Why Frameworks Fail: Treating Product Management Like a Product

What’s real progress?

Is adopting a framework a sign of evolution?Is shipping features faster a solid progress sign?Is making your strategy clearer than ever the way of accelerating?

Maybe yes, maybe not.

Every team has different challenges, and your context matters most.

Yet, every team would benefit from starting with their challenges and then choosing what to bring to the party to improve their situation.

To bring some clarity to this challenge, I got Tim Herbig to our podcast, and you’re going to enjoy a lot this chat. It’s honest and insightful. You will for sure get knowledge bites you can apply right now.

I got to know Tim a few years ago in Cologne, Germany at the DL Summit 2022. He’s inspiring and a great storyteller. His content impressed me because it’s well presented and designed (I even got jealous about it). And the insights per minute are incredible.

As Tim released his book, Real Progress, I couldn’t ignore it. I got my copy, read it, and got him to the podcast to get beyond it.

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This episode is 39 minutes. And here are a few things you’re going to get from it.

1. The Pragmatism Principle “Do what is needed, not what is expected. Whatever scrappy non by the book way makes the customers happy and increases the business value. Who is there to say that’s not the right way.”

2. AI Gets You to the Hard Part Faster “AI allows you to get to the hard part faster. Use it to take the shortcuts that are limiting yourself and then face the hard questions that are still in front of you.”

3. Frameworks Are Not Universal Truths “Every framework should have washing instructions. This is a snapshot of what has worked for one company in a specific context in a specific point in time. It’s nothing more. But don’t treat it as this is the way.”

4. OKRs Expose Problems, They Don’t Solve Them “OKRs don’t solve your problems per se. They make the goals more visible, more painful. And then you have to make a decision as a company how you want to deal with that.”

5. Use What You Already Have “There’s so much there. Look at the other things, artifacts you have around you. You don’t necessarily always have to go deeper into a practice, but you can look sideways.”

6. Discovery Is Risk Reduction, Not a Ritual “If you think discovery is talking to 10 people every week and nothing else, you might think you can’t do discovery with this feature idea of the CEO. If you think discovery is everything that reduces uncertainty, there’s probably stuff you can do.”

7. Product Management Should Be Treated Like a Product “Tell me, a year from now, what has changed? How do the product teams operate differently? How would you know? It’s embarrassingly simple. That’s what we’re doing with our products. We describe changes in behaviors for customers, but many companies struggle with doing that for the people they have on the payroll.”

8. Velocity Measures Shipping, Not Value “Velocity is not bad. It’s bad when you confuse it and you think that velocity shows you progress. It just shows you can deliver something at certain speed. But then what do you do next?”

9. More AI Features Doesn’t Mean Better Product “You can produce more LinkedIn posts, but they all read the same now. So what’s the point? More features means more support requests, more technical debt, more UX questions. Can you maintain it or is your product very quickly full of features you quickly produce?”

10. Match Goals to Team Capabilities “You give a team an outcome goal, but maybe the team doesn’t even have the capabilities to measure that goal. You have a great outcome metric, but you can’t measure it. So is that better? I would say it’s not.”

Do you feel you need any help in 2026?

Here are a few ways I can be your guide to help you make the best of 2026.

* 100X PM Mastermind: If you want to move from PM to Product Leader, this 3-week program will supercharge your growth. People from 15+ countries attended it already, and the feedback is inspiring. Join our upcoming program in January.

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