The most valuable people in product work are seldom generalists who know a little about everything.
They’re specialists who deeply understand how their expertise connects to business outcomes.
Take my director of strategy, Lori. She’s a genius at managing the thousand moving pieces that make or break product launches, bringing nearly three decades of marketing experience to our team.
The fact that she started her career in photography might seem slightly unrelated until you realize photographers are masters of seeing how every element in the frame contributes to the final image.
That same attention to composition and detail translates perfectly to product strategy — understanding how pricing, positioning, messaging, and timing must work together to create a cohesive market impact.
Lori naturally understands what makes products succeed. Not just the big strategic moves, but the tiny execution details that separate winning launches from expensive lessons.
She tracks dependencies, anticipates bottlenecks, and catches the small issues before they become expensive problems.
One thing that makes Lori so exceptional is how she applies specialized expertise to genuine relationship building. For years, she was our office mom here in Canada, keeping everyone connected and moving in the same direction.
Now working from her husband’s native New Zealand, that relationship mastery translates seamlessly across time zones and video calls.
This depth of specialized expertise creates something you can’t easily hire or replicate: institutional wisdom that compounds with every project rather than starting fresh each time.
Most agencies chase the latest tactics, newest platforms, or hottest strategies.
We like those things plenty, but have learned that sustainable success comes from deep specialists who are passionate about their craft and committed to outcomes rather than trends.
Like Lori.
In I Need That, I get into how the best products emerge from teams that combine specialized expertise with collaborative execution. You can have brilliant individual contributors, but without people who see how their deep knowledge connects to broader business goals, even great ideas struggle to reach their potential.
Product Payoff: Basecamp has maintained extraordinary consistency and innovation for over 20 years partly because founders Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson built a culture around retaining specialized experts rather than constantly cycling through new talent.
Their approach of hiring slowly, paying well, and creating an environment where specialists want to stay has resulted in remarkably low turnover and deep institutional knowledge.
This expertise retention allows them to maintain an unheard-of 98.5% customer retention rate while continuing to innovate — because team members understand both their product’s evolution AND their customers’ deepest needs.
Action for today: Look at your team’s depth versus breadth balance. While generalists provide valuable flexibility, make sure you’re also investing in developing and retaining specialists who understand your industry’s nuances, customer psychology, and hard-earned lessons.
The strongest teams combine deep expertise with collaborative application, creating a foundation where innovation builds on understanding rather than starting from scratch.
Do you have specialists on your team whose deep expertise creates competitive advantages?
Tap that reply arrow and share what specialized knowledge makes your key team members irreplaceable.
Or reach out to my team of seasoned product marketing specialists at Graphos Product.