A framework by Melissa Perri
Melissa Perri finds a missing product strategy without reading a document. She asks every team what they build and why. If the answers point at one business number, the strategy got through. If they scatter, the company has words on a slide. She runs the same test on the vision.
The line she draws
that's like a tagline but it's not a vision
The healthcare executives who said their vision was to be the backbone of healthcare could not say what it meant. That gap is the diagnosis.
The framework
Perri does not audit the strategy deck. She walks the organization and asks one question in many rooms, then listens for whether the answers match.
you go to all of your teams and you ask them what they're doing and why
A passing answer is a chain. This feature serves that initiative. The initiative moves a customer outcome that shows up in a business number. A failing answer stops at the feature. The scatter is the finding.
you find that there's different answers across the organization that shows a lack of alignment on a complete strategy
She runs the same test one level up. A vision that survives a follow-up question is a vision. One that dissolves is a slogan, and the executives who wrote it tend to be the ones who cannot defend it.
they said to be the backbone of healthcare i said what does that mean and they couldn't elaborate nobody could elaborate on that
Her follow-ups are plain. What are we manifesting into. What are we not doing. Who do we want to be in five to ten years. A team that can answer those has something to deploy.
Practice
The whole diagnostic is conversations. No document review, no offsite.
Go wide, not deep. The signal is whether independent answers converge, so one team's answer tells you nothing.
Perri's passing standard is that a team connects tactical work to customer value and then to a business metric. A chain that breaks halfway is a broken deployment.
She treats that question as a leadership failure, not a curiosity problem. A run of them means the story never reached the team.
Ask what the vision means, then ask again. A statement nobody can elaborate on is a tagline, and no amount of cascading will fix that.
Perri asks it outright. The exclusions make a vision testable, because no roadmap can contradict a statement with no boundary.
Her position on certifications and frameworks is that they never guarantee competence. Customer impact is the evidence; process adherence is not.
Conditions
Alignment is not a soft benefit in her account. It changes what a team can decide without asking.
if you deploy your strategy well your product teams will deeply understand how their stuff actually impacts the business
The failure she watches for is a company that reaches for a process framework instead. She has seen the cycle run its course.
I know a ton of companies that adopted safe about eight years ago and have got gotten rid of it
The second one is the real limit, and it is where Richard Rumelt's good strategy and bad strategy pushes back. Perri's test measures whether a strategy reached the teams. It cannot tell you the strategy was worth deploying.
Primary sources
Two solo Lenny's Podcast interviews. The strategy episode carries the test and the healthcare story. The SAFe episode is where she explains what companies buy instead of a strategy.
Melissa Perri · Lenny's Podcast
The Test, Stated Plainly
"you go to all of your teams and you ask them what they're doing and why"
Melissa Perri · Lenny's Podcast
The Backbone of Healthcare
"nobody could elaborate on that"
Melissa Perri · Lenny's Podcast
What Good Deployment Produces
"your product teams will deeply understand how their stuff actually impacts the business"
Melissa Perri · Lenny's Podcast
What Companies Buy Instead
"adopted safe about eight years ago and have got gotten rid of it"
Where experts disagree
Melissa Perri
diagnoses strategy by walking the organization and asking every team what they are building and why. Convergent answers that trace up to a business metric mean the strategy was deployed; scattered answers mean it never left the slide. She runs the same probe on the vision, and a statement nobody can elaborate on is a tagline.
Richard Rumelt
would call a company that recites one story aligned but not strategic. His four hallmarks of bad strategy include fluff and goals mistaken for a plan, and his heuristic is to strip the buzzwords and see whether anything substantive remains. On that reading a well-cascaded slogan is the more dangerous case, because the alignment makes it look solved.
The two tests measure different things and a company needs both. Perri's is a deployment check: did the strategy reach the people doing the work. Rumelt's is a content check: is there a diagnosis and a guiding policy underneath. A firm can pass Perri and fail Rumelt, which is a whole organization executing the wrong plan in unison. Failing Perri while passing Rumelt is the cheaper problem, because the thinking exists and only the communication is missing.
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