Traffic Cones & Time Travel: A Good Strategy Survival Guide
How to set a strategy that holds up even when the world gets crazy
Year 3000.
Not much has changed but we live under water.
Who could have predicted that?
Charlie Simpson of Busted. The rest of us can’t time travel.
Yet, businesses still behave as if every variable is fixed and today’s plan guarantees tomorrow’s success. This rigid mindset leads to disappointment.
Instead, we need to approach Product Strategy with adaptability and intent.
A strong strategy isn’t static—it’s malleable to roll with changing circumstances, and bold enough to foster passionate engagement from stakeholders.
So how do we move from strategy as words on paper to a force that drives real change?
To illustrate, here’s a fictional chat I had with Charlie Simpson, frontman of Busted. Let’s see what he thinks about my Product Strategy.
A solution for nothing
Rich: Good to meet you.
Charlie: It’s great to meet you. You’re my favourite Product Manager.
Rich: Thanks. Enough with the small talk Charlie. I work in the Traffic Cone business and my boss recently told me to make the Traffic Cone sexy again. So I wrote a Product Strategy paper on it.
Charlie: Rad.
Rich: I ran some research on cone appeal.
Get this -
People don’t find them sexy because Polyvinyl chloride is toxic throughout its lifecycle.
So,
My strategy focusses on replacing plastic for Shagpile, ditching the orange and bringing in a pop of purple.
Charlie: Why sexy?
Rich: What do you mean?
Charlie: Why does the cone have to be sexy?
Rich: Well… we’ve seen a reduction in traffic cone purchases as there’s been an increase in accidents in temporarily hazardous situations. Pedestrians don’t pay attention to them anymore, so our clients aren’t buying them. Profit is tanking, and my bonus is on the chopping block.
Charlie: So you think you have an aesthetic problem?
Rich: Why’s that matter? My strategy is to implement an aesthetic solution.
Charlie: You really think people need to love the way traffic cones look in order to stop ignoring them?
Rich: Yeah. It’s like a roadside boob job.
Charlie: You what?
Your solution falls apart because the context has completely changed.
In the future…
WE. LIVE. UNDER. WATER.
Purple barely stands out in the ocean, and shagpile gets heavy and sinks.
Have you thought about reframing your strategy around the actual problem?
Pedestrians aren’t getting hurt because the cones are ugly. They’re ignoring them because they don’t recognise them as a warning sign.
Your strategy is too locked into a specific solution. When the world shifts, you’ll be stuck.
Rich: Problem-oriented, solution-oriented—whatever. A purple, shagpile traffic cone is at least doing something different.
Charlie: Sure. But if you start with the wrong problem, “different” just means “irrelevant.”
Rich: So what should I do?
Charlie: Forget making cones sexy. Figure out what makes people notice danger.
And there it was—our first truth.
The strategy isn’t about falling in love with a solution. It’s about defining the right problem in a way that keeps you flexible, even when the world changes around you.
The best strategies don’t just chase a single fix; they set the right direction and leave room to adapt. Something Nintendo has mastered.
Nintendo doesn't play the game.
While PlayStation and Xbox compete in an eternal tech spec power struggle, Nintendo has carved its own path by focussing their efforts around creating new ways to play together. This clear & focussed framing of their problem space has led to innovations like the Wii’s motion controls, the Switch’s hybrid portability, and the DS’s dual-screen touch gaming. By staying adaptable, they avoid the tech arms race and redefine gaming on their own terms.
You can mimic Nintendo’s approach by focussing on defining the problem in an evergreen way. Try avoiding overly specific definitions that become obsolete when circumstances change.
Here’s an example:
Bad: “We need to make traffic cones sexier.”
Better: “How do we ensure temporary hazards are noticed and understood in modern urban environments?”
So how do we get here?
Get infantile. Start acting like an annoying child. Keep asking why until you hit a foundational problem that holds true even in different scenarios.
Secondly, ask yourself, “What happens to this strategy if the world fundamentally changes?” If it doesn’t hold up, you may have overcommitted to a solution.
A strong strategy doesn’t lock you into a single fix—it forces you to ask better questions. If your problem statement still makes sense a decade from now, you know you’re onto something.
