Product Management Insights

Most tech companies break out product management and product marketing into two separate roles: Product management defines the product and gets it built. Product marketing wires the messaging- the facts you want to communicate to customers- and gets the product sold. But from my experience that's a grievous mistake. Those are, and should aways be, one job. There should be no separation between what the product will be and how it will be explained- the story has to be utterly cohesive from the beginning. Your messaging is your product. The story you're telling shapes the thing you're making. I learned story telling from Steve Jobs. I learned product management from Greg Joswiak. Joz, a fellow Wolverine, Michigander, and overall great person, has been at Apple since he left Ann Arbor in 1986 and has run product marketing for decades. And his superpower- the superpower of every truly great product manager- is empathy. He doesn't just understand the customer. He becomes the customer. He can shake off his deep, geeky knowledge of the product and use it like a beginner, like a regular person. You'd be surprised how many product managers skip that hugely necessary step- listening to their customers, gaining insights, empathizing with their needs, then actually using the product in the real world. But for Joz, it's the only way. So when Joz stepped into the world with his next-gen iPod to test it out, he fiddled with it like a beginner. He set aside all the tech specs- except one: battery life. We created typical customer personas, then walked through the moments in their life when they used their iPods- while jogging, at parties, in the car. And we showed Steve that even if the number engineering gave us was twelve hours, those twelve hours actually lasted most people all week long. The numbers were empty without customers, the facts meaningless without context. And, that's why product management has to own the messaging. The spec shows the features, the details of how a product will work, but the messaging predicts people's concerns and finds way to mitigate them. It answers the question, "Why will customers care?" And that question has to be answered long before anyone gets to work. - BUILD Chapter 5.5 The Point of PMs

I am constantly thinking about how to foster innovation in my product organization. Building teams that are experts at execution is the easy part—when there’s a clear problem, product orgs are great at coming up with smart solutions. But it’s impossible to optimize your way into innovation. You can’t only rely on incremental improvement to keep growing. You need to come up with new problem spaces, rather than just finding better solutions to the same old problems. So, how do we come up with those new spaces? Here are a few things I’m trying at Duolingo: 1. Innovation needs a high-energy environment, and a slow process will kill a great idea. So I always ask myself: Can we remove some of the organizational barriers here? Do managers from seven different teams really need to say yes on every project? Seeking consensus across the company—rather than just keeping everyone informed—can be a major deterrent to innovation. 2. Similarly, beware of defaulting to “following up.” If product meetings are on a weekly cadence, every time you do this, you are allocating seven days to a task that might only need two. We try to avoid this and promote a sense of urgency, which is essential for innovative ideas to turn into successes. 3. Figure out the right incentive. Most product orgs reward team members whose ideas have measurable business impact, which works in most contexts. But once you’ve found product-market fit, it is often easiest to generate impact through smaller wins. So, naturally, if your org tends to only reward impact, you have effectively incentivized constant optimization of existing features instead of innovation. In the short term things will look great, but over time your product becomes stale. I try to show my teams that we value and reward bigger ideas. If someone sticks their neck out on a new concept, we should highlight that—even if it didn’t pan out. Big swings should be celebrated, even if we didn’t win, because there are valuable learnings there. 4. Look for innovative thinkers with a history of zero-to-one feature work. There are lots of amazing product managers out there, but not many focus on new problem domains. If a PM has created something new from scratch and done it well, that’s a good sign. An even better sign: if they show excitement about and gravitate toward that kind of work. If that sounds like you—if you’re a product manager who wants to think big picture and try out big ideas in a fast-paced environment with a stellar mission—we want you on our team. We’re hiring a Director of Product Management: https://lnkd.in/dQnWqmDZ #productthoughts #innovation #productmanagement #zerotoone

When I started in this industry 30+ years ago, energy management was linear... Power shifted from the utility to the customer, leaving little room for interaction or optimization. Today, we are moving into the era of the prosumer. Buildings, factories, and data centers are no longer passive consumers. They are becoming active participants who produce, store, and manage their own energy. I recently shared some thoughts with Forbes on how software-defined systems make this transition possible. The results are significant: ✔️ Decarbonization: Smart factories are reducing emissions by 61%. ✔️ Efficiency: We are seeing HVAC optimizations where every $1 invested in AI infrastructure returns $200 in operational energy savings. By embedding intelligence from the power edge to the production line, we turn energy from a monthly cost into a strategic asset. I invite you to read the piece and share how your organization is adapting to this prosumer model. The link is available under 'View My Portfolio' on my profile above. #FredsVoice #AdvancingEnergyTech

