Stop Apologising, Start Leading : Product-Led-Growth
How to build faster, align better, and lead with clarity in a world obsessed with compromise.
Here are some of the key lessons we’ve learned in our journey as product leaders across different companies—lessons shaped by launches that soared, strategies that failed, and hard-won realizations about what actually moves the needle.
If you’ve ever felt stuck in meetings that go nowhere, watched roadmaps drift off course, or sensed your team losing momentum despite working harder than ever—you’re not alone. We’ve been there too.
The good news? There’s a better way to build. A bolder, simpler, faster way to lead.
This isn’t about frameworks, buzzwords, or micromanaging. It’s about clarity. It’s about structure. And most of all—it’s about owning the product with conviction.
Here’s the blueprint that’s changed the way we work—and might just change the way you lead,
1. The Founder’s Dilemma: Clarity or Consensus?
Too many founders and leaders fall into a dangerous trap early on: trying to keep everyone happy.
They soften decisions, water down product direction, and compromise between what they believe and what their teams are comfortable with. It feels noble at first—empathetic, inclusive, collaborative. But here’s the twist: this doesn’t make your team happy. It actually makes everyone miserable.
The truth is, people don’t want a tug-of-war between competing visions. They want clarity.
They want to know where the company is headed, what matters most, and what their role is in making it happen. Leadership isn’t about keeping the peace—it’s about drawing a map and saying, “This is where we’re going. Let’s row together.”
If you lead by consensus, you create confusion. If you lead with clarity, you create momentum.
✨ Real alignment starts with decisive leadership, not diplomatic compromise.
2. Real Leaders Are in the Details (And That’s Not Micromanagement)
There’s a myth floating around the tech world: that great leaders “stay out of the weeds.”
That they hire amazing people, step back, and let them work. That management means “getting out of the way.”
Nope. That’s how good companies go stale.
Great leadership isn’t about hovering—it’s about engagement with intent.
Being in the details doesn’t mean barking orders or editing every button label. It means understanding what’s being built, asking thoughtful questions, and knowing enough to challenge assumptions. It’s what a great board does with a CEO: dig into the work, not to control, but to understand and guide.
If you’re not close to the work, how do you even know if it’s great?
🎯 “Micromanagement” is telling people what to do. “Detail leadership” is knowing what’s being done—and why.
In fast-moving companies, leaders who avoid the details don’t create freedom. They create chaos. Teams spin, decisions stall, and people work on things that don’t matter—until everything slows to a crawl.
3. Reinventing Product Management: Less Bloat, More Impact
Let’s talk about product management—one of the most misunderstood roles in tech.
In many companies, product managers have become Swiss Army knives: part strategist, part project manager, part analyst, part marketer, part team therapist. The result? A role that’s overloaded, vague, and often under-leveraged.
It’s time to rebuild product management from first principles.
Here’s a better model:
🎯 Merge product and storytelling: Product managers shouldn’t just define what to build—they should know how to talk about it. Every feature needs a story. Every release needs a clear reason for existing.
🧠 Separate out coordination: Program management is a full-time job. Let program managers own the process while PMs focus on product thinking, customer understanding, and communication.
🧬 Make it smaller and more senior: You don’t need a PM for every feature. What you need are fewer, sharper minds who can think end-to-end—strategy to execution to narrative.
🛠️ The future of product isn’t a bloated checklist of responsibilities. It’s focused, high-leverage leadership across product and market.
When PMs understand the story and the solution, they become force multipliers—not middle managers.
4. Kill the Divisions, Build Functional Powerhouses
Let’s be honest—most org charts are just polite diagrams of dysfunction.
They look clean on paper but messy in practice. One team owns "growth," another owns "engagement," a third owns “international,” and suddenly you’ve got overlapping goals, endless dependencies, and no clear owner of anything.
The root of the problem? Divisional thinking.
Divisions create silos. Silos create politics. Politics create slow, bloated, miserable companies.
The alternative? A functional model—where every function (engineering, design, product, marketing) reports up to leaders who are experts in their craft, and where teams align around a single company mission instead of local team metrics.
🧠 Forget “who owns the feature.” Ask, “Are we all building the same story?”
When teams are structured by function—not division—they can flex, collaborate, and share knowledge. The company starts to feel like a single product team again, not a federation of mini-empires.
It’s not just more efficient—it’s more human. Everyone speaks the same language. Everyone rows in the same direction.