They don’t just shape screens:

• They shape systems and business outcomes

• They orchestrate flows, model logic, influence onboarding

• They’re moving closer to data, automation, and increasingly — they’re building.

And it isn’t theoretical. It’s happening now.

The rise of AI-native tools like Cursor and low-code builders like Webflow and Framer has collapsed the gap between idea and implementation. What once took a team of designers, engineers, and content specialists can now be explored by one person — in hours, not weeks.

At Intercom, this transformation surfaced early in a public company setting. Their 2025 “AI-Driven Design Framework” memo laid out how designers would move beyond prototyping — into systems thinking, prompt orchestration, and production-integrated workflows.

Fin Ideas

Intercom's 3-point framework for AI-driven design

We all know that AI is changing how design gets done. At Intercom we led the charge earlier this year by having all of our designers ship code changes to production; in a short few months we’ve seen many other design teams follow suit, and it’s fast becoming standard practice…

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7 months ago · 78 likes · 7 comments · Thom Rimmer and Emmet Connolly

In an interview with Peter Yang (Product Lead, Roblox, Twitch, Meta), Cursor’s Head of Design, Ryo Lu, recently shared how he uses AI prompting and multi-agent configurations to design, generate, refactor, and deploy production-ready interface systems. Not mockups. Actual working product.

What we’re seeing is not an evolution of design—it’s a redefinition of how products get made.

Urgency Born From The Need For Speed

Speed has become the new competitive advantage for revenue growth.

Teams that can move an idea from concept to production in weeks instead of quarters are setting the pace for everyone else. In these companies, design isn’t a department or a phase — it’s the process itself.

This brings both opportunity and risk. The opportunity is creative freedom: the chance to own the full product lifecycle. The risk is inertia — holding onto a workflow that moves slower than the market.

If you’re a designer, this is your invitation to expand your range.

This post is your field guide to how the craft is changing — the skills, the tools, and a guide on how to shift towards becoming a true Product Creator.

The Traditional Roles of Product Design

Design is no longer a collection of siloed roles. In future, there will no longer be a distinct difference between “the UX designer,” “the content designer,” or “the service designer.” Modern teams don’t hand work across these boundaries anymore — they expect the same person to move across them.

Today’s designer is expected to operate across five interconnected competencies that together shape how products behave, communicate, and evolve. You may specialise in one, but you must be fluent in speaking in all five.

1. Interaction Design — How the Flow Behaves

Interaction design defines how users move, react, and respond within a system. It governs states, timing, and feedback. It’s not just about usability — it’s about flow, momentum, and behavior. Done well, it makes products feel alive and intuitive.

2. Usability Design — How People Complete Tasks

Usability is the discipline of clarity. It ensures that systems reduce cognitive effort, reveal the right options at the right time, and guide users toward confident decisions. It’s the difference between “I think I can do this” and “I know exactly what to do.”

3. Service Design — How the Whole System Works

Service design zooms out beyond the interface. It looks at how real journeys span across channels, policies, teams, and workflows. It connects product with operations, support, compliance, and fulfillment — mapping how the entire system works for the user, not just the screen.

4. Content Design — How Meaning Is Delivered

Content design gives language, clarity, and intent to the experience. Every label, message, and micro-interaction shapes understanding. Language is decision design — done well, it lowers friction and builds trust faster than visuals alone ever could.

5. User Research — How Teams Gain Confidence and Clarity

Research is no longer something done for designers — it’s done by them. It blends interviews, analytics, testing, and sense-making. Its goal isn’t documentation. Its goal is insight, direction, and confidence.

We are moving from role-based design (“UX vs UI”) to range-based design — where designers are valued for their ability to navigate all five dimensions, even if they specialise in one.

This is the foundation of full-stack design: Fluent across the stack. Deep in one. Able to connect decisions across the whole product, not just one layer.

The 2×2: Four Modes of Product Creation

Before debating which tools to use — Figma vs. Webflow, Cursor vs. Replit — it helps to realise that tools don’t define how we create: Modes of creation do.

The same designer might use Figma, Bubble, and Cursor in one week — not because those tools compete, but because each one supports a different mode of progress. That progress ranges from early exploration to functioning prototypes, all the way to real, durable products.

That’s why classifying tools often leads us astray. Tools are fluid; behaviours are not. What actually matters is not what we used, but what we were trying to achieve:

• Were we exploring concepts or validating real behaviour?

• Were we representing an idea or actually implementing it?

• Were we communicating intention to others, or already building something usable?

• Were we learning — or shipping?

These questions reveal four distinct modes of product creation, each with its own strengths, risks, and feedback loops.

The 2×2: A Map of Creation Intent

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“I am personally very worried… for [European] Product Owners. These are the most exposed roles to generative AI… they’re sitting ducks.”

“I’m encouraging all of my friends who are Product Owners to upskill—fast.

I know that’s upsetting to a lot of people. This is personal for them.

But I’d rather you not like me, and still have your job.”

Let’s be real:

• Generative AI doesn’t care about your Jira tickets.

• It doesn’t get tired.

• It doesn’t procrastinate.

• It doesn’t argue about story points.

…and it already does 80% of what Certified Scrum Product Owners are trained to do:

1. Write and refine user stories

2. Define acceptance criteria

3. Estimate complexity and manage sprints

4. Track burn-down charts and velocity

5. Automate stand-ups, retros, and status updates

💥 Here’s the cold truth:

If your role is defined by process, not product thinking, AI will outperform you. Not someday. Now.

So the question isn’t if you should evolve. It’s how fast.

R.I.P. Traditional Product Owner 🫠

You were the glue between stakeholders and devs.

The translator of needs.

The keeper of the sacred backlog.

Welcome to the new world, where tickets don’t need keepers. They need meaning, and they need to drive outcomes.

Feature factory teams and process-first roles are being deprecated—not because they weren’t useful, but because the tools now outpace them. AI doesn’t need a human to shuffle stories around a board.

The Product Owner whose day revolves around refining the backlog and facilitating stand-ups risks becoming a relic of an earlier era. What teams need now are not custodians—they need leaders who can unlock value. The traditional PO must evolve or face extinction.

Time to Evolve: From Scrum PO to Outcome-Obsessed Product Manager

If you want to stay relevant, you don’t need another certification. You need a mindset shift.

Here’s your step-by-step guide to stop playing it SAFe—and start being bold, creative, and transformative:

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That’s the question I found myself reflecting on after an eye-opening workshop with Zamina Ahmad at Product at Heart in Hamburg this week. It was a fast-paced, hands-on deep dive into how generative AI tools like ChatGPT, Figma AI, and Claude are already reshaping how we do product work—from wireframes to research plans, and everything in between.

But amid all the hype, I keep returning to a truth Teresa Torres nailed back in 2021: discovery isn’t a phase—it’s a habit. A rhythm. A muscle you build.

And in 2025, that habit is facing a new test.

Some teams are using AI like scaffolding—supporting and stretching their discovery skills. Others are falling into the trap of seeing it as a shortcut, or worse, a replacement.

This post is for the former—or anyone who wants to be. It’s a practical playbook for PMs, designers, and researchers who want to sharpen their discovery habits using AI as a partner, not a crutch.

This post is a practical guide to help PMs, researchers, and designers level up their continuous discovery habits with the help—not replacement—of AI.

Revisiting: Continuous Discovery

I’m a huge fan of Teresa’s book, Continuous Discovery Habits, where she defines it broadly as:

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At each step of the product management career ladder, the expectations, focus areas, and skills required shift dramatically. Many product managers only realise this when they hit a ceiling or feel stuck.

In this post, I’ll share my career journey—from consulting, to product leadership roles at Littlepay, TIER Mobility, IDNow and Moonfare—breaking down what to focus on at each level. I’ll also share real stories: my own learnings, mistakes, and observations from the great PMs I’ve worked with and led.

Whether you’re just starting out or eyeing the next step, I hope these reflections help you navigate your own growth. Let's help each other grow!

1. Associate Product Manager / Junior PM: Master the Fundamentals

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Leadership would ask, “What impact did this feature have?” She’d flip through dashboards, pull together usage data, and pray the numbers told a story. But too often, they didn’t. The feature shipped. Users clicked it. But did it actually matter?

Then came the layoffs.

Two product teams were cut. Maya's team survived, but barely. Her director was blunt: “The teams we let go couldn’t tie their work to meaningful business outcomes. Features were delivered, but no real value moved.”

That moment was a wake-up call.

Maya realised she wasn’t managing a product—she was managing a backlog. And if she couldn’t change how her team worked, they might be next.

The Enlightenment: From Feature Factory to Outcome Engine

Determined to change, Maya dove into product leadership content. She found inspiration in the work of Melissa Perri (“Escaping the Build Trap”), Teresa Torres (“Continuous Discovery Habits”), and Marty Cagan’s distinction between feature teams and empowered product teams. The core insight that clicked for her:
Outputs are what you build. Outcomes are what changes because of it.

She started by reframing her team’s mission. Instead of owning a “widget builder,” they now owned a part of the user journey—activating new users post-signup. Their new goal? Increase activation rate by 20%.

To do this, Maya built a simple KPI tree. At the top: “Activated Users.” Beneath it: metrics like “Time to First Action,” “Task Completion Rate,” and “Drop-off at Step 2.” This tree became their compass.

Every discovery sprint began with a behavior they wanted to shift. Every roadmap item had a hypothesis attached. Every retro circled back to whether outcomes moved.

Six months later, activation was up 23%, and churn in month one dropped 18%. Maya’s director highlighted her team in a company-wide review. More importantly, her engineers were energised. “It finally feels like we know why we’re building,” one said.

Why Outcomes Matter More Than Ever

We're entering a new era in product—one where business results speak louder than velocity.

