The gap between what’s possible and what’s actually achieved often comes down to one critical factor: mindset.

Over the last twenty years, the analytics landscape has evolved dramatically but one fundamental truth remains: organizations still struggle to translate data into meaningful action. In today’s AI-augmented environment, the challenge isn’t accessing data-—it’s determining which insights actually matter and how to implement them effectively within your organization.

In a world where both technical expertise and human development are critical for success, the most effective product leaders recognize that mentorship amplifies rather than replaces their technical capabilities.

Work Smarter, Not Harder

In technology and business, project and product management are two significant but often confused roles. Although the term “PM” can refer to either function, the goals behind both reflect drastically distinct ways to generate value - with significant effects on the performance of your company.

According to a 2024 McKinsey survey on business innovation, 78% of executives acknowledge their organizations spend more time managing existing problems than creating new solutions. The same study found that companies prioritizing creation over management experienced 3.2× the growth rate of their protection-focused peers.

Platform engineering has emerged as a critical component of modern product management strategy. As Gartner predicts, “by 2026, about 80% of software engineering organizations will establish platform teams as internal providers of reusable services, components, and tools for application delivery.” This shift represents a fundamental change in how product teams approach development and delivery.

The past ten years or so, be it in an official capacity or consulting, I’ve worked with various organizations to coach and lead high-performing teams. While I’ve spent most of my career in the technical space, I’ve had the privilege and honor to work with and help lead some amazing digital product teams the past three years.

Over the past several years, my career and learning path has dove deeper into leadership strategy and product marketing. As with many organizations, the excitement of machine learning, AI, and rapid prototyping has found a home in our team as we research, learn, test… and then either succeed or fail… then start all over again! I recently had a chance to sit down with product team leads from a few different organizations and talk about ideas, trends, and how teams were keeping up.