Making Three-Horizon Thinking Operational
The power of three-horizon thinking isn't in managing each horizon well—it's in orchestrating how they interact to create sustainable competitive advantage.
The Three Horizons: Reframed for Scale-Ups
The hardest part of three-horizon thinking isn't understanding the concept—it's defending strategic capacity when everything feels urgent. In Part 3, we tackle the organizational reality: how to maintain portfolio discipline when customers are demanding Horizon 1 features, how to structure teams across different horizons, and how to avoid the four pitfalls that kill most strategic initiatives.
Why Your (Standalone) Roadmap is Failing You
Your product roadmap looks impressive. It's packed with features your customers want, capabilities your sales team needs, and improvements your engineering team knows are necessary. You're executing well, shipping consistently, and hitting your quarterly commitments. So why does it feel like you're falling behind strategically? If you've achieved product-market fit but can't seem to build lasting competitive advantage, the problem isn't execution—it's how you think about your product portfolio.
Want Your New Team or Leader to Succeed? Start with Clarity.
Most teams don’t stumble because the new hire wasn’t good. They stumble because no one aligned on why the team exists or how it connects to the rest of the company. Add a new function without clarity, and people start guessing. That guesswork slows everything down.
Turning Customer Success Into a Discovery Engine
Turning Customer Success into a discovery engine means giving them the structure, skills, and recognition to turn daily interactions into actionable insight.
Deep Dive: When Curiosity Becomes Compliance (aka How Great Product Teams Lose Their Nerve)
Product teams are especially vulnerable to consensus-driven erosion. Good product people want to be useful, so they say yes. They reshape strategy to fit the loudest voices in the room. They try to serve everyone — and in the process, serve no one.
From Features to Focus: Getting Back to Why We Started
Few product teams set out to become feature factories. It happens slowly, even accidentally. At first, you’re solving real problems. There’s energy, clarity, a nearly singular purpose. Then the roadmap starts to splinter. Stakeholders get louder. Metrics get fuzzier. And before you know it, you're shipping work without being sure why it matters.
How to Sequence Tech Debt vs. New Features
Few topics spark more tension between product and engineering than the balance between addressing tech debt and delivering new features. Product wants to ship value fast. Engineering knows the cost of ignoring debt. When these priorities collide, roadmaps stall, trust erodes, and both teams feel unheard.
Turning Sales Losses Into Roadmap Opportunities
Every lost deal tells a story. Too often, product teams dismiss sales objections as noise or excuses. In reality, they are one of the most underutilized sources of product insight. The problem is that most companies lack the structure to separate valuable patterns from one-off complaints.
Creating Feedback Loops Without Derailing the Roadmap
Feedback is the lifeblood of great products. Sales hears objections in the field. Customer success sees adoption challenges firsthand. Executives bring insights from investors and the market. Every team has valuable input. The problem isn’t getting feedback—it’s managing it.
One Strategy, Two Roadmaps: Building the Foundation for High-Velocity Product Delivery
The alignment of roadmaps doesn’t just create smoother planning cycles. It builds trust. And trust is the most powerful accelerant a product organization can have.
The CPO-CTO Alliance: Why This Partnership Makes or Breaks Scale-Ups
When we see CPO-CTO pairs who never disagree, it's usually a red flag. The best partnerships generate creative tension that leads to better solutions.