Clarity in ordering dumplings
Rich: Listen, I shared my doc with the team, it included all my workings, all my ideas, some proper heavy hitting stats as well, but it just didn’t seem to land. What am I doing wrong?
Charlie: Have you ever read a restaurant menu with too many options?
Rich: Yeah, Joy King Lau, China Town. Has like 20 laminated pages.
Charlie: Overwhelming, isn’t it?
Rich: Definitely - had me stress eating all around the lazy susan.
Charlie: And I assume by the end, you became a lazy susan.
Rich: Heck yeah.
Charlie: Too much info leads to confusion. If it’s all over the place, people don’t see the direction—you’re making them work too hard to tease out the direction themselves.
Rich: Buuut I wanted to show all my thinking! All the insights, the data, the journey—
Charlie: Yeah, and now your team is drowning in context instead of seeing the decision. Look, focus isn’t about removing ideas. It’s about making the right idea impossible to ignore.
Rich: So what do I do?
Charlie: Cut the noise. Sharpen the signal. If someone only remembers one thing from your strategy, what should it be?
Rich: That we need to find a better way to capture pedestrian attention and divert them against danger.
Charlie: Great. Now, imagine your doc is a highlighter. Every sentence that doesn’t reinforce that point? Bin it.
Rich: Even the heavy-hitting stats?
Charlie: Like what?
Rich: 78% of Pedestrians between the age of 16-24 said they were more likely to notice a traffic cone if someone pointed it out to them
Charlie: How is that heavy hitting!?
Rich: It’s 78% Charlie. It sounds massive, and it’s specific.
Charlie: GET RID OF IT.
Ambiguity is the enemy.
In our day to day, we complete and come across so much work that feels so relevant to our strategy. While it may feel relevant to us, much of it is just noise to the people we need to convince.
Your strategy should make the audience think, "Of course, this is the only way forward."
That only happens when every piece of information has a clear purpose—either it directly supports the decision being made, or it doesn’t belong.
Remember, a strategy isn’t a scrapbook of everything you’ve learned. It’s a ruthlessly edited argument for why this direction is the only way forward.
If your strategy could be met with a shrug, it’s not clear or bold enough.
Make every sentence earn its place.
If removing a sentence doesn’t change the meaning of your strategy, it was never needed in the first place.
A strong strategy makes the next steps obvious. If people are left debating what the real focus is, you don’t have a strategy—you have a discussion starter.
The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do - Michael Porter
The Moment of Commitment
Rich: Alright, I’ve tightened the paper. I’ve let people know it’s coming - gonna hit send!
Charlie: Love that. So… what happens when you send it out?
Rich: People read it, absorb the genius, and execute flawlessly.
Charlie: Ah, you’re a dreamer. Love that for you. But let’s say you actually hit send—what really happens?
Rich: mm…Get a couple thumbs up reactions on Slack?
Charlie: And then?
Rich: …
Charlie: Exactly. You’re not sending an invite for birthday Drinkypoos.
It needs to land.
You need engagement.
A 30 minute debrief call and an upload to a Confluence page is barely fine. What you need to address is how you’re going to make this thing the centre of the universe for everyone who needs to be involved.
Engagement over apathy.
When teams see their work either align with or clash against the strategy, they don’t just passively agree—they engage. They either adjust their plans or challenge the strategy itself, both of which drive true commitment.
Your job is to create frequent opportunities for this to happen.
You could facilitate an assumption mapping session to surface hidden risks. Run a premortem where teams imagine the strategy failing and work backward to find blind spots. Hold a re-prioritization session to reassess roadmaps, cutting work that doesn’t align.
The format doesn’t matter as much as the outcome— shifting the conversation from “Does everyone understand this?” (which invites silence) to “What changes because of this?” (which demands action).
Prepping for the year 3000
The best strategy isn’t the most detailed. It’s the one that makes action feel inevitable.
They’re sharp, directional and unapologetically clear. They don’t just inform; they compel. I’ve padded this article for fun—treat it as a litmus test of what not to do.
What’s the one sentence your strategy hinges on? Have you cut the noise? Does it still hold if we lived under water?
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