Good morning, everyone. My name is Lisa Schneider. I am a fractional chief product officer and product strategy advisor and I have over 20 years of experience in product leadership, including cross functional leadership. I've had other departments report to me.And over this time, I have seen both how critic important it is that we have good cross functional strategy. Uh And also, sadly how often it is that we do not have cross functional strategy. So today, we're going to talk about why this matters and how to actually create one. And as we get started, I'd like to sort of talk about what is cross functional strength strategy and what does that look like? And I use the analogy of a game of volleyball. So in a really good game of volleyball and, and players that are playing at a high level, one team on the side of the net, they are working together with one goal which is to keep the ball in the air and get the ball over the net to the next team. And so no matter what happens, they are aligned in what their ultimate goal is and they are working together and that's what good cross functional strategy looks like. Bad cross functional strategy or a lack of cross functional strategy looks like what I call stakeholder volleyball.

And in stakeholder volleyball, you're actually on the other side of the net from one of your counterparts in another department and you sort of do a thing uh that, that is in your area and you just do it on your own and then you pop it over the net to the other side and they just have to deal with it.

And that is stakeholder volleyball. And one of the ways to sort of get out of stakeholder volleyball and get aligned in a really good game of volleyball is to have a solutions mindset, right? We are after a solution rather than doing the thing that we're doing. So in the analogy of volleyball, the solution is we are all aligned to keep the ball in the air and get it over the net. But really the best way I think to understand why this is so critical is to look at case studies of where it did not go well. And I, I tend to see a lot of nodding when we do this. So the first case study is an experience that I had where I was working for a really small organization and even being a small organization, there were three different strategies um in different departments across the organization. And what was especially interesting was this was a social enterprise, start up focused on home buyer education. And so everybody at this organization was highly aligned with the mission. We often think that a mission um maybe feels like a strategy or, or directs the strategy and that it's OK, as long as we share a mission. And in this case, right, people are really passionate about this mission.

This was about equity, it was about access to information and redressing information, asymmetry. And so the the people on the team were highly aligned in, in their commitment to this mission. And yet we ended up with a three way misalignment. So what did that look like? Well, marketing had sort of a cutesy voice for newsletters and social media. It was more in that like one o'clock tone, highly engaging, super successful, right? High high click through rates on newsletters and engagement. Um but that marketing content was really disconnected from product, it was disconnected in, in tone and it was sort of physically disconnected in the product. The business development team was trying to sell customer acquisition, they were very reactive to partner requests. So every time a potential partner said something like how about this or I might need that or I was looking for this, you know, they would run back and they would have a big meeting and they would say the client wants this, you know, when can we build it? And, and of course, because this is not unusual in any way, shape or form. Of course, then, you know, product would get very frustrated and say that's not in the road map. And product was focused on sort of accessibility education, very calm, measured tone. They were focused on creating content and tools around that education, not necessarily the things that Biz was trying to sell. So I I would also like to point out here, right?

These were all like really committed people, smart people and any of these strategies could potentially have been OK. The problem was that they were not aligned, right? So it was full on stakeholder volleyball, right? I'm doing my thing, you deal with it later. And the and the result was that aside from the long time partnerships that they had, there were no sales for about a year, a little more than a year before I got there, they made no sales because they were not aligned, right? So the outcome was not good. Another example uh was shared with me by my friend Jennifer Davis who experienced this. And this is a case study where product and marketing specifically were misaligned. So in the case of Honeywell, they were first to market with what they called the um first interconnected thermostat, right?

