Blog
My Thoughts (60)
August 31, 2026
The Model Was Rarely the Hardest Part
After building production AI products used by hundreds of thousands of people, I learned that the model is rarely the hardest part. Trust comes from observability, clear human control, and a product development process designed to learn continuously.
August 17, 2026
When Architecture Becomes Experience
One of the more interesting things I’ve noticed over the years is that software companies and customers often define the word platform very differently.
July 28, 2026
The Best Product Ideas Don’t Care Who Thought of Them
Every product leader eventually finds themselves in a familiar situation. Someone with influence has a strong opinion about what the product should do next, and the organization has to decide whether that idea represents...
July 21, 2026
When a Suite Becomes a Platform
Spend enough time in enterprise software and you’ll eventually notice that certain words begin to lose their meaning. "Innovation" is one of them. "Transformation" is another. Lately, I think "platform" belongs on that l...
July 15, 2026
Building Clarity
A few weeks after we launched a new capability, I was walking through our annual customer conference when someone stopped me to thank me for it. A little later, someone else did the same thing. By the end of the conferen...
July 6, 2026
Invisible During the Work. Visible in the Value.
One of the more interesting conversations I've been having lately starts with a deceptively simple question. Should AI be visible?
June 29, 2026
The Skills AI Couldn’t Replace
My laptop has become a retirement community for software projects. (Shady AI-cres...feel free to insert a groan.)
June 16, 2026
The Battle of the Claudes
Recently, I was working through a particularly important piece of strategic analysis. Like many people, I leaned heavily on AI to help process the information, identify themes, and formulate recommendations. The resultin...
June 3, 2026
The Rise of the Product Builder
Throughout my career, I've always had some side project cooking. Sometimes it was a website. Sometimes it was a mobile application. Sometimes it was a piece of software designed to solve a problem that annoyed me. Someti...
May 21, 2026
We Fixed Development. Oops.
The first wave of AI disruption inside most companies has been focused on Product and Engineering. That makes sense. The ability to generate working code in minutes instead of weeks is flashy. It gets attention. It creat...
May 4, 2026
I’ve Seen This Before. Just Not This Fast.
I’ve been around the block a few times. (Yeah, yeah, I know...)
April 20, 2026
Stop Waiting to Be Told What to Do
A lot of people are worried that AI is going to replace workers. That makes for dramatic headlines, panel discussions, and the kind of LinkedIn posts written entirely in capital letters. But I think the bigger story is m...
March 29, 2026
The T-Shirt Still Fits, But the Playbook Doesn’t
Recently, our CEO sent a note to the Product leadership team that really made me stop and reflect.
March 16, 2026
From PRDs to Prompts
For most of my career, which has been quite some time it hurts me to say, product development followed a fairly predictable rhythm. An idea would emerge, a Product Manager would write a detailed PRD, designers would prod...
January 27, 2026
What We Leave Behind in Ordinary Moments
For a long time, I thought kindness was something you decided to do. A conscious choice. A moment where you step up, do the right thing, and move on feeling pretty good about yourself. But the longer I pay attention, the...
January 14, 2026
AI Explained for the Rest of the Company
A practical explanation for executives, customer success, sales, marketing, and anyone else that thinks AI is witchcraft.
December 30, 2025
AI Didn’t Replace PMs. It Raised the Stakes
There was a time when being a Product Manager meant mastering the art of roadmaps, stakeholder alignment, and saying “no” with just enough warmth to avoid being disinvited from meetings. You translated customer needs int...
December 16, 2025
Your AI Pilot Shouldn’t Require a Fire Extinguisher
Lessons from running a real AI alpha/pilot that didn’t set anything on fire and helped me preserve what's left of my sanity.
December 2, 2025
"AI Duct Tape" Isn't An AI Strategy
Why bolting AI on isn’t the same as building AI-first (and why your product can tell the difference).
November 18, 2025
AI Quality: Preventing Confident Lies
Because “it works” is what we say right before something misbehaves.
