Product managers should explain why, not what

We’ve all been there: a team experiences “poor communication” and “changing requirements”; execs complain about “sense of urgency” and “visibility”; debates keep going into the weeds.

And so, we “clarify what we are doing”: we start adding meetings, producing product plans, sticking massive gantt charts on walls, having ever-more-specific acceptance criteria on tickets. But what if this is exactly backwards? What if increasing detail actually makes things worse?

In this talk, we will explore cases from startups to big tech where clarifying and communicating the “why” proved easier and more effective than traditional project management — where instilling a sense of purpose worked better than driving a sense of urgency.