From Spotify to Google, layoffs have become a harsh reminder that features don’t protect you—outcomes do. Here are some recent examples:

Spotify: In January 2023, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek laid off 6% of staff, later increasing the cuts to 17% by year’s end. His reasoning? “In hindsight, I was too ambitious in investing ahead of our revenue growth... our cost structure is still too big for the environment we’re in.” Teams that weren’t directly impacting revenue or user value were the first to go.

Airbnb: Airbnb took a similar stance in 2020 when 25% of the company was let go. CEO Brian Chesky wrote: “We will need to reduce investment in activities that do not directly support the core of our host community.” Projects in Transportation, Studios, and Hotels were cut in favor of core booking metrics like Nights Booked and Host Activation.

Google: Google’s Sundar Pichai echoed the pattern: “We hired for a different economic reality than the one we face today… [We’ve] reviewed product areas to ensure roles align with our highest priorities.”

Twitter.com/X: And Elon Musk, in his characteristically blunt style, justified cutting 50% of Twitter’s staff by tweeting: “Unfortunately, there is no choice when the company is losing over $4M/day.”

These decisions weren’t about bad people or poor execution. They were about impact. Teams that couldn’t prove they were moving the needle—on revenue, retention, growth—became liabilities.

In this environment, PMs who can demonstrate clear outcome ownership have leverage. Everyone else is replaceable.

How to Lead With Outcomes, Even If You’re Not the Head of Product

You don’t need a CPO title to drive an outcome mindset. You just need curiosity, clarity, and courage. Here’s how to start, especially as a mid-level PM looking to influence up:

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A feature decision is made without team input. A key risk is flagged, but leadership waves it away. A roadmap change lands suddenly, leaving engineers scrambling. Over time, people push back less. They stop raising concerns, stop debating trade-offs. The fire dims.

Not overnight, not in a dramatic explosion—just in a slow, quiet slide into disengagement.

I’ve seen this play out in multiple product teams, and it always follows the same arc: when trust fades, commitment evaporates.

People shift from owning outcomes to just delivering tasks. The difference?

• One is a team of investors—fully engaged, pushing to create the best possible outcome; whereas

• The other is a team of executors—clocking in, doing what they’re told, and moving on.

Great product teams don’t just comply with decisions—they commit to them. And that commitment? It doesn’t happen by accident. It’s deliberately built.

Trust is the Prerequisite for Commitment

Google’s Project Aristotle, a massive internal study on high-performing teams, uncovered a crucial truth: psychological safety is the single most important factor in team effectiveness. Teams thrive when people feel safe to speak up, challenge ideas, and take risks without fear of blame or retribution.

Patrick Lencioni, in The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, elaborates further on the concept of pyschological safety: without trust, teams avoid conflict, which means they don’t engage deeply enough to feel committed to a decision. Instead, they nod along, then quietly disengage.

And the kicker? commitment isn’t about agreeing on every decision. It’s about people feeling like their voices were heard, their input mattered, and the final direction makes sense—even if it’s not what they personally would have chosen.

So, how do you build trust that fuels real commitment? As a leader, I would advocate for four deliberate actions:

1. Create Psychological Safety

Teams can’t commit to work if they don’t feel safe to challenge it. The best teams debate hard before aligning—but that only happens if people believe their contributions won’t get shut down.

Amy Edmondson, a Harvard professor who coined the term psychological safety, found that the best-performing teams actually report more mistakes, not fewer (source). Why? Because they feel safe admitting problems early—before they become real failures.

The worst thing that can happen? A quiet team that never pushes back.

There are three simple ways ways to ensure an environment that is psychologically safe:

1. Set the norm for dissent:

Artificial harmony kills good decision-making. When teams don’t feel safe challenging ideas, they disengage. Instead of “Any questions?”, ask:

• “What’s wrong with this idea?” – Encourages critical thinking.

• “What’s the biggest assumption here?” – Uncovers risks early.

• “If this fails, why will it fail?” – Makes it safe to discuss flaws.

2. Kill the Fear of Mistakes

Postmortems Should Focus on Learning, Not Blame. Blame kills innovation.

If mistakes lead to punishment, teams play it safe instead of solving real problems. High-performing teams don’t fail less—they just learn faster.

• Shift from “Who’s responsible?” to “What can we improve?”

• Failures = data, not disasters. Test results guide better decisions.

• Publicly share learnings. Normalizing mistakes prevents repeat errors.

Every mistake is tuition—if you paid for it, make sure you learn from it.

3. Leaders Go First – If You Want an Open Culture, Start by Admitting Your Own Missteps

Teams mirror leadership. If leaders never admit mistakes, why would anyone else? The best way to build psychological safety is by going first.

• Own your failures. Saying “I underestimated this” builds trust.

• Ask for feedback—and act on it. If you get defensive, trust breaks down.

• Lead with learning, rather than a “know-it-all” culture.

For example, Satya Nadella transformed Microsoft by shifting from a “know-it-all” to a “learn-it-all” culture, emphasizing curiosity over expertise, collaboration over silos, and customer focus over internal competition.

A leader who says “I was wrong” earns more respect than one who pretends to be infallible.

2. Align on Shared Narratives and Outcomes

People don’t commit to tasks—they commit to missions.

Teresa Amabile’s research in The Progress Principle found that the strongest driver of motivation isn’t perks or even pay—it’s making meaningful progress on work that matters.

Yet, in too many product teams, work feels disconnected from impact. Teams are handed a feature roadmap and told to execute—no context, no north star. Then we wonder why engagement drops.

Creating Shared Narratives is a deeper topic, encompassing storytelling techniques that resonate emotionally and intellectually. But at its core, a shared narrative does three things:

• Links work to a real user problem, not just a feature. Instead of “We need to build X,” reframe it as “We need to increase conversion by 15%—how do we get there?”

• Passes the ‘So What?’ or ‘5 Whys’ test. Asking “So what?” or “Why?” repeatedly helps uncover the deeper impact behind any initiative.

• Incorporates real customer stories. Data is powerful, but nothing is more compelling than direct user feedback that shows why the work matters.

Once you've established these foundations, craft your unwavering cause and compelling problem to solve—a story that captivates your company’s attention and pulls them into the journey. Make them feel the stakes, the urgency, and the shared purpose of solving the problem together.

3. Give Teams Real Outcome Ownership

If a team is just executing someone else’s roadmap, don’t expect deep commitment.

In Drive, Daniel Pink highlights autonomy as one of the three core drivers of motivation. People do their best work when they feel ownership over it. Yet too many product teams are structured in ways that kill autonomy:

• A roadmap packed with pre-defined features.

• Leadership making all the key product decisions.

• A focus on outputs (features shipped) rather than outcomes (problems solved).

How to Fix It:

• Focus on problems, not just features. Instead of dictating what to build, provide teams with clear problem statements and let them determine the best solutions.

• Empower teams to propose product bets. Move away from rigid, top-down roadmaps—encourage teams to identify and pitch the highest-impact initiatives.

• Define clear ownership. Use frameworks like RACI (Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed) or DACI (Driver, Approver, Contributor, Informed) to clarify decision-making roles and ensure accountability.

• Establish high-level metrics while reinforcing team ownership. Set clear top-level goals, but expect teams to define and map the underlying success metrics that drive measurable outcomes.

When teams own the problem, they care about the outcome. And when they care about the outcome, they bring their best thinking to the table.

4. Make Trust Visible Through Actions

Trust isn’t built through memos or slogans—it’s reinforced through consistent, observable actions. Teams trust leaders who listen, follow through, and protect their autonomy, not those who simply talk about trust in all-hands meetings. When teams feel micromanaged, ignored, or deprioritized, trust erodes quickly, leading to disengagement, slower execution, and a culture of second-guessing.

Paul Zak’s research in Harvard Business Review found that teams in high-trust environments experience:

• 76% more engagement

• 50% higher productivity

• 40% less burnout

The key takeaway: Trust isn’t about words—it’s about what teams actually see. When leaders demonstrate trustworthiness through tangible actions, teams respond with commitment, confidence, and ownership. But when trust is broken—through lack of transparency, unkept promises, or shifting priorities—motivation plummets, and teams become reactive rather than proactive.

How to Apply It:

• Protect team focus. Cut unnecessary meetings, reduce context-switching, and shield teams from non-essential work distractions. Let people spend their time solving problems, not navigating bureaucracy.

• Follow through. If leadership asks for feedback but ignores it, trust erodes fast. Acknowledge input, take meaningful action on key insights, and close the loop by sharing what changed.

• Make support a habit. Regularly ask, “What’s one thing I could do to help you?”—then actually follow through. Small, consistent actions compound over time, reinforcing a culture of trust.

Trust isn’t built overnight, but it can be lost in an instant. To create a high-trust environment, leaders need to prove—through actions, not just words—that they genuinely value their teams and their expertise.

The Holy Grail? A Commitment Flywheel

Commitment isn’t something you demand. It’s something you build.

Trust fuels ownership. Ownership fuels engagement. Engagement fuels commitment. And the cycle repeats.

When teams feel safe to challenge, aligned on a mission, empowered with ownership, and backed by real trust, they don’t just do the work—they invest in it.

So, here’s my challenge for you: What’s one small move you can make this week to increase trust in your team?

Drop it in the comments. Let’s build better product teams—together.

At one large multinational organisation I worked with, meetings were dominated by a shopping list requests, typically from Customer Success or Sales. Despite investing millions in shipping these outputs, customer engagement barely budged and revenue targets were consistently missed.

Then, a seasoned product manager with deep experience in continuous discovery and product-led growth challenged the status quo. Rather than accepting another solution request at face value, they introduced a simple framework that mapped every feature request to three critical elements.

Their approach transformed the team’s process from simply checking off a to-do list to engaging in a strategic, iterative process that delivered real, measurable value.

Curious to find out what these three elements are? Read on below! 👇

Why Focus on Outcomes over Output?

