Your Strategy Feels Right—But Does Your Language?
The Hardest Part of the Journey is Admitting You Know Nothing.
Only then can your education begin.
If you did the exercise from last week (in this post below)
Your Strategy Feels Right—But Is It Selfish?
Last week, we had a conversation about listening more than we talked.
You’ve spoken to different stakeholders.
I’d bet this: There’s a gap between what you thought you knew and what they need.
That’s the good news. Now, you have raw material. Now, the real work begins.
Because if your strategy still sounds like you instead of them, you haven’t really listened yet.
Escaping a Selfish Strategy Starts With Changing Your Language
Your words shape how people perceive your strategy. A plan that seems logical to you might still be met with blank stares from stakeholders. The reason? They don’t see themselves in it.
But changing your language isn’t just about getting people to listen—it’s about shifting your role - because if you aren’t doing this, more likely than not, you have an “intake” form of some kind.
You may just be a product management “order taker.”
Stop Taking Orders—Start Driving Strategy
When stakeholders don’t feel heard, they compensate:
They dictate solutions instead of surfacing problems.
They bypass you instead of collaborating with you.
They see product as a servant instead of a partner.
The way out of that cycle isn’t just pushing back on requests. It’s proving you understand their needs so well that they start looking to you for leadership.
✅ When you use their language, they stop questioning if you “get it.”
✅ When you tie their concerns to the right metrics, they stop handing you solutions and start trusting your insights.
The shift happens when they stop feeling like they have to “convince” you—and start believing you already see what they see.
How One Team Found Their Language
I once worked with a product team that felt unsure of how to trust each other—they liked one another but didn’t believe they were genuinely being heard. Everyone seemed wrapped in their language. But in a lean coffee session, they realized they were heading in the same direction. Once they recognized their shared goals, they stopped taking orders and started collaborating to solve real problems. The result? They shipped faster, with insights from multiple teams baked into their work.
Using stakeholders’ own words became the foundation for a more unified strategy.
How to Translate What You Heard into Strategy
Step 1: Swap Internal Jargon for Their Words
What language did your stakeholders use? If you’re still using your own framing instead of theirs, you’re setting yourself up for resistance.
✅ Example:
You say: “We’re prioritizing cross-functional collaboration to optimize workflows.”
They said: “We need to stop wasting time waiting on approvals.”
Solution: Reframe your strategy to reflect their concern:
→ “We’re cutting approval delays so teams can move faster.”
Step 2: Find the Metrics That Matter
Changing the words is step one. The real power move? Connecting what they care about to measurable outcomes.
Stakeholders don’t just want a product roadmap (maybe we’ll talk about this later)— they want to know how success will be measured.
Start by identifying:
What numbers do they already track? (Every team has their own scoreboard.)
What product decisions actually impact those numbers?
✅ Example:
Sales keeps saying “help us sell more.”
Instead of just changing the language, connect it to pipeline velocity:
→ “By improving how we surface the right product recommendations, we expect to improve the win rate by 5%.”
What If Stakeholders Have Conflicting Metrics?
Sales wants to boost revenue. Ops wants to cut costs. Marketing wants brand expansion.
This can stall progress unless you align metrics to a bigger goal.
Remember, you are apart of one company.
The solution? Zoom out. Ask:
👉 Where does the company want to be in five years?
👉 What’s the biggest problem blocking that vision?
Suddenly, shared goals emerge, and alignment becomes easier.
Counter - If you are looking and there is no alignment, there may be cause to escalate. Something is happening above you and your peers that may need alignment from executives or founders.
Your Homework: Rewrite Your Strategy in Their Words
✅ Review your notes from stakeholder conversations.
✅ Identify the phrases and themes they used most.
✅ Rewrite your strategy using their language.
✅ Test it in a small conversation before rolling it out. Find a few one on one conversations and see how it goes.
Next week, we’ll go a step further—diving deep into leading and lagging indicators - this will be helpful when you want to tie metrics to other outcomes.
Remember: A selfish strategy doesn’t just ignore people—it also ignores useful data.
For now, focus on closing the translation gap between what you’re building and how people talk about success.