I Manage Products blog
& PRODUCTHEAD newsletter

» Avoid ambiguity by speaking plainly » Bring the data, not the verdict » Articulate the cost and opportunity cost » A ‘yes’ is only worth something if a ‘no’ is worth something

» Exclusive free giveaways for PRODUCTHEAD subscribers in May » Use genAI to generate possibilities and identify blindspots in your thinking without incurring cognitive debt » Backlash against the UK’s NHS closing public code repositories

We seem to stuck in a contradiction in which we worry about AI’s effect on our critical thinking, while finding it equally hard to resist using. Why is that?

» Ready meals are okay, just not all the time » Previous hype cycles masked who really had product-market fit and who didn’t » Humans excel where AI doesn’t » New tech rarely solves social problems

» Humans, not AI, are still sifting job applicants in or out » PMs should use AI to amplify their thinking, not replace it » Positive news for product managers in the UK job market » Advice from someone unjustly fired from Facebook

» Traditional SaaS companies will struggle if they believe they’ll control their UI for ever » Some org leaders think that AI can replace their “glue people” » The glue person’s work is often invisible because they were good at it

» Make your principles explicit so you can make the hard trade-offs between things you value » Your organisation’s strategy is the anchor that your culture – how you work together – is built on

» The art of influence is the highest-leverage skill remaining for product leaders » AI agents require the same strategic clarity as humans do » Building fast necessitates more human selectivity and expert judgement

» There’s no one true version of product management, but there are 4 flavours » Without support from the CEO, your product operating model probably won’t succeed

» In a self-service world, good content design helps users do what they’re trying to do » A content crit is a constructive, supportive peer review technique » Poor content design diminishes the value of your product or service to users

» Visible and invisible process both contribute to how work actually gets done » Orgs should not rely on individual heroic efforts in place of designed-in capacity » Accelerating the build reintroduces a bottleneck and results in wasteful overproduction » Context comes from not just sharing information but engaging with it

» With appropriate context, those closest to the problem should make the product decisions » Be outcome-focused and evidence-based regardless of what kind of product or service you work on » Be careful not to automatically balance out a conflicting behaviour in others (such as a founder’s bias) » “The obstacle is the way” – every setback is an opportunity to improve our condition