A lot of my job in product comes down to moving something from here to there. Learn what stakeholders and customers actually need, translate it into language a team can build against, and see it through to an outcome that works.
It’s rarely clean. You get mixed signals, half-stated expectations, people who want different things and don’t yet know it, and a healthy amount of “we’ll know it when we see it.” After enough years in that mess, I’ve landed on one thing that matters more than any framework: you need exactly two data points to get anywhere. Where you’re going, and where you are. Miss either one and you won’t make it.
Know where you want to go
Start with the destination, even a fuzzy one. It does not have to be a finished product spec or a detailed plan. It can be as loose as “I want to understand the single most important thing to our customers so we can grow revenue.”
The point is having a direction at all. A destination can move as you learn, and it usually does. But setting out to follow a map with no destination on it is just wandering with extra steps. You’ll be busy, you’ll feel productive, and you’ll have no way to tell whether any given turn took you closer or further away.
Know where you are
This is the one I see wreck projects most often. Everyone fixates on the goal, and nobody stops to plot the starting point honestly. On a map, if you don’t know where you’re standing, knowing the destination tells you nothing about which way to walk.
Knowing where you are means the whole team agreeing on the unglamorous truth of the current state. That’s harder than it sounds, because the honest version usually stings:
- That infrastructure isn’t built yet. It’s a diagram and a good intention.
- We don’t actually know if customers want this. We have opinions, not metrics.
- The team is already double-booked, so we need to prioritize the needs to make time.
None of that is fun to say out loud in a room full of stakeholders. But every one of those admissions is a real coordinate. And you cannot chart a course from a spot you’re pretending you’re not standing in.
Two points, then everything else
Once you actually have both, the rest of the work gets a lot more honest. You can pick a real direction, measure whether you’re closing the gap or widening it, and tell the difference between progress and motion.
Miss the destination and you wander. Miss the starting point and you march confidently in the wrong direction. Get both on the table, tell the truth about each one, and the path between them stops being a guess.
Everything after that is just walking.