October 28, 2025
The Art of Saying No
There’s a special kind of chaos that comes from saying “yes” too often. It’s the chaos that has you answering Slack messages at 9:47 p.m. while pretending to watch Ted Lasso for “self-care.” It’s the chaos that fills you...
October 14, 2025
No One Cares About Your Feature Parade
Let’s be honest. Most businesses secretly love outputs. Outputs are comforting. Outputs are neat. Outputs make us feel busy and therefore important. Outputs give us something to brag about in status meetings. “We shipped...
September 16, 2025
The Agile Anti-Framework: Crafting Your Own Path to Value
by Clair Meij
September 3, 2025
Too Tired to Inspire, Too Stubborn to Quit
(Sometimes heroic effort looks like just getting out of bed.)
August 13, 2025
PLG + AI: When Your Product Sells Itself… and Teaches You How
If you’ve been anywhere near a SaaS leadership meeting, a venture capital memo, or a LinkedIn scroll session in the last five years, you’ve probably heard the phrase Product-Led Growth enough times to make you suspicious...
August 4, 2025
Why Admitting ‘I Don’t Know’ Made Me a Better Leader
Spoiler: It involved a lot of nodding, coffee, and Googling under the table.
July 22, 2025
Slowing Down to Speed Up
If you're like most people in modern business, your calendar probably looks like it lost a bet. Mine is a wall of blue about 2 weeks out. Even worse, it's a zebra calendar, as my colleague calls it. (Meetings with small ...
June 30, 2025
Agile Rebellion
by Clair Meij
June 9, 2025
Why Kindness Is a Strategy, Not Just a Trait
I’ve always believed in being humble and kind. It’s more than a motto for me, it’s a mantra. But what continues to surprise me is just how powerful those two words can be in the world of business. For a long time, like m...
June 2, 2025
AI & The Product Manager
Let me begin by stating that I am SUPER excited about Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the possibilities that it provides. The ability of these tools to create images, text, music, computer code, etc. is just mind boggli...
June 2, 2025
How Generative AI Is Reshaping Product Management
Product managers, gather ’round. Let me tell you a tale of our not-so-distant past, back when roadmaps were hand-chiseled on stone tablets (read: Excel), customer interviews were conducted via interpretive dance (read: Z...
May 19, 2025
How to Write Product Requirements That Engineers Don’t Hate
I've been thinking a lot lately about product requirements. If you're a Product Manager, you've probably been on both sides of the "requirements divide", either hearing that your specs are too vague or feeling frustrated...
May 5, 2025
Stop Wasting Time, Start Owning Your Day
When it comes to receiving gifts, one of my most appreciated is one that has been made for me. This could include a written letter, a drawn picture, something made in the workshop, etc. I appreciate these gifts so much m...
October 22, 2024
Mastering Hypothesis Testing for Product Success
Introduction
September 24, 2024
Data Governance : Wrangling Chaos Into Order!
The Importance of Data Governance in an Organization
August 21, 2024
Creating a Safe Team Environment - Part 2
Overview
July 22, 2024
Creating A Safe Team Environment - Pt 1 - Effective Communication
Overview
January 8, 2024
My Favorite Ideation Techniques
So many ideas, so little time. It can become overwhelming when you're receiving input (ideas) from multiple sources such as Sales and Support, Executives, partners, customers, and Product colleagues. Not to mention your ...
October 23, 2023
Quick Update
Before I launch into my next blog on hyper-growth, I thought a quick recap of where I've been this past year is warranted. Yes, it's hard to believe that it's been more than a year since my last blog post.
October 17, 2023
Tips for Managing Hyper-growth
I wanted to touch on a subject in this blog that has been the topic of countless boardroom discussions and when failing to manage it correctly, has stymied the potential growth of many organizations. That is, how to mana...
May 10, 2022
"Where you been man?"
I've been hearing that a lot since my recent post on Pricing. I truly do appreciate the concern for my wellbeing and no, I haven't retired. (I still have a while to go before that happens. If it ever happens. Have you se...
