July 10, 2025 | Career, Product Discovery
Frame Your Purpose
Without a shared purpose, product trios drift. Anchor your work in outcomes, clarity, and who you’re really serving.
A clear purpose is your compass in the product chaos. Lose that, and you’ll wander in circles.
— Kristy Sullivan
Let’s be honest, product teams waste a ton of time chasing random ideas when they skip this step. If you don’t know why you’re building something, you’ll ship features that don’t solve real problems, frustrate customers, and drain your team.
Framing your purpose means getting your trio (PM, Designer, Tech Lead) on the same page before you write a single line of code or sketch a screen. It’s your anchor. When things get messy, and they will. This is what helps you stay grounded.
This is how great product trios operate. They set a clear, shared purpose, then revisit it often to stay aligned, inspired, and focused on what matters.
What it is
Framing your purpose gives your trio the clarity and alignment you need to move fast without spinning in circles.
What a Trio’s Purpose Includes
Owning the problem to solve
You’re accountable for understanding unmet customer needs and spotting the opportunities that matter. You don’t take orders, you discover and deliver the right problems and solutions.
Balancing value
Healthy trios hold three perspectives in tension:
- Desirability: Do customers want it?
- Viability: Is it good for the business?
- Feasibility: Can we build it sustainably?
- Usability: Can customers use it?
A trio mindset means no single view dominates. You share responsibility for balancing all three.
Driving empowered, continuous discovery and delivery
Great trios don’t run a mini waterfall. You work like explorers, sketching, testing, and learning together. You co-own the path forward.
Being the center of team alignment
You help translate leadership’s goals into team priorities and trade-offs. You make outcomes visible and meaningful.
How to do it
Here’s a step-by-step process your trio can use to frame your purpose:
Clarify Your Context
Start by grounding yourselves:
- What product or problem area are you responsible for?
- What is leadership asking your team to accomplish?
- Who are the key customers or users?
Need help? Share these answers, and I’ll help you reflect.
Reflect on Your Unique Role
Ask:
- What are we uniquely positioned to do that no one else is?
- Why does our cross-functional perspective matter for this problem?
This reframes your job from “build features” to “own the problem and outcomes.”
Define Your Guiding Principles
Talk about:
- How will we make decisions?
- What trade-offs are we willing (or not willing) to make?
- How do we want to collaborate with our broader team?
These conversations set healthy defaults and reduce confusion later.
Write a Purpose Statement Together
Use this format:
“Our trio exists to [what you will do] for [who you serve], by [how you will do it], so that [why it matters].”
Example:
“Our trio exists to continuously discover and deliver solutions for our platform’s self-service users, by combining customer insights with technical innovation, so that we reduce support volume and increase customer satisfaction.”
Align and Socialize
Once you’ve written your purpose statement, don’t let it sit in a doc no one opens.
- Review it together. Ask, “Does this feel true? Do we each see ourselves in this?” If the answer is no, tweak it. Your purpose should reflect the interests of everyone at the table.
- Share it with your squad. Post it where your team can see it — in Slack, on a team board, or in your discovery doc. Let it guide how others interact with your trio. When everyone knows what you’re focused on, it builds trust and reduces confusion.
- Revisit it every quarter. Your goals will shift. Your roadmap will evolve. Your trio might change. Make purpose review a lightweight ritual — take 10 minutes to gut-check if the words still match the work. Update if needed, and keep moving forward with clarity.
This isn’t a one-time alignment exercise. It’s an ongoing anchor. Keep it visible, practical, and real.
Fun Examples
Here are real examples from teams that framed their purpose clearly:
E-commerce Checkout
“Our trio exists to create a checkout that feels invisible, by continuously testing, measuring, and refining, so our customers can get on with their lives , and we can boost revenue.”
HR Platform
“Our trio exists to make hiring teams smile, by crafting tools they love to use every day, so they can focus on people instead of paperwork.”
Social Media Growth
“Our trio exists to help new users become fans, by delivering ‘aha’ moments fast, so our community grows in a healthy, authentic way.”
Insurance Education & Protection
“Our trio exists to remove fear and confusion from insurance, by delivering trusted, relatable education, so every customer can make confident decisions on their financial journey.”
Financial Literacy & Budgeting
“Our trio exists to support every customer’s journey to financial freedom, by providing clear budgeting tools and guidance, so they can move from surviving to thriving.”
Conclusion
A shared purpose keeps your trio focused on the right problems, not just the loudest requests. It aligns your thinking, strengthens your credibility, and gives your team an apparent reason to care.
The best part? It doesn’t take much to create. A single hour of reflection can save months of confusion.
Write it down. Revisit it. Let it guide your decisions and build your momentum.
Take Action
Start now. Use one of these tools or templates to help your trio frame and reinforce your purpose.
Purpose Canvas for Trios
Sketch this out in Miro, FigJam, or on a whiteboard:
- Mission — Why Does Our Trio Exist?
- Customers/Users — Who Are We Here to Serve?
- Outcomes — What changes are we trying to drive?
- How We Work Together — What rituals or principles guide us?
- How We Make Decisions — How Will We Resolve Trade-offs?
- How We Show Up to the Team — What Signals Build Trust and Clarity?
Problem Framing Template
Use this to clarify the problem before jumping to solutions:
- Problem Statement: Who is struggling with what, and why?
- Impact: What is the cost to the customer and the business?
- Evidence: What makes you confident this is the right problem?
- Desired Outcome: How will you know the problem is solved?
Decision Charter
Avoid deadlocks by writing a short trio charter:
- What decisions must we make together?
- When does each role lead?
- How will we break ties?
- When do we escalate?
Shared Outcomes Backlog
Alongside delivery work, keep an outcomes backlog:
- What behavior are we trying to change?
- What metrics show progress?
- What evidence reduces our uncertainty?