Setting Strategy From Data, Then Committing to a Choice
Gather internal data, customer research and company goals, make the best informed bet, then reevaluate and pivot.
- Difficulty
- Advanced
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 90%
Perri's answer to leaders who've never set strategy before and don't know where to start: begin with data from everywhere — hire an analyst — then combine it with customer research and company goals, ask 'how can we win and get closer to the vision given what we can execute now,' make a decision despite uncertainty, and keep reevaluating so you can correct course.
Origin
Melissa Perri's prescription for first-time strategy-setters, reinforced by studying how companies like Netflix set their strategy.
Core principles
- 01Strategy starts with data from everywhere, not with a framework or an MBA.
- 02The specific framework doesn't matter as long as it works for your company — everyone does it differently.
- 03You can never be 100% certain; the job is the best informed guess plus willingness to correct.
- 04Balance where you want to go (vision) against what you can actually execute now.
How to run it
- 1
Hire an analyst and pull internal data
Bring a data analyst onto the team to crunch numbers and surface patterns. Give them the questions you want answered; they format the data so you can make informed decisions.
Pro tip Ex-strategy-consultants are great at this — hand them questions, not tasks.
- 2
Add external customer research and company goals
Bubble up whatever your customer-facing people learn, and put the company goals into context alongside the internal and external data.
Pro tip Talk to other departments — sales, subject-matter experts — for win/loss analysis and market movement you don't see at team level.
- 3
Ask the winning questions and make a choice
Frame strategy around 'how can we win, how do we get closer to the vision' while staying grounded in what you can execute now. Then actually pick a direction even without certainty.
Pro tip Making a choice is the hardest part for people who want 100% certainty — commit anyway.
Watch out Waiting for certainty is paralysis; you'll never have it.
- 4
Reevaluate and pivot
Treat the chosen direction as a best guess, keep reevaluating against all the information, and change direction if it turns out wrong.
Pro tip Study how other companies (e.g. Netflix) went from point A to point B — it shows everyone uses a different framework.
In the wild
Perri didn't start doing strategy immediately; she analyzed how companies like Netflix set theirs, reading articles on how firms moved from point A to point B.
→ She learned that everyone uses a different framework and that the framework matters less than asking the questions and understanding the data, market, and customers.
Common mistakes
Starting without data
First-time strategists don't know where to begin; skipping the internal-and-external data foundation means decisions rest on opinion instead of informed patterns.
Demanding certainty before committing
Insisting a strategy be guaranteed to work prevents making any choice — the leader's job is the best informed bet plus the discipline to correct it later.
Is it for you?
Best for
Newly-promoted product leaders setting company or product strategy for the first time.
Not ideal for
Decisions that are purely tactical or reversible in a day, where heavy data-gathering is overkill.
From the transcript
“the place that you need to start is data from everywhere you need to start with internal data and you need to have an analyst…”
“we take all the information we can we make the best possible guess to go in one direction and then we just keep reevaluating it…”
“it doesn't matter what framework you use as long as it works for your company”
From the episode
How to create a winning product strategy
Melissa Perri