Last week, we held our 8th in-person edition of INDUSTRY: The Product Conference and brought together some of the brightest minds in product management to share insights, strategies, and visions for the future. As product managers and leaders gathered to discuss the evolving landscape of their field, several key themes emerged that are set to shape the future of product development and management.
From embracing an impact-first approach to rethinking personalization strategies, the conference highlighted the need for product professionals to adapt to a rapidly changing business environment. Speakers emphasized the importance of aligning product goals with broader business objectives, leveraging AI for enhanced customer understanding, and mastering the art of storytelling to drive product success.
The discussions also touched on the changing dynamics of product leadership, with a focus on adapting management styles to accommodate high-performing individual contributors. As the role of AI in product management continues to grow, attendees were challenged to consider how to balance technological advancements with the human touch, which remains crucial in creating meaningful user experiences.
If you couldn’t be there for it in person – you’ll have to plan for it for 2025! But I’ve highlighted some of the major themes that emerged, so you can still learn from them here.
Let’s dig in…
Embrace an impact-first approach to product management
Let’s face it, Product Managers are constantly pulled in multiple directions, balancing the demands of various stakeholders, technological possibilities, and market trends. However, it’s critical that we don’t overlook the need to embrace an impact-first approach to product management. This is one theme that seemed to ring true in many of the talks at INDUSTRY.
This idea was particularly emphasized in Matt LeMay’s talk, “The Business is Your Business,” but it resonated throughout other presentations as well. The core principle is simple yet profound: product managers must prioritize measurable business impact above all else.
LeMay stressed that product teams are ultimately subject to the commercial realities of their business. While there’s often a tug-of-war between doing things “the right way” and meeting business demands, it’s crucial to remember that product teams bear the consequences of low-impact work, regardless of how well-executed it might be.
To adopt an impact-first mindset, product managers should:
- Set team goals closely aligned with company goals: LeMay mentioned Christina Wodtke’s book, “Radical Focus,” and how it advises that team goals should be in direct orbit of company goals, no more than one step removed. This ensures that every team’s efforts directly contribute to the organization’s primary objectives.
- Keep impact at the forefront at every step: From strategy to discovery to problem definition, always reflect on whether your actions still add up to the impact you seek to drive. This helps in making more informed decisions throughout the product development process.
- Resist the temptation of low-impact work: Even if it feels like an “easy win” or “low-hanging fruit,” low-impact work comes at a cost to the product, its users, and the business at large. It’s crucial to have proactive conversations about the impact and be willing to say no to work that doesn’t significantly move the needle.
Rachel Weston Rowell’s presentation on “What Your Investors Actually Want to Know About Your Product” also emphasized the importance of connecting product work to business outcomes when communicating with stakeholders. She advised product leaders to explain their plans concisely and tie them to business impact, showing how product strategy supports the overall business story.
Similarly, Katy Faulder’s talk highlighted the need to reframe estimation requests as “Should we invest?” questions. This perspective shift encourages product managers to think beyond mere feasibility and consider the potential impact of proposed features or changes.
Embracing an impact-first approach doesn’t mean ignoring user needs or product quality. Instead, it’s about ensuring that every decision, feature, and initiative is evaluated based on its potential to drive meaningful business results. This might involve difficult trade-offs, but it ultimately leads to more focused, effective product management.
By adopting this mindset, product managers can better navigate the complexities of their roles, align their teams with organizational goals, and demonstrate the true value of their work. In an era where businesses are increasingly scrutinizing every investment, an impact-first approach to product management isn’t just beneficial—it’s essential for long-term success and relevance in the market.
Adapt leadership styles for the evolving landscape of high-performing individual contributors
Another significant theme that emerged at INDUSTRY is the need for product leaders to adapt their management styles. This is especially true in the rise of highly skilled individual contributors (ICs) in product teams. This shift, coupled with changing organizational structures and economic pressures, is reshaping the landscape of product management leadership.
Maggie Crowley’s talk on “Managing in the Age of the Super IC” was particularly illuminating on this topic. She highlighted that product management is catching up with engineering in terms of having “Super Individual Contributors” – highly experienced professionals who can drive significant impact without necessarily managing others. This trend, combined with companies’ increased focus on unit economics, is leading to flatter organizational structures with a heavier reliance on these skilled ICs.
To thrive in this new environment, product leaders need to adopt a new operating model:
- Guide, don’t just manage: Leaders need to continuously chart the course, set context, define the bar, and co-create the future with Super ICs. It’s less about being prescriptive and more about figuring out how to collaborate effectively.
- Coach, don’t dictate: Get into the details enough to help product managers and teams get the best work out of themselves. This approach fosters growth and autonomy among team members.
- Edit: don’t just approve: Keep the team focused, right-size scope, and help the team say “yes” to good ideas. Act more as an editor, looking at all the good ideas and refining them to what makes the most sense.
This shift in leadership style was echoed in other talks as well. Melika Hope’s presentation on transitioning from individual contributor to manager emphasized the importance of coaching over traditional management. She stressed that coaching should be a continuous, regular process focused on achieving outcomes rather than just keeping track of tasks.
