Product Design & Product Management - Building Blocks

Are you looking for a Third Growth Option ℠ ?

Inspired by Cincinnati’s historic Findlay Market, I pulled together three simple but powerful tools that help any leader (not just product managers) contribute to product strategy. These frameworks create a shared language that makes cross-functional collaboration easier across sales, finance, ops, and product.

• Two-by-Two Matrix → Map your assortment across basic vs. seasonal and core vs. fashion to see risk distribution at a glance
• Product Development Calendars → Gantt-style visuals show overlapping processes so bottlenecks don’t sneak up on you
• Scatter Graphs → Plot products to spot market gaps, competitive positions, and balance in your portfolio

When leaders have the right visual frameworks, silos break down, conversations flow, and assortment decisions become smarter.

Always growing.

Benno Duenkelsbuehler

CEO & Chief Sherpa of (re)ALIGN

reALIGNforResults.com

[e-mail]

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, we're outside Findlay Market.
You can see it over there.
I'm going to close it up herebecause it is too dang hot out
there.
Findlay's Market in Cincinnatiis one of those institutions,
100 plus years old that you canfind all kinds of awesome,
excellent food, and it remindsme of this episode that I wanted

(00:21):
to do as part of the GrowthClimbers Toolbox around product
management, product tools.
Obviously, a super importantpart of growing your business is
to get the product right and ifyou're a general manager that
has grown up not through theproduct side of the business but

(00:41):
through finance or operationsor sales, talking about product
can be complex, right, becausethere is left brain, right brain
, analytical, creative stuffgoing on to get the product
right.
So there are three tools thatI'm using, that I've been using
that I just wanted to share withyou guys because I think

(01:02):
they're super helpful.
One is a simple two over twomatrix.
I like the one here, set up asthe left column is basic,
everyday, the right column isseasonal, you know, holiday or
spring, seasonal product.
The bottom row is basic core,without a fashion element.

(01:29):
The top row is with a fashionelement, so obviously the most
risky is the upper right-handcorner where it's all fashion,
all seasonal.
The safest is the bottom left.
But you just want to sort ofplot your assortment along each

(01:50):
of these four quadrants to seeif you have it distributed in
the way you want it to bedistributed.
Do you want to be more fashionforward?
Do you want to be less seasonal?
That's one.
Number two product developmentcalendars.
Most companies work withproduct development calendars.
Many companies work with well,I've seen all kinds of formats

(02:15):
Super detailed, not detailedenough and everything in between
.
I really think that a Ganttchart, whether that's 12 columns
for the 12 months or 52 columnsby week, a Gantt chart that has
columns is the time rows arethe beginning, middle and end of

(02:39):
a process.
That could be the productdevelopment process.
That could be the marketingcollateral catalog website
production process.
That could be the inventorymanagement process.
And oftentimes I like to seeyou know the various processes
laid.
I like to see the side by sideor one on top of the other, so I

(02:59):
can see where is theircrossover and bottlenecks coming
up Right.
Whereas they're crossover andbottlenecks coming up right, you
can.
Some companies have differentproduct development calendars
for different collections, fordifferent categories.
So that's a super helpful tooland if you do it at the right

(03:19):
sort of level of altitude anddetail, it can be helpful to
non-product folks as well, rightOn the operation side, on the
finance side, on the sales side.
And the third one is just ascatter graph, scatter plot,
where you pick the X and the Yaxle values, however you want,

(03:47):
into why Axel values however youwant.
I, like you know, seeing lowprice to high price could be one
Axel.
Traditional versus fashionforward could be another Axel to
look at.
You can do a scatterplot foryour overall company and put
your competitors on that and seewhere there might be gaps in

(04:08):
the market.
You could put, if you have, say, 10 collections or 10
categories of products, put themon the scatterplot and see
where are you, left to right,top to bottom, where you want to
be.
Are there holes, are there gaps, are there opportunities?
So those are three things,three tools that I think are

(04:30):
super helpful to allcross-functionally, to all parts
of the leadership team, notjust the product team, so that
it fosters collaboration amongstthe different silos and helps
you build a better assortmentwith more collaboration, more
input from people outside theproduct department.