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Notes on the Modern Product Leader’s Playbook
Notes on strategy, speed, and why modern product leadership is a leverage game.
Leadership & Culture Archive
42 posts about leadership & culture.
Showing posts 1-40 of 42
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From Competitive Moats to Collaborative Bridges
In the AI era, the strongest products don’t build walls — they build bridges. Here’s why connectivity, not isolation, defines modern defensibility.
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The Feedback Loop Fallacy in AI Products
AI feedback loops can lie. Learn why engagement metrics fail and how product managers can rebuild truth-centered measurement systems.
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Platform Products Need to Earn Their Keep
Platform products need empathy and accountability. Treat them like external products — measure impact, earn trust, and prove real value.
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Thinking Through Agentic Loops
Exploring how agentic loops extend feedback loops by adding autonomy, iteration, and goal-directed action in systems and AI.
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Adaptability, Creativity, Tech Fluency: The Skills Defining Work Now
The core skills once seen as future-ready—adaptability, creativity, and tech fluency—are already defining how work gets done today.
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Rethinking Product, Market, Channel, and Model for AI Era
How Brian Balfour’s Four Fits framework has been updated for the AI era, and what product leaders can learn from the shift.
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From Architect to Gardner to Orchestrator: The AI-era Product Leader
How AI transforms product leadership from building to conducting. The rise of the Orchestrator mindset in product management.
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When Work Becomes the Practice
Moving beyond the search for meaning to the practice of creating it. A product manager's reflection on making work matter, one sprint at a time.
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The Massive AI Opportunity Hiding on Your Home Screen
Most 'AI products' aren't AI-native. Use the Home Screen Test to spot the billion-dollar opportunities hiding in plain sight.
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Platform vs Product: The AI Era Convergence
AI is collapsing the line between platforms and products. The winners will master both, balancing ecosystems and user experiences.
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When to Trust Intuition vs. Metrics
Intuition is a compass, metrics are a map. Here’s how product managers can decide which to trust, depending on the product stage.
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The Limit of Metrics
Metrics measure the present, but intuition imagines the future. Here’s why great product managers need both — and how to define intuition.
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Apple’s Sugar Water Trap
Apple’s iPhone 17 shows the sugar water trap risk as AI reshapes tech. A lesson for product managers on balancing incremental progress with bold bets.
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Outcomes Over Outputs For Real
How to make outcomes real, align cross-functional teams, and still give leaders confidence with a dual lens scorecard, DORA metrics, and probabilistic forecasts.
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Learning How to Learn Is Your Real Superpower
Learning how to learn is the real superpower for product managers. It’s not about speed, but reinvention, adaptability, and enjoying the process.
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Treat Your Job Like a Product and Protect Maker Time
Product leaders must treat their job like a product and protect maker time, or risk getting stuck in execution and missing leadership growth.
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The Hidden Cost of UX Friction in Enterprise Systems
Enterprise systems often rely on mandates, not UX. But small friction compounds into real business risk. Here’s why PMs can’t ignore it.
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One Question Every Product Manager Should Ask in Roadmap Reviews
A simple question can sharpen roadmap reviews: what will this feature replace in the user’s life? Here’s why the replacement lens matters.
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What Leadership Really Looks Like
Leadership for product managers isn’t about titles. It’s about daily choices—small acts of influence, initiative, empowerment, and courage.
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OpenAI’s GPT-realtime Brings a Step Forward in Voice AI
OpenAI’s GPT-realtime unifies voice AI into a single model. See why its technical leap and early adopters make this the moment voice AI goes mainstream.
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AI in Product Management
AI is moving fast in product management, from PRDs to prototypes. Here’s what research shows, what’s missing, and how PMs can lead.
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Product Culture Is Your Real Operating System
Strong product culture drives better decisions, innovation, and outcomes. Leaders shape it daily through hiring, rituals, and behaviors.
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The Big Squeeze in B2B and the Challenge of Lasting Defensibility
In B2B, escape velocity isn’t enough. Startups must turn rapid distribution into lasting defensibility before incumbents close the window.
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Curiosity Beats Tenure in the Age of AI
Junior developers’ curiosity and adaptability make them the most AI-native talent. Cutting them now risks weakening future innovation.
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Observability Now Includes Watching AI
AI observability means monitoring accuracy, drift, and hallucinations, not just uptime. PMs must treat it as a core product feature.
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Why Empathy, Not IQ, Defines Success in the AI Age
Empathy and critical thinking—not IQ—are the keys to thriving as a product leader in the AI era.
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Build, Buy, or AI-Build
Vibe-coding opens a new AI-build path, but Marty Cagan’s point on business rules shows its limits. Can AI ever capture this hidden and complex logic?
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Vibe-Coding Is Early But Already Changing SaaS
Vibe-coding is still early, but already empowers non-technical builders while pressuring SaaS vendors to deliver leverage beyond features.
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How Product Leaders Can Adapt and Thrive in the AI Era
Practical playbooks for product leaders to adapt and thrive in the AI era using wedge expansion, jobs-to-be-done, and dual transformation.
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The Informal Committees Behind B2B Buying
B2B buying isn’t decided by end users alone. Informal committees shape decisions, and product managers must map their jobs-to-be-done.
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Why Startups Struggle and Giants Stall in the AI Era
Why AI disruption challenges startups and giants while firms with product market fit adapt faster, explained through proven strategy frameworks.
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Making Product Decisions with a Bets Mindset
How leading product teams use betting principles to make smarter decisions, test ideas fast, and adapt quickly to real-world results.
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Start with Product and Target for Effective Distribution, Not Channel
Learn why smart product managers match channels to product and target, not trends, with a simple hospital software example.
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Architect vs. Gardner: Product Development Mindsets
Product leaders must know when to act as Architects and when to act as Gardeners. Learn how to balance precision and adaptability in product development.
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Modernizing the Product Requirements Process
PRDs aren’t dead—they’re evolving. Learn how to modernize product requirements with outcome focus, living documents, and AI-powered prototyping.
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Cultivating Strong Product Culture
Learn how to cultivate a strong product culture by empowering teams, aligning leadership, and focusing on outcomes over features.
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Cultivating True Agile: From Process to Outcome
Agile is not stand-ups or sprints. Learn how to cultivate true agility by focusing on outcomes, empowering teams, and decentralizing decisions.
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Love the Problem, Solution will Follow
Fall in love with the problem, not the solution. Learn seven techniques to uncover customer needs and build products that create lasting impact.
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Beyond the Deliverable - The Strategic Product Mindset
Learn how to move beyond delivery and adopt a strategic product mindset with practical steps, proven frameworks, and customer-first thinking.