Should leaders be prescriptive about strategy?

Where product strategy and discovery meet

Ideally, leadership assigns product teams a set of customer and business problems to solve (outcomes), and those teams figure out how to solve them (outputs).

The key point our discipline has been harping on in recent years—empowered teams—is that leadership should not be prescriptive about solutions and outputs at the tactical level.

Remember this: **Prescriptive in strategy, not in solutions.**

Strategy is another matter. When it comes to strategy, it *IS* the job of leadership to be prescriptive.

Do be prescriptive about what is important and what problems need solving. Avoiding this abdicates a key leadership responsibility.

We are just opening up the strategy topic here. There's much more to cover.

So as you close out this quarter and plan the next, remember: be prescriptive in strategy, not in solutions.