Building a product strategy is not so difficult in theory. It is mostly about the Why, What, How. In practice there are so many important topics to be included in a strategy, that it is easy to lose track of what is really important.

Building a strategy in a team does not make it much easier as the view points may vary significantly. When there is no good enough notion about the story line, wild discussions start and in every meeting a new topic or idea on what is important pops up. Probably a necessary phase. But it should not last too long, not longer until you have a good gut feeling on how the story has to look like.

Cutting short on the wild, explorative phase is needed when the incremental value of new topics or ideas is too low. Then it helps to have clear story line of maybe 10 to 15 slides with one message per slide. Build it and then the team discussion becomes more focused and effective.

And the slides (PowerPoint rules) have to be easily understood. Which costs time.