There are three main reasons why you want to move away from the concept of shipping outputs towards outcomes. Even if you aren’t asked by stakeholders, continually communicate your vision for outcome-led development, for the following reasons:

1. Customer-centric Value:
   While a new dashboard or repositioned button might look impressive, these outputs don’t guarantee that the underlying customer problem is solved. Focusing on outcomes ensures every development effort directly addresses real customer needs.

2. Sustainable Growth and Impact:
   Counting the number of features shipped is a vanity metric. True progress is reflected in revenue growth, cost reduction, and improved customer satisfaction. Shifting from outputs to outcomes creates a roadmap for long-term, sustainable success.

3. Resource Optimisation and Efficiency:
   You may expect an output-driven approach optimises resource allocation, however it often leads to the opposite. Often, teams may be allocating resources and scattered efforts across many features or improvements that have no linkages to business value. By prioritising outcomes, teams can concentrate on projects that deliver tangible impact, ensuring every resource spent directly contributes to strategic business goals.

In a previous LinkedIn post, I provided a quick diagram to inculcate a very simple message: outputs may result into short term shipment speed, but potentially at the expense of driving true business value.

Three Key Steps to Transition to a Product-Led Growth Motion

There’s plenty of jargon and terminology product managers use that may confuse stakeholders. To pivot from a feature factory to a product-led approach, I argue you could distill your approach down to three key pillars:

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In Part 1, we delved into the technical strategies for migrating from legacy systems to scalable, modern architectures, with the Strangler Fig Pattern as a centrepiece of our approach.

But as anyone who’s managed a migration can attest, technical success is only half the battle. The real test lies in how effectively your business operates during and after the migration—and whether your teams and customers feel confident in the transition.

In Part 2 below, we focus on the business enablement side of migrations: how to align stakeholders, prepare internal teams, and ensure customers experience the value of your transformation from the get go.

The Often Under-looked Use Of Enablement

Business enablement is often an overlooked aspect of large-scale migrations. While technical execution tends to dominate planning and resource allocation, insufficient focus on enabling the business can lead to misaligned stakeholders, unprepared teams, and frustrated customers.

Without a comprehensive strategy for communication, training, and support, even the most technically sound migration can falter, resulting in operational inefficiencies, customer churn, and erosion of trust.

Case Study: Haribo and their failure to migrate to SAP Hana

A notable example of a failed migration due to insufficient business enablement is the case of Haribo, the German confectionery company.

In 2018, Haribo undertook a migration to SAP's S/4HANA system to modernise its operations. However, the company faced significant challenges during the transition, including disruptions in their supply chain, which led to an inability to fulfill orders and a subsequent 25% drop in revenue.

The exact causes of the failure have been loosely documented, but consensus [source1 states that the main reasons were:

• Poorly Understood Legacy Processes: Haribo lacked a comprehensive understanding of their legacy workflows, leading to critical gaps in process documentation. This oversight made it difficult for teams to adapt to the new system.

• Undocumented Dependencies: Key dependencies between systems and processes were not accounted for, causing unexpected disruptions in supply chain operations.

• Lack of Pre-Standardisation: The absence of standardised processes across teams and regions created misalignment, complicating the transition to SAP's S/4HANA system.

These factors highlight the critical importance of thorough planning and business enablement in migration projects. Without addressing these foundational elements, even the most well-intentioned migrations risk falling short of their objectives.

The migration, which was initially seen as a step forward, became a cautionary tale of how neglecting business enablement can undermine technical success.

Five Steps To Successful Enablement

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This period has been one of intense research, collaboration and reflection —speaking with other leaders who have navigated similar challenges, analysing existing best practices, and dissecting what makes certain approaches succeed while others fall short.

As Moonfare prepares for a transformative year ahead, the stakes couldn’t be higher. We’re embarking on initiatives that will not only simplify our platform’s foundations, but also unlock value-added capabilities designed to grow the business and truly delight our investors.

The scale of these transformation demands is not just technical—it’s deeply operational, requiring a clear strategy, a compelling vision, and a firm commitment to keeping our customers and internal teams at the center of the journey.

In this post, I’ll share the framework I’ve developed for managing customer and operational migrations, blending lessons from my own experience with insights gathered during Moonfare’s evolution. We’ll dive into proven migration strategies, the trade-offs of different approaches, and how to ensure a seamless transition for both customers and the teams who support them.

This post is Part 1 of our migration journey, focused on the technical approaches needed to move from monolithic mammoths to modern, scalable microservices.

In Part 2, we’ll shift gears to explore how to enable the business during and after migrations—including the stakeholder alignment, training, and enablement deliverables that ensure the right experience for everyone involved.

Placing High Stakes On The Table

Customer migration isn’t merely about moving data or users from one system to another—it’s about ensuring continuity of value and service. This makes it one of the riskiest tasks in any major business or product transformation.

When done poorly, migrations can lead to:

• Mistrust: Loss of customer trust due to downtime or data issues.

• Inefficiency: Operational inefficiencies caused by staff confusion or untrained teams.

• Churn: Customer churn or dissatisfaction due to unresolved pain points.

However, when done right, migrations become an opportunity to showcase your excellence through:

• Customer Value: Reaffirming your commitment to delivering customer value.

• Core Competencies: Deepening engagement by introducing new and improved capabilities for both customers and staff.

• Operational Excellence: Setting the stage for operational excellence through better tools and processes.

At Moonfare, we’re using this transformation as a springboard to not only elevate our platform, but also ensure that investors experience unparalleled ease and satisfaction when engaging with us.

A Playbook for Seamless Customer and Operational Migration

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Reflecting on the lessons I’ve learned from 2024, it's clear that setting specific, measurable, compelling, and targeted product and company goals is essential. In empowered product team setups, this enables the most effective outcome-focused decision-making through goal setting.

However, starting fresh with frameworks like NCTs or OKRs can feel daunting, especially when the stakes are high, and the expectations for precision and alignment have never been greater.

To address this challenge, it’s worth emphasising why structured goal-setting is indispensable in this era. Frameworks like NCTs inspire collaboration and strategic alignment, while OKRs drive measurable outcomes and accountability.

These tools not only help teams thrive but also ensure that roadmaps and strategies are rooted in clarity, purpose, and adaptability—critical qualities as we head deeper into 2025 with confidence and focus.

Two Tools of the Trade: NCTs vs. OKRs

Two of the most popular goal-setting frameworks in modern product management are:

• NCTs (Narratives, Commitments, Tasks) and

• OKRs (Objectives and Key Results).

Each offers distinct advantages, depending on your organisational needs, team dynamics, and strategic priorities. In this post, we’ll unpack these frameworks, compare their strengths, and explore examples of companies that use them effectively.

NCTs: Storytelling Meets Accountability

What Are NCTs?

NCTs focus on defining:

1. A compelling Narrative;

2. Supported by concrete Commitments; and

3. Broken into actionable Tasks.

They’re designed for teams that thrive on clarity and alignment with a shared vision. One useful tool in creating an effective narrative is to use Amazon’s Press Release method, which we dive deeper into below.

Example: Amazon’s Press Release

Amazon popularised NCTs by linking each goal to a "press release" or "future memo," a simulated document written as if the initiative were already successfully completed.

This approach was highly effective at the time because it allowed teams to visualise the end goal, align on what success looked like, and work backward to identify necessary steps, creating a shared sense of purpose and clarity.

Elements of a Press Release

When crafting a Press Release, consider the following components:

• Clear Summary: Provide a concise overview of the product and the key benefits it delivers. This section should captivate readers who might only skim the document.

• Problem Statement: Highlight the primary issue or gap that the product addresses, contextualizing its relevance.

• Elegant Solution: Describe how the product uniquely and effectively resolves the outlined problem.

• Spokesperson Quote: Include a quote that encapsulates the team’s vision and enthusiasm, as if responding to a media query.

• Easy Onboarding: Detail how users can start using the product and the straightforward steps involved.

• Customer Testimonial: Share a hypothetical customer experience that showcases the product’s benefits in action.

• Call to Action: Conclude with a compelling invitation for the audience to engage with the product further.

In addition to the format, here are some additional guidelines:

• Keep it simple.

• 3-4 sentences for most paragraphs.

• Accompany the press release with a customer and stakeholder friendly FAQ.

For instance, in launching Prime, the narrative might have been something like this:

Sample (shortened) press release with sample statements:

• Clear Summary: Prime is a subscription service designed to redefine convenience by offering free two-day shipping and exclusive perks, saving customers time and money.

• Compelling Problem: Customers often face delays and high costs for shipping, making online shopping less efficient than desired.

• Elegant Solution: Prime provides fast, reliable, and cost-effective shipping, paired with additional benefits like streaming services and exclusive deals, creating an all-in-one convenience solution.

• Spokesperson Quote: "With Prime, we’re transforming how customers experience online shopping. It’s not just a service; it’s a commitment to making their lives easier," said [Your Name], Amazon’s spokesperson.

• Easy Onboarding: Signing up for Prime is as easy as visiting our website, selecting the Prime membership option, and enjoying instant access to free two-day shipping and other benefits.

• Customer Testimonial: "Prime has completely changed how I shop online. I can order what I need and get it quickly without extra shipping costs – it’s a game-changer," said a satisfied Prime customer.

• Call to Action: Start your free trial of Prime today and experience unparalleled convenience and value. Visit Amazon.com/Prime to learn more.

The NCT format would then be included, showing:

Commitments:

• Launch Prime with free two-day shipping by Q4.

• Achieve 80% on-time delivery by year-end.

Tasks:

• Negotiate logistics contracts.

• Build subscription management interfaces.

Strengths:

• Inspires teams: by providing a clear and compelling vision that motivates them to rally around shared goals. This shared clarity helps teams see the bigger picture and understand how their work contributes to broader success.

• Drives cross-functional alignment: by establishing a unified narrative that ensures different departments and stakeholders are working cohesively toward the same objectives. This reduces misunderstandings and siloed efforts.

