Got piles of information
but no clear direction?

I keep seeing articles like “90 LLM tools for product managers.” I wonder if that’s great advice, particularly for small businesses.

It can seem like there’s always something else you’re supposed to do.

Interview more customers, buy more POS receipts, know your user more deeply, process more data.

Sometimes that helps. Sometimes it just makes it harder to move.

One of my favorite things about product strategy is when something simple enables the breakthrough.

Like, I love a good two-axis plot.

Sure, you can use it to organize what you already know. Put products on a map. See who’s where. Nice.

The magic happens when you find a new way to view the data.

Suddenly an overlooked dimension of your market seems critical. The opportunity isn’t where you thought it was. A decision that seemed impossible starts looking obvious.

The skill is finding a secret axis that reveals something consequential.

Take this example.

A fictional Product Director is about to steer development toward lower price points. After all, that’s where the revenue is.

But there’s something else going on. Their best sellers also have benefits that are easier to understand at shelf. And they’re not getting additional marketing support.

When we put benefit clarity on the vertical axis, and use bubble size to show revenue, we find a richer insight.

Same products, one extra variable, a very different conversation about where to invest.

Maybe a lower price matters. Maybe making the benefit easier to understand matters more. There’s something to investigate before the next development brief goes out.

Synthetic data, but based on a true story. Well, several.

Tools are supposed to help.

I think we spend too much time accumulating tools, frameworks, and methods, and not enough time asking how each one is supposed to help.

Some tools establish facts. Some organize complexity. Some expose things that were previously invisible.

Some are just producing more documentation. Some might even be obscuring the picture.

Before you add another tool or another pile of data, ask yourself: What am I actually trying to see?