Internal Product Championing

The "Keeper of the Flame" strategy is a high-agency approach to internal product development. It requires maintaining optimism "bordering on delusion" to transform a fragile idea into a company-wide priority through visual storytelling and momentum hacking.

The Champion's Workflow

1. Build the Foundational Insight

Do not start with a roadmap; start with an "A-" conviction based on immersion.

• Inseparable User Empathy: Identify non-users and ask specifically why they don't use your product.
• Cross-Pollination: Combine insights from research (feeling), design (visuals), and engineering (feasibility).
• Identify the "Democratic" Seed: Find an existing behavior (e.g., how people use whiteboards for brainstorming) and envision what the world looks like if that behavior became the norm for all work.

2. Craft the "Show, Don't Tell" Pitch

Words are insufficient for high-stakes buy-in. Use a visual artifact (Figma deck or prototype) to make the vision "see-to-believe."

• The Triple-Threat Structure: Organize your pitch as a repeating sequence of:
  1. Pain Point: A visceral user struggle (use video testimonials).
  2. Solution: A functional prototype or high-fidelity mock.
  3. Proof Point: Data or user quotes validating that specific solution.
• The Reality Distortion Field: Use small hacks to increase believability. For example, swap an existing product icon in a staging environment for your new product icon to show how it fits into the ecosystem.

3. Hack Internal Hype

Zero-to-one projects are "destined to die" unless you stoke the embers.

• Leverage High-Visibility Forums: Insert demos into company-wide events like Sales Kickoffs (SKO), Hackathons (Maker Weeks), or All-Hands, even if the product is "barely built."
• Create Ownership via Staging: Put the product on internal staging/dogfooding environments early. When colleagues give feedback and see you implement it, they transition from "skeptics" to "co-creators."
• External Symbiosis: Use "Easter egg" launches or small community moments (like a "Birthday Party" for a feature) to generate external buzz that reflects back into the company.

4. Maintain Direct Momentum

• Clarify Opinion Levels: To avoid steamrolling, explicitly state your confidence: "I think we should do X, but I have medium confidence—I defer to you if you feel stronger."
• Solicit Feedback First: Before giving direct feedback to a partner, ask for theirs. This balances the "radical candor" and ensures the directness is two-way.

Examples

Example 1: Pivoting from Brainstorms to "Democratic Meetings"

• Context: FigJam was successful for brainstorms, but the team wanted broader adoption.
• Input: Observation that brainstorms are democratic, while most meetings are one-way.
• Application: Defined a vision for "Democratic Workspaces." Built features (music, voting, stamps) that specifically facilitated the "generative" nature of brainstorms in other meeting types.
• Output: Shifted the product from a "whiteboard tool" to a "meeting ritual platform."

Example 2: The "Maker Week" Product Birth

• Context: A PM has an idea for a new product but leadership is skeptical of the business value.
• Input: A week-long internal hackathon.
• Application: The PM walked the office asking engineers "Will you work on this with me?" until a team formed. They built a rough functional prototype and swapped the main UI icons to make it feel like a shipped feature.
• Output: The demo created such internal "fist-pounding" excitement that leadership greenlit the project for a formal launch.

Common Pitfalls

• Hearing "No" as a Final Answer: Successful internal founders must translate "No" into "Not yet" and continue stoking the flame.
• The Vacuum Trap: Coming out of a silo with a "perfect" vision. If the team doesn't feel they helped shape the insights, they won't have the durability to survive the "messy middle."
• Optimizing for the Tweet, Not the Tool: Creating a demo that looks great in a presentation but lacks an "interactive black box" where users can actually manipulate the output.
• Waiting for Permission: Thinking culture or innovation is top-down. Culture is set by values (e.g., "Play"), but the manifestation of those values (e.g., "The Figgies" awards) must be bottoms-up.