The first smart thermostat and you know, it was a really good product, it was a really sort of good quality thermostat and Nest came out with a product that was initially it was an inferior product um but they positioned it as internet of things. So they sort of product positioning with internet of things. When I say the product was inferior. As I understand it, it was so unreliable as a thermostat that they had to show on the front, the temperature that the thermostat was set to rather than the temperature that the room is, which is what you expect. I wanna go see what the temperature is because that fluctuated so wildly. So Honeywell went to market normal marketing channels, brand new product first interconnected thermostat went through their normal H VAC channels. So product had sort of this new innovative thing, but marketing was doing the same old, same old and nest of course, went to market with this consumer facing cutting edge. Their marketing was aligned with this product positioning as, as uh internet of things. And so because their product and marketing were aligned and they had really good clear messaging. They won that race even though they had an inferior product. So, you know, from Honeywell's perspective, not having that alignment really uh caused them to lose the race, right?

That misalignment caused them to lose the race. So they were, they were pretty disappointed. This guy looks pretty bummed here yet another case study. Another one told to me by a friend. So this one's going to be really vague. But a a health tech company built a product and really on their own in a complete silo they built a product, full stakeholder volleyball, lobbed this finished product across to marketing. And if any of y'all work in highly regulated industries, you will understand marketing could not talk about it. So they built a product, didn't tell anybody lobbed it over the net to marketing and marketing couldn't talk about it. So if they had alignment from marketing in the beginning, they could have worked out, you know, what do we need to do as we build this product to be able to go to market, to be able to talk about it. But because they hadn't done that, they put all of this effort really sunk cost into creating a product that they couldn't even talk about. Another experience that I had was working at A B to B content and data services company. One of our markets was agriculture and one of our targets was cattle ranchers. And so the, the name of the consumer facing content, right? B to B, right? Business consumer content was beef, right?

They had beef magazine, they had a website that was beef and somehow between sort of the core intent of who our target is got disconnected from this idea of like what are the keywords around beef. And so the search marketing team ended up um pulling together and running a campaign against related keywords for beef. But instead of targeting cattle ranchers, they were consumer driven keywords that targeted people that wanted to know what was in their hamburger at mcdonald's.

And again, this is not the audience that is going to um purchase all of the things that their, you know, sponsors and partners were, were looking to connect. So that was a very unsuccessful campaign again because there was a lack of alignment. Uh Finally, I, I worked for many years at Merriam Webster at the Dictionary and I was initially brought in with a vision of doing digital innovation and I came in like all happy and we're gonna do digital innovation. And the problem is that that vision was not aligned with the existing mission. The company had obviously been around for a very long time, right? I think around 100 and 70 years when I got there and they were, they were very focused on, you know, we write dictionary definitions and we have really strict criteria for entry, right? So we're, we're not making stuff up. We're actually following the evidence. I I used to joke, we've been data driven for almost 200 years. But, but that was like the mission, the mission is we're gonna write dictionary definitions with the strict criteria for entry. And I will say that the admission is like the why you're doing something, not the what you're doing. But but regardless this was the sense sort of in the company.

And so that disconnect caused people to go like what, like I would have these ideas and then people go like I don't understand. Why do you even wanna do that? Right. Why do you even want to do that? So we didn't have alignment, we're gonna come back to this later. So, so what do we do? What do we do about this lack of alignment? And how do we create that? And the thing that I like to do is an exercise going through the strategy pyramid. And this is not unique to me. You can find this, but the way that we're going to talk about it, I think is very helpful. And we're going to go through this twice once, just to sort of get a sense of what this is. And then we're gonna go through it with a little storytelling exercise. So at the top of the strategy pyramid is your mission, right? Why are we doing this and, and understanding that why is really important and making sure that everybody is aligned on the, why is really important?

The next thing is the vision. What does this look like when we're done? So in the, in the case of the homeownership enterprise, there was a shared mission but not a shared vision. So they were already misaligned at this second level, even though there was such strong alignment at the top, it's really important that we hit all of these points. So we need to have a shared vision. What does this look like when we're done? Because there are different ways to execute on a mission. The next level is objectives, right? How will we know if we've succeeded? How are we going to measure this and that? Right? Revenue, obviously, that could be revenue, but it can be other things. How many new people did we reach? You know, how much engagement do we have? Uh what percentage of the market did we hit? Did we disrupt the system? Right? There are other objectives. But again, everyone has to understand this is how we'll measure it, right? This is what it looks like and this is how we'll measure it. So you can see where having those shared outcomes already kind of provides a creative constraint to start to get people on the same page. Then once you have all of that, then you can start to think about strategy, which is broadly how are we going to get there? But you can't think about strategy. How will we get there if you don't know where there is and what it looks like, right?

