For six years, Arjun was a successful product manager with strong instincts who created winning products using trustworthy roadmaps and led a team that had full confidence in his ability to produce results. However, as soon as his company started adding artificial intelligence (AI) into its core product, he soon realised there was a change happening and wanted to continue leading meetings with the same amount of confidence but struggled due to not knowing how to use the new terminology from the engineers’ side of things and felt like everything was happening much too fast for the frameworks he typically would use to make decisions. This did not mean he had become a poor Product Manager, but meant he would need to keep learning new skills so he could continue to be successful as a product manager going forward.
Five years ago, the product and business management playbook used to be relevant. However, in the time since, AI has not only added an extra tool to your toolkit but also changed the order and speed at which decisions are made, as well as how we think about what creates value. Roles that previously included coordinating timelines and people now require driving intelligent systems, interpreting model data, and building products that learn. The successful managers did not take the time to adapt; they were proactive in rebuilding their skill base prior to being required by their organisation to do so.
