What Part of You
Is Making the Decision?

​Dear Reader,​

For much of my career, I’ve helped product teams work through uncertainty.

I challenged assumptions, introduced frameworks, and helped people make better decisions when there was no obvious answer. While I still love doing that work, I’ve become increasingly interested in a deeper question over the past six years:

From where within ourselves do we make those decisions?

This question shows up in life and product work all the time. I'm pretty sure you know what I'm talking about.

A CPO can agree on presented evidence and still avoid making a strategic choice. A Product Manager can understand they made a mistake, but feel held back from owning it. A team can sense the disconnect among members, but blames it on the friction of using Scrum.

More information does not necessarily change what someone is willing to choose or will show up to.

Sometimes the reason for that is analytical. The evidence is weak, and the options are poorly articulated. We like to framework-ize our way around it.

But sometimes the obstacle lies elsewhere. Sitting with negative feedback from your boss can feel more threatening than the words on paper (I've been there).

When an Insight Becomes Personal

My experiences with product management, teaching, and consulting taught me how to move information across. I could explain an idea, visualize it, and adapt it to a team’s context.

Meditation, Qigong, coaching, and my own personal development practice taught me something different: Lasting change rarely came from receiving more information alone. It came when an insight became personal, and I was willing to look at myself more openly.

I might have understood a pattern intellectually for months. Then a conversation, physical practice, or uncomfortable moment allowed me to see how I was reproducing it. The actions didn't change, but how they landed in me did.

And that experience changed how I think about helping other people. A framework can clarify a decision. It cannot make the decision for you.

As a coach, consultant, or leader, I can ask a powerful question. But I cannot determine whether you are willing to stay with the discomfort your answer creates. What I can do is create conditions in which seeing and choosing become more possible.

From the Surface Toward Greater Depth

One of my mentors described my teaching gift as inviting people from the surface toward greater depth without forcing them. It gave me language for something I had experienced across many parts of my work.

In Product Strategy, the surface might be a set of filled-in canvases. Greater depth means confronting the choices the company keeps avoiding.

In OKRs, the surface might be a correctly formatted goal. Greater depth means admitting that the team does not know whether its work changes anything for a customer.

In Discovery, the surface might be the number of interviews or experiments completed. Greater depth means noticing how strongly the team still wants its original idea to be right.

I have written about this for years through ideas such as Value over Correctness and Alibi Progress. I am now becoming more interested in the human capacity required to put those ideas into practice.

Entering as a Student Again

This year, I’m giving that part of my work more space by joining the Creative Consciousness International Coaching Academy (an ICF-accredited Coaching Program.

I want to deepen the coaching practice in my work and become more aware of how I guide individuals and teams. That includes learning how to hold questions that help people discover their own answers, instead of reaching too quickly for the useful answer I could offer.

I don’t yet know exactly where this will lead. It may change how I work with leadership teams. It will definitely influence my writing, workshops, and the way I think about what remains human in Product Management.

For now, I am excited to enter something new as a student again.

Thank you for Practicing Product,

​Tim​

Who is Tim Herbig?

As a Product Management Coach, I guide Product Teams to measure the real progress of their evidence-informed decisions.

I focus on better practices to connect the dots of Product Strategy, Product OKRs, and Product Discovery.