• Works exceptionally well for exploratory or big-bet initiatives: by fostering a sense of purpose and direction, particularly in ambiguous or high-risk scenarios. It encourages innovation and calculated risks by offering a structured framework to tackle uncharted challenges.

Challenges:

• Stories: Requires excellent narrative skills.

• Data: Can be difficult to quantify success.

There are some ways you can overcome the challenges, but it may require a bit more of your time when prepping the narrative for the company. The mitigations include:

• Enablement: Invest in training sessions or workshops on storytelling and narrative development to enhance team skills.

• Training: Pair narrative or story telling experts with product teams to co-develop initial NCTs.

  Note: I’ve found tools such as the PipDeck Story Teller Tactics as a highly quick and effective way to craft compelling narratives that sell themselves!

• Measurements: Use proxy metrics or qualitative success indicators (e.g., pulse stakeholder feedback via survey) to complement narratives where quantifiable data is unavailable.

OKRs: Laser-Focused Metrics

What Are OKRs?

OKRs originated at Intel in the 1970s, introduced by Andy Grove as a method to align teams and drive measurable progress. The framework gained wider popularity when John Doerr, a venture capitalist, shared it with Google, helping them scale effectively during their early growth years. Today, OKRs are used by companies like Google, LinkedIn, and Spotify to maintain focus and accountability.

For more on OKRs and examples from real world experience, explore John Doerr's book, Measure What Matters. It’s a fantastic read and a foundational PM book for all objective setters (everyone!).

OKRs combine high-level Objectives with measurable Key Results to drive focus and accountability. They’re a favourite of fast-paced, metric-driven organisations, but can often also be a hindrance when implemented poorly.

Why Are OKRs Often Implemented Poorly?

While OKRs have proven their value in driving alignment and focus, they are often implemented poorly due to a lack of understanding of their core purpose. The framework is intended to create clarity and alignment, but it can devolve into a simple checklist of outputs, rather than focusing on meaningful outcomes that align with strategic goals.

Examples of Poor OKRs:

• Objective: "Build a new landing page for the marketing campaign."

  • Key Result: "Complete the landing page design by March."

  • Issue: This OKR focuses on the completion of a task (output) rather than measuring the success or impact of the campaign (outcome).

• Objective: "Improve team collaboration."

  • Key Result: "Hold 10 team meetings this quarter."

  • Issue: The KR measures activity without demonstrating whether collaboration has actually improved.

To learn how to create effective OKRs that avoid these pitfalls, teams must ensure they connect Key Results to measurable outcomes that reflect progress toward meaningful objectives.

To learn how to create effective OKRs that avoid these pitfalls, teams must ensure they connect Key Results to measurable outcomes that reflect progress toward meaningful objectives. Creating a KPI tree, as discussed in my previous post: "The Key Elements of Product Strategy," can be a powerful tool here. By visualizing how each Key Result ladders up to broader strategic goals, teams can ensure alignment and focus.

This approach also helps in clarifying the link between individual contributions and overall company success, making goal-setting both actionable and inspiring.

Example: Google

Google famously adopted OKRs to scale effectively throughout its organisation. For their core business of online advertising, an effective OKR might be defined as follows:

Objective: Increase the efficiency and effectiveness of Google AdWords

Key results:

1. Increase click-through rate on Google AdWords by 15%

2. Reduce cost per click by 10%

3. Improve ad relevance score by 20%

Note: that these Key Results are more effective in an empowered Product team setup because they do not specify solutions or deliverables without outcomes. The outcomes are mentioned head-first, allowing autonomy for teams to define the best path to reach the desired outcome.

Strengths:

• Provides measurable targets: that help teams clearly understand what success looks like and track their progress over time. This ensures alignment and reduces ambiguity in goal-setting.

• Encourages prioritisation and focus: by requiring teams to identify the most impactful objectives and key results. This avoids distractions and ensures resources are allocated effectively.

• Ideal for organisations that value data-driven decision-making: as it fosters a culture of accountability and evidence-based evaluation of progress.

Challenges:

• Overemphasis on metrics can lead to short-term thinking: where teams prioritise immediate results over long-term strategy and sustainability. This can undermine the broader purpose of OKRs.

• Risk of setting overly aggressive or irrelevant key results: results can either demotivate teams due to unachievable targets or misalign efforts with the organisation’s strategic goals.

Choosing the Right Framework

The choice between NCTs and OKRs depends on your goals:

• Use NCTs when tackling complex, exploratory challenges that require storytelling and cross-functional buy-in.

• Use OKRs for focused, data-driven initiatives where progress can be quantified.

For instance, a startup exploring product-market fit might prefer NCTs, while an established SaaS company optimizing churn rates might lean on OKRs.

Both frameworks are rather similar in that they specify large goals and ways to achieve them in different communication formats. To help you identify which one suits your company and culture better, start asking yourself some key questions:

• For the case of using NCTs:

  • Are you launching a new initiative or exploring an uncharted market where ambiguity is high?

    • NCTs excel in scenarios where a clear and inspiring narrative can align diverse stakeholders around a shared vision.

  • Does your project require strong cross-functional collaboration?

    • The narrative component of NCTs helps bridge gaps between departments by providing a cohesive story that clarifies each team’s role in achieving the goal.

  • Is your goal to motivate and inspire teams to pursue bold, innovative solutions?

    • NCTs can energise teams by painting a vivid picture of future success and setting meaningful commitments.

• For the case of using OKRs:

  • Are your goals clearly defined and supported by measurable data?

    • OKRs are best suited for teams that thrive on quantitative results and have well-established metrics to track progress.

  • Does your organisation emphasise accountability and efficiency in achieving targets?

    • OKRs drive focus by ensuring every team member understands their specific role in reaching key results.

  • Are you scaling or optimizing proven initiatives where precision and tracking are critical?

    • OKRs’ measurable nature makes them ideal for iterative improvement and operational excellence. you launching a new initiative or exploring an uncharted market?

Actionable Steps for Product Managers

Getting started with NCTs or OKRs can feel overwhelming, especially if your team or organisation is new to structured goal-setting frameworks. The challenge lies in choosing the right approach and ensuring that it aligns with your strategic objectives and team dynamics. Without guidance, teams may end up over-complicating the process or defaulting to poorly defined goals.

To simplify this journey, start with three simple steps to provide a practical starting point and ensure clarity and direction from the get-go:

1. Evaluate Your Context: Are you driving innovation or optimising existing processes?

2. Define Success: Is it about inspiring teams or achieving measurable outcomes?

3. Experiment: Are you able to test both frameworks in different time periods using the same team, for different initiatives, and adapt based on results?

Final Thoughts

Both NCTs and OKRs are powerful tools, but their effectiveness lies in thoughtful implementation. By understanding their differences and tailoring them to your needs, you can set your team up for success in 2025. Start the year with intention, and let your goals guide you to impactful outcomes.

What frameworks do you use to set goals? Share your thoughts below! 👇

Product managers are no strangers to analysis paralysis. We’ve all been in that room, staring at an endless stream of charts, debating whether to move forward with a product decision or wait for more data.

The cost of indecision can be staggering—wasted resources, delayed launches, and missed market opportunities. But what if we could break out of this cycle? What if, instead of waiting for perfect data, we could make decisions with conviction and adapt on the fly?

The Problem with Traditional Decision-Making

Traditional decision-making models often involve gathering data, analysing it extensively, and then making a decision. While this approach seems logical, it’s not always practical.

The reality is that by the time you've collected and analysed all the data, the market may have moved on. Worse, the pursuit of certainty can lead to analysis paralysis, where decisions are delayed indefinitely because no one wants to make a call without absolute proof. Our unstructured set of conclusions and decisions may lead us into decision spiral, like this:

In contrast, Hypotheses-Led Planning is about moving forward based on your best-informed hypotheses and validating them as you go. It’s not about being reckless—it’s about making decisions with enough information to act and then iterating based on what you learn.

Hypotheses-Led Planning

Hypotheses-Led Planning, is a change in mindset that shifts the focus from exhaustive ‘boil the ocean’ research to focussed hypothesis-driven action.

By framing decisions as testable hypotheses, product teams can accelerate their processes, learn faster, and make more efficient use of resources. In this post, we’ll explore how hypothesis-driven decision-making can transform your product strategy.

The Key Elements of Hypothesis-Led Planning

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Building product strategy can be one of the most challenging yet rewarding aspects of being a product manager. The task isn't just about crafting a vision—it's about aligning stakeholders across various levels of the organisation while backing up your strategic choices with solid data and evidence. This complexity is even more daunting when you're new to your role, where the pressure to deliver is high but the path forward may seem unclear.

From my time working in both early startups to late-stage scale-ups and enterprise, I've encountered five key reasons why building a product strategy is so challenging from the get go:

• Misaligned stakeholder expectations – Different departments often have varying goals, making it impossible to create a unified product strategy that satisfies everyone.

• Conflicting business priorities – Balancing short-term revenue goals with long-term product vision can create tension, especially when leadership demands immediate results (e.g., be profitable, now!).

• Lack of reliable data or metrics – Without access to strong data, product managers are left to make assumptions, which weakens the justification behind strategic decisions.

• Pressure to deliver short-term wins over long-term vision – The need to show quick results can lead to compromises on the broader, future-oriented strategy.

• Navigating organizational politics and power dynamics – Internal politics and the influence of key stakeholders often overshadow data-driven decisions, making alignment harder to achieve.

The importance of strategy cannot be understated. The fast you develop your strategy, the faster you avoid being stuck in what I call the “Strategy Misalignment Spiral”.

Our 🔒Strategic Product Execution series helps product leaders efficiently plan and convert strategy into action and outcomes. One post at a time.

 If you’re a free subscriber and you’d like to upgrade to receive them you can do so below! Or you can find out more about paid access here.

