Why is it important for Product leaders to be good at communicating product strategy and results?

Communication is crucial to garnering support for product initiatives – effective communication helps build productive relationships with various stakeholders, including executives, investors, partners and customers. 

Product has to maintain credibility and reliability to be effective – successful Product teams are built on strong relationships with other functions. Transparency around product plans and performance is key to building trust with peers and reports.

It enables effective product planning and risk mitigation – when stakeholders understand the current plans and iterative improvements, it allows for better resource allocation and enables adaptation to potential market shifts or competitive threats.

What kind of insights and reporting do different stakeholders care most about when interacting with Product leaders? 

It depends on the individual involved
Stakeholder		What matters most to them
CEO		• High level growth metrics like revenue, churn, NPS • Cost efficiency and profitability • Data-driven Justification for major product decisions
Heads of Sales / Marketing		• Competitive comparisons and positioning • Pipeline and user engagement metrics • Tension around roadmap priorities
CTO		• Technical performance • Quality metrics • Development process • Security compliance
Chief Customer Officer		• Customer satisfaction and sentiment metrics  • Product adoption and usage trends among key customer segments • Roadmap initiatives tied to addressing top customer pain points • Customers’ feature requests and feedback themes • Product-related support ticket and escalation volumes
Board / Investors		• Heavy focus on financials and growth metrics • Operational efficiency of Product/Eng investments • Market share, penetration and competitive lens Note: Awareness of the holding period is key for strong communication with your board – if you’ve got an 8-year plan but your investors need an exit in 3-5 years, you’re not aligning with their time horizon and goals.

Following the Roadmap

How should Product leaders present the roadmap to different stakeholders? What’s the right level of detail and time horizon for each?

Stakeholders	Level of detail	Medium	Goals
Internal R&D team	Detailed features, timelines, and dependencies.	Likely viewed and overseen via project management tools.	Solid execution and alignment across Product and Engineering.
Broader leadership team	High level overview of strategic initiatives and major milestones.	Often best portrayed in slide decks.	Alignment on priorities, timelines and cross-functional dependencies.
Board	Strategic overview emphasizing market positioning and growth impact.	Often best portrayed in slide decks.	Confidence in the company’s direction and competitive advantage.

Don’t plan beyond 18 months with any specificity – you can project growth and major moves over a 5-year period, but expect the detailed roadmap to change frequently based on market factors outside your control.

When is it okay and not okay to change the roadmap? How do you communicate and explain decisions to change the roadmap to different stakeholders?

It’s okay to change the roadmap when:

• Market needs or business priorities meaningfully shift 
• You’re iterating based on testing data and customer feedback
• You have clear justification based on the results you’re seeing

It’s NOT okay to change the roadmap when:

• It’s happening frequently without good reason
• You’re tossing out prior commitments without explanation
• Changes aren’t supported by data or strategic rationale

How should changes to the product roadmap get communicated?

Before making major changes, align with the executive team first – include the executive team on major decisions affecting the product roadmap. Then take time to gather supporting data before communicating out to the rest of the organization

Provide context for why you’re making the adjustment – clearly explain the driving factors behind the change, whether it’s market shifts, new data, or strategic realignment. Use specific examples or metrics to illustrate why this adjustment is necessary and beneficial for the product’s long-term success.

Acknowledge the impact and any trade offs being made – be transparent about how the changes will affect different stakeholders and any potential downsides. Address both the positive outcomes you’re aiming for and the challenges or compromises that may arise, showing that you’ve carefully considered all aspects of the decision.

Outline concrete next steps and timelines – present a clear action plan with specific milestones and deadlines for implementing the changes. This helps stakeholders understand how and when the adjustments will be rolled out, providing a sense of structure and progress.

Follow up to ensure there are no lingering concerns – Schedule check-ins or feedback sessions after the initial announcement to address any questions or worries that may have arisen. This demonstrates ongoing commitment to transparency and allows you to gauge how well the changes are being received and understood

How can Product leaders manage conflicting product strategy requests from different stakeholders?

Have a clear decision-making framework – this allows you to justify what is prioritized and what is not in an objective way. Live by the framework and point back to the principles you operate by when explaining decisions. This is one of the hardest parts of the job. Requests and opinions will come in from all corners, and it’s on Product to thoughtfully navigate them.

Understand the perspective behind each request – understanding the point of view behind the requests helps you make clearer headed decisions. What is motivating it? How many data points is the request based on? Is it an isolated suggestion or representing a broader theme?

Discuss and consider the tradeoffs and opportunity costs  – if you took on that request, what would you have to pause or stop doing? Does that align with your strategic priorities? Explaining the tradeoffs to stakeholders will help them understand the reasoning behind product choices.

Note: Board requests tend to be high-level and require deeper investigation before pursuing – board members often have extensive market expertise but may be removed from company specifics. Take time to validate whether their input matches the specific your situation before acting on it.

Determining the Right Metrics

What product metrics should Product leaders report on?

Product should aim to track both leading and lagging indicators:
Lagging indicators – business outcomes and results		Leading indicators – product inputs that feed business results:
• Revenue and growth rate • Gross margin and profitability • Customer acquisition cost and lifetime value • Retention and expansion rates • Net Promoter Score and customer satisfaction		• User engagement, activation and conversion rates • Feature adoption and usage • Funnel drop-off rates • Testing and experimentation results

Product OKRs should always connect directly up to company-level goals – product-specific objectives and key results must clearly support overarching company priorities. They should be devised with company objectives in mind and shouldn’t be formed and evaluated in a silo. 

Limit your OKRs and executive reporting to 5-10 of the most essential metrics – curate what you include in your reporting to provide a comprehensive yet focused snapshot of performance. Revisit what you report on each quarter to trim anything that’s no longer relevant. You can track additional information, but your executive summaries should be focused and concise.

