A New Year, A New North Star, and Why a Compelling Product Vision Matters
The start of a new year always gives me a little extra clarity. It’s a natural pause point, a moment to step back and ask bigger questions than “what’s next on the roadmap?” or “how do we finally move the needle in a meaningful way?”
At Springbach, we began the year by revisiting an exercise from our 2025 offsite: crafting a product vision. Not a strategy deck. Not a feature roadmap. Not a list of OKRs. Just a vision.
I’ll be honest, even after years of working with product teams, I underestimated how powerful this would feel. The exercise was grounding, energizing, and unexpectedly clarifying. It reminded me that product vision isn’t something that’s nice to have once everything else is figured out. It’s foundational. And without it, even very capable teams can end up working incredibly hard in slightly the wrong direction.
As we reflected on the work again this January, one thing became abundantly clear to me: we have a responsibility, as leaders, to paint the picture of the future, to provide inspiration to our amazing teams, and anchor them in something meaningful and compelling.
The Trap So Many Product Organizations Fall Into
Over the past several years, I’ve noticed a pattern developing across almost all our clients. They have gotten very good at delivery, but not particularly good at innovation. They optimize the mechanics of shipping work without ever aligning on where that work is meant to lead. Marty Cagan describes this tension well in Transformed: organizations that are predictable, but not innovative.
Without a compelling product vision, something subtle but damaging starts to happen:
Teams optimize locally instead of systemically
Roadmaps quietly turn into feature factories
Autonomy increases, but alignment erodes
Strategy becomes a slide, not a force
None of this happens overnight. It’s a slow drift. And because everyone is busy and well-intentioned, it often goes unnoticed until progress starts to stall.
A product vision is what interrupts that drift.
What A Real Product Vision Actually Is
A strong product vision isn’t about dates or deliverables. It doesn’t explain how you’ll get there. Instead, it paints a picture of the future:
Three to ten years out
Centered on how the customer’s world has changed
Inspiring teams to solve problems, not just ship features
Acting as a North Star, even as plans change
During our offsite, we had to consciously resist a very familiar urge: jumping straight to solutions. Instead, we paused and asked a different question:
If we’re successful, how will our customers experience the world differently?
That question changed everything. It shifted the conversation away from what we wanted to build and toward the impact we wanted to create.
Simple Questions for a Strong Product Vision
Strong product visions, regardless of industry, share a few common traits. If you’re crafting a vision for a product, a team, or an entire organization, these questions are a helpful gut check.
1. Is it customer-centric?
A product vision should tell the story from the customer’s perspective and clearly show how their life improves because the product exists.
A product vision is not a set of company objectives. Objectives describe how we want to grow, scale, or reduce costs. A vision describes how customers succeed. The irony is that business outcomes follow when we solve meaningful customer problems first, not the other way around.
2. Is it a true North Star?
It’s easy for teams to get consumed by their own work and their own challenges, slowly losing sight of the bigger picture. A product vision serves as a North Star.
Every team should be able to answer:
What’s the end game?
How does my work contribute to it?
That only happens when the vision is communicated clearly and repeatedly.
3. Is it ambitious and meaningful?
A good vision should feel slightly uncomfortable. It’s a statement of intent about the future you’re trying to create, not a promise of exactly how you’ll get there. It’s not a roadmap of features.
Most visions look three to ten years out, far enough to stretch thinking without becoming fantasy.
4. Does it leverage industry trends?
Product leaders have to decide which trends to incorporate into the vision and which ones are just noise. That includes technology trends, but also shifts in customer behavior, expectations, and buying patterns.
A strong vision is informed, not reactive.
5. Does it reflect your company’s values and principles?
A vision should sound unmistakably like your company. Values aren’t posters on a wall. They’re design constraints. If your vision could belong to anyone, it probably belongs to no one.
Why Vision Matters More Than Most Teams Realize
A compelling product vision pays dividends far beyond inspiration.
It informs architecture.
You don’t design systems in a vacuum. You design them in service of a future state.
It informs team topology.
Don’t design a vision around today’s org chart. Design teams after you know where you’re going, to enable flow, not handoffs.
It’s one of your best recruiting tools.
Talented people want to work on meaningful problems. A strong vision attracts them faster than any job description ever will.
It’s an evangelism tool.
A well-articulated vision aligns executives and stakeholders. Do you want funding for your product? Then create a compelling product vision. You need to tell the story.
This is why I care so deeply about product vision. When teams have it, the work feels lighter and more intentional. When they don’t, even great teams burn energy on the wrong things.
Techniques That Actually Work
A few practical lessons I’ve seen work in practice:
Vision doesn’t have to live in a document. It might take the form of a storyboard, a future press release, a short video, or a VisionType. Often, a blend of narrative and visuals works best.
PowerPoint rarely inspires. I’ve never seen a slide deck make someone care. Storytelling, imagery, and even music engage emotion, and vision lives there.
And while research and validation matter, vision still requires a leap.
As Cagan writes in Empowered:
“Pursuing a product vision is largely a leap of faith. We’re betting on ourselves that we’ll be able to discover a solution that delivers the promise of the vision.”
A Simple Place to Start
Try this with your team:
Imagine it’s three years from now, and a customer is describing how your product changed their day-to-day work. What do they say? What’s no longer frustrating? What became possible?
Write the answer as a story, not a list.
Your Turn
You don’t need to be a product leader to benefit from this kind of thinking.
As an experiment, try creating a vision for yourself or your family in 2026:
What does a great week look like?
What are you optimizing for: energy, impact, balance?
What are you intentionally not doing anymore?
Vision isn’t just a product practice.
It’s a leadership practice.
A life practice.
And it might be the most important work you do all year.