What, what is the vision of what it looks like? And, and how will we know if we got there? You need to know those things in order to develop a strategy and then you get down into tactics and those tactics can be whatever they are, right? It can be the road map, the the product, things that we're building, it can be, the marketing could be, you can fill in any other department, any uh but it's really about the tactics and what happens is um this creates cross functional collaboration and in the examples that we gave, what happens is these middle things are missing, right?

So you have maybe a mission and then you've jumped down to here and that's why you have people who are misaligned and not going off um in the same direction because they don't, they're not having a shared vision. And so everybody is making up their own version. And as in the case of the homeownership again, they might all be sort of viable, good ideas, but, but it doesn't work if they're different. So we're gonna go through this now again and I'm gonna talk about, um, planning a trip to California. I'm based in New York in the United States. And so for me, that seems like a great thing to do. We're gonna plan a trip to California. So starting with the mission, why are we planning a trip to California? Well, I wanna work on strategy, right? I want, I want to get out of the, every day. I wanna get out of where I am. I wanna be somewhere else and I wanna work on strategy. Ok, fine. So the next level is the vision. What does this look like when we're done? What does it look like to go to California and work on strategy? And I do this workshop a lot. Um, either one on one or in small groups with clients and I always say I want to go to California because I wanna sit on the beach, I wanna sit in the sun.

And when I'm doing strategy, I want to really be able to think and focus and be inspired by nature and look out on the horizon where the sky meets the ocean and it'll just expand my thinking and I'm gonna be really creative and it's gonna be worth the investment in time. And I was doing this with the client in December and he said to me as soon as I finished talking, like, so quickly that you could see he was like, already thinking of this. Um He said, well, I assume if we're going to California, we're going to be networking. And I was like, oh my God, I'm so glad you said that because that is the exact point of this, I assume to go to California and do strategy. We're sitting on the beach and you assume that we're going to be doing networking. So we have a disconnect now. It's OK to have that conversation. But ultimately, we need to decide together, what does that trip look like? So it could include networking in terms of big events, it could include something that looks like a small seminar or roundtable, whether that, you know, user research or seminars that we're giving or people that we're meeting, whatever that looks like, but that's a little bit different.

My CFO might be like you're going to California, like I need you to pitch. Right. I, you know, I want you to come back with some money. I want you to meet some potential investors and I want you to pitch. And again, any of those might be fine. But if different people have different expectations of what a trip to California looks like you can see where we're going to get in trouble. The next control issues, um, The next level is objective. So how will we know if we've succeeded? Well, I'm gonna think that I succeeded.

If I come back with a really elaborate strategy, Jock, I can share with everybody, I can get that alignment and it's really clear. But my CFO who thought, you know, maybe I should go and pitch might only be happy if I come back with some kind of commitment for, for investment and somebody else might only be happy if I've, you know, maybe made some new connections or developed some partnerships. And it's not that you can't have more than one objective, but I will just caution very quickly if you have more than one objective. And you probably do, you need to make sure that those are balanced, right? You cannot have objectives that are like contra indicated that are competing. So that one department has an objective and another department has an objective and they specifically clash, right? You, you can have multiple objectives, but you have to work those out as a team, you don't want to be pitting people with like competing objectives against each other, right? So the next one is strategy. This is super great. Um Yeah, Sandra, thank you. Sorry y'all. Um There's a question here but I'm, I'm gonna maybe answer it at the, I think at the end. Um So I think that's a really good question, but let's talk about it now. I can't close this. Um Hold on.

