Don’t Stop Too Soon
Most strategy conversations start with the numbers, and many end there too. But the big gains only come when you keep going.
I’m part of a community of senior product people who meet every now and then for roundtable discussions. Each table takes a different topic.
I almost always find myself at the strategy table. It’s a topic I’m super passionate about, and I feel I have a lot to contribute there.
At this last session, much of the conversation was about how hard it is to get the organization to do the strategic work.
Toward the end, one of the participants, who does product strategy at a large company, summed it up. He said it beautifully: people think strategy is a game of numbers, while it’s actually a creative process.
I couldn’t agree more. I find myself saying similar things to my clients.
But numbers are so much easier to start from. They are black and white, management takes the discussion there (more so in corporates from what I’ve seen), and they surely are part of the discussion.
So how do you get to the creative part?
The answer is to keep going beyond the numbers. Real creativity comes from depth, and many teams simply stop before they get there.
Here’s what going beyond the numbers looks like, and what you’ll see once you do.
Look for growth
I was working with a client whose core market had stopped growing.
The numbers were clear, and not kind. Prices in their market were set from outside. Demand was flat. Every corner of it already had a product in it, often theirs.
So management pushed for what management usually pushes for in that situation: cut costs. Make it cheaper, run it with fewer people, take something off every line.
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And in many cases, that’s the right first step.
But cutting costs is a bandage. It stops the bleeding. It doesn’t heal anything, and it doesn’t build a better future.
To succeed over time, a business has to keep growing. So you can cut, and often you need to. You just can’t stop there.
What comes after the cut is the harder question: how do we bring in more revenue? Numbers can still help you figure it out, but you have to know where to look.
See what really works
So we went on to look at sales and usage statistics to understand what was actually going on. But “what’s going on” has many layers, and that’s where things get interesting.
With this client, the overall usage number was low. Definitely a bad sign. Since numbers can tell more than one story, to really understand what’s going on we had to go deeper. We separated the usage by use case, and suddenly the numbers weren’t so bad all around.
One use case turned out to be a phenomenal success. Others were lagging way behind. Seeing that in the numbers, the product leaders in the room could also explain why that’s true and makes sense. We were able to turn the numbers into a story, and the logic of that story helped us understand what they are really dealing with in a much better way.
Numbers are not the answer, they are the ground for insights, and it’s those insights that help you move forward. But even that’s not the end of it. To understand what to do next, there is another layer to dig into.
Go with the wins
Once you see what works and what doesn’t, attention tends to go to what’s not working, so you can fix it. The use cases customers bought and don’t use are right there, and you start planning how to win them back next year. You might even think about bold moves like withdrawing from some of the use cases entirely.
It’s very natural to go there, and perhaps even necessary, but fixing things isn’t a strategy. Even killing what’s not working isn’t a strategy. They’re a means to something. A strategy needs to explain how we succeed, and to succeed, we need to look at what works.
There are two things to look for when you dive deeper into what works. First, can you take what works and scale it? Is there even a market to scale with? And the second is can you find other places with similar characteristics that you believe you can succeed on. It can be the ones that need fixing, but also new ones entirely, as long as you can explain how you are going to succeed there.
When I say that strategy is a creative process, this is what I mean. Figuring out how you’re going to succeed, and being able to explain it, is creating something new. You still have to be good with numbers, but to become really strategic you have to bring your creative mind too.
Our free e-book “ Speed-Up the Journey to Product-Market Fit” — an executive’s guide to strategic product management is waiting for you at www.infinify.com/ebook
Originally published at https://infinify.com on October 7, 2026.
