Visionaries think in systems. Teams work in sprints. Writing ideas down, parking them, and aligning on when they matter is how you protect focus without killing creativity.

I asked AI to summarize a product I knew well. The answer was confident and wrong. It made me realize that AI perception is now part of how buyers meet our products. I wrote about a simple loop product managers can use to turn that perception into product learning

Blocking a visionary rarely protects the team. It usually just creates a bigger fight later. “Yes, and…” keeps the idea alive and the delivery moving. Sequencing steps to the big idea is product leadership.

Visionary leaders don’t struggle with ideas — they struggle with translation. Your job isn’t to make them “more realistic.” It’s to turn future thinking into next steps without shrinking the vision.

Here's what AI-first product managers do: 🔹 Start with AI before you have the answer 🔹 Test an idea against potential scenarios 🔹 Come to discussions with options, not conclusions 🔹 Talk about outcomes, not features "Starting without AI feels incomplete." Mustafa Kapadia

Progress isn’t one big “yes.” It’s dozens of tiny signs. Sales asking questions. Marketing previewing messaging. None of these look like success on their own. Together, they’re momentum. Great product managers don’t wait for validation. They build it. One signal at a time.

If you feel stuck, it’s usually not because you lack answers. It’s because you haven’t written down the right questions yet. Writing questions is underrated product work. It turns uncertainty into something you can actually move. Clarity isn’t found. It’s drafted.

AI explains your product before customers talk to you. If your product can’t explain itself, AI fills the gaps with partial context. Explainability is where context engineering becomes real.

Product work rarely gives quick signals. No instant metrics. No immediate validation. So product managers do the dangerous thing: They wait for confidence to appear. Momentum doesn’t come from certainty. It comes from creating your own signals of progress.

The silence after a win is the real test of product leadership. You get exec buy-in. The next steps look obvious. Then your team goes quiet. That silence isn’t resistance—it’s a lack of direction. People need paths, not just conviction. Product leadership starts after the yes.

Is your AI feature suffering from "silent failure"? Product managers often treat AI like traditional code—ship it and move on. But AI requires "gardening," not just building. More on handling post-launch decay for product managers: buff.ly/Hv8Q1yN

When product managers raise concerns without artifacts, it sounds like intuition vs velocity. When you share eval notes, screenshots, and recordings, the conversation changes: - concerns become visible - tradeoffs become explicit - alignment happens faster Evals don’t slow teams down.

You don’t need perfect coverage to ship confidently. Evals trade exhaustive testing for prioritized validation: a small set of high-impact, high-risk scenarios that reflect real customer use. The goal is “we understand what could go wrong...and we’re aligned on the tradeoffs.”

Each year, I write about what feels different in product work. Lately, that difference shows up in flatter organizations, faster AI-enabled product work, and more ambiguous initiatives. buff.ly/PCz6887

Evals are about testing what actually matters. Product managers understand why: - real customer journeys - business context - the failure modes that cause churn or escalation Evals capture product judgment and make it runnable — so confidence doesn’t live only in one person’s head.

Ever notice how everything can be “working as expected” and you still hesitate to ship? It’s about customer workflows crossing team boundaries in your product Evals give you a way to turn that intuition into something visible and actionable.

Product managers who want AI search accuracy do this: 1. Keep your product knowledge base current 2. Make it easy for humans and AI to gain information 3. Help buyers know about you This post from Eli Schwartz has more on AI visibility for product people.

If performance and security deserve roadmap space, so does operational maturity. Without it, growth slows. PM focus erodes. Success becomes friction. Scaling is not side work. It is product work.

“Who owns this?” rarely fixes anything. A better question is: What capability is missing for this product to scale? That shift turns ownership fights into growth conversations.

You can ship a lot of launches and still feel like nothing’s moving. I don’t think that means product managers need to “do GTM.” I think it means some launches aren’t finished yet.

When processes only work with you involved, handoff is impossible. Not due to resistance. Due to dependency. You are not hoarding work. The system is not ready to let go.

Your product is working. That is why everyone keeps looping you in. Sales questions. Custom requests. Onboarding edge cases. Not because you should own them. Because you always have. Early success creates hidden drag.

If you find yourself re-explaining your context and product to AI, then Rian van der Merwe has some time-saving ways to get more value from working with AI. "Iterate on the prompts. If a prompt isn't helping, change it." bit.ly/4oUNvnU

You don’t grow beyond execution by fixing everything. You grow by choosing: • which friction is systemic • which confusion is blocking others • which work is worth walking away from Strategy isn’t cleanup. It’s building paths others can follow.

Strategic product managers don’t ask for recognition. They make chaos understood: • patterns instead of noise • narratives instead of updates • decisions before escalations That’s why leadership keeps pulling them “away.” They’re not being pulled out — they’re being pulled up.

