Leadership, incentives and agency

Product managers are saving hours with AI, yet feel more uncertain than ever about whether their products will succeed. What’s going on?

In this episode of The Product Experience, Lily Smith and Randy Silver sit down with Axel Sooriah, product management evangelist at Atlassian, to unpack the findings from a large-scale survey into the state of product management today.

Axel shares why so many teams are stuck on the hamster wheel of execution, how cross-functional collaboration still breaks down in practice, and why 84% of product managers doubt their products will succeed despite loving the craft. The conversation explores the real reasons behind PM anxiety, the role of leadership in creating confidence, and how reframing work around customer progress can re-energise teams.

Chapters
00:00 – Money, motivation, and product work
01:12 – Axel Sooriah’s product background
02:16 – What a product management evangelist does
05:38 – Why Atlassian ran the state of product management survey
07:01 – AI productivity and the strategy time paradox
11:32 – The hamster wheel of execution
14:01 – Leadership, incentives, and product manager agency
16:16 – Using AI in customer discovery
18:17 – Cross-functional collaboration in practice
22:06 – Why 84% of product managers doubt success
26:16 – Discovery, evidence, and decision-making confidence
28:47 – Fear and curiosity in the age of AI
30:50 – Getting started with AI as a product manager
32:54 – Profit focus and product team motivation

Our Hosts
Lily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.

Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager’s Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon’s music stores in the US & UK.