Vlad Loktev taught me more about product management than anyone else I've ever worked with, and is responsible for the biggest inflection in my PM career. Vlad spent 10 years at Airbnb where he started as an IC PM and quickly advanced to lead product, and then GM the entire Airbnb homes business, managing over 1,000 people and reporting directly to CEO Brian Chesky. He recently left Airbnb and joined Index Ventures as their newest partner. Prior to Airbnb, Vlad spent a year at Zynga, where he helped grow Words with Friends to over 14 million daily active users. In our conversation, we discuss: 🔸 Insight into Brian Chesky’s leadership style 🔸 Why success as a PM is all about impact, impact, impact 🔸 Why chaos can be good 🔸 Why as a leader it’s OK to let some fires burn 🔸 Why you should learn to “poke the bear” 🔸 Balancing product release speed with quality 🔸 Lessons on prioritization, decision-making, and organizational design 🔸 Advice for founders on building company culture 🔸 Much more Listen now 👇 - YouTube: https://lnkd.in/gMrECh5z - Spotify: https://lnkd.in/gG8yRXh2 - Apple: https://lnkd.in/g8rKdAjm Some key takeaways: 1. Relentlessly focus on impact. Start by identifying the highest priorities for your organization or team. Each day, ask yourself: What are the most critical tasks or projects that align with these priorities? Ensure your efforts are directly contributing to these goals. 2. Don’t be afraid to “poke the bear”: When you have a strong opinion or concern, don’t shy away from voicing it, even if it challenges the status quo. Poking the bear means confronting difficult issues constructively and openly, which can drive meaningful change and improvements. 3. Lead with curiosity and dial down advocacy: When entering a conversation or meeting, start by asking open-ended questions to understand others’ perspectives fully. This approach shows respect for differing opinions and helps you gather important information. Only after you have actively listened and absorbed the other viewpoints should you advocate for your own perspective. 4. Let some fires burn. You can’t address everything at once, and if you feel a need to do so, that’s a sign you don’t understand what’s most important for your business. You need to be explicit with yourself and your team about what the priorities are and what you’re willing to let burn in service of them. Aligning on this in advance will help you resist the urge to put out fires as they start. 5. Two tools to help you calm your mind: a. The serenity prayer: “Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” b. The shit bucket: Designate a specific place, like a physical trash can or a digital file, as your ‘shit bucket’ for frustrations and issues you can’t change.

I’m a product manager with nearly 20 years of experience in the software industry. If I could sit down with a Jr. Product Manager today, here are 11 pieces of advice I’d share - lessons I’ve learned along the way: 1- If your product targets a small user group, focus on delivering core value quickly and keep the roadmap simple. But if you aim for millions of users, you need scalable infrastructure, solid user segmentation, and robust analytics. 2- If you’re the only PM shaping the product, lightweight processes and direct communication work. But with multiple teams involved, invest in clear roadmaps, regular syncs, and strong prioritization frameworks. 3- If a feature failure impacts only a small user segment, a quick fix and transparent communication is enough. But if a bug breaks critical workflows, you must have incident response plans, clear escalation paths, and backup solutions. 4- If you’re gathering user feedback informally, simple surveys or chats might do. But if you’re scaling, invest in structured research, usability testing, and customer journey mapping to truly understand your users. 5- If you can rely on gut feeling for early decisions, that’s okay initially. But as the product grows, leverage data analytics, A/B testing, and customer metrics to guide your roadmap. 6- If your data needs are small, simple dashboards and reports work. But when handling large datasets, build scalable analytics, automate data pipelines, and use data warehouses effectively. 7- If you’re working solo, inconsistent documentation might not slow you much. But in a larger team, clear user stories, acceptance criteria, and consistent terminology avoid confusion and speed up development. 8- If your support volume is low, handling customer issues via email or chat may be enough. But when the product grows, set up help desks, ticketing systems, and real-time customer feedback loops. 9- If deadlines are tight, deliver MVP features that work. But if the product is strategic, focus on maintainability, testing, and designing for future growth. 10- If you’re collaborating with one or two stakeholders, informal check-ins might suffice. But with multiple teams, establish regular planning sessions, shared documentation, and clear decision-making processes. 11- If your product is in early stages, prioritize speed and learning. But once it matures, clean up tech debt, optimize processes, and rethink features carefully to avoid “maintenance hell.” People often think product management is just about building features. But really, it’s about: – Knowing when to say no – Being ready to pivot or remove features – Making tradeoffs with imperfect data The best product managers don’t just move fast. They build the right foundations that allow their teams to move fast safely.

