Why Your Strategy Sucks (And What to Do About It) with Martin Eriksson
Most product teams think they have a strategy. They don't. They have a list of goals, a roadmap full of features, and a vague mission statement on the wall. Then they wonder why nothing connects.
Martin Eriksson has spent nearly 30 years in product, co-founded Mind the Product, and advised 150+ companies as Operating Partner at EQT Ventures. He's seen the same problem everywhere: teams that can't answer "how do we know we're building the right thing?"
His answer is the Decision Stack — a framework that connects vision to strategy to objectives to action, so every level of the organisation can make better decisions faster without waiting for permission. It's already being used at Bloomberg, Novo Nordisk, and Co-op. And it's the subject of his upcoming book (out Q2 2026).
In this session, Martin will break down:
* Why most strategies are actually just goals — and why that distinction matters more than you think
* The Decision Stack — how vision, strategy, objectives, opportunities, and principles layer together so decisions at each level constrain and clarify the next
* What "being strategic" actually means in practice — for ICs, for leaders, and for the messy reality in between
* How to use strategy to say no — the real superpower most product people never develop
This isn't abstract theory. It's a practical framework from someone who's built the community most of us belong to, sat on VC boards, and watched hundreds of product teams get strategy wrong.
Martin Eriksson is the co-founder of Mind the Product and ProductTank, Operating Partner for Product at EQT Ventures, and author of Product Leadership. His second book, The Decision Stack, is out in 2026.
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