Melissa Perri: Why Annual Planning Needs Strategic Intents, Not Just Feature Lists

In a recent LinkedIn post, product strategy expert Melissa Perri discusses a common pitfall in corporate annual planning: mistaking a list of features for genuine strategic direction. Perri highlights how many leadership teams emerge from planning sessions with a collection of specific product ideas, rather than clear, outcome-oriented goals.

Perri contends that this approach leads to a fundamental misunderstanding of strategy, often resulting in scattered efforts and diluted resources. She writes:

“Share classes with others.” “Referral codes.” “A new quiz system.” “A site-wide leaderboard.” That’s the kind of “strategy” I see come out of these rooms, and it isn’t strategy at all. It’s a stack of guesses about what might work, dressed up as a plan.

According to Perri, the critical difference lies in focusing on strategic intents, which are defined by desired outcomes rather than predetermined solutions. She elaborates on this distinction, stating:

Strategic intents look like outcomes. “Increase user acquisition through organic channels” gives the team a goal worth working toward and the freedom to figure out how. A referral system might be part of the answer. It might not. The point is the team gets to find out.

This common trap, Perri explains, makes leadership teams feel productive due to the tangible output of a feature list. However, this often results in teams being assigned to numerous unrelated initiatives, with budgets spread thinly across features lacking a cohesive strategic logic. She observes that this leads to a situation where leadership pre-decides solutions, rather than empowering their product teams.

The Misalignment of Features vs. Strategic Outcomes

Perri argues that the core issue stems from a misunderstanding of roles within an organization. She emphasizes that the responsibility of senior leadership should be to set clear, high-level strategic intents. These intents provide direction and purpose, allowing product teams, who are closest to the customer and the problem space, to determine the most effective solutions.

“The C-suite should be setting intents. Solutions belong to the product teams closest to the problem,” Perri asserts. This delegation of solutioning empowers teams and fosters innovation, as they are tasked with achieving a specific outcome rather than simply building a pre-defined feature.

The Impact on Product Development and Transformation

The consequences of mistaking features for strategy can be profound, according to Perri. When leadership dictates specific features, it bypasses the crucial discovery and validation process that product teams undertake. This can lead to wasted development effort on features that do not ultimately meet user needs or business objectives.

Perri notes that this is a common reason why many organizational transformations stall. The lack of clear strategic intent means that teams are not truly aligned toward a common goal. Instead, they are working on a fragmented set of tasks that may or may not contribute to the overarching business strategy.

Shifting Towards Outcome-Oriented Planning

The shift Perri advocates for is from a feature-driven plan to an intent-driven one. This change, she believes, is fundamental for achieving true alignment within product development. When leadership focuses on defining the ‘why’ and the desired ‘what’ (the outcome), product teams can then focus on the ‘how’ (the solution).

“Once leadership makes that shift, planning meetings finally produce alignment,” Perri concludes. She encourages leaders and teams to critically examine their own planning outputs, asking whether their priorities represent genuine strategic intents or simply individual feature preferences.