Electricity management is increasingly an analytics problem where AI needs to step in. Decarbonization, variable demand, regenerative energy, and complex infrastructure make it impossible to rely on static rules or occasional reporting. Value comes from analyzing operational data continuously and turning it into decisions. The usual analytics setup does not scale. Work is often done in silos, with data pulled into notebooks, results shared as static reports, and little reuse across projects. Domain experts are separated from the analysis, cycles are slow, and each new use case starts largely from scratch. A collaborative model is a catalyst enabling AI to change the economics. At Mitsubishi Electric, data scientists work directly with domain experts on shared workflows. Analytics is used to identify concrete issues and opportunities. In railways, analysis showed where braking generates surplus energy and how it could be reused. In thermal energy management, a full year of building data was analyzed in 20 business days to optimize heating and cooling. Platform efficiency matters. By running the full AI lifecycle in Dataiku, Mitsubishi Electric reduced their time to produce new projects by about 60 percent. That translates into delivering value roughly 2.5 times faster, which means more use cases delivered and quicker operational impact. This is what AI Success looks like in energy and industrial systems. Read the full story on our website: https://lnkd.in/evhhuQNF 

The energy sector is transforming, and digital is at the center of it. In my interview with SandRose Magazine by SPE-KSA, we explored how digital innovation is not only modernizing operations but also helping us meet some of the industry’s most complex challenges. Here are a few key takeaways: 🔹 Smart partnerships matter Collaborating with the right technology partners ensures we can navigate the regulatory landscape, address data residency challenges, and create technologies that liberate and manage all types of data. 🔹 Data as the new oil We apply the same rigor in collecting, processing, distributing, and utilizing data as we do with hydrocarbons. With platforms like Lumi™, we are using AI and generative AI tailored to the energy sector to extract insights and drive decisions. 🔹 Autonomy drives safety and performance From automating repetitive tasks to reducing human error, autonomous systems are already transforming field operations and delivering tangible improvements in efficiency and safety. 🔹 Digital accelerates sustainability Reaching net-zero is not possible without digital. By fusing domain expertise with emerging technologies, we’re making meaningful strides on the path to lower emissions. Read more from the full interview here: 🔗 https://lnkd.in/gJREJXXN

Ever felt like your product team is doing everything right yet not making the impact you expected? 🤔 After working with countless teams across industries, I've noticed a recurring issue. Teams excel at the fundamentals like customer discovery and experimentation, but struggle to connect their efforts to meaningful outcomes. This disconnect is often due to what I call the "missing middle." The "missing middle" is the gap between a company's high-level business vision and the day-to-day execution of product teams. Even skilled product managers using the best practices hit a roadblock when strategy isn't clearly articulated or aligned across the organization. Here are 5 warning signs that your organization may have a strategy gap: 1. Teams can’t connect their work to company goals. If asking how current projects align with business objectives gets you blank stares, there's a disconnect. 2. Decisions based on opinion, not evidence. Phrases like "I think users would prefer..." pop up without supporting data, leading to decisions made in a strategic vacuum. 3. Building without validating opportunities. Rushing into solutions without first assessing their value is a telltale sign of missing strategic guidance. 4. Departments with different objectives. If marketing, sales, and product teams are all heading in different directions, alignment is lacking. 5. Constant changes from executives. Frequent shifts in direction suggest that strategy isn’t clear or compelling, causing executives to react rather than lead. I recently worked with a financial services company that faced this exact challenge. Their product teams were skilled, yet business metrics stagnated. By helping them establish a strategic framework, we connected customer problems to business outcomes. The result? A 3x increase in business impact within two quarters. The key wasn't changing how they built products, but rather focusing on which opportunities to tackle and why. If your company faces similar challenges, you're not alone. Understanding and crafting a robust product strategy is crucial, yet many leaders lack the support needed to master this skill. To address this, I'm excited to introduce our "Mastering Product Strategy" course at Product Institute. This program will equip you to bridge the "missing middle" by developing strategies rooted in customer insights and business realities. You'll learn to communicate effectively, create feedback loops, and guide product decisions toward achieving real outcomes. Ready to transform your approach to product strategy? Join us and start achieving the impact you envision for your organization!

