Product strategy

When I joined MachineMax, it had been in the market for just 6 months. The core focus had been on IoT hardware and creating a device that would ‘connect the unconnected’, bringing data from machine to our cloud, creating data models and applying machine learning to provide information about the productivity and utilisation of the machine. My joining MachineMax led the transition from solely hardware business, to a PasS business. Not only was this a key part of building out an end to end experience for our customers to invest in, but also contributes to our higher valuation as a business.

During my time as Head of Product and Design, I have been responsible for working with not only the leadership team but with the entire business and our customers to define the product strategy.

Our vision

To enhance human capabilities to make a better future

How did we get to this? When i joined, there was no clear vision. It was something that the co-founders had in their heads but was not translated to a real business plan or strategy.

My process

1. Internal interviews to understand the current views at all levels

2. Customer and consumer research to understand the market sentiment

3. Key stakeholder workshops to define the; Why, how, and what. Following Simon Sinek’s Golden circle. Take time to highlight what we are not.

4. Use this to define the vision and the mission statement, and start to think about how we can get there over the next 3 years

5. Most important! Share the vision, the mission and our elevator pitch with the business to understand their interpretation of it. Use this to iterate.

6. Break down the key levers or components that can help us get to our vision. For us this included; team, software, hardware & firmware, data science, infrastructure, operations, pricing, industries & regions, and channels. Work backwards from the 3 year mark to identify in each of these areas where we want to be and hence what is the desired state at the end of each year for each lever.

7. Bring it to life! This can be done in many ways but I like to work with the team to design a ‘vision’ of the future in both a prototype and video format. This really helps with buy in. You can see some of these examples below.

8. This process never ends! Strategy is not done once and forgotten about. It’s continuous, iterative and inclusive.

Visibility of the strategy is the most important factor in its success. Once we have that, we must give the teams ownership. During my time at MachineMax, I have successfully transitions the product and engineering teams from delivering features requested by sales, to OKR led squads with purpose and tangible outcome contributing towards our ultimate vision.

The biggest learning I have is that strategy is not an individual task.