There's a particular kind of PM that I call the connective tissue. You're the one making sure everyone's on the same page. You're holding the product vision while also making sure engineering doesn't feel blindsided, design doesn't feel unheard, and leadership knows what's actually happening. You're the glue. And you're probably terrible at taking credit for it. Because the better you are at your job, the more invisible your work becomes. The team moves smoothly. Launches happen. People forget that it's because you held all of that together. But here's the thing: your career doesn't move forward on invisible work. It moves forward on work that people know you did. So I'm curious: How do you balance being the person who makes everyone else successful without disappearing yourself in the process? What does that actually look like for you?

Let's plan our next session. Here is the Doodle: https://doodle.com/group-poll/participate/b4v1xwke

Hi All, Please take a moment and share your availability on this Doodle for a call. Our topic will be the evolving roles in Product Management and making the leap to Product Leadership. There will also be time if anyone has a burning topic to discuss. I'll look to get this scheduled based on responses by this Friday. https://doodle.com/group-poll/participate/b4v1xwke

60%. That's the percentage of product teams not using AI at all who reported "no meaningful value yet" from AI. (page 77) I know. Shocking. 😂 But stick with me. Because buried in this data from the State of Product Management 2026 report is something actually worth thinking about. The teams who've made AI a core strategic capability? Zero percent reported no meaningful value. The teams using it across many workflows? 4.3%. The teams just experimenting? 21.8% still not seeing it. In other words — you don't get the value until you're actually in it. Which sounds obvious. But I think a lot of product teams are still waiting to feel convinced before they commit. And the data says that's exactly backwards. The strategic benefits — more time for actual strategy, better prioritization decisions, improved discovery quality — those don't show up early. They show up after you've moved past the experimentation phase and started weaving it into how you actually work. What's your honest relationship with AI right now? Are you in it or still watching from the sidelines?

Four of us sat down to talk about Prioritization Hell. A few things that stuck with me: - Clear is kind. Brené Brown said it and every one of us had a story that proved it. The support team that replaced "we've logged your feedback" with "honestly, there's a 0.5% chance this happens" — and customers thanked them for it. The product leader who killed a low-traffic website simply by saying it wasn't in Q2, Q3, or Q4. They shut it down. Right outcome, finally. - Frameworks are a communication tool, not a decision engine. Did the iPhone come out of a spreadsheet? Use RICE when you have a specific problem. Use it to break a tie. Use it to teach a junior PM how to think. Don't use it to pretend a decision you've already made is data driven. - The hardest no isn't the off-strategy stuff. That gets easier with experience. The hard no is the thing that's genuinely good, has real support, and you still have to kill it because you only have so much bandwidth and you have to protect the best stuff. - AI is making prioritization harder, not easier. Everyone sees what's possible now. The CFO wants to know why you can't ship faster. The backlog got longer. The requests got louder. "I've created a monster" was said out loud by at least one person in the room. This is what The Product Room is for. Not slides. Not frameworks. Just honest conversation with people who've been in the same rooms. Next session coming next month. Watch this space. @Rob Taylor @Therese Alburg @Jay Fluegel what landed for you last night? Did I miss anything? Drop it below.