My senior year at high school was the best. Most of it didn’t include high school at all, since I completed most of my university requirements in the 11th grade. I really needed to be at school for six hours a week or so, so I had plenty of time to do other things which I liked better. 

The first one was my job. I worked at a cinema. My first shift was on the last time Pulp Fiction was played, so I got to see it almost all by myself, with free popcorn that I got as part of the job. Other masterpieces, like The Usual Suspects or Seven, for example, I saw when they just came out. And then again. And again. It was the best job ever. 

The second place I spent a lot of time was Tel-Aviv University, where I started my Math and Computer Science degree. I didn’t plan to start it at high school, but since I took my math final already I found myself missing math, and decided to join at the last minute. I took Calculus and Discrete Mathematics and enjoyed every minute of it (yep, that’s me). But even more than I loved math, I enjoyed being at the university. I met there friends who were much older than me and remain great friends until today. I loved drinking coffee outside and felt that I’m part of something big that is happening. 

But the third one was the most exciting. I passed an audition at the best acting studio in Israel and took their preparatory class. It was a series class: about 20 hours a week, with some of the best teachers you could learn from. We had to work hard, and some of my classmates turned out to be famous actors in Israel afterward. At the end of the year, some of us were officially accepted into the school to continue to the full program. I was among those who passed. The manager told me that I can be an actress, but he is not sure that I will be. 

Eventually, he was right of course. Math won over the theater. I’m not at all sorry, but I do miss the years when these two great loves of mine lived together.

I got to think about it recently when I realized that I use techniques from both at work, but not necessarily in a straightforward way. On the math front, it’s not about fancy algorithms. And on the acting front, it’s not about speaking in front of large audiences (which I do, and love, but there’s more to it).

I found myself using both in order to keep a fresh perspective when I help companies build the right product for the market. It is super important to keep a critical eye on the stories we tell ourselves. This is one of the hardest things to do, especially after you have already been working on something for a while. You know it in and out, and looking at it from the outside is nearly impossible. These simple and useful techniques will help you do just that.

The Math Teacher Method

I always say that your product strategy needs to make sense. You need to be able to clearly explain why it should work, at least on paper. If it doesn’t work on paper it will never work in reality (the other way around is not always true of course, not everything that works on paper works in real life). 

How can you make sure your strategy makes sense? By looking at it as if it was a math theorem. Of course, your strategy needs to tell a story, and stories need to be much more detailed and colorful than pure mathematics, but in its essence, it is a claim, a point you are trying to make.

In math, a statement can be true only if it stems from previous statements. In Calculus, you start with an axiomatic system and build all of the math we all know on top of it, step by step. In high school, I was fascinated with this. The idea that you cannot rely on anything to be true until you prove it, even if you were using it your entire life, felt super powerful. It also helped simplify things, since it created clarity. There were the things we knew (axioms and the theorems we already proved) and anything else required proof. 

If you apply the same line of thinking to the product world, your product strategy needs to start with a list of assumptions. Then, every statement you make in your product strategy document needs to either be an assumption or derive from previous assumptions and statements. Looking at it statement by statement, like a math teacher who needs to grade your proof and see if you were able to accurately lead us to the conclusion that something is correct, is exactly the magic we are looking to apply.

It allows you to focus on one sentence at a time, and see why you think it is true. The need to explain it – even to yourself, will force you to think it through and will reveal many hidden assumptions and blind spots that you have never thought of.

Since unlike math, in the product world there are no axioms, the fun begins when you get to discuss your assumptions and statements with others in the company. If you don’t agree on the same assumptions, it will be very hard for you to agree on the following statements. But that’s exactly how this method works – write your assumptions down, build your entire theory based on them, and then debate with others to see if they agree. Rinse and repeat until it all makes sense.

The Actress Method

Great, so your product strategy now makes sense. But wait, makes sense for whom exactly? It needs to make sense to your customers, through their point of view, otherwise, you can talk to the market forever about things they don’t see the same way – it won’t lead you to the results you are looking for. 

How can you adopt your customer’s point of view? By entering their world and playing their role. Think that you are now about to enter a roleplay – you might have done that in business school or as part of your professional training before. You are assigned to be X, a person with a specific profile and characteristics. How would you prepare for that roleplay? I can share with you my method, which comes from years of semi-professional acting.

First, you have to understand the character you are about to play. Who are they? What’s their (relevant) history? What do they care about? What are their motivations? Note that you want to answer these questions broadly and not just when it comes to your product. That’s exactly what makes it a fresh perspective – for example, you might find out that the problem that your product is solving isn’t at all at the top of their concerns. Quite refreshing and important, isn’t it?

Create as detailed a profile as possible. It is easier if you think about the people you know who are your customers. Think about a few of them, and see what they have in common. Add as much color and information as needed in order to make it feel real. This is important both for your strategy in general and for this method of looking at it from the customer’s perspective.

Then, before you read your product strategy with a fresh eye, make it even more real by telling it in the first person. Take a deep breath and say “I am X”. Then go on to share what your day as X looked like. You were running from one meeting to another, with your boss constantly asking you about a certain project that is running late. Again, try to shy away from anything related to your product, because you want to open the lens. Give this reality a chance to lead to your product naturally. If it can’t, chances are that this is exactly what’s happening when you talk to real customers.

Then, with X’s day in your mind, read through your product strategy again. See if as X one statement leads to the other. For example, if the statement says that the customers would be telling other people about the product, ask yourself if as X, at this point of the story, you would go and do that. Why would you? What needs to happen that will cause you to take action? What will be a strong enough motivation to go beyond any objections?

Adopt X’s point of view to again poke holes in the story. 

Important note: Don’t feel bad when you find these holes. The contrary should be true. They always exist, and if they do – you should be happy that you found them. That’s why we need to comb our strategy time and again. But now that you have found them, they are no longer blind spots, and you can do something about them. Rewrite your story and start from the beginning. That’s how it works.