Product Management Is People Management
Why mastering relationships is just as critical as mastering roadmaps.
By Sean L. Adams
In the world of product management, we love to talk about frameworks, roadmaps, and execution strategies. But after nearly two decades in the field, I’ve come to believe one thing above all:
Product management is people management.
It’s not just a clever saying — it’s a practical truth. Because no matter how sharp your strategy is, your ability to build, influence, and align with people is what actually moves products forward.
The Climb: Lessons at Every Rung
That realization didn’t happen overnight. It unfolded over the years — through role changes, company shifts, and ever-growing scopes of responsibility. As I advanced, I realized that each level of product leadership required a new perspective on people.
I didn’t start my career in product. I came up through customer service — advocating for users, solving frontline problems, and eventually realizing I wanted a seat at the table where bigger decisions were made.
That Nordstrom-style belief — that “the only boss… is the customer” — never left me. But product quickly taught me something else: the customer isn’t the only person who matters.
As I moved up the ladder, each rung reshaped not only the relationships I was responsible for managing but also the voices I needed to keep top of mind and the perspectives I was accountable to represent:
- First, it was the user.
- Next, it was the business — translating vision into roadmaps that balanced both need and feasibility.
- Then, it became the teams — ensuring we had the right structure and culture to execute.
At every level, managing expectations, relationships, and trust was more important than the features themselves.
Managing Up: Optimistic Transparency
One of the earliest challenges I faced was learning how to manage up. It’s easy to follow the marching orders because those are the marching orders. Also contributing to this is the pressure of growth — as your sphere of influence expands, so does the pressure to translate chaos into clarity for those at the top.
Managing up means translating complexity into clarity. My approach is what I call optimistic transparency:
Yes, I’ll tell you the truth. But I’ll also help you see a path forward.
Executives don’t need to know every bit of the sausage-making process. But they do need to know:
- Where we are
- What’s in our way
- And what needs their support to keep progress moving forward
One of my strengths is turning lofty corporate initiatives into clear, actionable milestones — then pushing product teams to build roadmaps that align with them. That alignment, along with the subsequent execution, builds trust. And trust creates freedom.
As David Allen put it: “You can do anything, but not everything.”
Part of managing up is helping leaders focus on the right anything. When the business trusts us, we can have the freedom to succeed as well as fail.
Managing Across: Influence Through Service
Just as crucial as managing up is managing across — working with peers, partners, and cross-functional teams who don’t report to you but who deeply affect your ability to succeed.
Cross-functional work is where product leaders earn their stripes — or lose them. Managing across silos isn’t about authority. It’s about service and social equity.
Colleagues need to feel like they’re never surprised. And ideally, they feel that partnering with the product org helps them get things done — not slow them down.
Often, my job is to ensure that the right people are talking. Product management, at its best, is the connective tissue of an organization. Sometimes, that means leading conversations; other times, it means quietly facilitating them.
Managing across teams sometimes feels like being the world’s most polite hostage negotiator:
“Let’s all put down the priorities and talk about roadmaps.”
And yes, I’ve seen almost every type of stakeholder dynamic: executors who can’t collaborate, collaborators who can’t deliver, and everything in between. The key is to earn trust (and social equity) before you need to spend it.
Building High-Performing Product Teams
Of course, none of this works without a strong product team behind it. Leading people isn’t just about alignment and politics — it’s about culture, coaching, and capability. And this is where I want to be most intentional.
When I build a product org, I optimize for three things:
- Cultural Fit — Does this team thrive in our org context?
- Current Fit — Can we maintain and ship well today?
- Future Fit — Are we building skills for tomorrow?
For future fit for example, if I see automation, AI, or platform modernization on the horizon, I’m hiring for — or upskilling toward — those realities.
Beyond technical capabilities, I also align teams with the organizational culture. Some companies — especially those where the product isn’t the technology — view product as a cost center. This is common in sectors like healthcare, where the core value proposition might be well-run emergency departments or strong clinical outcomes. In those cases, technology must support and amplify that unique value proposition — but it’s not the center of gravity.
In contrast, product-led organizations see the product team as a growth engine, driving revenue and market differentiation. I build teams differently for each context, ensuring they are positioned to deliver value in alignment with the organization’s structure and strategic focus.
But hiring the right mix is only part of the equation. Sustaining a high-performing team requires ongoing investment in people and practices. Some of the best practices I’ve adopted to support this include:
- Coaching and mentorship — Helping PMs grow beyond their current roles
- Book clubs and shared learning — Creating a culture of curiosity
- Communities of practice — Including not just product managers but product-adjacent talent
- Storytelling and stakeholder readiness — Enabling the team to communicate up, down, and across
I also prioritize empowering healthy working habits that prevent burnout — because burnout is a far bigger issue than it often gets credit for. In fact, a 2023 Deloitte study found that 77% of professionals report experiencing burnout in their current roles, with many citing a direct impact on the quality of their work.
In product, we sometimes mistake motion for progress. Just because your calendar looks like a game of Tetris doesn’t mean anything is actually shipping — or that value is being created.
I work to protect our team’s time, promote clarity over chaos, and ensure everyone is equipped to tell the story of their work with confidence and precision.
As Arianna Huffington put it:
“Burnout is not the price we have to pay for success.”
Hard Lessons: When Trust Breaks
But even the best-built teams hit turbulence — and some of the most valuable leadership lessons come when things don’t go to plan.
Let’s be honest: sometimes things go sideways. I’ve made mistakes. I kept the wrong people in the wrong roles too long. I’ve seen trust erode and teams fracture.
Sometimes, repair starts with removal — of toxicity, misalignment, or dysfunction. Other times, it’s reassignment — finding someone a better fit within the org.
I lead with empathy, but I know culture can shatter in an instant. Restoring a fractured team takes intentional rebuilding and emotional intelligence.
“Leadership is communicating to people their worth and potential so clearly that they are inspired to see it in themselves.”
— L. David Marquet
That kind of belief in people is what steadies the ship when things feel unmoored. After all, as Faye Wattleton once said — in rough waters, the only safe ship is leadership.
I see my job as helping the team chart a new course — upholding our purpose while ensuring we all arrive at a stronger destination.
Conclusion: People First, Product Second
These experiences have only reinforced my conviction about what truly matters. Because when you strip away the tools, the sprints, and the strategy — you’re left with the people. And they’re everything.
Your roadmap won’t save you if your relationships are broken.
You can’t push innovation, drive transformation, or hit a release date without trust, communication, and alignment. And that starts with managing people — not just the ones who report to you, but everyone your product touches.
I still believe in strategy. I still believe in execution. But more than anything, I believe in people. Because, at the end of the day, the product is built by people, for people — and product management is the art of managing both.
What’s one hard-earned lesson you’ve learned about leading without authority?
Drop it in the comments or message me directly — I’m collecting insights for Part 2 of this series.
About the Author
Sean L. Adams is a Director of Product Management with 15+ years of experience driving platform transformation and organizational change across healthcare, fintech, and SaaS. He specializes in building high-performing teams, aligning business strategy with product execution, and modernizing legacy systems into scalable, future-ready platforms.
Learn more at www.SeanLAdams.com or connect with him on LinkedIn.
