It's always a pleasure discussing The Decision Stack with someone who's actually put the ideas through their paces. Stephanie Leue is one of the CPOs who has stress tested The Decision Stack in a real role — and now writes about the strategy-execution gap as well as anyone I know.
In this podcast episode, we talked about how most organisations who think they’re going too slow have an alignment problem. That if most of your team can't name the strategy, the deck being "done" doesn't mean the work is. We also got into stopping your CEO from overwriting priorities, and why AI changes less about product leadership than people think.
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Chapters
2:34 - The existential crisis every product leader knows. Why a pony farm in Cornwall was always more dream than plan.
3:41 - Being a leader means enabling teams to do great things. Why the aha moments shifted from shipping to watching people grow.
4:44 - Most product problems are shared context problems. What Martin kept finding when he was called in to "fix the product team."
7:29 - The biggest surprise about the strategy-execution gap. 95% of your team doesn't know what your strategy is. And yet exec teams assume the work is done the moment the deck is finished.
9:09 - How to properly communicate strategy. Co-creation, principles, and why once you are tired of repeating it, people are just starting to hear it.
12:13 - Strategy is a living document. How to handle the fact that strategy changes mid-communication and what to do when people notice.
13:29 - Strategy problems are people problems too. Why there is no perfect answer to communication, and why the burden we put on leaders is often too high.
16:26 - To build a great product is to say no to more than you say yes to. What separates high-performing product orgs from struggling ones comes down to one thing: focus.
18:11 - How to stop your CEO from overwriting your priorities. Evidence over opinion, the post-it wall, and "not yet" as an alternative to no.
21:29 - Why some leaders struggle to say no. Psychological safety, the cost of always saying yes, and why Stephanie never had this problem.
30:13 - Sometimes you just have to build what needs to get built. The Cazoo story and the difference between product as the thing you sell and product as an enabling function.
35:07 - AI's impact on product leadership. Why getting drawn into building with AI tools is the wrong move, and why strategic clarity matters more now than it ever did.