6 𝗟𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝗺𝘆 6 𝗬𝗲𝗮𝗿𝘀 𝗶𝗻 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁 𝗠𝗮𝗻𝗮𝗴𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 👇🏻 All these years, I’ve had my wins and made mistakes. But looking back, I wish I had someone to help me skip the trial and error. While I can’t rewrite my early days, I can share what I’ve learned. Here are six lessons I wish I knew sooner: 1. 𝗕𝗲 𝗰𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗿 𝗼𝗻 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘁𝗼 𝗯𝘂𝗶𝗹𝗱 - It’s easy to get swept up by new ideas. But part of your job is knowing when to say no.  - Define what you won’t build early on. It saves time, keeps your team focused, and helps you stick to the roadmap. 2. 𝗗𝗼𝗻’𝘁 𝗿𝘂𝗻 𝗯𝗲𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗳𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 - Perfectionism is tempting, but it slows you down. Chasing an ideal product can lead to missing key opportunities. - Done is better than perfect. It’s okay to launch a product with a few rough edges; you can always iterate and improve it over time. 3. 𝗣𝗿𝗶𝗼𝗿𝗶𝘁𝗶𝘇𝗲 𝗱𝗲𝗲𝗽 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸 - PMs often have calendars packed with meetings and catch-ups. This leaves little time for focused work. - Prioritize deep thinking time during your workday to avoid burnout and better productivity. 4. 𝗚𝗲𝘁 𝗯𝗲𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗮𝘁 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗺𝘂𝗻𝗶𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗱𝗲𝗹𝗲𝗴𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗮𝘀𝗸𝘀 - As a PM, you’re not working alone, you’re leading a team. It’s your responsibility to clearly communicate what needs to be done and how to do it. - Miscommunication creates chaos, so clarity is key. Delegating tasks isn’t just a matter of passing work along, it’s a skill that takes time to master. 5. 𝗔𝗹𝘄𝗮𝘆𝘀 𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗿𝘁 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗯𝗹𝗲𝗺 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝗼𝗹𝘂𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 - A common mistake for new product managers is to jump straight into solution mode Don't rush to solve. - Take time to understand the problem. Talk to users. Look at data. A well-understood problem leads to a better solution. 6. 𝗪𝗲𝗹𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗲 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗲 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘂𝗻𝗰𝗲𝗿𝘁𝗮𝗶𝗻𝘁𝘆 - Tech moves fast. What works today might be outdated tomorrow. And no matter how well you plan, things will change. - Priorities shift, problems pop up, and deadlines move. Adaptability is your biggest asset. It's better to accept it if you can't resist it. 👉🏻 I hope these lessons will help you guide your product management journey. Mistakes will happen, but they're opportunities to grow. What's been your biggest lesson in product management? Share in the comments!

The role of product management, especially for AI-based products, is changing a lot. Interestingly, a significant number of products are becoming "AI-based" products. You'll often see requests for a stronger technical background alongside traditional PM skills. It's not enough to just know the market and users anymore; product managers now need to understand things like algorithms, data pipelines, and machine learning. This isn't a small change; it's a real shift in what's required. It’s not about knowledge of a toll but the technology. I'm seeing this trend firsthand. Look at product manager job descriptions, and "understanding or working knowledge of AI" is becoming standard. We're also seeing more data scientists and AI engineers moving into product management. This isn't just a career switch; it's a sign that technical knowledge is crucial for building good AI products. For people without this background, it's a big challenge, requiring a lot of learning and a willingness to try new things. Being able to explain complex technical ideas in a way that users understand is now a must-have skill. The key to AI product management is balancing big ideas with what's actually possible. Without understanding AI's strengths and limitations, product managers can easily get swayed by marketing hype or struggle to create realistic roadmaps. It's the difference between a dream and a practical vision. Equally important is building strong communication with engineering teams, not just for technical alignment but for building trust. Don't believe the idea that you don't need technical skills in PM. This trend is only going to get stronger. It's better to adapt and learn than to struggle later. #ExperienceFromTheField #WrittenByHuman