Field Notes · Product Management
Charted
Mapping product journeys with clarity and intent
Iterative Testing Beats Perfect Planning
The last time I spent three months on a product strategy doc, we shipped it to leadership the same week a competitor launched the exact feature we were planning
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The Metric That Defines Your Product Strategy
I've watched product teams argue for weeks about roadmap priorities while their CEO quietly wonders if the PM org understands the business at all. The problem u
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Cowboys vs Farmers in Product Orgs
I've worked with a PM who could ship three features in the time it took most teams to finish a kick-off meeting. I've also worked with a PM who spent six weeks
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When Code Gets Cheap, Clarity Gets Expensive
I've been watching product teams move faster than ever. GitHub Copilot writes functions in seconds. Cursor generates entire components. V0 spins up UI prototype
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Why Your Roadmap Needs Fewer Big Bets
I spent two quarters last year watching a director-level PM explain the same roadmap to three different stakeholder groups. Each time, she got the same question
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Product Roadmaps Are Fundraising Decks
I learned this the hard way during a Series A process: the product roadmap I'd carefully crafted for my engineering team was completely wrong for the fundraisin
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Why Your Roadmap Debates Are Theater
You've been in this meeting before. Engineering wants to pay down tech debt. Sales needs the enterprise SSO feature they promised three quarters ago. Marketing
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Fast and Wrong vs. Slow and Right
I once watched a PM spend six weeks validating a pricing change that took an engineer twenty minutes to ship. The analysis was beautiful. The stakeholder deck w
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Strategic Theater vs. Real Product Decisions
I was in a six-hour offsite last month where we debated whether our Q3 theme should be "Accelerate Growth" or "Drive Expansion." The SVP had strong feelings. We
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AI Connectors Transform Product Workflows
I've watched product teams waste entire afternoons rebuilding what already exists somewhere else. A customer insight buried in Gong. A feature request hiding in
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User Solutions vs User Problems Framework
I watched a product team spend six months building a "dark mode" feature. Users had been asking for it in every feedback channel. The Jira ticket had 247 upvote
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CEO Journaling for Product Clarity
The best product strategy I ever read wasn't in a deck. It was in a CEO's daily journal — three paragraphs written at 6am before anyone else got to the office.
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First Impressions vs Deep Value in Products
I've shipped products that got standing ovations in demos and died six months after launch. I've also shipped products that flopped in user testing but became q
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Product Managers as Company Storytellers
I've watched talented PMs kill their own roadmaps with bad storytelling. They had the right strategy, the right data, the right prioritization framework. But wh
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Stakeholder Alignment Framework Evolution
Three PMs presented the same strategy to their exec teams. One got approved, one got sent back, one got cancelled. Here's what made the difference.
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Why cultivating agency matters more than cultivating skills in the AI era
Max Schoening's observation hits different when you've watched talented PMs get outmaneuvered by mediocre ones with better instincts.
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AI-Native vs AI-Enabled Product Strategy
There's a meaningful difference between building AI-native products and bolting AI onto existing ones. Most teams are doing the latter.
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AI Companies Need More PMs Than Engineers
AI company hiring patterns reveal a counterintuitive truth: the constraint isn't engineering talent — it's product judgment and direction.
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Meeting Simulation for Product Success
Three months into my first VP role, I walked into a board meeting with what I thought was a bulletproof product strategy.
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Why Your Stakeholders Don't Read Reports
Stakeholders don't read reports because reports aren't built for how decisions actually get made. Here's what to do instead.
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The Product Narrative Gap
Great features die when the narrative around them is weak. Here's why product storytelling is a core competency, not a nice-to-have.
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Agent-Driven Development Impact on Product Teams
I've been watching product teams experiment with AI agents for the past eighteen months, and we're hitting an inflection point.
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1300 PRs Need Review Strategy
Most PRs don't fail because of bad writing — they fail because no one had a strategy for getting them read. Here's how to change that.
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Good DX Enables Good AI
I've shipped enough AI products to know this hard truth: the most sophisticated machine learning model is worthless if developers can't actually use it.
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Leadership availability creates product velocity
When senior leaders are unavailable, product teams stall. Here's how leadership accessibility directly drives or kills product velocity.
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Rehearsal Culture in Product Management
The best product teams don't wing it in high-stakes meetings. They rehearse. Here's what rehearsal culture looks like and why it works.
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AI Agents Need Product Guidelines Too
Most teams deploy AI agents without product guidelines. Here's why that's a mistake and what guardrails actually look like in practice.
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The 70/30 Big Bets Growth Strategy
Three years ago, I watched a promising B2B startup spread their eight-person product team across fourteen initiatives.
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Signal vs Noise in Product Storytelling
Smart PMs present compelling data and logical frameworks — and still lose the room. Here's why storytelling beats data in every product review.
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Invisible AI-Powered Onboarding Framework
Most AI-powered onboarding fails silently. Here's a framework for designing onboarding that adapts to users without feeling mechanical.
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Workspace AI Wars Signal Product Tool Consolidation
AI is accelerating tool consolidation across product teams. Here's what the workspace AI wars signal about where the market is heading.
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AI Agents Need Documentation Like Teams Need Process
I spent six months watching our ML team roll out an AI-powered recommendation engine, only to watch it fail spectacularly in production.
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From craft mastery to strategic orchestration
Early-career PMs optimize their craft. Senior PMs orchestrate systems. Here's what the shift looks like and how to know when you're ready.
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Complex Setup Kills Product Adoption
A complex onboarding flow is a silent product killer. Here's why setup friction drives churn before users ever reach the aha moment.
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A New Look for a Clearer Path Forward
Lodestone has a new logo. Here's the thinking behind the redesign, what changed, and what it signals about where the product is headed.
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Finding Our Way: The Origin Story of Lodestone
Lodestone's founder on why he built a product management tool, what the methodology is rooted in, and where the name comes from.
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