516: Strategic decision making in product management- with Atif Rafiq

Product Mastery Now for Product Managers, Leaders, and Innovators

How product managers can move from ideas to action

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TLDR

In this episode, I speak with Atif Rafiq about how senior product leaders approach strategy development and execution. Atif brings valuable insights from a recent PDMA executive workshop where leaders discussed their real-world challenges with strategic decision making and innovation strategy.

Key topics from our discussion:

• Main challenges product leaders face when developing strategy
• A practical framework for exploring product opportunities
• How AI tools can help with strategic decision making
• The importance of early-stage product work
• Ways to improve alignment across organizations
• Real-world example using a subscription service concept

Introduction

In this episode, I’m interviewing Atif Rafiq, who recently led an executive workshop at the PDMA conference, where senior leaders discussed challenges they face, including navigating ambiguity and making decisions with more clarity. In this episode, he shares some insights from that workshop and his experience in product leadership. Atif has spent 25 years working in both Silicon Valley and Fortune 500 companies, including leadership roles at Amazon, McDonald’s (as their first Chief Digital Officer), Volvo, and MGM Resorts. He has developed a systematic approach to problem-solving that forms the basis of his book, Decision Sprint: The New Way to Innovate into the Unknown.

Key Challenges in Strategic Product Leadership

During our discussion, Atif identifies three main challenges that senior leaders face when developing and implementing product strategy:

1. Alignment Challenges

Organizations often struggle to get everyone moving in the same direction:

Challenge Area	Impact	Common Problem
Problem Understanding	Teams interpret issues differently	Resources going to wrong priorities
Stakeholder Views	Departments focus on different goals	Competing objectives and metrics
Customer Focus	Too much focus on one perspective	Missing business or operational needs

2. Input and Collaboration Issues

Atif explains that product leaders often struggle to gather useful input and work effectively across teams. Common problems include:

• Meetings that don’t collect all needed information
• Difficulty managing different department viewpoints
• Challenges combining input from multiple sources
• Time pressures that cut short important discussions

3. Experimentation Challenges

While many organizations value testing ideas, Atif notes several common issues:

• Starting experiments before understanding the problem
• Running tests without clear goals
• Weak links between test results and business strategy
• Racing through testing without proper planning

Purposeful Exploration: A Better Approach

In our discussion, Atif introduces “purposeful exploration” – a structured way to investigate and test product opportunities. This method helps organizations find balance between rushing into solutions and getting stuck in endless discussions.

Key Elements of Purposeful Exploration

Element	Purpose	Activities
Problem Definition	Get clear about the challenge	Talk to stakeholders, analyze data, study market
Question List	Identify what we need to learn	Team workshops, AI-assisted research
Testing Strategy	Check our assumptions	Small pilots, focused tests, data gathering
Making Sense of Results	Draw useful conclusions	Analysis, recommendations, team alignment

Real-World Example: Coffee Subscription Service

During the workshop, Atif walked the senior leaders through an exercise to get buy-in for a coffee subscription service at McDonald’s. Three different groups crafted a problem statement related to this idea and then identified key questions they needed to answer. This example demonstrates how to balance different business needs when exploring a new product idea.

Strategic Questions to Consider

The teams identified key questions, including:

Business Area	Key Questions	What to Explore
Revenue Impact	Will subscribers visit more often and buy food?	Visit patterns, additional purchases
Operations	Can stores handle increased coffee orders?	Service speed, staff needs
Customer Value	How does this work with loyalty programs?	Digital integration, easy redemption
Business Model	What makes this profitable?	Pricing levels, program guidelines

Next, each group shared their questions with the others, and they used AI to compare the breadth and depth of the questions.

Key Insights from the Example

• Success depends on getting customers to visit more and buy additional items
• Testing needs to happen in stages to manage operational complexity
• Digital platform integration affects customer adoption
• Program rules must work for both customers and the business
• Workshop participants found they could work much faster when combining team expertise with AI capabilities

Upstream Product Work

Atif emphasizes the importance of early work—the foundation-setting activities before product development starts. He notes that this phase often determines success or failure.

Essential Early Activities

Activity	Purpose	Result
Problem Definition	Get clear about the challenge	Shared understanding
Question List	Identify unknowns	Focus areas
Team Alignment	Build agreement	Clear direction
Resource Planning	Ensure enough support	Available resources

Ritual: An AI Tool to Support Strategic Decision-Making

During our discussion, Atif introduces Ritual, a tool he and his team developed to support strategic decision-making processes. Ritual combines workflow management with AI capabilities to help teams move from initial ideas to solid recommendations. The tool reflects Atif’s experience leading organizations through strategic decisions, incorporating features that support building and running explorations, gathering team input, and producing strategy documents.

Workshop participants using Ritual noticed significant improvements in their exploration process, with AI assistance helping teams work up to ten times faster while maintaining quality. The tool helps teams develop strategy memos and recommendation documents that include context, problem statements, goals and constraints, key issues, analysis insights, and final recommendations. While Atif emphasizes that good strategic thinking remains fundamental, tools like Ritual can help teams work more efficiently and maintain consistency in their strategic exploration process.

Putting It Into Practice

Atif recommends these steps for using these ideas:

1. Define Problems Well

• Write down the challenge clearly
• Get team agreement on the problem
• Choose how to measure success

2. Plan Your Exploration

• List key questions
• Design useful tests
• Set clear deadlines

3. Use Tools Wisely

• Add AI where it helps
• Keep human oversight
• Record what you learn

4. Build Team Skills

• Train people in new methods
• Create clear processes
• Set up ways to learn and improve

Conclusion

Throughout our conversation, Atif emphasizes that product strategy works best when teams balance thorough analysis with timely action. The methods and frameworks we discussed can help product leaders work through strategic challenges more effectively.

Remember that improving how you make strategic decisions takes time and practice. Start with small changes, see what works, and adjust your approach based on results.

Useful links:

• Check out Atif’s book, Decision Sprint
• Check out Ritual, an AI tool for Purposeful Exploration
• Connect with Atif on LinkedIn and sign up for his Rewire newsletter
• Learn more about the Product Development and Management Association (PDMA)

Innovation Quote

“There are one-way doors and two-way doors.” – Jeff Bezos

Application Questions

1. How could your team spend more time understanding problems before jumping to solutions? What process changes would this require?
2. What steps could your team take to balance customer needs with business requirements when exploring new opportunities?
3. How might your team use AI tools to speed up the early stages of product development while maintaining quality?
4. What changes would help your organization align different departments when exploring new opportunities?

Bio

Atif Rafiq invented a system for problem-solving based on his 25-year career spanning Silicon Valley and the Fortune 500. His ideas proved so impactful as a competitive advantage that they sped his rise at Amazon and later to C-suite positions he held at companies, including McDonald’s as their first Chief Digital Officer, and at Volvo and MGM Resorts.

He wrote DECISION SPRINT: The New Way to Innovate into the Unknown and Move from Strategy to Action based on what he learned leading organizations from a product perspective.

Thanks!

Thank you for taking the journey to product mastery and learning with me from the successes and failures of product innovators, managers, and developers. If you enjoyed the discussion, help out a fellow product manager by sharing it using the social media buttons you see below.