The Unfortunate Case of the Strategy Misalignment Spiral

When a business or product lacks a clear strategy, teams often find themselves caught in a horrible downward spiral that leads only to the demise of team morale, productivity, and product performance.

I’ve now seen this spiral in different forms through my career, both as a consultant and as a product manager and leader. The spiral looks something roughly like this:

Reactive Decision Making

Without a clear product strategy, teams make decisions reactively, constantly shifting priorities to address the latest stakeholder demands or firefighting urgent issues. This leads to…

Wasted Resources

Reactive decision-making results in focusing on features and initiatives that do not align with long-term goals or deliver significant value. As a result, time, money, and talent are wasted on projects that do little to move the needle. This leads to…

Stakeholder Misalignment

As more resources are wasted on low-value efforts, frustration grows among stakeholders. Different departments push for their own priorities, leading to misalignment and conflicting demands across teams. This leads too…

Short-Term Wins Over Longer-Term Vision

In response to misalignment and growing stakeholder pressure, product teams focus on delivering short-term wins to appease immediate concerns. This compromises any long-term planning and perpetuates the cycle of reactive decision-making. This leads to…

Erosion of Team Morale

Constantly shifting priorities and delivering low-impact results take a toll on team morale. The product team and their stakeholders can feel disconnected from a larger purpose, leading to disengagement and burnout as they struggle to find meaning in their work.

Increased Reactive Decision-Making

As team morale declines, the product team becomes even more vulnerable to external pressures and firefighting. The lack of proactive strategic direction forces them into deeper reactive decision-making, perpetuating the downward spiral.

Avoid The Downward Spiral By “Leading Upwards”

There are some concrete ways to catch your teams from heading further down the spiral. I break this down into five key steps:

Read more

In my previous blog post on The Daily Dichotemies of Product Leadership, I explored different leadership styles and ways to enhance autonomy. Today, let's dive deeper into how psychological empowerment can drive motivation and productivity, and why knowing when to step in and when to let your team take the reins is key to your success.

A Circle Filled With Two Equal Halves

Picture yourself in two contrasting scenarios.

Scenario 1: Autonomy Without Guidance

Imagine you’re working in a fast-paced, innovation-driven environment where you’re given complete freedom to chart your own course. While it sounds ideal, you start to realize that the lack of guidance is more daunting than liberating.

The project’s goals are ambiguous, the structure is loose, and you’re left to navigate this uncharted territory on your own. You’re flying blind, unsure if you’re heading in the right direction.

The endless possibilities can become overwhelming, leading to decision paralysis. In such environments, the absence of clear expectations and support can leave you feeling isolated and uncertain, questioning whether your efforts align with the broader objectives of the organization.

Scenario 2: Directive Control

Now, let’s flip the coin. You’re in a scenario where every detail is meticulously planned out for you. Your goals are set with precision, your tasks are defined down to the last detail, and there’s little room for deviation.

You’re closely monitored, ensuring that you follow the established path without straying. On one hand, this structure keeps you aligned with the company’s vision, reducing the risk of errors or missteps. But on the other hand, the rigid control stifles your creativity.

You’re not just solving problems—you’re following a script, which can lead to a sense of disengagement. There’s little space for innovation or personal growth, as the directive approach leaves no room for your unique insights or creative solutions.

Striking the Balance

Finding the sweet spot between these two extremes is crucial for your development as a leader and the success of your projects.

Autonomy fosters creativity and ownership, but without guidance, it can lead to confusion and inefficiency. Conversely, while directive control ensures alignment and reduces uncertainty, it can also limit innovation and personal engagement.

The key is to navigate between these two approaches—providing enough structure to guide and support while offering enough freedom to innovate and grow. While there’s no perfect equation to understanding when to move into more direct oversight versus empowering teams, I’ve learned quite a few lessons from my many roles in the past, both consultant and in leadership, that can help you find your way forward.

Real-World Experience: From Individual Contributor to Empowered Leader

Let me share a couple of stories from my different leadership roles in the past that may resonate with you.

At Littlepay, a startup that started in small beach-side office in Geelong, Australia, but then grew to process over 100 million transactions a year, I began as employeed number six (6), a sole product manager and as an individual contributor for the team. Over time, I evolved into leading a team of five product managers. The company needed to scale and build capabilities beyond relying on me alone.

This role was a crash course in leadership. I had to switch between being hands-on solving problems with clients on the ground, then hiring more Product Managers to build a team team, learning to balance oversight with autonomy and empowerment. This was my first real taste of leadership, and it was a rollercoaster ride—one that taught me the importance of flexibility in management styles.

Contrast that with my time at Tier Mobility, a late stage Series C/D micromobility operator, rapidly growing across 200+ cities and multiple countries, with over US $300m raised in capital. Here, I move roles from Product Director to VP of Product, managing between three to twelve teams across various disciplines.

The scope was enormous, so diving into every detail wasn't feasible. Instead, I had to rely on my team's expertise and navigate and start with self-empowerment and autonomy as my default position, then only using direct oversight when I needed to critically course correct if we weren’t moving metrics.

It felt like leading a series of interconnected T-shaped teams, sometimes diving deep into one domain and then stepping back to oversee the broader landscape. It was a wild ride, but it was an invaluable lesson in managing a wide array of challenges.

Understanding Direct Oversight

Oversight, in leadership terms, involves closely monitoring and guiding team members' work to ensure they meet established goals and standards. It often includes setting explicit objectives, providing detailed instructions, and regularly reviewing progress. This approach is particularly effective in situations where tasks are complex, require precise execution, or involve high stakes.

For me, being in a financial services environment where accuracy is critical, using oversight for my teams helps prevent errors and ensures compliance with regulatory standards. When implemented well, oversight can provide the structure and clarity needed to achieve high-quality outcomes and maintain alignment with organizational goals.

However, oversight can become dysfunctional if applied excessively or inappropriately. When team members are micromanaged or scrutinised too closely, it can lead to diminished morale, reduced creativity, and a lack of ownership.

This is especially true in environments that benefit from innovation and flexibility. In these scenarios, overly stringent oversight can stifle initiative, limit problem-solving capabilities, and create a culture of dependency rather than empowerment. The challenge lies in striking the right balance—using oversight to provide necessary support and direction, while avoiding the pitfalls of micromanagement that can hinder team growth and effectiveness.

Understanding Psychological Empowerment

Psychological empowerment isn’t just about having the freedom to make decisions; it’s about feeling that your work has meaning, that you’re capable, and that your actions matter.

This empowerment ties directly into the core components of Self-Determination Theory:

• Autonomy;

• Competence;

• Relatedness (or “Meaning”); and

• Influence

The theory is that when an individual feels self-determined with full influence, they are more likely to take ownership of your work, leading to greater satisfaction and productivity.

Let’s dive into each pillar one-by-one.

The Role of Autonomy: The Freedom To Choose

Autonomy is a cornerstone of both psychological empowerment and Self-Determination Theory. It’s the feeling that you have control over your work and the freedom to make decisions that align with your understanding of the task at hand.

In a high-pressure environment, especially in growth stage or late stage companies where you want to ensure a product-led organisation where ‘bottom up’ ideas and execution matters more than top-down oversight, having autonomy can be a powerful motivator.

However, autonomy needs to be balanced with oversight. For example, in the early stages of a project, it’s essential to have clear goals and expectations to ensure alignment with the company’s objectives. As you build trust with your leaders, you can expect more autonomy, allowing you to exercise your judgment and creativity.

The Role of Competence: Building Confidence through Guided Development

Competence is another critical component of Self-Determination Theory. It refers to the belief that you can perform tasks effectively. When you feel competent, you’re more likely to take initiative and engage deeply with your work.

However, building competence often requires guidance, especially in a complex field like financial technology. If you’re working on sophisticated financial products, you might need structured training and regular feedback to develop the necessary skills. Initially, your managers might take a more hands-on approach, but as your competence grows, they should shift to a more hands-off style, empowering you to take more control.

The Power of Meaning: Aligning Work with Core Values

Meaning is about feeling that your work has significance and aligns with both your personal values and those of the organization. This sense of purpose is essential for psychological empowerment.

In the financial services industry, where the stakes are high, understanding the impact of your work on clients' financial well-being can be incredibly motivating. Leaders can help you find this meaning by clearly communicating the broader purpose behind each project.

While direct oversight might be needed to keep the team aligned with these values during critical phases, the ultimate goal is to empower you to connect your personal values with your work, driving sustained engagement and performance.

Relatedness: Fostering a Supportive Team Environment

Relatedness, the feeling of connection and belonging within a team, is the final pillar of Self-Determination Theory. It’s vital for creating a cohesive, motivated workforce.

In product management, where collaboration is key, fostering relatedness can significantly enhance team dynamics. While leaders can set the tone for a collaborative environment through clear communication and inclusive decision-making, empowerment comes into play when you and your peers support each other and self-organise around shared goals. This not only strengthens relationships within the team but also promotes a culture of mutual respect and accountability.

Influence: The Power to Shape Outcomes

Influence is about having the ability to affect decisions and outcomes within your work environment. It’s the sense that your voice matters and that you have a role in shaping the direction of projects and initiatives.

When you feel influential, you’re more engaged and motivated because you see the direct impact of your contributions. In a team setting, this means having the opportunity to contribute ideas, provide feedback, and make decisions that align with your expertise.

Leaders can enhance this sense of influence by actively seeking input from team members and involving them in decision-making processes. When team members feel their influence is valued, they’re more likely to take ownership and drive success.

When To Choose Oversight vs. Empowerment?

To effectively balance oversight and empowerment, I’ve found a super helpful model, called Situational Leadership: developed by Paul Hersey and Ken Blanchard in the late 1960s, and still applies to this day.

