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 to do together.
So we did what PMs do when things don’t make sense: we asked a few questions, complained a little, and looked for our Irish exit.
It felt like a high school reunion with people you weren’t close to the first time around. Everyone vaguely familiar. No deep shared memories. No real reason to be there, except someone else thought we should be.
It reminded me of that line from About a Boy (with apologies to John Donne): “Every man is an island. And what’s more, he’s an island paradise. He’s Ibiza.” That’s what PMs are supposed to be, fully autonomous, fully optimized. But in practice, it’s more like trying to run an archipelago without any bridges. We’re alone together.
It wasn’t a one-off. I’ve seen it again and again at companies big and small: product leaders try to create cross-PM rituals — a sync, a council, a round-table, and it fizzles. Quickly.
The Interview Disconnect
It didn’t start this way. Remember the interview? We spend hours trying to evaluate a candidate’s product sense before they join: case studies, frameworks, strategy whiteboards. And then?
They get the job, and we mostly stop talking about product, at least in the theoretical sense.
The work becomes local. Tactical. Focused on launches, not learning. We interview for taste and judgment, but once hired, there’s rarely a forum to develop those muscles further.
This isn’t just a missed opportunity — it’s a risk. Critical thinking is like a muscle: without challenge, it atrophies. In one study, participants who spent just 15 minutes reflecting on their work daily outperformed peers by 23% after 10 days.
As John Dewey put it: “We do not learn from experience… we learn from reflecting on experience.” Donald Schön extended this: reflection-in-action (while doing) and reflection-on-action (after doing). PMs need both.
So why don’t we create the space to keep thinking?
Schedule the Mess
Rituals are how we encode values and beliefs.
Consider Netflix: Former VP of Product Gibson Biddle introduced a product strategy ritual where every team shared what they were learning, why it mattered, and what bets they’d make next, not just polished outcomes. Strategy docs were shared in advance and debate was expected. Half presentation, half critique. Alignment was earned, not mandated. The goal wasn’t consensus — it was context. Over time, this ritual reinforced Netflix’s culture of candor and strategic thinking, built on frameworks like Biddle’s DHM model: Delightful, Hard-to-copy, Margin-enhancing.
It's not just Netflix. At Coda, the monthly "Garden Party" welcomes anyone, regardless of role, to pitch product ideas. Pixar's Braintrust gives directors a space for candid peer feedback, without formal authority. Again, the result wasn't consensus but clarity.
Why do these rituals work, when so many PM syncs fizzle? Because they're not theater. Not update parades or awkward silences. They're spaces for work in progress: unfinished thinking, sketchy strategies, fuzzy trade-offs. The mess, not just the metrics. They center around real work that's useful first and foremost to the presenter and then the audience. In other words, they're worth their time.
The other core ingredient? Psychological safety. As Amy Edmondson notes, this is the belief you can raise tough ideas, ask naïve questions, and share risky insights without reputational risk. Google’s Project Aristotle found it to be the most important factor in effective teams.
Structure matters, but intent matters more. Whether it’s Netflix, Coda, or Pixar, these rituals thrive not because they’re polished, but because they foster the messy middle — where product sense is tested, challenged, and honed.
Miss this, and your strategic muscle weakens. Your best PMs become only execution machines (isn’t that what AI is for?). Your product flattens out.
Caveat Emptor I and II
Caveat Emptor I: Frank, PMs aren’t just stretched too thin, they’re rubber bands starting to snap.
Between backlogs, stand-ups, reviews, decks, stakeholder updates, and surprise "quick questions," the idea of carving out more time to reflect, prepare for a strategy session, or simply think? It feels laughable.
In a ship-ship-ship culture, thinking starts to feel like a luxury.
But here’s the trap: if all we do is execute, our thinking degrades. And so does the product.
So the answer isn’t “add more meetings.” It’s to build smarter rituals — ones where the discussion is the exhaust of the work itself. That one-pager you wrote for leadership? That’s the thing we discuss. That roadmap trade-off you just debated? Use it as a live case study.
Great rituals don’t require extra prep. They just require structure, rhythm, and a team agreement that sharpening our thinking is part of the job.
And as leaders, it’s on us to make that real.
To protect space for deep dives.
To model the pause.
To ask better questions — not just for answers, but for insight.