“Follow the money” is good advice — just not when you’re pre-revenue. Early product work needs a different kind of thinking. I wrote about the work that comes before the money shows up.

If the hardest parts of your product job aren’t in JIRA anymore, that’s not scope creep. It’s a signal. You’re starting to work in the space between teams — where strategy, translation, and influence actually live.

Ever notice how some product managers never “own” features — but everything moves faster when they’re around? They’re not avoiding product work. They’re connecting it. That role is real. And more product managers are moving into it than they realize.

Launch your product fast or experiment before launching? Itamar Gilad provides a case study of these approaches for adding an AI-powered feature.

With Finance, long explanations hurt you. Clarity earns trust. If you can’t explain the business impact in 1–2 clean sentences, you’re not ready for the meeting. Keep distilling.

Finance is already modeling your product. Don’t just ask for a final number. Ask to see the model. Work on assumptions together. It turns Finance from a checkpoint into a partner.

Teams don’t need more docs. They need the right context. New article on the builder PM moves that make that happen:

A common product manager slip: trying to “summarize” revenue recognition, tax, or margin logic. If it’s complex, don’t paraphrase. Ask Finance to explain it in their own words so you carry it forward accurately. Trust rises instantly.

Product managers lose trust fast when they talk in ambiguity while Finance talks in precision. If Finance frames customers in revenue/month or margin impact… follow that structure. Mirror their language. It’s the fastest way to build credibility.

Peter Yang's perspective on product management: 1️⃣ Building will be a baseline expectation of product managers 2️⃣ For the first time ever, ICs who use AI tools can have more leverage than people managers 3️⃣ Successful product managers will have "just figure it out" energy buff.ly/Pfqu1GE

Strategic influence as a product manager is earned when you: 💠 Clarify next steps 💠 Pull in stakeholders 💠 Stick with it when enthusiasm drops 💠 Close the loop with a clear decision You can be the product manager who finishes what others only start.

Most strategy projects die early because they’re pitched like… strategy projects. Try this instead: 💠 Call it a hypothesis, not a “strategy” 💠 Describe the pattern you’re seeing 💠 Minimize dependencies 💠 Keep a simple, living POV doc 💠 Let the actions emerge as you learn

I’m spending more time answering internal questions than doing product work. My poll says 90% of PMs are in the same boat. So I wrote about why this is happening —and how a “context system” saves hours a week.

Before you pitch a “strategic” idea, ask a simple question: If this worked, would your team proudly put it on a billboard? If the answer is meh, drop it. If the answer is yes, you’ve found the kind of quiet, adjacent, high-impact work that actually gets noticed.

Most product managers never start strategic work because it’s invisible on the roadmap. No stakeholder asking. No safety net if it goes nowhere. The best strategic product managers start with a small pattern hiding in plain sight. Start small and stay close to delivery.

You do need evidence for your monetization plan. Stakeholders respond to things like: - “Here’s what 4 customers said they’d pay for…” - “Here’s the workaround they’re eliminating…” - “Here’s what we’re testing next…” Product managers earn trust by showing how they’re validating it.

Start with who the feature is actually for. When you define the specific buyer + the exact revenue motion (upsell, expansion, new tier), your monetization story becomes dramatically clearer. If monetization feels fuzzy, the target customer is usually the missing piece.

Writing about product every week for 3 years changed how I do product. Patterns emerged. Blind spots showed up. PMs quietly taught me more than I expected. Here’s what 150 weeks revealed.

Product work used to stop at “customer value.” Now leaders are being asked to grow revenue without adding budget or headcount. That change pulls product managers directly into strategy. If you’ve ever thought, “Why is Sales suddenly asking about value props?” This is why.

When stakeholders ask about monetization, it’s a sign that your business case isn’t enough anymore. They want to understand why customers would pay. Product managers who can translate features → revenue paths stand out fast.

@producttalk.bsky.social sits down with product teams building AI products: 1️⃣ They start with real customer problems 2️⃣ They build evaluation into the process from the start, even if it's just spreadsheets 3️⃣ Domain expertise shapes what AI can do buff.ly/mV6djat

Product managers don’t burn out from work—they burn out from carrying too much alone. Build a relief valve: a manager, product manager, engineer, or program manager who can step in fast. Dependability doesn’t mean doing everything yourself.

You don’t need to say no more. You just need to stop being first. Try “Not me first.” Let others answer, then step in only if it’s urgent or aligned. Your credibility stays intact—and your brain stays whole.

PM reminder I needed this week: Ambiguity = build a system, not pick an option. I wrote up the flow that helps me get unstuck when nothing is clear.

The most expensive habit for product managers? Saying yes before thinking. It protects trust in the moment but quietly shreds your focus over months.