✍️✍️ Waves of change Ever navigated a major org-level change where the experiences of it from different folks feel like night-or-day? Change moves through organizations in waves, but waves are individual in nature. I unpack this idea in my new essay linked here 👇 🔗 open.substack.com/pub/waqaswri...

Excellent from @hpdailyrant.bsky.social 👇 "Research shouldn’t be just validation. Validating concepts is the bottom of the totem pole in discovery. A mixed method researcher matches the method to the question....

🚢 Shipped the ability to filter my essays based on 5 core capabilities of PM that matter the most IMO: 🗺️ strategy 🧠 judgement 🧭 leadership 🤝 collaboration 💪 craft Also I decided to add deep-linking too, because... well, why not? Give it a whirl ⬇️ waqas-sheikh.com/browse#craft

“Always” statements are almost always wrong. or incomplete. Or naïve. I encourage you to avoid absolutism in your thinking. See what I did there?

How our energy shifts through any big change…

Are resources fungible? Only if you believe macroeconomic theory is a good strategy for you to make financial decisions for your family. What may be true at large scale may not be true at small scale. For product teams, make resourcing decisions at the right scale.

This diagram will explain most of the challenges you face, in aiming for your product team(s) to be more “outcome-oriented”.

If you fail fast, then failure is guaranteed but success isn’t. If you want to succeed, you need to adapt fast, more than just failing fast. And if your aim is to adapt fast, then you need to learn fast. But learning fast doesn’t need you to fail first. So, learn fast.

✍️ New essay published: The OKR Olympiad OKRs aren't one-size-fits-all, but we sometimes treat them that way. Your OKRs should reflect which game you're actually playing. More in the essay here: open.substack.com/pub/waqaswri...

✍🏻 Peeking perils How do you know when to pivot vs. when to stay the course? Whether it's strategy, team challenges, or your own career - the answer comes down to discipline around three things: clear hypothesis, predefined burden of proof, and giving time. open.substack.com/pub/waqaswri...

✍️ New essay published: The OKR Olympiad OKRs aren't one-size-fits-all, but we sometimes treat them that way. Your OKRs should reflect which game you're actually playing. More in the essay here: open.substack.com/pub/waqaswri...

If you convince yourself that doing things the right way is either “too slow” or “too intensive” - then the solution to that is to find ways to do things the right way faster or more efficiently. Not to do things the wrong way.

By focusing on the speed & efficiency benefits of AI, we are conditioning ourselves to be lazy users & expect instant gratification. The best results from AI tend to come from context and thinking, not clock-speed. One-shot can feel magical, but the real magic is building leverage with your time.

Testing something. waqas-sheikh.com

Many PMs think alignment is binary—you either have it or you don't. But alignment is actually two-dimensional: it's about Affinity (do they believe in it?) and Commitment (will they act on it?) ✍️ New essay: Beyond binary: the four faces of alignment. open.substack.com/pub/waqaswri...

The inevitable has happened. I have become *scratch* built a ChatGPT wrapper 🚢 You can now use 🔍 semantic search to find essays tailored to your specific context or the situation that you’re working through. Give it a whirl - all feedback welcome! (Link in profile)

✍️ New essay published: Playing the headcount accordion This essay is for product leaders who are trying to navigate the tension of organizations wanting to run leaner and faster, while so many incentives & constraints are pushing us to keep growing our teams. 🔗 open.substack.com/pub/waqaswri...

The evolution of product teams - from tribes, to guilds. And what that means for us: constructing our personal talent stacks. 🔗 open.substack.com/pub/waqaswri...

Your product org is an OS.

The best teachers consider themselves students more so than teachers. It is their curiosity that sets them apart, not their knowledge.

Hey 👋 - I'm running a survey, "The State of B2B Product Management 2025", to try to work out what's going on out there. Please fill it out if you have a few spare minutes, and share with any friends or frenemies! b2bproduct.io/state-of-b2b...

Enjoying how this project has been coming along! Mostly design & visual upgrades this time to waqas-sheikh.com

The best teachers consider themselves students more so than teachers. It is their curiosity that sets them apart, not their knowledge.

the prototype will not replace the prd. but the combination of a living prototype and a living prd will replace weeks & months of work-about-work. we should see these as connected, not in conflict.

There is no such thing as “objective prioritization”. Prioritization is, at its core, an opinionated exercise and muscle.

The soft bigotry of low ambition. When we set our sights too low, we do ourselves an invisible disservice. We settle now, only to remain unsettled thereafter. Setting your ambition too low is how your current self discriminates against your future self. Slowly, insidiously. Keep raising your bar

✍🏻 New essay: Weathering the storm open.substack.com/pub/waqaswri...

I am struggling with people who believe AI is all hype/BS who also believe that AI will lead to massive job displacement and the slow decay of human civilization.

Arial superseded Times New Roman as the default, making Times New Roman more endearing and Arial more despised.

Oftentimes in product reviews, people will ask questions about the details when their real question is not about the details at all. Its just that the details are simply the most accessible "gateway" for them to access what they really want - the higher order principle or problem or concern.

Simpler times?

If your goal is to convince someone, the worst way to express your disagreement with them is to put them on the defensive. Instead, consider ways to invite them into a debate they may not be having within themselves.

Customers tend to be very good at sharing problems, average at sharing explanations and bad at sharing solutions. The challenge for product people is getting at the underlying “why” without indexing too much on either the problems or the solutions shared by your customers.

This is a super interesting insight. It's hard not to see this from the perspective of how familiarity became a design principle contributing to homogeneous experiences on web.

If you struggle to develop talent on your team as a manager, it is highly likely that acquiring new talent from outside (alone) won’t fix your problems. Because your limitations are a part of the problem you want to solve.

I’m excited about the number of creatives who are able to build their ideas and put them out to the world faster, cheaper and more often than ever before

Long-form writing at waqas-sheikh.com

The pen is mightier than the sword because while swords can kill, your words live forever. Swords have limited reach and terminal impact. Words have infinite reach and perpetual impact. Swords dull over time, but when the ink of the pen dries, the words stay sharp forever.

The biggest problem with the profit motive is that it precludes you from other motives that are more profitable.

one skill that is underrated is the ability to simulate a fresh perspective, even when yours is not fresh anymore.

“Fake it till you make it” sounds good but misses the mark. You need enough confidence, commitment and momentum to get the flywheel going, on the way to success. You need enough of that push to get over the cold start problem. But you should certainly not be “faking” it.

🚢 Updates to waqas-sheikh.com Animations are hard!

We deserve better, more aligned products than we have today.

If you’re wondering why Siri and Alexa aren’t as smart or engaging as ChatGPT, here’s a hint - they are designed to close conversations, not open them up.

✍️ New essay published: The mechanical advantage of PMs Reflecting on the relationship between the "input forces" of our teams and our role as PMs in being the "levers" to amplify them - so we can carry lift heavier objects, together. Link below 👇

I accidentally called ChatGPT “Siri” and it didn’t correct me. If this is AGI, then you may call me “Peter” from now on.

When it comes to AI, be careful to not fall in love with a specific UX paradigm too early. You might box yourself into experience constraints that are too limiting - or even to loose. Think of the paradigm as part of your experimentation.

Speed and quality are not at odds. But busy-ness and quality are definitely at odds. If you want to get speed and quality, remove the busy work.