Lately, there have been situations when my To-Do list has grown disproportionately to the amount of time available to focus on it. Partly, that is due to me attempting a wild pivot from software engineering to product management and back. The truth of the matter seems to be that product management needs a broad set of perspectives. Perspectives that are learned from deep experience in a more traditional role such as software engineering or project management. Furthermore, the art of product management appears to demand a very thick skin and an ability to convince naysayers of value. Whether it be value derived from new features or market analyses or user reports, as long as value is shown, all is well in the world. It is when that value is either non-existent or latent that the problems with “non-authoritative” leadership and consensus generation start. Nobody wants to know that the product manager spent hours perfecting the user’s asks into neatly categorized taxonomy of mental models. All that most want to know is, “What are we building?”, “Why are we building it?” and “What do I or my team get out of building it?”