You know that moment when your brain just... stops? When you're staring at your screen, and there's just too much noise competing for attention in your head?
I hit that wall recently. Between performance reviews waiting to be written, supplier metrics that needed analysing, three different versions of the roadmap to update, and that "urgent" requests sitting in my inbox - it felt like my brain was running out of RAM. Classic PM context overload.
It took me right back to my early engineering days. Back then, I was the first engineering hire at a startup, and I remember that exact same feeling of being overwhelmed. But here's the thing that engineering taught me - when you're drowning in work, the answer isn't to swim faster. It's to build a better boat.
I caught myself falling into that classic PM trap recently. You know the one - being the keeper of all knowledge, the decision bottleneck, the walking context repository. Making calls based on accumulated knowledge that lives only in my head. Sound familiar?
You know what's funny? I used to come back from any time away and immediately focus on what hadn't been done. Why haven't we moved faster on that customer problem? Why didn't that solution develop the way I envisioned? My instinct was always to take control, to get things "back on track" - my track.
But something's shifted in my thinking lately. I've started to realise that this need for control, this fixation on my way of doing things, was actually slowing us down.
So what am I doing about it?
First, I'm getting clearer about outcomes. Not just what we're building, but what customer problems we're solving and why they matter now. Making sure everyone understands the destination, even if the path there looks different than I imagined.
I'm creating spaces for alignment. Regular conversations where we can all sync on direction, share customer insights, and build that shared understanding of what success looks like. Not status updates - real discussions about what we're learning and how it shapes our direction.
And most importantly, I'm letting go of the how. Trusting that when people understand the outcome we're after and why it matters, they'll often find better ways to get there than I would have thought of.
Because here's the thing about product management - it's not about having all the answers or controlling every decision. It's about creating alignment around what really matters. Bringing clarity to the what, the why, and the why now. Then using that shared understanding to enable others to move forward.
Is it perfect? Not even close. Sometimes things still move in unexpected directions. But here's what I've learned - when people understand where we're headed and why it matters, the path there often looks better than anything I could have planned.
The real value isn't in controlling the journey - it's in clearly marking the destination and enabling others to find the best way there.
