Two tips to build Product teams that deliver impact proactively:

1. Lead with context, not solutions.
2. Let the Product team speak with clients.

Two simple things — with rules attached.

And, yes, you've read correctly. In 2026, and in more companies than you think, many PMs and Designers are still not free to schedule time to talk to customers. I still meet Sales and CS leaders who are uncomfortable having PMs talk to clients. Like they are afraid they will mess up the relationship or waste clients' time.

Without the right guardrails, it is understandable. But it is worth the effort to coordinate and frame the research correctly because, in my experience, clients feel valued when they talk to product people. They find it genuinely refreshing to talk to someone whose only agenda is to solve their problems. It can even help you close deals!

Then, if you have insights from your customers, the market or data that your Product team doesn't have, lead with it. Don't extrapolate the solution. And if you have inherited a solution request from your customers, walk back to the problem — or ask your Product team to do it.

The change is simple, and it fundamentally rewires the dynamic: requirements are expressed as a problem or a hypothesis, with the expected business impact and your team is free to go get the qualitative and quantitative feedback that could validate or invalidate it.

When you start doing these 2 things is when the magic happens. The benefits are immense. When you lead your teams with context rooted in the problem space, and you let them talk to your customers, you basically give them a mandate to own an outcome and not just an output. That's when most of your discussions switch from feature to value, from scope to impact.

And this is what will make you win in the age of AI: needs expressed as problems, hypotheses validated with data, all codified in your own Product Management harness. Your AI no longer simply accelerates delivery; it accelerates the delivery of VALUE.

That is the work I do with my clients: alongside management and the teams, reframing how the company decides — and installing the AI harness that makes it scale.

If this resonates, let's talk!