Clifton Gilley’s talk, “Product Management is a Team Sport,” further reinforced this idea. He advocated for a model where product managers, product operations, and product owners work together as a “three-legged stool,” each focusing on different aspects of product development. This structure allows for more specialized roles and enables product managers to be more strategic and externally focused.
To succeed in this new landscape, product leaders must adopt a multifaceted approach. It begins with building a team of high-performing individuals, carefully defining roles and recruiting for specific skills that align with those roles. Once the team is in place, the focus shifts to setting clear, impactful objectives that tie directly to broader business goals, ensuring everyone is working towards the same outcomes. To maintain a connection with the day-to-day work without micromanaging, leaders should implement regular check-ins and reviews, creating rituals that keep them informed and able to provide meaningful guidance. Throughout this process, embracing a coaching mindset is crucial. By offering continuous, context-dependent feedback and acting as a sounding board, leaders can help their team members reach their full potential. This approach not only develops individual skills but also fosters a culture of growth and collaboration, ultimately leading to more innovative and successful products.
This evolution in leadership style isn’t just about accommodating Super ICs; it’s about creating an environment where all team members can thrive and contribute their best work. It requires leaders to trust their team’s expertise, provide clear direction and context, and focus on removing obstacles rather than dictating solutions.
Leverage AI to enhance product research and customer understanding
Another theme at INDUSTRY, as you may imagine, revolved around the transformative potential of AI in product management, particularly as it relates to user research and customer understanding. As product teams strive to make data-driven decisions, AI is emerging as a powerful tool to gather, analyze, and interpret user feedback at scale.
Yana Welinder’s talk on “Product in the Age of AI” highlighted how AI and Large Language Models (LLMs) have ushered in a golden age of product research. These technologies enable teams to interact asynchronously with users and generate vast amounts of data from user feedback. AI can analyze inputs from various channels where users interact with a product, grouping and sorting this feedback into potential projects or user stories.
One of the most exciting applications of AI in product research is the concept of AI-driven user interviews. Traditional methods like surveys and user interviews have limitations – surveys often suffer from low response rates, while scheduling and conducting interviews can be time-consuming. AI can help overcome these challenges by:
- Creating dynamic, personalized questions based on previous responses
- Conducting interviews in the user’s preferred language and translating insights for the product team
- Analyzing results much faster than humans, identifying patterns and trends across large datasets
However, it’s crucial to approach AI-driven research with caution. As Dan Chuparkoff pointed out in his talk on “AI & The Future of Product Management,” AI models can sometimes produce inaccurate or biased results, often referred to as “hallucinations.” To mitigate this risk, it’s essential to keep humans in the loop, verifying AI-generated insights and maintaining control over the research process.
Praful Chavda’s presentation on “Improving Product Sense Using AI” provided a framework for how product managers can enhance their understanding of customers using AI tools across four key aspects:
- Understanding Customers and Users: Use AI for feedback synthesis and trend analysis
- Domain Knowledge: Leverage AI to track competitive landscapes and market projections
- Analytical Skills: Employ AI for prioritization, problem-solving, and anomaly detection
- Creative Skills: Utilize AI in UI/UX design ideation
By integrating AI into these areas, product managers can gain deeper insights, make more informed decisions, and ultimately build products that better meet user needs.
However, as Katie Dove emphasized in her talk on personalization, it’s crucial to remember that AI-driven insights should complement, not replace, human empathy and understanding. The goal is to use AI to create experiences that make people feel known, involved, and valued rather than just delivering technically optimized solutions.
As AI continues to evolve, product managers who can effectively harness its power for research and customer understanding will have a significant advantage. They’ll be able to make decisions based on richer, more comprehensive data, identify emerging trends more quickly, and ultimately create products that resonate more deeply with their target users.
Master the art of storytelling to drive product success
Another theme that reverberated throughout the 3-days at INDUSTRY this year was the role of storytelling in product management. Effective storytelling isn’t just about creative writing or presentation skills; it’s a fundamental tool for product managers to align teams, engage stakeholders, and create products that truly resonate with users. (Even backstage, I heard from a past speaker of INDUSTRY how he was investing in storytelling roles within his company!)
Mark Cruth’s session, “The Art of Product Storytelling: Building the Right Thing,” emphasized that in an era dominated by KPIs, metrics, and data-driven decision-making, finding your product’s story is what will lead you to your next great feature idea. Cruth argued that while data is crucial, it’s the narrative around that data that often drives true product success.
To craft compelling product narratives, Cruth outlined four key characteristics that every story needs to make a lasting impression:
- Relatable: People must be able to see themselves in the story, but not so directly that it becomes about them. Including elements of vulnerability and failure can make stories more relatable and impactful.
- Emotional: Embrace passion and emotion in your storytelling. People are 22 times more likely to remember stories told with emotions, according to Stanford Professor Jennifer Acker.
- Authentic: Share stories that are personal and important to you as the storyteller. This builds trust and connection with your audience.
