The Top 10 Mistakes, Misconceptions, and Missed Opportunities in Product Management
...at Product-Enabled Companies
Every modern company relies on technology to power its business, but that doesn’t make them a tech company. In product-enabled organizations—retail, finance, healthcare, manufacturing, etc.—product management plays a critical role in aligning business goals with technology, but it often gets misunderstood. Leaders look to Big Tech and the most popular product management gurus for inspiration, trying to replicate their structures, processes, and buzzwords. However, what works at Amazon, Google, or Meta doesn’t always translate to a company where technology is a means to an end, not the core business.
Product-enabled companies face two key challenges: first, there’s a lack of tailored advice for their specific business models, and second when big-tech-inspired product management strategies don’t deliver quick results, these companies often revert to traditional methods and label product management as ineffective. The reality is that without the right infrastructure, culture, and experience, these strategies won’t work as-is. They need to be customized to fit the unique needs of each company and applied with a clear understanding of how to make them effective.
Here’s where companies are going wrong:
1. Structuring Product Teams Around Tools Instead of Problems
Many product-enabled companies build product teams around tools, platforms, or features rather than around business problems or customer needs. This makes more sense when the technology is the revenue driver for the business. However, in a product-enabled model, when the product teams are oriented around enabling tech instead of around core business goals, it tends to result in teams focused on maintaining systems rather than driving outcomes. Product becomes siloed and disconnected from the broader business strategy, completely reliant on stakeholders to drive the direction of the technology. Product teams should be structured to align with business objectives so they can focus on solving meaningful problems in partnership with the rest of the business. The most effective teams are goal-oriented, not systems-oriented.
2. Treating a Roadmap as a List of Features Instead of a Tool for Alignment
Too often, companies treat the roadmap as a feature checklist with due dates rather than a strategic tool for aligning around business objectives. A good roadmap isn’t a schedule, it’s a way to communicate priorities, tie the work to business goals, and create shared understanding. A roadmap should be a flexible document focused on driving outcomes, not a tactical list of things to build. When roadmaps are a to-do list or delivery plan, teams have already missed the opportunity to work together and align on what problems to solve in the first place. One more time: a roadmap is an alignment tool, not a delivery plan.
3. Expecting Product Teams to Function Without Stakeholder Understanding
For product managers to be successful, they need strong partnerships and mutual understanding with stakeholders. Product teams cannot thrive if stakeholders do not clearly understand what product management does, how they operate, and how the stakeholders can participate in product activities effectively. When there is no education about product management company-wide, product managers are misunderstood and often treated like tool administrators or project managers. And the onus is on product management to provide this education, especially in product-enabled companies where the product is not the core business driver. Product managers can also foster collaboration by sharing their techniques and methods.
4. Focusing Only on Delivery Instead of Balancing with Discovery
Focusing primarily on getting features out the door without proper discovery and research is a problematic mistake. Product managers should be experts at balancing delivery and discovery, but it's common for leadership requests to bypass these important tasks, further reinforcing that lack of product management knowledge company-wide. And since good discovery—continuous discovery— involves a lot of user participation, it gets a bad rap when the user base is small and internal. It can seem like an endless phase rather than an ongoing practice. But without proper discovery, companies risk the costly squandering of resources while delivering products that don’t fully solve the problems.
5. Mistaking Stakeholders for Users
It’s easy to confuse stakeholder requests with user needs, especially when stakeholders are vocal, visible, and often represent “the business.” As product managers who enable companies to function, business goals are generally of the utmost importance, and user pain points are really just blockers to achieving goals. However, prioritizing features that please leadership or the most opinionated stakeholders without validating the manifestation of the user problem can be detrimental. Leaving users with bad experiences—no matter how good the business solution is—will prevent adoption. Even if business requirements take priority over user problems, stakeholders shouldn’t be proxies.
6. Treating Product Management as an Extension of IT
In many product-enabled companies, product management is wrongly treated as an extension of IT, expected to translate business needs into tech specs. This reduces product management to a purely tactical role, lacking influence over customer experience or business strategy. Product managers should be positioned as strategic leaders who bridge the gap between business, technology, and users. They need to be empowered to shape the long-term vision, not just manage the tech stack. Companies spend a lot of time trying to figure out where to put product management as if product management isn’t its own thing completely. Free advice: Product management teams should be in the product management org.
7. Using Product Managers as Order-Takers Instead of Problem Solvers
When product managers are treated as order-takers—merely prioritizing features from stakeholders—they miss the opportunity to drive innovation and solve business problems. Strong product managers challenge assumptions, ask the right questions, and ensure that every initiative is aligned with both business goals and user needs. Treating product managers as problem-solvers, not order-takers, is key to unlocking their potential and achieving real business impact. It’s also risky from an attrition perspective to downgrade thoughtful, curious, problem-solvers into requirements-gatherers; the best talent does not want to be the middlemen.
8. Leaving Buy vs. Build Decisions to IT Instead of Product Teams
Many product-enabled companies use vendor-licensed technology instead of tools built in-house. Sometimes they leave the decision to buy or build tools to IT or procurement teams without involving product management. This can lead to purchasing technology that doesn’t align with business needs or user workflows or that is too narrowly focused on one or two teams’ needs without considering the systemic problems and future state. Product teams should play a central role in these decisions, ensuring that technology is selected based on its ability to solve real user problems and support long-term business strategy.
9. Assuming Adoption Happens Automatically Instead of Treating It Like a Product Launch
Adoption doesn’t happen by default—whether it’s an internal tool or a customer-facing product. Many companies treat product launches as IT deployments, assuming users will automatically embrace new tools. This often leads to low adoption rates. A proper product launch includes a strategic go-to-market plan, training, and ongoing support to ensure that users understand the product and its value. Adoption should be treated as an integral part of the product lifecycle, even internally. It might feel like tools for internal users are required by default and that there are no options. Perhaps that’s true in some cases, but just because people need to use the tech, does not mean that they won’t create methods to avoid it, build workarounds, and be very vocally against the tools. Angry users make product managers look bad and ineffective.
10. Thinking You Can Fix Your Product Management Problems While Also Doing the Work of Product Management
Leaders often believe they can fix structural issues in product management while simultaneously managing day-to-day product work. The truth is, you can’t do both. Improving your team requires a focus on restructuring, shifting mindsets, plus creating and implementing new frameworks. Trying to tackle these issues while also overseeing product delivery leads to burnout and missed opportunities. And a lot of product management consultants hired to help merely provide generic advice without getting in the weeds. Find the right help to strengthen your product organization.
You caught me, number 10 is a bit of a sales pitch, but I’m required by entrepreneur law to do it. Workable Strategy focuses exclusively on tackling the challenges in product-enabled companies, and we can certainly help with any and all of these problems.