How to align product work to business goals | Corinna Stukan (CEO, Bizzy)

February 25, 2026 at 08:52 AM
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The Product Experience

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Business Acumen for Product Managers | The Product Experience

Corinna Stukan, Product Leader and Founder of fintech marketplace Bizzy, lays out practical advice for connecting your product roadmap to business goals. She explains how a metrics one-pager aligns day-to-day product decisions with company goals, why understanding whether your business is in growth, acquisition or cost-control mode should shape every prioritisation call, and how to frame initiatives so stakeholders see commercial impact — not just better UX.

Chapters

04:00
Why product people should care about business acumen
06:01
Organisational causes of weak commercial context for PMs
08:10
What business acumen means in practice
09:10
Wake-up story: prioritisation shifted after asking the CEO about revenue drivers
11:05
Misalignment: company goals vs team OKRs
12:13
How to run the metrics one-pager and link product to business goals
14:37
Strategy: where we are, where we're going, how we'll get there
15:03
Encouraging ideas while setting business context
17:01
Running collaborative bets before creating the roadmap
19:20
Communicating value: turn "better onboarding" into business impact
22:08
Avoiding over-attribution and internal attribution fights
23:05
Example: marketing's 12 touchpoints and joint contribution to acquisition
24:26
Practising stakeholder storytelling; where LLMs help and don't
29:17
Presentation craft: fewer slides, start with numbers, end with actions
31:03
Using LLMs for synthesis, not human insight
32:06
Reading the room: tailoring to numbers people vs story people
33:51
Final advice: discovery mindset in stakeholder meetings

Key Takeaways

Be curious about the business model, not obsessive about the accounts. Ask "how does the company make money?" and align work to that simple answer.

Map metrics top-down. A one-pager linking company goals → product contributions → leading indicators fixes prioritisation and alignment quickly.

Know the company mode. Growth, acquisition or cost-cutting mode should change your prioritisation and pitch.

Keep arguments tight: two or three points. Limit slides and arguments so stakeholders remember the key message.

Share context and invite ideas. Leaders must expose goals; product teams should frame bets against them, not only request resources.

Steer clear of the attribution game. Many initiatives are joint efforts — focus on narrative and contribution rather than perfect mathematical credit.

Use LLMs for synthesis, not empathy. Automate aggregation of qualitative feedback and KPI summaries, but practise reading the room and asking discovery questions in person.

Treat presentations as discovery. Ask what keeps stakeholders up at night, then refine your story for the next meeting.

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