Product Management Needs a Reset: From Optimization to Acceleration

There’s a palpable tension in the product management community these days. Over the past year, I’ve had countless conversations with PMs, product leaders, and executives trying to understand why. A clear pattern has emerged: product management has lost its way.

Over the last decade, we’ve transformed from a role focused on building great products into one obsessed with process and optimization. The irony is striking – the very frameworks meant to make us faster and more effective have become rigid orthodoxy. “Lean startup,” “agile,” and “growth” methodologies have become chains rather than enablers, with PMs spending more time following their rules than remembering why these frameworks exist in the first place.

Brian Chesky (CEO of Airbnb) recently captured this tension perfectly on an episode of Decoder with Nilay Patel

Technology might as well be a synonym for ‘change’. We are in the change industry. He contrasted this with Tim Cook’s tenure at Apple – excellent at scaling the iPhone, but not at creating transformative change. This distinction cuts to the heart of what’s wrong with product management today.

We’ve mastered the art of optimization and process, but lost sight of our real purpose: driving meaningful change through technology. Product managers should be agents of transformation, not custodians of the status quo. Instead, we’ve built careers around optimizing what exists rather than imagining what could be.

Why Product Managers Exist

At its core, product management has a singular purpose: to inflect change in the world. This isn’t about incremental improvements or process optimization. It’s about creating fundamental shifts in how people work, live, and interact with technology.

Product managers exist to:

1. Solve problems with emerging technology in ways that drive outsized impact, not incremental improvement
2. Create solutions so delightful that people eagerly pay for them
3. Accelerate businesses not just toward revenue goals, but toward future market positions others haven’t even imagined yet

When we lose sight of these fundamental purposes, we become process managers instead of product leaders. We optimize when we should transform. We facilitate when we should build.

The Mindset Shift Product Management Needs

From Optimizer to Accelerator

• Stop asking “How can we improve this?”
• Start asking “How can we fundamentally change this?”
• Focus on exponential possibilities, not incremental gains

From Facilitator to Builder

• Less time managing processes
• More time actually building products
• Stop coordinating work and start creating value

From Risk Mitigator to Risk Taker

• Embrace ambiguity as opportunity
• Make bold bets on future possibilities
• Value learning through failure over playing it safe

From Metrics to Impact

• Stop optimizing for numbers
• Start optimizing for transformation
• Measure success by lives changed, not just metrics moved

From Increments to Trajectories

• Think in terms of where technology is going
• Focus on future possibilities, not current limitations
• Build for tomorrow, not just today

From Satisfier to Delighter

• Stop building adequate solutions
• Start creating experiences people love
• Make products so good people can’t imagine going back

Making Change Happen

The path from process optimizer to transformation agent isn’t about frameworks or methodologies. It’s about changing how we think and act every day. Here’s how to start:

1. Cultivate Deep Curiosity

   • Talk to users and customers through real conversations, not just surveys
   • Immerse yourself in your market and technology landscape
   • Read voraciously about adjacent industries and technologies
   • Study emerging trends and their potential impacts

2. Build More, Process Less

   • Spend more time creating, less time documenting
   • Experiment with emerging technologies and AI tools
   • Build side projects to stay sharp and explore new possibilities
   • Share and test ideas early and often

3. Create Space for Innovation

   • Ruthlessly eliminate unnecessary meetings and processes
   • Protect time for exploration and learning
   • Make faster decisions with imperfect information
   • Foster an environment that encourages experimentation

4. Drive Meaningful Change

   • Focus on transformative impact over process efficiency
   • Pursue user delight, not just satisfaction
   • Make bold bets on future opportunities
   • Challenge fundamental assumptions about your product and market

The future belongs to product managers who can drive outsized impact through technological change. Not by following processes or optimizing metrics, but by imagining better futures and having the courage to build them.

It’s time for product managers to stop being process optimizers and start being what we were meant to be: agents of transformation in the change industry.