Last Saturday at half past three I was waiting for my AVE train to Valencia after attending TRGCON with the Rankia team ... nothing new, I ordered a sparkling water and a coffee... and.... damn.....
A test of faith
three meters away from me, a guy had spent 5 minutes digging into his nose as if he were alone in the station.
Calm. Focused. Deep in his flow.
But at the exact second he pulled out the booger… and I was watching.... BAM! He realized he wasn't alone. And lightning-fast, he hid his hand in his trousers.
Too late.
We had all seen it, or at least I had.. and that got me thinking this was clearly a lesson for Manolo.
So there's Manolo walking into my office again, Monday at 09:00, like clockwork. You can tell he hasn't rested over the weekend, because he comes in with a coffee in one hand, a bottle of sparkling water in the other, and a sour face.
—Man… —says Manolo— the company isn't moving... I don't get how this got so tangled up.
—Because you've spent 6 months picking your nose in front of everyone without realizing it, Manolo....
—Bit dramatic, no? Haven't you seen the action plan I've rolled out to all the teams?
—No, Manolo. All you're doing, in the end, is trying to hide the booger.
—Jose, come on, what booger are you talking about?
—Manolo, the booger you've been picking at for 6 months. What isn't seen doesn't stop existing. It just waits for its moment to gross people out or wreck your life.
This happens in companies. People acting for months as if nobody were watching:
no product strategy, no business strategy, no prioritization, no clear narrative, * no thought for how it looks from the outside.
And then, when the market, the AI, the investor, the users or whoever the hell founded the thing... see the result..... Manolo sees it too
But by then it's too late…
And this is where STP comes in — Strategic Product Thinking. It's not a textbook framework or a "magic method", but if you actually build product, you're already applying (or ignoring) its principles every single day.
It's about something very simple: stop confusing motion with progress.
If you want to see how other sharp minds structure it far better than I do, take a look at this article
And if you combine it with Javier G. Recuenco's thread on truth coping Manolo's story stops being so funny — it becomes something that will make you think.
It's not about "restoring order when everything goes to hell"; it's about setting the course from the very first gesture, and for that you have to be telling yourself the truth every hour... and that hurts...
Every micro-decision counts. Every feature you build, every message you send, every bug you ignore is shaping a narrative — of product, of business.... whether you're aware of it or not.
Perception isn't managed at the end. It's built from the moment you get up until you go to bed.
—But Jose —says Manolo—, I didn't think this mattered that much.
—That's why you pay me so well, Manolo. Because it matters. Because the user, your employees, your partners... don't see your PowerPoint. They see your product, your value proposition, your EBITDA... your onboarding, your bugs, how people are managed at your company and..... your silence....
They see your strategic boogers....
If you have no strategy (product, business, whatever...), you're improvising.
And by the time your stakeholders notice, it's already too late to play it cool.
> It's not about hiding the booger faster. It's about not letting it grow in the first place, because they're watching you — someone is always watching you
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