Hello Reader,

2025 has been one of the most transformative years I’ve seen in my career, not just for product teams, but for organizations as a whole. AI had already entered the room but this year it took over the conversation. Everywhere I went, every leadership meeting, every conference talk, every team workshop… the same question kept coming up:

“How do we use AI to accelerate everything we do?”

And while the enthusiasm is well-placed, this year made something abundantly clear:

AI can amplify great systems, but it cannot replace the foundational work of building them.

AI Became the Default But the Fundamentals Didn’t Disappear

We saw incredible advances this year. AI prototyping matured. Tasks that once took hours now take minutes. Teams suddenly had access to deeper customer insights, faster experimentation, and richer analysis - often generated automatically.

And yet, despite all that acceleration, something interesting surfaced:

Teams without strong product foundations got faster… at being misaligned.

They generated more ideas, more prototypes, more data… but without clarity on strategy, without defined outcomes, without a product operating model… all of it created more noise, not more value.

What we learned over and over again this year:

AI can help you explore directions, but it cannot choose the right direction for you.
AI can summarize data, but it cannot tell you which metrics actually matter to your business.
AI can simulate pathways, but it cannot replace the organizational alignment required to pursue them.

The fundamentals didn’t go away. If anything, they became more important.

The Overwhelm Is Real And Understandable

One unexpected insight this year has been how overwhelming AI adoption actually is for most teams. Even for highly capable product managers, using AI outside of a handful of basic tasks felt daunting:

Access is there, but habits haven’t formed.
Potential is massive, but guidelines are unclear.
Tools feel powerful, but they also feel fragmented.

Many people told us the same thing:

“I know AI can help me… I just don’t know how to use it well yet.”

The PMs who benefitted most from AI weren’t the ones who used the most tools. They were the ones who had clarity. Clarity around the problem they’re solving and their desired outcomes.

AI multiplies what you already have.

If you have clarity, it multiplies value. If you have confusion, it multiplies noise.

Large Organizations Face an Even Bigger Gap

When the year began, I was genuinely optimistic that more companies were finally embracing product operating models. We saw more product leaders get seats at the table, more interest from CEOs, more recognition of the strategic role product teams can play.

But as the year progressed, a different pattern emerged:

Many organizations still don’t have the foundational product infrastructure needed to support meaningful AI adoption.

Some of the most common symptoms we saw:

Teams trying to accelerate with AI before establishing consistent ways of working
Leaders wanting AI dashboards without agreeing on what “good” actually looks like
Companies investing in tools while skipping the strategy and governance that make them useful
Product leaders trying to drive change… while key stakeholders weren’t truly bought in

As much as AI can help, it cannot fix misalignment at the executive level, and it cannot stand in for a company-wide approach to product.

I came into 2025 thinking the industry had finally turned a corner on building these foundations. I’m leaving the year realizing just how much work there still is to do.