No PM is an Island

Why the best product conversations stop after the interview — and how smart teams keep them going.

Welcome to Frank Takeaways. I'm Frank, writing the notes worth keeping from decades at companies like Slack, Etsy, and Google. I run a coaching practice dedicated to guiding leaders through the tricky stuff of building products and high-performing teams.

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I recently caught up with a friend, reminiscing about a past PM job and the day we got pulled into a conference room. It’s hard to remember the details — the meeting was anything but specific or uncommon. Someone had scheduled a “PM sync.” No agenda. No objective. Just a vague sense we should “connect.”

We were all reasonably experienced, knowing what we were doing and, at the same time, still figuring it out. Some of us ran businesses. Some of us ran platforms. Some focused primarily on the consumer experience in-between. The wildest part? Not one of us could tell you why we were there or what we were meant…