The PM Tension Series: Part 1

Welcome and Webinar Overview: The PM Tension Series Begins

Rina Alexin | 00:00:00 – 00:03:45
Hi everyone and welcome. We’re just going to give a couple minutes for people to join. Today Kenny and I will be discussing the first in our Product Management Tension Series. We’ll get started shortly.

As you enter, if you don’t mind posting in the chat where you’re calling in from. Kenny and I would also love to hear if there are any topics around roles and responsibilities that you hope to see covered today. This gives us the ability to make sure we get to the topics that are most meaningful for you.

How’s my sound? It looks like my mic is miced. We’re good. Okay. Awesome. Yeah, we can hear you fine. Welcome everybody. Good to see folks joining.

As I mentioned, just put in your chat where you’re dialing in from. Always good to see that. And if there are any roles and responsibility specific questions you might have, we love to get interaction in these webinars.

Welcome from India. It’s evening to you. We’re all over the world today. We’ve got some UK folks. The good news is that roles and responsibility challenges are ubiquitous. They’re global.

Let’s get started. Welcome everyone. Please chime in the chat where you’re calling in from. If you have any questions top of mind, we’ll ask for questions throughout.

Today Kenny and I will be discussing the first in our PM Tension Series, focusing on roles and responsibilities. My name is Rina Alexin. I’m filling in for Tom Evans, and I’m located here in Austin, Texas. Kenny, why don’t you give a brief intro?

Introducing the Speakers and Productside

Kenny Kranseler | 00:03:46 – 00:05:15
Sure. I’m Kenny Kranseler. I’ve been at Productside for almost seven years now. I’ve been in product management for over 30 years, so I’ve got plenty of scars on my back. I’m dialing in today from California, but I spend time in Seattle as well. A typical West Coaster.

Who We Are at Productside

Rina Alexin | 00:05:16 – 00:08:30
For those of you joining us for the first time, Productside is an outcome-driven product partner. When we work with clients, we operate as one team with you. Our mission is to help product teams build products that people want to buy and use.

Clients choose us because we offer a complete solution across assessments, customized training programs, coaching, and advisory. Everything we do is tailored to your context so it’s relevant for your team and helps you grow product management capability. All engagements are led by invested experts like Kenny.

Please ask questions throughout. Use the chat or the Q&A button. We’ll get to as many as possible live.

One of the most common questions is whether this session will be available later. The answer is yes. You’ll receive an email with a link to watch the recording on demand. It will also be available on YouTube and our website.

Please connect with us on LinkedIn. Our Productside community has over 60,000 members and continues to grow. It’s a great place to share best practices, network, and discuss product challenges.

Why Roles and Responsibilities Are the #1 Product Management Tension

Rina Alexin | 00:08:31 – 00:13:05
Before we get into the agenda, I want to share why we’re even having this PM Tension Series. At Productside, we surveyed over 600 product managers and product leaders across the last two years to understand their biggest frustrations.

The number one tension by far was roles and responsibilities. This wasn’t a surprise to Kenny or me. In nearly 100% of our engagements, confusion around roles and responsibilities shows up.

Some examples from the research include confusion between product manager and product owner roles, shifting and unclear job expectations, blurred lines between product manager, product owner, and business analyst, and product decisions driven primarily by technology.

We also looked at regional differences and found none. This is a global challenge. Whether you’re joining from India, the UK, or the US, this tension is universal.

Introducing the PM Tension Series Framework

Kenny Kranseler | 00:13:06 – 00:16:40
Roles and responsibilities go hand in hand with tension in product management. What I want to do today is give you a system — a repeatable way to break this problem down and act on it.

I break this into five actionable parts. First, how to get unstuck from accidental responsibility. Then how to negotiate your role and expectations. Third, how to apply influence without authority. Fourth, using team agreements. And finally, mapping stakeholders.

The goal is to define your role intentionally instead of reactively.

Accidental Responsibilities: Why PMs End Up Owning Everything

Kenny Kranseler | 00:16:41 – 00:19:30
Let’s acknowledge a truth. Job descriptions rarely reflect what product managers actually do. Stakeholders are unclear on ownership. PMs absorb work because no one else steps in. Responsibilities balloon over time.

These aren’t isolated issues. They’re predictable and systematic. That’s why we need tools to address them.

Poll #1 – What’s Your Biggest Source of Role Tension?

Kenny Kranseler | 00:19:31 – 00:22:15
We’re launching our first poll. What’s your biggest source of role tension? Is it unclear ownership, stakeholder overreach, no authority with full accountability, constant role creep, or cleaning up everyone else’s messes?

We’re seeing responses come in. A large portion of you say you’re constantly cleaning up everyone else’s messes. That aligns with what we see across organizations.

