How to use the Radical Product Toolkit (Part 1)
We’ve seen a large number of downloads of the Radical Product Toolkit since we posted the full version of it for free on our website. We’ve heard from some of you that you’re interested in a little more guidance on how to use the Toolkit, so we’ve decided to offer:
- An example of a completed instance of the Toolkit: We’ve created an example of the Toolkit filled out using Radhika’s last startup, Likelii. We hope this will give you a real-world look into how you can use the first two sections of the Toolkit to plan your vision and product strategy.
- Free office hours: We are offering “office hours” to help you get the most out of the Toolkit. If you have questions as you’re using the Toolkit, or if you want feedback on how you’re building your strategy and vision, you can use the following link to sign up for a free 30 minute slot.
In the meantime, here’s a brief guide to how we recommend using the Radical Product Toolkit.
Who should use the Radical Product Toolkit
Start by picking the description that best describes your company’s stage and scroll down to the relevant section:
- Discovery: Founder who is starting a company or thinking about starting a company, and is still investigating the problem space
- Startup: Founder or product leader of an early stage startup
- Scaling: Founder or product leader of a company ready to scale
- Enterprise: Product leader in an established company
Discovery: You’re starting a company, or thinking about starting a company
Why should you use the Radical Product Toolkit?
There is this idealized myth you’ll encounter as a founder: you’ll embark on your startup solving one problem, and when that idea doesn’t work, you’ll show off your perseverance as an entrepreneur and continually pivot until you arrive at the right product-market fit.
Save your pivots for your how, not your why. Pivoting on why means fundamentally changing your product’s core vision — the reason for your company’s very existence. Frequent pivots on the why are confusing to the market and exhausting for your team. It will kill any momentum you’ve built up, slowing your time to product-market fit while your cash burn continues unabated.
Save your pivots for your how, not your why.
Pivoting on how, however, is simply a cost of doing business. As you dive deep into solving customer pain points, your original solution will inevitably need to evolve. But this evolution will build upon your prior experiences and learning, giving you the best chance to find a marketable product.
By differentiating between the how and the why, you can avoid many of the pitfalls of Lean Startup methodology. If you’re like us, the worst possible outcome for your startup isn’t total failure — it’s being stuck in charge of a company that has found product-market fit, but doesn’t yet have a clear answer to the question: “Why should we be the ones to build this product?”.
Lean Startup can often lead founders into this trap. But, when your “pivots” are limited to the how, and anchored to a clear vision and strategy, you will increase the chances that the product-market fit you discover will represent a sustainable and viable business!
What Discovery Stage founders can get out of using the Toolkit:
- A clear WHY for your company (i.e. what problem you are setting out to solve) so your Lean Startup iterations don’t lead to “Pivotitis”
- An initial strategy for HOW you’ll realistically achieve your “why” over time, including any trade-offs, necessary detours, and sub-problems you’ll need to address on the way.
How Discovery Stage founders should use the Radical Product Toolkit:
Don’t start with the Vision Worksheet! For Discovery Stage founders, we find that starting with the vision ends up generating a lot of ideas, but not much substance.
Instead, we recommend starting with the RDCL Strategy canvas to frame the problem and solution space. This will require a deep understanding of the market and customers, and requires thinking through a comprehensive strategy to solve that problem. It’s not just a matter of filling it out — you might find that it requires research and speaking with customers.
The four RDCL Strategy elements are:
- Real Pain Points: What are the problems we are solving? Who, specifically, has these problems?? You’ll likely need to validate these pain points by speaking with customers and through user research.
- Design: What does the product do (features) and how does it do it (appearance, brand, voice)?
- Capabilities: How will you deliver on your promise to your customers? What are the Product capabilities (e.g. data, algorithms, patents) and Process capabilities (e.g. relationships, partnerships) that allow you to accomplish the functionality exposed by the Design?
- Logistics: How does the product get into customers’ hands? How do we price it? How will we support it?
Once you fill out the RDCL Strategy canvas and you have a clear definition of the problem space, you can then iterate between that and the Vision Worksheet to craft a vision anchored in reality.
At the end of this exercise, you’ll have an aligned vision and strategy, so that you can begin using Lean Startup to test your hypotheses captured in your RDCL Strategy canvas.
Startup: Founder or product leader of an early stage startup:
Why should you use the Radical Product Toolkit?
If you have more than one person in your startup, you need to communicate a clear vision and a strategy so that your team is aligned on the company’s goals. You may think that this isn’t necessary for your team, but in our workshops we have not yet encountered a single founding team that was 100% aligned on the vision.
This becomes increasingly important as your team grows. You’ll want to make sure that, from your interns to your developers to your co-founders, everyone is anchored by a common vision and shared sense of the future. Without this vision, it’s easy for every startup to fall prey to the most common product diseases.
In our Radical Product workshops, we have not yet encountered a single founding team that was 100% aligned on the vision.
What Startup Stage founders can get out of using the Toolkit:
- Clarity on your vision, product strategy, priorities, roadmap and KPIs
- A framework for communicating all of the above with your team
How Startup Stage founders should use the Radical Product Toolkit:
As an early stage startup, you likely have some kind of product vision, shared (more or less) among the founding team. We recommend starting with the Vision Worksheet exercise, with each member of the founding team filling out a worksheet independently and then comparing notes. Then, you will be able to jointly craft a vision you can all get behind. Remember, don’t worry too much about the exact wording of the vision. Consider it your “source code” that will then be “compiled” into a more polished form for specific media and audiences.
We then recommend working through the RDCL Strategy canvas, capturing your existing product strategy and filling in any blanks that have not yet been discussed (most often, this is the Logistics section). You will want to refer back to your Vision Worksheet as you work on your RDCL Strategy to determine which items would be considered Vision Debt, and which represent Vision Investment.
Once you have the above, then you can use the Toolkit to create a roadmap and execution model that is aligned with your vision and product strategy.
Remember that these are all living documents. You should plan to review and modify your RDCL Strategy on a quarterly basis, and your roadmap and measurement strategy every month or so.
Scaling and Enterprise stage companies
In the interest of keeping this post short (relatively), in our next post we’ll cover the two other scenarios for how to use the Radical Product framework:
- Scaling: Founder of a company ready to scale, and
- Enterprise: Product leader in an established company
Meanwhile, try downloading the Radical Product Toolkit and share your experiences. We look forward to hearing from you!