Their model recognises that there is no one-size-fits-all approach, allowing leaders to adapt their behaviours to suit the unique needs of each situation. They believe that your leadership style should vary depending on two key factors:

1. Competence, which is an individual’s ability to perform a task effectively. It encompasses their skills, knowledge, and experience related to the task or role. High competence means the person is skilled and knowledgeable, while low competence indicates they may need additional training or support.

2. Commitment, which reflects an individual’s motivation, enthusiasm, and willingness to engage with a task or role. High commitment means they are highly motivated and eager to contribute, whereas low commitment might suggest they are less motivated or uncertain about their role.

If an individual is considered “low” on both counts, then directive oversight is recommended with clear goals, expectations and even instructions on how to conduct the work. Conversely, a high performer that appraises themself high in both counts may simply need empowerment: a clear goal and some guidance only when necessary.

The interplay between Competence and Commitment creates a four-quadrant matrix, each requiring a different leadership approach, as shown in their diagram:

1. Low Competence, Low Commitment: In this quadrant, you need to be more directive, often referred to as “Telling.” Detailed instructions and close supervision are necessary as individuals may lack the skills and motivation to perform independently. Here, extremely high oversight is needed.

2. Low Competence, High Commitment: This quadrant calls for a “Selling” approach. While the individual is motivated, they still need guidance to build their skills. Your role here is to provide support and encouragement while also offering direction.

3. High Competence, Low Commitment: In this scenario, a “Participating” style is effective. The individual has the skills but may lack the motivation or confidence. Collaborative decision-making and providing emotional support can help re-engage them.

4. High Competence, High Commitment: Finally, in this quadrant, you can adopt a “Delegating” approach, which may be deemed the most ‘autonomous’ or empowered approach to use. Because the individual is both capable and motivated, you are allowed to step back and empower them to take full ownership of their work.

Hersey and Blanchard's research shows that adjusting your leadership style to the situation improves team performance and individual satisfaction. Understanding this matrix helps you tailor your approach based on where you or your team members fall, ensuring you provide the right mix of oversight and empowerment.

Final Thoughts

As you grow into your role as a product manager, it’s crucial to find the right balance between seeking guidance and taking ownership of your work. By understanding the principles of psychological empowerment and Situational Leadership, you can better navigate the balance between needing oversight and embracing autonomy.

As you grow as a product leader and are managing a team of individuals, you need to also think about when to apply situational leadership, depending on the commitment and competence of your team.

I encourage you to reflect on your current approach and consider how you can apply these principles in your daily work. Whether through seeking more autonomy, focusing on competence-building, or finding deeper meaning in your tasks, the right balance can help you unlock your full potential.

Ask yourself:

• How well do you balance autonomy with oversight in your current role?

• Are you providing or receiving the right amount of guidance to foster competence within your team?

• Does your work align with your core values, and do you feel a sense of meaning in your daily tasks?

• Are you cultivating a supportive team environment where collaboration and relatedness thrive?

• When faced with varying levels of competence and commitment within your team, how do you adjust your leadership style?

• What steps can you take to ensure that both you and your team members feel empowered and capable in your roles?

If you’d like to discuss how these concepts can be tailored to your unique situation, please feel free to reach out! Simply leave a comment below and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.

The truth is, my life got way busy more than it has ever been before. Between starting a new job and integrating my 1 year old into childcare, as well as other family commitments, I simply ran out of time.

But, good news: my energy levels are back and I’m putting pen to paper once more in an attempt to bring more value back to you!

If you’re a paid subscriber, I have also given you more complementary time to reward you for your loyalty. Hope this helps and I hope to see you return to my publication in weeks to come!

Yes, I left my new job during my probation period…

I know, it’s not normal news, but I want to be transparent.

For those astutely following my career movements, you'll know that I joined a leading ID verification company in Europe, with:

• Strong double digit revenue growth

• Strongly positive Net Dollar Retention

• An industry that leverages AI for competitive advantage

I joined in a VP Product role in charge of their main business line, ID Proofing solutions. A huge role with the quality huge responsibility.

For those even more astutely following my movements, you would know that I actually left this role only five months later.

You may be left wondering: why on earth would I leave such a fantastic opportunity? Any SaaS VP Product would be crazy to leave during a market with limited senior leadership opportunities to pick from.

To be honest, deciding to leave was an extremely difficult decision, but it is a move that I hope I can shed light on, to may help any readers here also considering the same for their own situation.

Reasons Why It's Super Hard to Leave a Company Early

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Fortunately for me, I’ve had a great run using fantastic products and services that usually meet or exceed expectations. You know what these experiences are like:

Uber: Quick Convenient Journey

Touching down at a foreign airport, only to find your Uber immediately, taking you door-to-door to you intended destination. Meanwhile, everyone else is queueing for a more expensive taxi.

• Pain: Unable to get to your hotel fast to enjoy the rest of your day.

• Gain: Fast and cheap ride to hotel with ease.

Amazon: Last Minute Purchase

Solo parent at home, acquiring that one grocery item that you couldn’t find at-home, needed to bake a perfect cake for your kid’s birthday. Delivered same-day, just-in-time for you to place in the oven before guests arrive.

• Pain: Unable to find a scarce ingredient needed for a crucial event.

• Gain: The most convenient way to buy your required ingredients, without leaving your child without supervision.

Wise: Foreign Cash and Currency

Converting foreign currency overseas that is required immediately after you land at the airport. You withdraw from the nearby ATM at the airport with minimal fees.

• Pain: Expensive foreign exchange fees from untrusted parties. Risky to carry local cash to bring on a plane trip before exchange.

• Gain: Local currency immediately available to you with no risk and low fees.

Rarely, I've encountered distressing experiences that I hope no one, myself included, ever faces again. Let me share one such ordeal: a dismal food delivery mishap that no product manager should subject their users to.

The Tale of The Penang Curry: Lost in Delivery

A few years ago, with family visiting and time scarce, dining in became the plan. Turning to a local food delivery app, a familiar tool from my overseas jaunt, I hunted for a meal, armed with vouchers from a previous order mishap.

Spotting a nearby restaurant, a 15-minute drive away, I opted for delivery to entertain guests at home. Promised a 35 to 45-minute wait, our hunger grew as time elapsed with no sign of our meal.

Emotions ran high: family tired and hungry, myself, a tad stressed, primarily vexed with the delivery app. Tracking the vehicle's progress, hope flickered as the icon stalled just minutes away.

Contacting support yielded little relief. A chatbot's hollow responses led to a futile conversation with an agent, promising action but delivering only frustration.

One hour passed, no food in sight, patience wearing thin. The revelation of the driver's car trouble dashed any remaining hope. Offered a voucher as compensation, I declined, opting for an immediate refund and severing ties with the app for good.

I decided to draw out my experience after that whole ordeal, using a basic journey map, based on Positive, Neutral, and Negative sentiment. See below:

…and yes, I haven’t installed the app since. I’ve found better alternatives!

How Could This Have Been Better?

The experience with the food delivery app left me with an extremely bitter taste, prompting a retrospective on how it could be improved. I left plenty of feedback in my chatbot: I sincerely hope that someone picked it up for their backlog!

Firstly, better communication and transparency regarding the delay would have alleviated frustration. Timely updates from the support team or the delivery driver could have managed expectations and provided reassurance during the wait.

Secondly, a more efficient and responsive customer support system would have been useful. A seamless transition from automated responses to human interaction, coupled with proactive problem-solving, could have salvaged the situation. Empowering support agents with the authority to take immediate action and resolve issues swiftly would have prevented much of my dismay.

Lastly, investing in driver training and contingency plans for unforeseen circumstances such as car breakdowns could prevent similar incidents in the future. Maybe they can give the order to another driver who can pick it up off them? Who knows. Ensuring drivers are equipped to handle emergencies would have upheld a level of service reliability and trust.

Ultimately, by prioritising near real-time communication, customer service, mitigations and operational preparedness, the food delivery app could have turned a disastrous experience into an opportunity to build loyalty and trust. After all, they should have known I would have been at risk of churning: I had a voucher already from the missing items in a previous delivery!

Reasons Why Feedback Is Often Ignored

Amidst the ever-evolving market dynamics and customer preferences, many businesses struggle to effectively harness customer feedback as an invaluable resource to learn from. This is due to mainly 3 reasons:

1. Lack of Customer-Centric Culture

Sometimes you may find yourself in an organisation where customer focus is spoken about, but never really lived in the values of the employees.

Usually there are some tell-tale signs that indicate this lack of customer-centric culture, which also cause a much more wider problem: “organisational entropy”, which is the natural tendency of organizations to become disordered, inefficient, or resistant to change over time.

Take a look at the below, and see if any of them apply to your organisation:

1. Poor Communication Channels: Product managers do not establish clear channels for collecting and communicating customer feedback within the organization, leading to a lack of awareness and understanding of customer needs among team members.

2. Siloed Structures: Departments or teams within the organization may operate in isolation, making it difficult to share and utilize customer insights across the entire organization.

3. Bureaucratic Hurdles: Complex approval processes and bureaucratic red tape can slow down the implementation of customer-driven initiatives, leading to delays in responding to customer feedback.

4. Resource Constraints: Limited resources, whether financial, human, or technological, can hinder the organization's ability to invest in tools, training, or initiatives aimed at capturing and leveraging the voice of the customer.

5. No Action On User Feedback: management disregard user feedback and continue to make decisions based on assumptions or internal preferences.

6. Limited Customer Engagement: your team members or peers don’t speak to customers proactively on opportunities, instead only reacting when feature requests are escalated.

7. Disregard for User Experience: Product managers prioritize technical specifications, sales demands or internal processes over-optimizing the user experience, resulting in products that are difficult to use or navigate, or are inconsistent with design systems or UX best practices.

2. Fragmented / Unmeasured Feedback Channels

Feedback from customers come from all kinds of channels, many of which may not be easily transposed into meaningful insights or data pipelines in companies. Many organisations do not invest in synthesising the multiple inputs into meaningful insights or outcomes.

