I came across this quote in a fantasy novel* I was reading:
“Strategy is just a fancy word for a special kind of common sense, the ability to see options, to make them where there were none. It’s not about knowing the rules. It’s about knowing how to break them.”
When it comes to building Product
, There are thousands of frameworks, books and ways of looking at strategy. But at the end of the day, no framework will replace the ability to see… to be able to look at your situation, at the strategic context of your product, and see your options.
Frameworks can help you organise and explain what you see
, and sometimes even deduce or discover things you might not have otherwise seen. But the strongest Product people I know use a strong combination of instinct and pattern recognition to see their strategic options and deduce the right way forward.
* The novel is called “A Conjuring of Light“, and it’s part of the Darker Shade of Magic series by V. E. Schwab.