Execution won’t stop. Strategy will unless you have a system: Jenny Wanger at INDUSTRY 2025

Jenny Wanger, a leading product operations advisor and consultant, spends her time helping product teams escape the chaos of constant execution and reclaim space for strategic thinking. At INDUSTRY 2025, she delivers an engaging session on how to break free from the “hamster wheel of execution” and build a system that makes strategy not just possible, but sustainable.

Watch the video in full, or read on for some of her key takeaways! 

“Product management often feels like a never-ending cycle,” Jenny says. “There’s a slew of tickets to write, messages to respond to, emails, meetings and we’ve all been there.” This, she explains, is the default mode of many product organisations: relentless, reactive, and effective in the short term, but unsustainable when it comes to the strategic thinking that drives long-term success.

The execution hamster wheel

Jenny stresses that execution itself is not the enemy. “Execution never stops, nor should it,” she explains. “The problem is that without a system, strategy does stop.” She reflects on her own time as an individual contributor project manager, when she believes that a promotion would finally give her the breathing space she needs to think strategically. The reality turns out very differently. “I got that promotion,” she says, “but I did not end up getting much more time for strategy.”

The hamster wheel doesn’t slow down, it speeds up. She still owns all of the executional tasks, but now with the added responsibility of providing direction. “What I learn is that you have to actually figure out how to slow the execution down.”

Jenny explains that there’s never really going to be a time when strategy just presents itself and makes itself available for you to work on.

Without a system, the problem compounds. “If you’re so busy that you don’t have time to think about strategy, you won’t have time to communicate your strategy either “, explains Jenny.  She emphasised the fact that if strategy isn’t communicated clearly, the whole organisation suffers from confusion, duplicated effort, and differing priorities that can cause challenges down the line.

Strategy feels like a luxury

Jenny highlights how common this issue is by sharing polling results from her own research. A staggering 90% of individual contributors report not having enough time for strategy. For managers and directors, the figure is 85%. Even at the VP and CPO level roles often assumed to be almost entirely strategic 60% still say they lack time.

“Strategy feels like a luxury,” Jenny says. “But it’s also what gets you recognised. It raises your visibility. It highlights the skills you bring as a leader, the very things you might feel aren’t being recognised right now, because you’re stuck in the execution trap.”

She emphasises that this isn’t just a frustration, it’s a career risk. Product managers who remain trapped in execution don’t get the chance to showcase their strategic judgement. And as Jenny puts it, “If you’re not recognised for those skills, your opportunities for progression get limited too.”

Building your strategy system

So how can product leaders escape the trap? Jenny introduces the strategy flywheel, a system designed to reclaim space for strategic work without abandoning the realities of day-to-day execution.

The flywheel consists of three steps:

• Narrow your focus – decide what matters most and confidently exclude what doesn’t.
• Operationalise your strategy – make your strategy visible, usable, and easy to understand.
• Reinvest time – as execution slows slightly, put the reclaimed time back into strategic thinking.

The brilliance of the flywheel is in its compounding effect. Each cycle makes it easier to prioritise, easier to communicate, and easier to build a culture where strategy becomes part of everyone’s job.

“Leaders always have more responsibility,” Jenny reminds the audience. “So don’t just think about how you’ll operationalise strategy for yourself, think about what you need to do to enable your team to do the same.”

How to operationalise your strategy

Jenny spends much of her talk digging into the practicalities of operationalising strategy and emphasises that it’s not enough to simply write down a set of objectives or frameworks if nobody engages with them.
Access the full INDUSTRY 2025 recap here to discover more great product management goodness.