If Product changes its metrics or methodology, be transparent – clearly explain why you’re making the change and how it will improve your measurement going forward. Avoid constantly shifting what you track, as moving goalposts slow progress.

What should happen when metric-based goals aren’t being hit, given that Product’s goals are often impacted by other functions?

Product has to be transparent and accountable along with the rest of the leadership team – no one wants to report poor performance to the board. The leadership team should do an honest review of performance and present a clear-eyed picture to the board when there are shortcomings.

Product should partner with other functions to diagnose root causes – is underperformance due to upstream marketing challenges? Can failures be attributed to downstream conversion issues? Results can be impacted by the work of multiple functions, so dig into leading indicators to identify drivers.

When diagnosing problems, do a full data review beyond headline KPIs – review customer interview results, user journey analytics, and product testing insights to shine a light on where to improve. KPIs are great for observing performance, but more detailed investigation is required when looking to make a fix.

Functional leadership should present a united front on how you’ll course correct – showcase the initiatives and investments you’re making as a cross-functional team to get back on track. The board should see you’re proactively managing any problems and finding solutions.

To what extent should Product be assessed based on delivering on-time against the roadmap?

Roadmaps exist for a reason, but timing is not the ultimate measure of success – there may be very valid factors behind shifts in the roadmap’s scope and timeline. Don’t rotely stick to measuring product performance based off of performance to a static roadmap—or mis-prioritize roadmap delivery if business priorities have changed. 

Rather than on-time delivery, focus on achieving desired outcomes – focus on those strategic objectives the roadmap was designed to support. Try to move the needle on the initiatives that are aligned with desired business objectives. 

If roadmap delays are consistent and without clear justification, investigate them – if roadmap timeline slips are frequent and seemingly arbitrary, it points to potential issues with estimation, resourcing or accountability that need to be addressed.

Optimal Approaches to Board Reporting

What should the Product section in a board deck look like? 

The Product Section of the Board deck should include: 

• 1-2 slides on key product initiatives –  lead with progress on major product initiatives and how they ladder up to company goals discuss where there are roadblocks and where there’s been progress. Highlight any significant market or competitive developments that impact positioning. 
• 1 slide on the product roadmap at a high level – refresh members of the board on what the product roadmap looks like, what you’re aiming for, and any changes that have occurred to the roadmap since the last meeting. 
• 1-2 slides on leading and lagging KPIs – go over your function’s performance on the key product KPIs and connect product metrics to the business’s overarching performance. Don’t show every supporting metric you track, but have them handy to answer questions. 
• 1 slide on Product/Engineering investment allocation – provide visibility for the board into the allocation of Product and Engineering resources.

Maintain a consistent reporting structure from meeting to meeting – this makes it easy for the board to track your progress and spot important changes. Use an appendix if you need to include more detailed content.

Ideally the Product leader is the one presenting – this gives them valuable face time with the board and ability to handle Q&A and discussion directly. If the CEO or CFO is covering Product slides, ensure tight coordination on the storyline.

How does the board members perspective from the Product team or the leadership team? 

Board members often have a broader aperture on the market – they may see emerging trends or competitor moves that the Product team hasn’t been exposed to yet. Their input can help expand your function’s thinking.

They can pattern match across their portfolio – board members who work with multiple companies may recognize winning plays to adopt or anti-patterns to avoid based on what they’ve seen elsewhere.

They’re highly attuned to financial efficiency – the board will zero in on the ROI and unit economics of product investments. They want to see you’re making smart bets and focusing on financial efficiency.

Board members may not have the full context on company nuances – their feedback can be directionally on point, but may need to be adapted to fit your specific situation, team and customer base. Validate suggestions with your own data.

What kind of questions should Product leaders expect to field from the board and investors?

The board will often ask data-driven questions like:

• Why are we seeing certain movements in KPIs?
• How does this new launch compare to the competition?
• What’s the payback period on this product investment?
• How are customers responding to this change?

Come prepared with detailed analytics and verbatim feedback – if a board member presses for more context on a certain trend, be ready to go two levels deeper than what’s shown on the slide.

Expect questions to get into the weeds of your operations – board members may probe into your experimentation practices, resourcing model, or go-to-market coordination. Have crisp answers ready.

If you genuinely don’t have an answer, say so – it’s okay not to have all the details at your fingertips during a board meeting. Commit to following up with a complete response after the meeting.

Overall

What are the most important things to get right?

Product’s communication and storytelling – being able to crisply articulate your strategy, results and decision-making process is critical to instilling confidence with the executive team and board.

Metrics and goal-setting – define the right leading and lagging indicators to measure Product’s impact on the business and ensure that Product’s targets map to the overall company objectives.

Manage the expectations of all stakeholders – be transparent about when you’re making roadmap tradeoffs and changes, and why you make decisions. Proactively reset deliverable timelines when needed. 

Attempt to cultivate stakeholder alignment – understand what facets of Product work each cross-functional peer and board member cares about most. Tailor your style and focus areas accordingly.

What are common pitfalls?

Inconsistent or unclear communication – constantly shifting your metrics, roadmap and narrative will erode trust with stakeholders. Establish a steady drumbeat and use the same vocabulary.

Only reporting vanity metrics – if you only talk about top-line user growth without digging into engagement, retention and monetization, you’re telling an incomplete story. Go deeper than surface metrics.

Glossing over misses or delays – if things aren’t going well, don’t try to spin the story. Be upfront about challenges and how you’re course correcting. Not planning adequately for meetings – if you try to wing important readouts, it’ll show. Invest time in building a compelling narrative backed up by data. Practice key messages.