All right, I've lost my controls now by looking at this. All right, let's see if we can get around this. I am not sure. All right. So strategy is the next, the next thing and because strategy is broadly how we'll get there, it's fun to take this a little overly literally and say strategy is literally how we're gonna get to California. So maybe we're gonna fly, maybe we're far enough away that that seems to make sense. But, you know, maybe not, maybe we're close enough that it's kind of borderline and, and even if we're flying, right, do we, do we care what airline do we need to use? Miles? Do we want the whole team on one plane? You know, maybe we're really well funded time is of the essence and we're actually gonna fly private and it's, it's worth that investment, but certainly not something you want to assume. Maybe we wanna drive, maybe we wanna drive because we're close enough, maybe it's cheaper, maybe we wanna do team building as, as a road trip. Right? It doesn't really matter. But we, we need to be aligned and, and maybe on the flip side of the flying private, we're very early stage start up. We have no money. We are completely bootstrapping. It's like we're gonna hitchhike. Like I'm gonna get there by hook or by crook, we're gonna hitchhike.

These ridiculous examples are great because they show the range of things that you can be thinking about that you need to align on together and then we get to the level of tactics. And so let's say tactics are like things we're gonna pack maybe and, and things that, that we're gonna do there. So, first of all, what am I packing in? What does that look like? So if I'm flying, I definitely wanna pack in like one nice neat suitcase, little carry on, right? Everything is well contained and I can get on the plane really quickly. But if I'm going in a car, it's ok if I throw a bunch of different things in a bag and I can like have my stuff in a bag, but then I like threw some extra books in another one and I threw some snacks in a shopping bag and it doesn't matter because I can just put everything in the trunk of the car and it'll fit and what am I putting in my luggage?

Right. Another tactic. What am I putting in my luggage? Well, if I think I'm sitting on the beach, then I'm gonna pack a bunch of bathing suits. And if I'm, you know, presenting leading around table pitching, then I probably wanna look really professional. And if I know that we're going to a bunch of parties, then you know, I'm gonna take some party gear and this is where you can see the variety of tactics really starting to not line up. So if I pack a bathing suit, because in my mind, right, we're going to the beach to work on strategy and come back with a holistic strategy. Jock, you know, that's reasonable. But if the itinerary is networking, which is also a reasonable, I'm gonna be pretty upset because I probably don't want to go to a, you know, big networking party in my bathing suit. And if the expectation is that we'll come back with money, but I'm sitting on the beach, right. I'm not coming back with money and somebody is going to be very upset if the expectation is that we're flying and I throw things in a lot of different bags. I might not even get on the plane. And so you can see where at the bottom level if the tactics are reasonable for your vision but not aligned with somebody else's. That's when you have cross functional um misalignment.

So let's go back to a couple of our stories and see what happened in the case of the uh social enterprise organization, we had this three way misalignment and we just, we stopped everything we said, hey, let's talk, right? Like, let's identify the through line. And in this case, you know, the objective of a revenue and getting new partners, that was really our primary objective. So that's where we started. And, and we said, ok, we've got like five partners potentially who apparently want five different things. Can we identify a through line? Right?

What, what does it look like? What do they have in common? What can we, what can we do and then we align the team on that? So, OK, we think if we build X, this will, this will sort of solve um all of the baseline problems that they have and let's align the team on sort of what does that look like and whether it's scalable. And once we had that alignment, right, we were able to create the correct marketing support and we had sort of both B to C and, and B to B positioning. And so we're able to create the correct marketing uh that, that really aligned with all of that as well as update the product roadmap to include that and to be aligned with, with products goals as well. So we now have one solution where now we're all working towards the same solution and, and aligning everybody and in fact, it worked right, we had sales and when I, when I say we had sales, so our first sale um was to Rocket Mortgage, which is a huge player in the industry. Like that's like a huge sale. That's like a big heavyweight, right? And it worked so well that we aligned with Rocket Mortgage. Um We also sold to Lemonade, which is really fast growing, you know, in surete start up.

