Blog - Itamar Gilad

Embracing Uncertainty: A Modern Take On Strategy, Goals, and Roadmaps

We all strive for certainty — if we do X, Y will happen. Certainty is comforting; it allows us to operate without fear, doubt, or having to think too much. Many of the processes your company employs, especially strategy, roadmap, and project planning, are meant to create certainty — Here’s what we need to do […]

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FAQ: OKR Not Working in My Company

Anti-Patterns, Goals and OKRs

Objectives and Key Results (OKR) is one of the most common processes in the industry, and yet, despite 50 years of history, it’s the one companies struggle with the most. This problem is most evident when talking with product people and product leaders — the same challenges and frustrations come up again and again. So

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4 Levels of Data Proficiency

Metrics and Data

Data is the lifeblood of product companies, but with access to lots of information come big challenges. Our brains were not designed to process large amounts of facts and figures and cognitive biases may kick in to create a simplified, and often wrong, narrative based on a few salient data points. We’re also tempted to

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A Culture of Good Decision-Making (Part 2)

Prioritization, Product Operating Model

In part 1 of this article series I discussed the principles high-performing companies use to accelerate and improve the quality of their decisions. In this article I want to give you specific techniques to do the same, including the ACID model, not judging decisions by their results, and publicly killing HiPPOs. This is a long

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A Culture of Good Decision-Making (Part 1)

Product Operating Model

Many organizations struggle with decisions-making: both speed and quality are well below where they need to be. Key contributing factors include: While these challenges are common, slow, bad decisions are not a universal problem. Some organizations are able to make good decisions fast and at scale. In this two-part article series I’ll cover the most

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You’re Not Just Solving User Problems

Frameworks and Tools, Prioritization, Product Discovery

I regularly ask product people how they choose what to develop. Today, an increasingly popular answer is “we focus on the most important user problems”, or its more modern cousin “we prioritize opportunities”. Underlying these answers is a classic model that asserts that product development has to start with mapping out and prioritizing customer problems,

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The Lifecycle of Goals: Research, Discover, Deliver, Monitor

Goals and OKRs, Product Discovery, Roadmaps and Planning

Product companies tend to manage the lifecycle of projects (AKA ideas) — from the moment the project/initiative is approved until it is shipped. But in a reality where most ideas fail to create value, it is far more important to manage the lifecycle of goals (what we’re attempting to achieve)— from the moment the goal

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What Does Generative AI Mean For Product Development?

Frameworks and Tools, PM Role and Skills

If you’re a product person Generative AI should be firmly on your radar, not least because some think that it will replace you soon. Hyperbole aside, it’s very reasonable to assume Gen-AI will affect, maybe transform, product development. But what’s going to change? And are there any downsides? As this is a very new technology,

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6 Product Manager Stereotypes To Avoid

Anti-Patterns, PM Role and Skills

It’s no secret that product management is often a misunderstood and misused role. Many companies restrict PMs to narrow, stereotypical jobs, hindering their potential impact. Without strong role models, some PMs fall victim to these product management myths and perpetuate them to new hires. Here are six wrong ways to think about the product managers,

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Don’t Let Hype Run Your Product

Anti-Patterns, Prioritization

Observing tech companies you may notice a broad, disturbing phenomenon: everyone’s hard at work “selling” their product ideas — stakeholders and engineers are selling to product managers, product managers are selling to management, and management is selling to everyone (just listen attentively in the next all-hands meeting). As a product manager I too had to

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