Consider the following sources of feedback:

• Marketing or CRM:

  • Website Behaviour: how your users interact with your website, either the sales and marketing collateral, or the product itself

  • Live Chat: how your users chat and interact within live chat, as well as any reviews or ratings provided

• Customer Care

  • Customer Support Interactions: call data or recordings of common or recurring issues, as well as emails received

• Platforms:

  • App Reviews: user feedback on the service from app store reviews, whether positive or negative, as a source for improvement

  • Social Media Listening: mentions and comments about the service on social media channels

• Research:

  • Survey data: qualitative and quantitative feedback from email or in-app surveys

• Product:

  • In-App Feedback: data supplied in feedback forms of in-app experience

  • User Interviews: Conduct interviews to understand user experiences.

  • Data Analytics: Use data to track user behaviour and identify areas for improvement.

Integrating these touch points and channels into meaningful insights can be difficult, especially for organisations that have a low appetite to invest further, limited by shorter-term profitability goals where return on investment and payback thresholds are low.

3. Purely Capitalist Pursuit Towards Profitability

Your company’s pursuit of profitability may often take precedence over other considerations, including actively listening to customer feedback. Businesses, particularly those under pressure to deliver short-term financial results, may prioritize initiatives that directly contribute to the bottom line, relegating feedback integration to a secondary or tertiary concern.

This profit-centric mindset can manifest in various ways:

• Short-Term Focus: Businesses may prioritize initiatives that promise immediate returns, such as cost-cutting measures or quick product releases, over longer-term investments in customer feedback analysis and product refinement.

• Quarterly Targets: The pressure to meet quarterly financial targets set by investors or stakeholders can lead businesses to allocate resources primarily to activities that generate immediate revenue, rather than those focused on improving customer satisfaction or loyalty through feedback implementation.

• Cost Considerations: Investing in comprehensive feedback analysis tools or hiring dedicated personnel to manage customer feedback channels may be perceived as costly endeavours, particularly for businesses operating on tight budgets or facing financial constraints.

• Market Competition: In highly competitive markets, where companies are vying for market share and profitability, there may be a reluctance to divert resources towards feedback integration efforts, especially if competitors are not visibly prioritizing similar initiatives.

As a result, VoC is overshadowed by short-term financial goals, hindering the ability of businesses to fully leverage feedback for continued innovation to create sustainable advantages.

6 Steps to Establishing Voice of Customer

So in light of all these challenges, we ask ourselves:

How can businesses leverage the voice of the customer to not only drive product innovation, but also foster sustainable growth and success?

Below, I offer 6 key ways to move towards a more sustainable measurement, synthesis, and action for Voice of Customer.

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At Littlepay and TIER in their early stages, motivation was high; everyone was eager to innovate and provide value to customers. However, during the economic downturn at TIER Mobility from 2022 to 2023, profitability took precedence. Over 18 months, successive layoffs led to a decline in motivation, and plummeting employee NPS.

There are many reasons why fostering motivation can be challenging amidst varying product cultures:

1. Leadership Style and Company Goals: The leadership style and overarching company goals heavily shape the product culture. In environments where profit margins and short-term gains are prioritized, such as during economic downturns, the focus may shift towards cost-cutting and efficiency rather than innovation and employee satisfaction.

2. Organizational Structures and Decision-making Processes: Organizational structures and decision-making processes play a significant role. In hierarchical setups, where autonomy and creativity are stifled, team members might feel disengaged and undervalued.

3. Transparency and Communication: The level of transparency and communication within a company greatly impacts motivation. When there's a lack of clarity regarding objectives, progress, and individual contributions, employees can feel disconnected and demotivated.

Motivating teams in the realm of product development is a crucial yet intricate task, often influenced by the prevailing product culture within an organization.

Let’s take a look at two real PMs that I’ve worked with previously, anonymised for the sake of this post :)

The Tale of Two PMs

Amy works as a Product Manager in a SaaS Business, where:

• she is responsible for a small product feature set that is not performing well financially

• she has clear objectives, KPIs, and problem areas for her to discover

• she is responsible for a roadmap that is prioritised by her, trusted by her leader to do so via data and evidence she has collected with her stakeholders

• she has the tools and organisational structure (say, a dedicated squad or team) to deliver against her domains and goals

• however her company is not profitable today, and while the leadership has a plan of becoming profitable, it is constantly behind revenue numbers and always asks Amy for demonstrated impact in her deliverables.

Here, Amy my works in an “Empowered Product Team”, but suffers high mental load from executives asking about her initiatives every week.

John, on the other hand, works in a completely different cultural environment than Amy, although still a SaaS business, where:

• The company is profitable and his product areas are growing revenue slowly over time, around 5% per year

• He is responsible for the backend team: a team of backend engineers that own components in a large processing platform

• Feature requests are handed to him either by escalation or service desk. Each feature request has due dates, seeking prioritisation from sales teams, customer success, or from escalations from executives

• Often these requests demanded by current paying customers, where if feature requests were not delivered, they threaten to churn

• Discovery and ideation of different solutions to solve the underlying problems does not occur: there’s no time to do this, due to the endless stream of feature requests

• His roadmap is full of features, where the final outcome or impact is not that clear: it looks like a wish list of functionality, driven by a sales-led organisation

Here, John works in a “Feature Factory”, where teams focus primarily on churning out product features without considering broader strategic goals or user needs.

As Melissa Perri puts it:

Which would you rather be: Amy or John?

From the above situations, you probably have a strong preference for one over the other:

• Many PMs I would ask would love to be in the Empowered Team: given the autonomy to shape and deliver value to customers in the way they want, despite the lack of clarity on the future to come. In short, these people enjoy uncertainty because of the support they have around them to figure it out autonomously.

• However, there are many PMs or POs who don’t mind working in Feature Factories, because work is well defined and they have other priorities in their life to focus on: perhaps a family, or even a side hustle.

For PMs that haven’t been able to find their fully Empowered Product team to work in, they have a choice to either:

• Lead by example as a change leader towards a better way of working to inspire and motivate the peers and stakeholders around you; or

• Accept the status quo, not questioning nor improving culture, as its considered too much a heavy lift.

I argue, in most cases, you should definitely try to improve your ways of working. If you don’t, your mental health may suffer faster than you realise!

Accepting Status Quo Doomed For Failure

Regardless of the heavy lift, you always want to attempt to improve culture, for three main reasons:

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A keen Sales Representative pitching a B2B solution to an enterprise customer discovers a significant opportunity that dwarfs all other sales deals by 2-3 times.

However, to secure the deal, certain features not currently supported by our core product are required, potentially requiring months of work.

The Sales Rep urgently contacts you, the Product Manager, via Slack, asking if these features can be prioritized for delivery within 30 days.

However, our roadmap is already full of planned initiatives for over the next 2 quarters or more.

Upon meeting with the Sales Rep, it's revealed that the prospect wants to finalize the deal in 7 days with a commitment to launching the requested features.

So you are now tasked with the question:

PMs collectively suffer the pain of context switching and constantly reviewing and setting priorities. Unfortunately, this pain gets far worse, especially when:

• Escalation splash zone expands: the request is mentioned multiple times but different stakeholders, all increasing in seniority until the Top-level Management demand answers (and they want them yesterday!).

• Competitor intensity is high: Ignoring this opportunity could allow competitors to further their differentiations on your product, increasing their market share at the expense of yours.

• Internal politics is rampant: another department has already complained that their technical initiatives that save cost and retain customers have not been paid attention to.

As stakeholder demands increase in urgency and complexity, product managers risk decision paralysis: a state in which we are unable to make a decision due to being overwhelmed by too many options, conflicting information, or the fear of making the wrong choice.

If We Get Paid For This Custom Product Development, Why Does It Matter?

It can be extremely tempting to accept new requirements for new revenue. After all, if a handful of small features is all you need to deliver, the revenue should be enough to justify… right?

Well, the answer is often not as simple as you think, for a few key reasons:

• Hidden costs: Fulfilling customised development requests often requires significant resources, including time and financial investment. This can divert resources away from core product development and delay roadmap commitments that are already aimed at revenue uplift.

• Complexity Overload: Bespoke customer demands can introduce complexity into the product architecture, leading to increased maintenance costs, technical debt, and potential compatibility issues with future updates or releases.

• Misalignment with Strategy or Vision: Tailoring products to individual customer requests may lead to a divergence from the product's core vision and strategic direction. This can dilute the value proposition and hinder scalability and market competitiveness in the long term.

• Huge Dependency Risks: Over-reliance on customized solutions for individual customers can create dependencies that limit the ability to scale and adapt the product for broader market needs. This can hinder your organisation’s agility in responding to evolving market changes and competitive threats.

Ultimately, it comes down to trade-offs, where a PM needs to ask themselves:

• What shorter and longer term impact does this incoming request have to our business?

• If we make variances to plan, how do I explain this to stakeholders we’ve previously committed to?

The Different Stakeholder Perceptions Of Product Roadmaps

Roadmaps are perceived very differently depending on the stakeholder.

• In a B2B/B2G context, Salespersons often perceive a roadmap to be a list of deliverables by delivery date. They often require precision and certainty to manage client expectations and sales pipelines. Any slippage from plan and they lose trust in Product.

• In a B2C context, customer care or customer success teams may also demand precise commitments, often due to feedback received from existing customers. Sometimes a product may have bugs that are never prioritised due to lesser impact than planned initiatives or complexity to fix.

There’s a few risks with perceiving a roadmap as a list of commitments and dates:

1. Limited Flexibility: Treating roadmaps as sales commitments can lead to rigid timelines and scope creep as sales-driven demands override strategic considerations. This limits the team's ability to adapt to changing market dynamics, emerging technologies, and customer feedback effectively.

2. Undermining Trust: When roadmaps are consistently perceived as sales commitments, stakeholders, including customers, investors, and internal teams, may lose trust in the organization's ability to deliver on its promises. This can erode credibility and damage relationships over time.