And so so it worked right that like creating alignment worked and we went from really having these, these three different, you know, OK, Biz Dev is going after money, products sort of doing seminars, marketing is having a little bit of a party to get everything aligned and, and really have that looks really have that um work out in terms of revenue.

And in the case of Miriam Webster, right, we had this vision for digital innovation, a mission that didn't, that didn't really line up. And the problem was that we didn't really have an articulated mission. And so when we changed the mission from like, oh we write dictionary definitions to step back and think about the why, right? Because that's a, that's a tactic, that's a thing that we do a task and it's not a why. So when we step back and said, well, why do we do this? Right? Why are, why are all these people at Merriam Webster for so many years? And we came up with a two part mission statement that was first we propagate our irrational love of the English language, irrational because English does not make a lot of sense. Um And we help people understand and use language better so they can better understand and communicate with the world around them. And that was a really easy sell, right? Because that was a mission that everybody could align with, right. People who care about language, who believe that words matter, who want to help people communicate better. That made total sense.

And once that was mission rather than we write dictionary definitions, all of a sudden it made sense to do all these super cool cutting edge things like using um natural language processing and machine learning to create content or developing a new podcast or, or apps or internet of things partnership.

So that cute little guy in the bottom corner is, is Moxie and Moxie is the world's first social emotional learning robot. Um It's pretty incredible and we partnered to provide an API that would enable Moxie to understand either ask for or understand if a child was correct in terms of definitions and synonyms, right? So, so for kids who are struggling a little bit, this idea of like, well, what's another word for that or what does that mean? Right. The the power of Moxie to answer that question came from Merriam Webster. So you really do want to make sure that you hit every single one of these and and don't sort of skip and jump to tactics. So I wanna talk for just a second about storytelling. So I told this frankly, um possibly silly story about a trip to California and what we're packing and showing up in a bathing suit at, at a party and feeling inappropriate. And the point is you will hopefully remember this. And so when you think about the role that you might play in your organization and how you can impact this, really think about this story and think about, do I have all the information that kind of like aligns with these steps or if I'm communicating that? Right?

Am I communicating this in a way that kind of makes sense connects like a story and is memorable because this is really memorable. And if you're not the person who is setting the strategy, right, this this kind of framework really enables you to ask really good questions. So whether you are asking questions of your manager, right? Oh You want me to plan a trip to California, like let me make sure that I understand, you know, what our intent is in going there and what that looks like or you can ask a colleague, right? You can go over to your counterpart and be like, hey, I'm working on this, does that align with what you're working on? And if not, can we sort this ourselves or like, do we need to loop in other people? So whether you're sort of using this a rubric to set strategy or whether you're using it as a rubric to kind of gain understanding by the way, you will become very valuable in your organization if you ask these kind of questions and and make sure, right, but this is really the way that that you get to cross functional collaboration.

Um So happy to jump to Q and A and I am actually going to end the slide show here so that we can see the Q and A. All right. So Sandra or Sandra, sorry, I want to get people's names, right? Wrote interesting to see the mission topping the pyramid. I've always had vision at the top as to why as it's long term, the mission would be how to get to that vision and is more short term, what the how would be the strategy with more tactical elements. Um So I'm just, you know, here's the thing, right? Especially because I come from the dictionary, I disagree um with Sandra's definitions, right? Her definitions are the inverse of mine. But what's more important is that you understand? Right. I described mission as the why the mission is your why? Right. That's your like motivating the mission is what motivates me. That is your why, right. So in the case of the social enterprise organization, the mission was we want to make it easy for people to make really good financial decision about home ownership, to get to home ownership, to make it accessible, right? That was the why we were doing this and Merriam Webster, the mission, the why was because a we want to propagate our rational love of the English language and, and, and that why was around just kind of like geek out in public around language?