Getting Unstuck from Role Creep and Cleanup Work

Kenny Kranseler | 00:22:16 – 00:28:40
Product managers are action-oriented. When we see a hole, we fill it. The problem is that temporary fixes become permanent expectations.

Start by identifying misaligned ownership. What are the things you did once that became your job forever? Articulate the impact. Identify who is better suited to own that work long term — or whether it should exist at all.

Prepare a reset conversation. Frame it around tradeoffs and outcomes, not abdication.

Example language might be: “I’ve been handling X, and it’s starting to limit my ability to deliver Y.”

How to Reset Ownership Without Burning Bridges

Kenny Kranseler | 00:28:41 – 00:33:10
Once you’ve started to identify accidental responsibilities, the next step is resetting ownership without burning bridges. This isn’t about conflict. It’s about clarity.

Most product management discomfort doesn’t come from the work itself. It comes from unspoken assumptions. Product managers often skip the step of explicitly defining expectations before jumping into tactics.

You work across the organization, which is why this role is so rewarding, but it also means you must communicate expectations broadly. Patterns we see repeatedly include undefined decision rights, overlap with adjacent roles, and responsibilities that were never negotiated.

None of this means people are difficult. It’s structured ambiguity.

Negotiating Roles and Expectations Across the Organization

Kenny Kranseler | 00:33:11 – 00:38:05
Negotiation isn’t about fighting. It’s about alignment. You want to shift ownership conversations from emotional to objective.

Define the work. Identify who has the right skills, data, authority, and context to own each responsibility. Surface assumptions. Then have an alignment conversation focused on outcomes and tradeoffs.

Document decisions lightly. This doesn’t require heavy process. A follow-up email summarizing agreements often works well.

Product Manager vs. Product Owner: Where Confusion Starts

Kenny Kranseler | 00:38:06 – 00:43:20
One of the most common misalignments I see is between product managers and product owners, especially when product owners sit in engineering and product managers sit elsewhere.

There is intentional overlap between these roles, but that overlap must be negotiated. Product managers tend to focus on discovery — customer needs, market analysis, business outcomes. Product owners tend to focus on delivery — backlog management, release execution, and development flow.

The tension often lives in the middle: vision, roadmap, personas, and release planning. There’s no universal answer. It depends on organizational context and individual strengths. What matters is deciding who has ultimate decision responsibility.

What If You’re Both the PM and the Product Owner?

Kenny Kranseler | 00:43:21 – 00:47:10
Many organizations combine the product manager and product owner roles. If that’s you, you must be intentional about how you spend your time.

Think in terms of urgency versus importance. Urgent and important tasks must be done immediately. Urgent but not important tasks often consume far too much time. Strategic work — important but not urgent — is what differentiates products in the market, yet it’s often neglected.

You still need to handle tactical work, but you cannot let it dominate your schedule.

Urgent vs. Important: Escaping the Tactical Trap

Kenny Kranseler | 00:47:11 – 00:51:30
If you spend all your time on urgent tasks, you starve strategic thinking. Ask yourself whether you are the right person to handle every urgent request.

Delegate when possible. Redirect ownership. Use calendar management intentionally. Block time for strategic work. Protect it.

Many product managers do their best strategic thinking early in the morning or later in the evening. Reserve that time deliberately.

Shifting from Reactive Work to Strategic Product Leadership

Rina Alexin | 00:51:31 – 00:54:20
This is easy to say and hard to do. Everything feels urgent, but not everything is. Strategic work doesn’t always feel pressing, yet it prevents long-term organizational debt.

When leaders don’t understand what strategic product work looks like, it gets deprioritized. Making this work visible helps others understand its value.

Using Tradeoffs to Influence Stakeholder Decisions

Kenny Kranseler | 00:54:21 – 00:58:10
Influence comes from articulating tradeoffs. If I spend time managing user stories, I’m not analyzing the market. If I’m executing tactical work, I’m not shaping long-term growth.

Frame conversations around consequences. Ask leaders where they want you spending your time. Make tradeoffs explicit.

Influence Without Authority: The Core PM Leadership Skill

Kenny Kranseler | 00:58:11 – 01:02:30
Product managers lead through influence, not command. Influence is built through diplomacy, timing, empathy, and clarity.

Understand motivations. Recognize organizational politics. Build coalitions before big meetings. Pre-align with stakeholders.

Use data, but make it digestible and decision-ready. Highlight the cost of inaction. Make decisions easier for others.

Political Awareness, Diplomacy, and Coalition-Building for PMs

Kenny Kranseler | 01:02:31 – 01:06:15
Political awareness isn’t manipulation. It’s understanding how decisions get made.

People have personal goals. Align your asks with those goals. Reduce friction for decision-makers. Help others look good when decisions move forward.

