your mission.

But it does something else. And I really like this quote from Chris Voss, he's a former FBI negotiator, and he was involved in a number of high-stakes hostage-taking situations. And he says this: vision drives decision. In other words, when negotiating in hostage situations, you stand a much better chance of getting a decision and therefore getting an action from the person in front of you if they can visualise what you're offering.

Now, hopefully your stakeholders will not be as difficult as hostage takers. So it should work even better for them because this is the second objective. A good product vision also motivates and drives people towards a common goal.

1:35 The test: can you see it?

Now, what does that mean in practice, that you can visualise it? Well, I'd like you to think back about the 80s and what the situation was like when it comes to computers. You would have, you would find computers in offices, you would find computers usually old terminals, but it wasn't really that widespread. Yet in the 80s, Microsoft had this vision for their employees. A computer on every desk at work and at home running Microsoft software.

And this is really something you can easily imagine. You can really close your eyes and see what that situation would look like. So this is what you're looking for. You're looking for a statement that can easily be imagined.

2:15 Company vision vs product vision

Now, if your company is a startup with a single product, then your product vision is probably not too different to the company vision. There might even be a case for not having a separate product vision at all, especially in the early days. But if you're a multi-product, then you need to take the company vision and adapt it to your product. So you keep the mindset, you keep the high-level objectives, but you adapt it.

You essentially explain what it means for your product.

2:42 Example: Apple and the iPhone

So if we take an example, last time I checked Apple's vision, it said this: to make a contribution to the world by making tools for the mind that advance humankind. So that's the overall vision for Apple. And you could argue that's a bit fluffy, but that's understandable because there's a lot of product, you know, from an AirTag to an iPhone through a Mac or an iPad or a Vision Pro.

Those are very different products. So the vision statement for the company needs to fit all those products, but it's the role of the product manager to then adapt this to their respective product. And for the iPhone, it goes like this: make a phone that is truly smart, user-friendly and improves the lives of users across the globe. And if you think about what that means: truly smart, I think it's a little bit debatable at the moment with Siri, but hopefully that will improve.

User-friendly, yes, definitely. And improves the lives of users across the globe, and this is, this explains why Apple puts so much emphasis on accessibility. Whatever disability you have, whatever the impairment, they try to make the iPhone usable for you so that you can enjoy life better. So those are how you get a vision from a company vision.

3:57 How to write a product vision

So how do you make one? Well, this is not a solo exercise coming up with a product vision. Use this as an alignment workshop, and the earlier you bring people in on this journey, the more support you will have. So don't spring a product vision on them that they haven't seen. Make them part of the journey. And you could do this. You could have a workshop where you ask people what they would what would they like to be true in the future if the company is wildly successful.

And you can have a lot of fun talking about all those statements that would be true.

4:24 Write it yourself, or with AI

And then you have two options. If you're good at copy, then you can turn this into a statement yourself. Or if, like me, English is not your mother tongue, or if like me, you've never really been good at writing copy, then this is an AI job where you feed all those statements that have been provided by people, and you ask an AI to create three to five different options for a vision statement.

And you use this to pick and mix the best bits and assemble your final vision statement from all those different options that have been provided.

4:57 Your turn

So that's how you get to a great product vision. Give this a try and let me know in the comments how it went.