Amy Mitchell

When Doing Everything Right Still Feels Wrong as a Product Manager How some product managers navigate fast, fragmented product environments

Most product advice assumes one context.
Many product managers operate across several:
product,
platform,
GTM,
exploration,
support.

I wrote about using a personal “environment strategy” to decide where your thinking matters most as things shift.

Keeping everything alive during urgency feels responsible.

It’s usually the opposite.

Product manager trust is built when you drop something clearly,
explain why,
and protect focus.

Invisible trade-offs erode credibility.
Visible ones create it.

The hardest part of an “urgent” request isn’t the work.

It’s the 30 seconds after you hear it.

That pause,
before you say yes,
before you scramble,
is where product manager judgment lives.

Reacting feels helpful.
Adjusting builds credibility.

Growth And Retention In An AI-first World | Takeaways For Founders And Product Leaders AI makes products feel magical at first, but only trust, habit, and problem frequency turn novelty into durable retention.

Takeaways for product managers on growth at scale from product leaders:

1️⃣ Turn excitement into habit by
2️⃣ Growth comes from solving shared problems
3️⃣ Product-led ≠ hands-off

"In an AI-first world, stacking beats strength — and sequencing beats brilliance."
buff.ly/VeuondD

Deadlines don’t create momentum.
Stories do.
When teams understand the chain reaction of a delay, such as who it affects and how, then urgency spreads naturally, without pushing.

“I intend to…” creates ownership.
“You need to…” creates compliance.
Same plan, radically different energy.
Inspiration often starts with how you frame the next step—not the step itself.

Alignment Isn’t the Problem Product decisions stall when risk stays unspoken

What if “just get alignment” is usually a symptom, not a solution?
In a lot of product work, the real blocker is unchosen risk hiding behind requirements debates.

More here:

When work feels abstract, teams lose energy.
Find one real signal—a customer quote, a sales question, a rough draft—and share it early.
Seeing progress makes the work matter again.

The most dangerous product delays aren’t the loud ones.
They’re the ones everyone silently agrees are “fine”… except you.
If you’re the only person still feeling urgency, it’s usually not a planning problem.
It’s an inspiration gap.

The Mighty Metaphor Set your audience free to think for themselves.

Steps to improve your executive presentations with metaphors:
1. Compare your environment to an environment that is known to the audience
2. If the audience embraces your metaphor, forget all the other slides and run with it!

buff.ly/15g5Qpu

The strongest skip-levels don’t get rescued by the manager
When your boss barely edits your readout, that’s the real win.

It means:
• your thinking is already aligned
• your story travels upward intact

Skip-levels are about becoming someone leaders rely on for direction.

Executives want to know where to act in a skip-level meeting.
Context shows what matters.
Your response shows you’re on top of it.
Your asks show where leadership can unblock, align, or accelerate things.

If a skip-level ends without a clear ask, leaders leave informed ... and unable to help.

Builder PMs When Product Pace Increases How offer and customer context support speed

Lately I’ve been thinking about how product pace changes where decisions get made.

When teams move faster, they don’t wait for context. They adjust.

I wrote about what that means for product managers who want to stay in the loop as speed increases.

The real skip-level trap is spending too much effort.
Product managers think the choice is:
• overbuild a deck
• lean on your boss
• present something half-baked

The better option is a constraint: make 3 slides in 60 minutes.

Skip-levels aren’t judging your slide design.
They’re judging how fast you can turn chaos into clarity.

Speed signals confidence, mastery, and focus.
If it takes you days to prepare, leaders assume the work itself is messy.

The Power of Stepping Back In a world obsessed with urgency and moving forward, sometimes the best action is taking a step back.

If you feel rushed into action, slowing down for thinking and planning are critical steps. Instead of pushing forward with brute force, here are some ways to step back:

1️⃣ Give yourself permission to slow down
2️⃣ Disengage with the chaos
3️⃣ Broaden the discussion with questions

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Leadership doesn’t remember who wrote the cleanest PRD.

They remember who got the messy, cross-team initiative across the line.

That’s orchestration.
And it’s quietly becoming one of the most valuable skills for product managers.

Most product risk doesn’t live inside teams.

It lives between them:
– pricing vs UI
– naming vs docs
– features vs SKUs
– intent vs execution

Product managers surface the risks while they’re still cheap.

The Line Between AI-First and AI Theater Letting product ownership be your guide

A PM showed me an AI demo that worked beautifully and couldn’t ship.

That moment changed how I think about “AI-first” product work.

I wrote about that tension here.

AI made writing faster.
It didn’t make delivery simpler.

Products still ship through pricing, SKUs, UI, demos, and ordering flows.
None of those coordinate themselves.

Orchestration is how strategy survives contact with reality.

Your PRD isn’t the risk anymore.
The handoffs are.

If you’ve ever walked into kickoff with a great doc and left realizing no one owns the seams, then you’re already doing orchestration work.

Product managers are becoming the connective tissue.

What We Learnt From Speedrunning the Idea Maze Our attempt at applying two theories of accelerated expertise to the first cohort of Speedrunning the Idea Maze.

What do product managers and entrepreneurs have in common? 3 things entrepreneurs and product managers do:

1️⃣ They take many affordable loss bets

2️⃣ They can turn stakeholders into partners

3️⃣ They are ok with many of the outcomes they can affect

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Visionary leaders don’t need to be tamed.
They need partners who can turn motion into progress.

When you translate, reframe, buffer, and build trust —
their chaos becomes momentum.

That’s how vision becomes product.

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.

The Product Perception Loop How product managers can measure, prioritize, and improve how AI understands their product

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.

Your PMs Are Using AI. But Nothing Is Changing. Usage is up. Impact isn’t. Here’s what most product leaders are missing.

I get better results by working with AI when I start a product initiative. Here is the full article mustafakapadia.substack.com/p/your-pms-a...

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.