Making Better Decisions Easier for Stakeholders

Kenny Kranseler | 01:06:16 – 01:09:05
The easier you make decisions for others, the more influence you’ll have. Present clear options. Clarify consequences. Remove ambiguity.

Influence grows when people trust that your recommendations are thoughtful, grounded, and aligned with outcomes.

Poll #2 – How Clear Are Roles on Your Product Team?

Kenny Kranseler | 01:09:06 – 01:11:10
Let’s pause for a second and check in. What agreements do you currently have between you and the teams you work with most closely?

Some of you may have clearly defined responsibilities. Others may have partial agreements. And some of you may feel like it’s complete chaos and no one is quite sure who owns what.

Looking at the responses, the top two are pretty evenly split. Some people have a few responsibility definitions in place. Others are operating in a lot of ambiguity. That doesn’t surprise me at all. This is extremely common.

Team Agreements: Making Expectations Explicit

Kenny Kranseler | 01:11:11 – 01:15:05
Team agreements are one of the most effective tools for addressing role ambiguity without introducing heavy process.

Think of them as shared rules of engagement. They clarify how decisions are made, how work is owned, how communication happens, and how conflict is handled.

These are living documents. They should evolve as teams and products change.

What to Include in a Strong Product Team Working Agreement

Kenny Kranseler  | 01:15:06 – 01:18:20
A strong team agreement should include roles and responsibilities as they’re currently understood, decision-making principles, communication norms, and expectations around cadence.

It should also address conflict resolution. Conflict is inevitable. What matters is how you handle it.

The goal is to make implicit expectations explicit. When expectations are explicit, misunderstandings decrease and trust increases.

Using Team Agreements to Reduce Role Conflict

Rina Alexin | 01:18:21 – 01:21:00
Team agreements are especially helpful when you’re experiencing friction with stakeholders. Framing these conversations around working better together — rather than fixing someone else — creates alignment.

This is also a great way to introduce role clarity early, instead of letting confusion build over time.

Stakeholder Mapping: Who to Engage and How Often

Kenny Kranseler | 01:21:01 – 01:25:30
You only have so much time, so you need to be intentional about how you engage stakeholders.

Think about stakeholders across two dimensions: interest and power. Some have high interest and high power. Others may have one but not the other.

Your engagement strategy should vary based on where stakeholders fall.

Prioritizing Stakeholders by Power and Interest

Kenny Kranseler | 01:25:31 – 01:29:20
High-power, high-interest stakeholders should be actively engaged. High-interest, low-power stakeholders should be kept informed.

High-power, low-interest stakeholders need to be kept satisfied. Low-power, low-interest stakeholders should be monitored, because their influence can change over time.

Building a Core Product Team vs. Extended Stakeholders

Kenny Kranseler | 01:29:21 – 01:33:10
Your core product team typically includes product management, engineering, design, and delivery partners. This group should meet regularly to review strategy, resolve blockers, and plan ahead.

Extended stakeholders — finance, marketing, sales, support, security — should be engaged intentionally at the right moments, often through structured updates or monthly touchpoints.

Defining Your Role Intentionally, Not Reactively

Kenny Kranseler | 01:33:11 – 01:36:20
The central idea here is simple: define your role intentionally, not reactively.

Negotiate early. Influence strategically. Reset misalignment when needed. Use agreements and stakeholder mapping to maintain clarity.

Pick one tactic and try it this week. Progress doesn’t require perfection.

Practical Next Steps for Clarifying PM Responsibilities

Rina Alexin | 01:36:21 – 01:38:40
If you’re feeling role confusion, download the Productside roles and responsibilities infographic and bring it to your next one-on-one.

Use external data to open the conversation. You don’t have to carry this alone.

Productside Resources, Training, and Upcoming Events

Rina Alexin | 01:38:41 – 01:41:30
We offer multiple training options, including Optimal Product Management and AI Product Management certifications.

Our next in-person event will be in London. We also have upcoming webinars as part of the PM Tension Series, including “Why Smart Teams Sometimes Build Stupid Things.”

Q&A and Closing Remarks

Rina Alexin | 01:41:31 – 01:53:00
We’ll close with a few questions. One attendee asked how to manage up when founders repeatedly disrupt alignment and reprioritize late in the process.

The key is confidence and curiosity. Ask leaders about their vision. Understand their context. Make tradeoffs visible.

Another question focused on negotiating with senior leaders. Remember — you are senior. Don’t be afraid to ask for time. Frame conversations around learning and alignment, not blame.

Titles matter less than relationships. Build trust by celebrating wins, not just surfacing problems.

Thank you all for joining us for the first session in the PM Tension Series. You’re not alone in these challenges. They’re common — and solvable.

Have a great day, everyone.