Many product leaders tell me they want to be “strategy-first.”
They read the right books.
They talk about outcomes, not features.
They care deeply about impact, customer value, and business goals.
And yet, their days still feel dominated by urgency - especially from Sales.
Requests arrive framed as critical.
Deprioritization leads to escalation.
And despite all the strategic intent, product ends up operating reactively.
This is usually interpreted as a personal failure:
If I were more strategic, this wouldn’t be happening.
That interpretation is wrong.
The real issue isn’t strategy. It’s timing.
Most organizations don’t struggle with strategy in the abstract.
They struggle with when strategy is exercised.
By the time requests reach product, a lot has already been decided:
which customers matter most
what “supporting revenue” means
what trade-offs are acceptable in the moment
When those decisions aren’t made explicitly and early, urgency becomes the default decision mechanism.
Not because Sales is wrong - but because alignment happened too late.
Why urgency keeps winning
Sales requests don’t feel urgent because Sales is unreasonable.
They feel urgent because they’re often the first concrete signal of misalignment:
between the ideal customer profile and the actual pipeline
between what leadership says matters and what deals are being chased
between long-term bets and short-term pressure
When that alignment work hasn’t happened upstream, product absorbs the tension downstream - through interruptions, escalations, and reactive trade-offs.
At that point, no amount of “better prioritization” fixes the problem.
Executive product presence is built ahead of time
Product leaders who are perceived as strategic aren’t simply better at pushing back.
They’re involved earlier:
in conversations about who the company is really trying to win
in understanding why recent deals were won or lost
in clarifying where the business is willing to say no - before urgency shows up
This isn’t about defending product boundaries.
It’s about shaping shared understanding before requests turn into pressure.
When that work happens, urgency doesn’t disappear - but it becomes interpretable, not overwhelming.
The uncomfortable implication
If product only enters the conversation when requests arrive, it will always feel reactive - no matter how strong the strategy language sounds.
Strategy isn’t proven by how well you respond under pressure.
It’s proven by how much pressure is avoidable in the first place.
A question for you to think about:
💬 Where in your organization are decisions being made too late - and what would need to change for product to be involved earlier?
Hit reply and tell me — I love hearing your thoughts.
Elena Leonova
Executive product & business-strategy leader
I work with senior product leaders, Directors, and VPs to help them master product strategy when decisions are high-stakes, ambiguous, and made at scale - where trade-offs matter and the cost of getting it wrong is real.
This newsletter reflects the thinking behind my work across:
• Product Executive education — From PM to Product Executive (Maven cohort)
• Advisory & coaching — product strategy and executive decision-making
• Writing & research — including my forthcoming book The Art of Platform Products
Maven cohort: https://maven.com/elena-leonova/from-pm-to-product-executive
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elenleonova
Website: https://elenleonova.com
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I write for product leaders who are expected to think beyond delivery and operate with business-level judgment.