9 out of 10 engineers can't state your strategy: 19 rules of product strategy
aakashgupta · x · 2026-10-24
Aakash Gupta distills a conversation with product strategy coach Tim Herbig into 19 rules. His core test: can an engineer explain your strategy in 30 seconds, use it for daily decisions, and say no with it? A 5-engineer team costs $1.4M/year—if no one can state the strategy, that money points nowhere.
Highlights: strategy exists to help teams say no (his leadership team had 14 priorities and achieved nothing aligned until cutting to 3); if the opposite sounds stupid, you made no choice (Roger Martin); cheap features make wrong choices more expensive; narrow your target audience comically (Andy Johns); AI alone is not a value proposition since everyone uses the same frontier models; tokens consumed is a value exchange for Anthropic, not your customer; metrics not moving means the choices were wrong. Try rule 0 tomorrow: count how many things your strategy doc lets you say no to.
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