3. Risk of Overpromising: Mistaking roadmaps for sales commitments may result in overpromising features or delivery timelines to customers, leading to disappointment, dissatisfaction, and potential churn if expectations are not met.

Instead, we want to view product roadmaps as an agile communication tool that articulates current strategic priorities in achieving established product vision or strategy.

I’ve transformed product organisations across different maturities and sectors towards Product-Led Roadmaps through many ways. In this post, we discuss five common elements and steps for any PM to shift these mindsets to a more collaborative “Product” way of working, focussing on outcomes and flexible, agile collaboration.

Let’s dive in!👇 🏊‍♂️

5 Steps Towards Product-Led Roadmaps

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Despite this, stakeholders demand them for the sake of transparency, tracking progress, and seeking assurance that their favourite projects are on track.

However, to truly foster trust with stakeholders, product managers must go beyond mere one-way status updates upon demand. They must transition towards continuous feedback loops, involving stakeholders throughout the journey, from Discovery to Delivery.

For Discovery:

• Involving key stakeholders during collaborative design kickoffs is essential. This collaborative approach ensures that diverse perspectives are considered, leading to more robust solutions.

• I've previously delved into the importance of conducting collaborative feature kickoffs in a separate post: check it out here!

For Delivery:

• Product managers must excel at providing transparent product updates. These updates should not only track delivery progress but also showcase the value of the product work.

• Stakeholders need to see how insights and data have informed product increments, driving tangible customer and business value. This is where mastering the ceremony of a Product Review becomes crucial.

The Case Against Status Update Reports

Status reports indeed provide a snapshot of work being completed and deliverables shipped, but there are certain limitations for these kinds of reports. These include:

• Static Information: While product status reports offer a snapshot of the project at a specific time, they overlook the rapid changes inherent in product development. This oversight can result in stakeholders lacking an accurate understanding of the project's current state.

• Lack of Context: Status reports often concentrate on metrics and milestones, neglecting to provide adequate context. This omission can lead stakeholders to misinterpret the reported status or its implications for overall project goals, hindering effective decision-making.

• One-Way Communication: Traditional status reports serve as one-way channels, delivering information to stakeholders without encouraging feedback or collaboration. This limitation restricts stakeholders' ability to ask questions, voice concerns, or offer insights that could enhance project outcomes.

• Oversimplification of Complexities: Product development involves navigating various complexities, such as market changes and technical challenges. Status reports may oversimplify these complexities, resulting in an incomplete understanding of progress and risks.

• Focus on Outputs over Outcomes: Status reports often prioritize outputs like completed features rather than outcomes like customer value. This emphasis can disconnect reported progress from the project's strategic objectives, leading stakeholders to prioritize activities that don't align with goals.

Executives often demand written executive summaries so that they can have a sense of control and predictability into deliverables. However, in Product, especially in industries with high technological change, predictability is a pipe dream!

Instead, we need to review how we can improve the sphere of communication impact in a cadence that is aligned with how value is being created by the rest of your organisation.

Benefits of Effective Product Reviews

From my time in early-stage companies through to large scale enterprise, I see the following themes of benefits that result from conducting effective recurring reviews

• Align: ensuring product efforts match strategy, boosting stakeholder confidence and project alignment.

• Resolve: tackling issues, risks, or roadblocks, ensuring smoother progress and timely solutions.

• Educate: informing stakeholders on project progress and impact, aiding informed decision-making.

• Enable: offering guidance on deployment and go-to-market activities, empowering stakeholders to support product rollout effectively.

• Collect: gathering feedback at each stage, enhancing evidence guided decision-making and final deliverable quality.

• Celebrate: acknowledging achievements, fostering team pride and providing visibility into future business impact.

Note that these kinds of meetings should not be used as forums for decision making on execution details. Consider engaging stakeholders through continuous discovery instead, where you bring your stakeholder along the journey as you build, measure, learn and test your solutions.

Figuring Out Your Update Cadence

We’ve all been there:

• Responding to daily questions about product status too frequently, and you will feel overwhelmed with no time to perform the actual product execution needed.

• Updating stakeholders too late, and you’ll receive complaints that your team isn’t transparent or involving enough.

PMs are also busy continually crafting their narrative of the bigger picture as well, giving little room to report findings at a more frequent timeframe. Whether you’re creating yearly strategy reviews, updating quarterly roadmaps, or prioritizing initiatives monthly, PMs often have little room for reporting findings at a more frequent timeframe.

For me, updating stakeholders every 3 to 6 weeks strikes the ideal balance, allowing teams ample time to deliver value. This timeframe accommodates reporting insights from discovery and research, as well as sharing delivery progress, including lessons learned and impacts gained from product experiments or launches.

For instance, if you operate on 2-week sprints, you can choose to conduct Product Reviews every 4 weeks (equivalent to 2 sprints) or every 6 weeks (equivalent to 3 sprints), allowing for a comprehensive assessment of progress and insights gained.

The Elements Of Effective Product Reviews

There are many different formats you can use for your reviews. As each company has its own different culture, I can’t recommend a single method for you to use, but what I can do is list out some key components that reviews should have to ensure the benefits listed above. These are:

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Product leaders today need to become much more commercially savvy, analysing revenue and cost levers with minutia of detail to ensure every product and technology investment is made with the greatest return with shortest payback.

Often, we must continually create and communicate business cases or impact assessments, to justify strategic priorities. Without it, we may face a swift axe of layoffs decided by a ruthless management board!

So how does one create investment cases that not only capture the attention from senior executives, but also secures the funding you need for your next product initiative?

One way is to tell business cases not only through numbers and analysis, but through an emotional customer-focussed narrative. Daniel Kahneman explores this further through his story of “The Elephant and the Rider”.

The Rider, The Elephant, System 1 and 2

Psychologist and Nobel laureate, Daniel Kahneman, introduced the concept of "The Elephant and the Rider" in his book "Thinking, Fast and Slow."

Kahneman’s metaphor represents the interplay between two systems in our minds:

• The emotional, impulsive "Elephant"; and

• The rational, controlled "Rider”. Imagine a young boy sitting on that impulsive Elephant.

Kahneman argues that while the rider (synonymous for our rational thinking) can guide the elephant to some extent, the elephant's emotions often dominate decision-making.

A brilliant example of success in branding, is Nike:

• Rational Approach: A rational approach might emphasize the technical features of Nike's athletic shoes, such as advanced cushioning or high-tech materials.

• Emotional Approach: Nike's "Just Do It" campaign doesn't focus on the technical aspects but appeals to the emotional side, inspiring people to overcome challenges and achieve greatness. It creates a sense of empowerment and motivation.

Emotional stories can have a massive impact in pitching business cases because they engage the elephant, making the information more memorable and persuasive. Narratives are key.

Here are 5 steps I like using to create compelling narratives that wrap around my business and investment cases. Let’s dive in.

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Whichever your company industry or sector, you will be given many complex problems to solve, and the resources and autonomy to solve it in the way you feel is best, based on your understanding of market and customer needs.

However, as you progress in your career, your professional development needs also grow, meaning that you need to find new challenges to develop a higher product mastery, one project at a time.

These new projects and experiences don’t just land on your lap. You need to be humble about your own capabilities and development gaps, then find ways to close the gaps that are often expected at the Product level you are targeting.

Closing these gaps cannot be something you do on your own. Your ability to grow as a PM is hugely dependent on your environment around you, and whether your manager can provide opportunities for you to deliver more impact and be rewarded for it.

You also need to be open and honest about your development needs. To do this, PMs need to ‘look into the mirror’ with humility.

Looking at the Mirror

When you wake up in the morning, one of the first things you would do would take care of your basic hygiene, looking at the mirror to perform your daily care routine, getting ready for the day to come.

As children, when we look into the mirror, we often see the best of ourselves, unafraid to do whatever we want during the day.

As adults, we recognise that we have many traits that makes us feel fantastic (“strengths”, previously covered in this article), but also many blemishes that we may feel vulnerable about (self-proclaimed “weaknesses”).

But let’s be honest: we hate our imperfections. We cover up our blemishes, aiming to blend in, when instead we should learn to love them.

Looking at one’s own product career is much like looking at the mirror. For many reasons, Product Managers undergo huge imposter syndrome (covered previously here), often understanding of their own weaknesses, but unwilling to accept them as traits that uniquely define their leadership style.

Using Weaknesses As Opportunities For Growth

To feel complete, I advocate that PMs start with an honest self-assessment: to take a long hard look at oneself in the mirror and define a daily care routine that makes you feel healthier each day you wake up.

These steps include:

• Reflection: Assessing your professional development gaps (e.g. using public competency frameworks, such as these skills listed by Reforge or Progressions.fyi)

• Acceptance: Understanding what your Product superpowers are, and your weaknesses (previously covered here)

• Seeking Guidance: Working with your manager to find projects around you that help improve strengths or cover weaknesses, often discussing where you can deliver more impact

• Developing Your Path: Considering options to address these gaps. Note: switching jobs may be needed!

To complete these steps properly, you need to understand the various types of impact that you can generate as a Product Manager as you move up towards a role of Leadership.

The Varying Degrees of Product Impact

I see a Product Manager’s type of impact varying depending on the levels of your organization, namely:

• You (Individual): Deepening your product sense and insight

• Your Team, Product and Stakeholders: Delivering value for customers via features or domains.

• Your Group: Helping adjacent teams covering other domains to achieve shared outcomes

• Your Department: Serving as an advocate for the Product function

• Your Company: Prove the value of Product, leading by example.

Let’s dive into examples of how you can expand your impact per level.

Widening Your Impact Per Organisational Level

Below is a mega-map of the different types of product manager impact across the 4Ds Product Development Lifecycle. It shows the various areas of impact that, over time, expand from an internal focus to an external focus.

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