- Detailed: Add specific sensory details to your story to make it more vivid and memorable. Focus on details that create a focus for your audience.
Bukky Adebayo and Rye Castillo’s presentation on designing products for technical audiences offered a compelling case for the power of storytelling in even the most technical environments. They shared their journey of building a customer-focused culture within their engineering team, demonstrating how narrative techniques can bridge the gap between technical expertise and user needs. By weaving stories of real user experiences and challenges, they helped their engineers look beyond their own perspectives and truly empathize with their customers.
This approach opens up a world of possibilities for product managers across various domains. Storytelling can breathe life into product visions, painting vivid pictures of how a product will impact users and businesses in the future. It can transform dry customer journey maps into engaging narratives that highlight user pain points and opportunities for improvement. When creating empathy maps, stories can help team members step into users’ shoes, understanding their emotions and motivations on a deeper level. Even something as potentially mundane as a product roadmap can become a compelling narrative, outlining how the product will evolve over time to meet changing user needs and business goals. By embracing these storytelling techniques, product managers can create more engaging, user-centered products and align their teams more effectively toward a shared vision.
Product managers can more effectively communicate complex ideas, inspire their teams, and create a shared vision for their products through thoughtful storytelling. In a field where technical skills and data analysis are often emphasized, the ability to tell compelling stories can be a key differentiator, helping product managers to build better products and drive business success.
Rethink personalization strategies to create genuine user value
Personalization has been a buzzword in product management for years, but INDUSTRY highlighted the need to rethink our approach to personalization to create genuine value for users. This idea challenges product managers to look beyond algorithmic recommendations and consider the psychological aspects of personalized experiences.
Katie Dove’s presentation on “Personalization: Fad or Future? A Behavioral Scientist’s Perspective” emphasized that personalization isn’t just about delivering a functionally better product; it’s about creating an experience that makes people feel known, involved, and valued.
Dove outlined three common pitfalls in personalization efforts and provided strategies to overcome them:
- When products don’t make you feel seen: Solution: Use callbacks to past behavior to acknowledge the user. This creates a sense of being known and understood, which drives value in relationships with products.
- When products don’t get the user bought in: Solution: Increase perceived fit through asking questions. Contrary to the common wisdom of removing all friction, sometimes asking more questions can enhance the personalization experience by involving the user in the process.
- When products don’t showcase their effort: Solution: Use operational transparency to draw attention to the ‘how’. People value things more when effort is apparent, so make it clear how much work went into delivering a personalized experience.
These insights align with Yana Welinder’s talk on leveraging AI for product research. While AI can provide powerful personalization capabilities, it’s crucial to maintain a human element. As Welinder pointed out, the goal should be to use AI to create experiences that make people feel understood and valued rather than just delivering technically optimized solutions.
When it comes to personalization, product managers are being called upon to rethink their strategies and create more meaningful, user-centric experiences. Rather than relying solely on background data and algorithms, the new approach invites users into the personalization process itself. This might involve asking interactive questions or allowing users to set their own preferences, giving them a sense of control and involvement. When offering personalized recommendations, explaining the reasoning behind them can build trust and further engage users in the process.
The concept of effort visibility is gaining traction, with product teams finding creative ways to showcase the work that goes into creating personalized experiences. Something as simple as a progress bar during data processing or a brief explanation of the steps taken can make users feel more valued and appreciated. While AI and automation play a crucial role in personalization at scale, finding the right balance with the human touch can make experiences feel more authentic and relatable.
Moreover, forward-thinking product managers are looking beyond basic demographic or behavioral data. They’re considering the user’s context, goals, and emotional state to create deeply personalized experiences that resonate on a more personal level. This holistic approach to personalization isn’t just about delivering the right content or features; it’s about making users feel truly understood, involved, and valued throughout their entire interaction with the product.
Summing it all up
Throughout the entire conference, one thing was clear: the role of the product manager is evolving rapidly, demanding a blend of business acumen, technological prowess, and human-centered design thinking. The future of product management lies not just in mastering individual skills but in orchestrating a symphony of capabilities that drive meaningful impact for both users and businesses.
The key takeaway for product managers is this: embrace adaptability. It’s true that AI is reshaping our workflows and will continue to play a role in our work that we may not even be fully grasping at this point. This makes the ability to adapt and evolve even more important. This adaptability isn’t just about learning new tools or techniques; it’s about cultivating a mindset that’s open to change, willing to challenge assumptions, and always focused on creating value.
As you move forward in your product management journey, here’s a call to action: Commit to continuous learning and experimentation. Whether it’s exploring new AI tools, refining your storytelling skills, or rethinking your approach to personalization, make it a priority to step out of your comfort zone regularly. Engage with your peers, seek out diverse perspectives, and don’t be afraid to try new approaches in your work.
Remember, the most successful product managers of tomorrow will be those who can adapt swiftly, think critically, and lead with empathy. By embracing these principles, you’ll not only stay ahead of the curve but also play a crucial role in shaping the future of product management.
