How do you run a product strategy session for a small team?

Do not arrive at the strategy conversation with a blank ladder. Arrive with one already filled from the evidence, every row citing where it came from, and present it as a draft to be corrected. People correct something concrete far faster than they fill a blank, and a cited strawman turns the conversation from opinions into an argument about which citation is wrong.

What is a strawman proposal and why does it work?

Do not arrive at the strategy conversation with a blank ladder. Arrive with one already filled from the evidence, every row citing where it came from, and present it as a draft to be corrected. People correct something concrete far faster than they fill a blank, and a cited strawman turns the conversation from opinions into an argument about which citation is wrong.

How do you prepare for a strategy discussion?

Do not arrive at the strategy conversation with a blank ladder. Arrive with one already filled from the evidence, every row citing where it came from, and present it as a draft to be corrected. People correct something concrete far faster than they fill a blank, and a cited strawman turns the conversation from opinions into an argument about which citation is wrong.

The strawman · Product Strategy

§The question: what should be on the table when the team sits down to decide?

§The worst version of a conversation opens with a blank whiteboard and the word mission written at the top. Four people look at it. The most confident one speaks. Ninety minutes later there is a sentence everyone can live with and nobody believes.

§ 10.1Arrive filled#

§Before the conversation, one person, the owner or whoever facilitates, fills the entire ladder from the evidence. Mission, vision, strategy with its "we will" and "we will not," goals, roadmap, first task. Every row carries a citation: the row of the tension map, the interview code, the number from the field, or, honestly, "the room's belief, uncited."

§This is the strawman. It is presented as a draft to be corrected, and it is presented in full, so that the team reacts to a whole rather than building one level at a time from nothing.

Blank start	Strawman start
"So, what's our mission?" Silence. Then the loudest voice.	"Here is a mission drafted from the field: every guest recognized across brands without being asked. It cites the six-of-six profile completions and the vision row. Where is it wrong?"
"Let's brainstorm our bets." Forty sticky notes.	"Here are four bets in sequence, each with what has to be true and where the evidence is. Bet three is uncited; it is my belief. Argue with that one first."

§ 10.2Why it works#

§People correct something concrete far faster than they fill a blank. Shown a specific sentence, a team member knows within seconds whether it is wrong and can usually say why. Shown an empty box, the same person hesitates, defers, or produces something safe. The strawman converts the team's judgment from generative, which is slow and dominated by the confident, to evaluative, which is fast and distributed.

§It also makes the argument about . When every row cites a source, disagreement takes the form "that citation does not support that row," which is a factual dispute with a resolution, rather than "I don't feel that's our mission," which is not. The hospitality group's strategy row was argued for twenty minutes, and the whole argument was about whether five of six operations staff asking for the profile card justified making the operation bet two rather than bet three. That is a good argument to have. It has an answer.

§ 10.3The anchoring objection#

§The obvious risk is Kahneman's: a strawman anchors, and the team ends up near the facilitator's draft regardless of its merit. The risk is real and the defenses are specific.

§Cite everything, including the uncited. A row marked "my belief" invites attack in a way an unmarked row does not. Present the strawman after the team has written in silence, not before; the next chapter's first rule is that every level begins with each person writing alone, and the strawman is revealed after those are read, so the team's independent positions exist before the anchor does. And make correction visibly welcome: the facilitator who defends the draft has defeated its purpose. The draft's job is to be wrong in specific places so that the team can be right there.

§Amazon's practice of reading a narrative memo in silence before discussing it is the same mechanism at a larger scale: a written, complete proposal that the room reacts to, rather than a presentation the room absorbs.

§ 10.4The decider#

§Jake Knapp's gives one person the final call and names them before the week begins. The strawman needs the same. When a row is contested and the argument does not resolve, someone picks, and the team knows who before the conversation starts. Without a named decider the contested row stays blank, and a ladder with a blank row has a hole every level below it falls through.

§ 10.5What comes out#

§A filled, cited ladder, presented as a draft, corrected in the room by people who wrote their own positions first, with a named decider for the rows that do not resolve. The next chapter is the rules for that room.

10. The strawman