And we ended up with a really popular social media presence that um created a larger ecosystem of success for us and you know, a podcast that was again, gee out around language and, and was very popular and and helping people understand language, they can communicate better and better understand the world around them, right?

I'm defining the mission as the Why Sandra is defining the mission as the like? How? Right. So in my mind, the mission is the why the vision is, what does it look like? Right? My vision, what does it look like to be in that space? Right? What does success look like? So this is less to quibble over definitions, more to clarify. But here's the more important thing. I don't really care what you call it internally, as long as internally you are aligned those definitions. So in this case, Sandra and I would have to sit down and say, hey, um what do these things mean? Right. Are we using them the same way? So that, that clarity and alignment starts with the definitions. You want to call it something else, call it something else, but make sure everybody is aligned. That's the most important thing. Are there any other questions you can um pop things into questions or chat. I'm not sure people can unmute and ask, but pop your questions um into Q and A or into chat, be happy to answer other questions. I'll give it a couple of minutes. Oh, great. Um Great question. What is the most effective way you found to align your product goals with marketing?

So I think first of all this, this framework is effective because again, if you sort of generally whatever you're calling it mission vision, you know, but if you've got one piece of this, it's really easy for, again, smart, good intentioned people to interpret that differently.

And so if, if product thinks, oh, the way that I'm gonna do this is like build a certain product and marketing things, oh the way that I'm going to do this is go to market in a certain way, it's the lack of the communication, that's the misalignment. So early communication is really important and the most effective way to be more specific is, first of all, at the leadership level, you, it's really important if you're at a leadership level to make sure that you have excellent relationships and frequent communication and clear alignment with counterparts.

And, and it's one of the things that I talk about when I'm sort of like coaching people who are coming up into senior level product roles that you can't just focus on your vertical. You really have to focus as well on your relationship with your peers and getting that alignment with them. So that's one place that it really starts then on a more tactical level, it's, hey, let's, let's get together and like here's, here's my product road map. I mean, road maps are a whole other story, but here's my product road map. Here are the things that we're thinking of doing next. Um Does that make sense to you? What are you seeing in the market? What are you hearing uh from users? Right? What, what is it that you would have imagined we're going to do? And, and do you think you can position this correctly or based on how you would position it, do we need to do something else? And so, you know, I'm coming at it from OK, product bringing, you know, marketing into the meetings, it, it doesn't matter what direction, right? It could be marketing saying, hey, what are you working on? We want to make sure that our messaging is aligned or we're seeing this thing, you know, you might want to prior you and product want to prioritize this based on things that we're seeing in the market.

So again, the most effective way is to have that communication really clear early and often both at a high level to set those parameters that we talked about. And on a sort of um I would say like mid, you know, mid level to constantly be saying like, hey, if, if we're thinking of a road map. I should not be thinking of that in a vacuum and, and then telling marketing about it, right? Marketing should be involved in that conversation. And if I'm the marketing person, I should not be setting up a whole campaign without going back to product and saying, hey, here's what we think would be effective, right? Can you, can you build these things to support or how do we align to do that? So, ultimately, it's all about communication and using that framework to make sure that you're aligned. But again, early and often any other questions, we have just a couple more minutes. Diane said, thank you. This has been a very beneficial presentation. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. All right, we'll give it another minute. I know sometimes it takes a moment for folks to think of and type up their questions and there are no more questions. We can, we can wrap it up in just a couple of minutes, give you all a few minutes between sessions and if you do have questions or you think like this is something that you want to follow up on.

You wanna figure out in more detail, how do I do? I execute this in my organization? Um Absolutely. Feel free to reach out to me. You can find me on linkedin and I'd be, I'd be happy to chat with anybody. All right. Well, thanks everybody for being here. Really appreciate it if there are no other questions. We are gonna go ahead and uh close out the session and thank you very much for coming and enjoy the rest of the day.