STRATEGY
Boiling the Ocean
How lack of focus can sink your product
When trying to please every notion,
The product is lost in commotion,
With goals spread too wide,
And no focus to guide,
You’re left boiling the whole darn ocean.
"Boiling the ocean" is a ridiculous, impossible concept. It perfectly encapsulates the chaos and inefficiency of trying to solve every problem or serve every customer at once. It's a common trap for product teams eager to please everyone but ultimately leads to lost direction and weak product outcomes.
Symptoms
Wide and undefined target audience. If your product is "for everyone," it’s a sign that you're not focusing on a core segment.
“Thrashing.” Your team often changes direction based on the "next big thing" before finishing what you’ve started.
Too many projects and initiatives. With so much to do, teams struggle to align on what matters most to finish something.
Unstable roadmap. Constant pivoting between different priorities leads to an unstable roadmap, making it impossible to communicate a clear vision—both internally and externally.
An unfocused backlog. A backlog overflowing with disparate features, often with no clear prioritization criteria, is a telltale sign.
Consequences
Lack of trust among teams and stakeholders. Without focus, teams rely on individual heroics to get anything done, often cherry-picking the coolest ideas rather than the highest priorities.
Scattered resources. When your team tries to address too many features or customer segments at once, resources are spread thin, leading to mediocre solutions that don’t fully address any single need.
Delayed time-to-market. Attempting to do too much inevitably results in delays as teams try to finish everything, leading to an endless cycle of “almost ready” with nothing delivered.
Diluted customer impact. Instead of solving a few core problems exceptionally well, the product becomes a mashup of disconnected features, few of which deliver the full value intended.
Loss of product identity. Without a clear focus, your product lacks unique value, making it hard for customers to understand why they should choose you over alternatives.
Recommendations
ASPIRE to your capabilities. Use the ASPIRE method to assess and articulate your organizational capabilities and apply them to opportunities to determine what you SHOULD do, not just what you COULD do.
Find your niche and prioritize ruthlessly. Identify the core personas and problems your product is designed to solve. Prioritize features and enhancements that directly solve the most pressing customer issues.
Communicate the vision. A well-defined vision helps align all teams and stakeholders on what’s important. Ensure this vision is consistently communicated and serves as the north star for product decisions.
Establish clear metrics. Focus on key performance indicators (KPIs) that reflect the desired outcome. This will help the team know where to focus their efforts and define what success looks like.
Staying focused on a specific market is about leveraging your unique capabilities, prioritizing the right opportunities, and maintaining clear communication. By using the ASPIRE method to align your strengths with market needs, ruthlessly prioritizing features that solve core problems, and consistently communicating a unified vision, you ensure your team remains focused on delivering real value.
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