Elon Musk

Product Managers – Learn from Elon Musk: write down your product strategy in prose

Posted on by will

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, Elon Musk posted his second ‘Master Plan’ for Tesla. In it, he lays out the strategy for Tesla for the next decade or so, in a clear, concise and highly readable way. He doesn’t use slides. He doesn’t use visuals or charts or graphs. Just words.

As a Product Manager, when was the last time you put your product vision and strategy into words? Into just words?

I’ve seen lots of product visions presented with powerpoint slides. Decks containing reams of slides with graphs and charts and bullet points. I’ve seen prototypes and visual concepts of futuristic products. But rarely do I see a product vision boiled down into its basic elements and presented in the form of written prose.

Don’t get me wrong: powerpoint and visual concepts are fantastic tools for communicating certain types of things. But the written word, in particular well-written prose, has an efficiency, elegance and clarity that you can’t replace with 80 slides.

If you don’t already, get into the habit of capturing your overall product vision and strategy in prose. Why? Because the ability to write it down in a clear and concise way is the ultimate test of the clarity of your vision.

It doesn’t have to be complicated. Let’s take a look at Elon’s post, and what we can learn from it:

  • The post is highly readable: it doesn’t use technical language, buzz words or jargon and it adopts a very informal style. A strategy brief doesn’t have to be complicated or written like an academic paper, nor does it have to be filled with management buzz words.
  • It is very clear and concise: you know exactly where he’s going and why.
  • The vision is sufficiently high-level: you can see the long-term end goal he’s going after (the vision), and the big building blocks he will assemble, in what order, to get there (the strategy).
  • It’s relatively short: about 1500 words. A strategy brief doesn’t have to be a novel! In fact, the shorter
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    , the better.

  • He breaks down extremely broad and complex macro-economic and environmental topics (global warming, sustainable energy production, etc) into very simple terms.
  • At the end there’s a 4 bullet-point summary containing just 47 words that sums up the entire thing. A decade-long plan summed up in under 50 words. This is the ultimate test of your vision and strategy: can you describe it clearly in under 50 words?

At Amazon, Jeff Bezos famously introduced a rule forcing his executives to present product and strategy proposals in written prose, in what he called narratives.

A quote from the book The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon:

“PowerPoint is a very imprecise communication mechanism. It is fantastically easy to hide between bullet points. You are never forced to express your thoughts completely.”

Give it a try: take 30 minutes and put your product strategy onto paper. If you like I’ll even read it for you and provide feedback! Send me an email or find me on Twitter.