What is wrong with measuring energy connected to the strategy?

It cannot tell a strategy that chose from a strategy that was never consulted. When building takes minutes, every reasonable idea is connected to the plan, so the measure passes by default. John Cutler's CEO claiming 100x effectiveness with no additional demand, as Gupta reports it, would have passed the same test.

What goes in the no ledger?

Five columns: the date, what was refused, who wanted the yes, what the refusal cost, and what it protected. Next to it, the yes count and the share of yeses that became orphans, which for my spring was 13 of 39. A month with an empty ledger means the strategy is a description, and a description does not need a document.

How does a strategy produce a no on a schedule?

Name one constraint a week in a sentence, put one owner on it, and decide what Friday has to prove. Everything else waits, and the waiting is the no. That loop runs at every level and it is the part of leadership agents cannot do, because they surface problems well and choose among them badly.

How Do You Know If a Product Strategy Is Working?

How do you know if a product strategy is working?

THE SHORT ANSWER

A strategy is working when it produced a no this week that cost something a named person wanted. Tim Herbig's test, per Aakash Gupta's October 14, 2026 write-up, is whether most of the team's energy goes to work connected to the strategy. That is an input measure and it passes when the strategy was never asked: I said yes to 39 agent builds in 80 days, every one connected to the plan and minutes to build, and 13 ended with zero references anywhere else in the system. Keep a ledger of the nos with the date, what was refused, who wanted it, what it cost, and what it protected, published next to the yes count and its orphan rate. Use Roger Martin's flip to test whether a strategy line can produce a no at all.

Herbig's test for a strategy line is right: if the opposite is stupid, it was never a choice. His test for whether the whole strategy is working is the one I would replace, because mine passed it for an entire spring in which the strategy refused nothing and 13 of 39 builds ended up as orphans.

The ledger format, the flip applied to the two lines most AI strategy decks open with, and why three writers landed on the same point in one week are in A Strategy Is Working When It Said No This Week. Count the Nos.. The loop that fills the ledger is One Problem a Week, and the 39 builds are counted in Twenty Minutes Is Not a Reason to Build.

Last reviewed 2026-10-16 · 1 min read

How do you know if a product strategy is working?

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THE LONG VERSION

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