What Buddhism Taught Me About Product Management
Jun 2019
The Buddha's insight applies directly to product work: unhappiness stems from refusing to see things as they truly are. Effective PMs must develop the discipline to see their products, teams, and markets with clear eyes—not through the lens of what they wish were true.
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What Buddhism Taught Me About Product Management
Jun 2019Most unhappiness in product work comes from resisting reality as it is. The gap between how you want things to be and how they actually are is where suffering lives. Closing that gap requires accepting reality first, then acting.
What Buddhism Taught Me About Product Management
Jun 2019The illusion that you can reach a state where all problems are solved is the root of team suffering. Instead, accept that fires will always burn and people will always get upset. Find your fulfillment in the act of solving problems, not in the fantasy of a problem-free state.
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Jun 2019Product managers hold disproportionate influence over key decisions yet lack direct authority over their teams. Success requires building trust, making decisive calls, and helping everyone do their best work—not through command, but through influence and credibility.
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Jun 2019Your job as a PM is to accelerate good ideas and kill bad ones—not to keep your own ideas alive at all costs. The longer you cling to a bad idea because you're attached to it, the worse it becomes for you and the business. Impermanence applies to strategies too.
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Jun 2019A polished, well-designed product that doesn't solve the problem you set out to solve is a failure, regardless of its aesthetic or technical merit. The work of staying true to the problem is harder than the work of building the solution.
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