Because the truth is: shipping and sharpening aren’t at odds. In the best teams, they feed each other.
Caveat Emptor II: Frank, as leaders sometimes I need to communicate things to my team. I think readouts are valuable. Don't you dare take away my readouts.
I agree, readouts have value. Just don’t let them hijack the whole meeting. Start with a crisp five-minute “top-of-mind” share: “Here are things you need to know. No need to react now — just digest and apply where relevant.”
Readouts bridge silos and connect product to business context. The key? Honesty. Call one-way information what it is. It feels disingenuous when readout theater masquerades as collaboration.
The best ones are brief, clearly framed, and serve the product conversation without trying to become it.
Iron Sharpens Iron
Design has critiques. Engineering has architecture reviews. They pressure-test the work before it ships.
So why don’t PMs do the same?
Too often, we only share when the story’s finished. Or we ask for feedback from only the people closest to the work — not the people whose product sense we admire.
Let’s fix that:
Pick a recurring slot. Monthly or biweekly, whatever fits, and give it a low-pressure name: “Product Problem Hour,” “Thinking Aloud,” whatever lowers the stakes.
Make it opt-in but visible. Bring one messy, in-progress challenge: a half-formed strategy, a roadmap trade-off, or a tough call.
Set one ground rule: This space exists to sharpen thinking, not present finished work.
End with action: Each session, help the presenter walk away with a next step or new clarity.
Rotate facilitation: Spread ownership, keep it fresh. It has to be valuable first and foremost to the presenter.
After 1–2 sessions, check in: Did this sharpen our work? If not, tweak and try again.
Leverage tools or AI to document and connect ideas if it lowers friction, but don’t let the tool replace the talk. The magic is in the conversation itself.
Want to sharpen product thinking? Model on Pixar’s Braintrust: focus on the problem, not the person; let the presenter decide what to do; keep feedback expert but non-authoritative.
A Cautionary Tale
On Pentecost Island in Vanuatu, there’s a ritual where men leap from 100-foot towers with vines tied to their ankles. It’s called land diving. The aim? To brush the earth with their heads and bless the soil for a good harvest.
Anthropologists say the ritual began with a woman outsmarting her husband by tying vines to her ankles before a desperate jump. He followed, unprepared, and didn’t survive. The lesson lived on: every year, men rebuild the tower, select the right vines, and leap — if the timing and conditions are right.
Here’s the catch: land diving only works when the details are honored. In 1974, the ritual was performed out of season to impress Queen Elizabeth II. The vines were brittle. One snapped, and a diver died. Symbolism turned fatal because the context and care were ignored.
Our work is similar. In product management, we build our own towers of ritual — strategy councils, syncs, show-and-tells. But the risk isn't just that these become performative. Save the look-backs and book reviews for the all-hands. Great theater, but if that's all you're doing, you're missing what matters. Product minds crave more than connection — they hunger for relevance, for strategic dialogue, for the chance to sharpen their craft together. Without attention and intent, we start leaping for tradition's sake, missing the real point. Are we designing the leap, or just following the script?
Just like the land-diving tower, our work rituals require continual rebuilding and re-calibration. What worked last year may be dangerously out of sync this year — the “vines” too brittle for today’s realities.
So as you look at your own product rituals, take a closer look at the vines. Are they still elastic, built for where you want to go? Or are you making a leap out of habit, hoping tradition alone will catch you?
The best teams I’ve seen don't just leap and hope. They build, rebuild, and check their ropes every time. Not for show, but because they know the real work — the real leap — only matters if you land safely, together.
Because no PM is an island. No leap is just symbolic. And none of us should be building alone.
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Really well said, Frank. I remember a head of product at a company I worked for recently lamenting how little collaboration there was between PMs. But in that company—as in most I’ve worked at—expecting PMs to collaborate closely is kind of like wondering why the pitchers from every Major League team don’t work together more. They do the same job, sure, but for different teams. Their paths don’t really cross, and when they do, it’s usually in a competitive or adversarial context.
That isolation is real, and I think PMs would do better work, enjoy their roles more, and deliver more value if they had space to reflect on why they made certain decisions, to talk through their product thinking, or even just to have time for product thinking—rather than constantly being beholden to shipping and spinning a story about how what they shipped created impact.
This is a must-read for anyone building or leading a product team.