May 9, 2022
Pricing
How to determine the optimal price for your product is one of the most critical, and in my opinion, one of the most difficult things to get correct in business. Price too low, and you're leaving money on the table and po...
November 4, 2021
Be The Leader Your Team Deserves
Over the course of my career I've had the opportunity to work with many great leaders, and unfortunately, have had to suffer through some less than stellar performances as well. Lately, I've been reflecting on what has d...
October 13, 2021
"We want it all!" - Prioritizing the Product Backlog
One of the great mysteries of Product Management is how the work that we plan is prioritized. I say that not from the perspective of a Product Manager because hey, I'm a Product Manager too and I know how it's done. But ...
October 1, 2021
Measuring the Product - Product KPIs - Financial Metrics
In a previous blog post, I described some of the metrics that can be used to measure the performance of a Product Manager. I described how metrics used to measure the product (I.e., MAU, CAC, LTV, ACL, MRR, ARPU, NRR, Ch...
October 1, 2021
Product Led Growth
There is a lot of discussion around Product Led Growth (PLG) and how it has been a game changer for many organizations. But what is PLG and is it a magic bullet for every organization? I dug into these and many other que...
August 27, 2021
What Makes A Great Product Manager?
I'm currently on the hunt for a Director of Product Management and it started me thinking about the qualities that I would look for in a Product Manager. Over my career I've hired some great, and admittedly, not so great...
July 27, 2021
Too Much Industry Focus & Not Enough On The Customer
For those of you that have read my blog post Staying Sane In An Insane World, you will recall that I am socially awkward, but determined to become less so. To help me progress, I've signed up for an on-line program that ...
July 26, 2021
Empathy
An email arrived in my inbox with the subject “Customer is Going to Cancel Their Subscription”. The sender had my full attention and of course my reaction was to immediately open the email to see what was going on. Wit...
July 26, 2021
Measuring the Product Manager
I was speaking with a CTO the other day and he asked me what metrics I use to track the performance of Product Managers. I responded with the quantitative measures that I use, as well as some qualitative metrics. The dis...
July 26, 2021
What’s Your Brand?
What is a brand?
June 16, 2021
If I could be half the man...
I still remember the call. I was at home in Georgia and my wife Shari and our kids were in Canada visiting our family. The phone rang In the middle of the day. It was my wife.
June 9, 2021
The Human Need To Reciprocate & How That Applies To Customers
I've been on a kick lately reading books on psychology and philosophy in an attempt to better understand "why people are the way they are". It's always been somewhat of a fascination to me. The interaction of human being...
April 28, 2021
The Strategy Canvas
There are many tools in a Product Manager's tool belt. In this blog, I'm going to describe a tool that has great benefits, but one that I've found is used by a very small number of Product teams. You may have guessed b...
March 24, 2021
Staying Sane in an Insane World
I spent the bulk of my teenage years in the 1980s, living the neon dream with hair so high it needed a blinking light on top to avoid aircraft collisions.The generation that single handedly created a hole in the ozone la...
March 10, 2021
The Business Intelligence Blueprint - Pt.3.
Recap
February 10, 2021
The Business Intelligence Blueprint - Pt.2.
In my previous blog, The Business Intelligence Blueprint Pt.1, I described several of the key steps that should be taken to prepare for the interview process. These steps include:
February 3, 2021
The Business Intelligence Blueprint - Pt.1.
In my last post, I discussed how businesses are drowning in data and unable to take full advantage of the benefits that it will bring to the organization. Benefits such as:
February 2, 2021
We Have Lift Off!
Have you ever woken up in the middle of the night, your mind racing as it processes all of the events of the day, and then suddenly find yourself in the midst of an existential crisis? Yeah, me too, and hence this blog....
December 16, 2020
Data, Data Everywhere...
I still remember the computer that I purchased during my first year of college, back in the late 1980s. It was an IBM Personal Computer XT (PC XT). For those of you who aren’t as old as I am, or have not visited the Sm...