If Your Product Managers Only Hear Agreement, You Have a Problem

wetzel8716
Apr 23, 2025
2 min read

As CEO, you rely on your product team to drive clarity, prioritize smartly, and build the right things. But here’s a quiet risk in plain sight:

If stakeholders and customers aren't pushing back, your product managers aren't engaging deeply enough.

Smooth meetings, polite nods, and “Looks good” reactions feel productive. But they often signal passive approval, not true alignment. And in product, that's a silent killer.

What’s Really Going On?

When product managers present roadmaps or solutions and only hear agreement, it's rarely because everything is perfect. More likely:

Stakeholders feel it’s too late to weigh in... everything is set and can't be changed.
Customers were surveyed, not heard.
Too much presentation and not enough conversation.
Feedback was rushed, reactive, or overly filtered.

The result? Teams execute with confidence... but its a false confidence.

What Great Product Managers Do Differently

If you want a product team that consistently delivers impact—not just velocity—encourage behaviors that drive real dialogue with both stakeholders and customers.

1. Ask Questions That Surface Risk

Your PMs should know their audiences and tailor the amount of information presented to be just enough to ellicit reactions but not so much that it overwhelms and prevents discussion. Your PMs shouldn’t ask “Any feedback?” They should ask:

“What worries you about this?”
“What trade-offs are we overlooking?”
“What would cause this to fail in the real world?”

This turns meetings from passive check-ins into meaningful pressure tests.

2. Engage Stakeholders as Thought Partners

Your leadership team has critical context—on sales, competitors, customer health. PMs should proactively seek those insights before near term roadmap decisions are made, not after.

Encourage your product leaders to:

Get early feedback on problems, not just solutions.
Summarize trade-offs transparently—not just sell a decision.
Create channels for async, candid input outside of meetings.

3. Treat Customers as Co-Creators

The best PMs don’t just validate ideas with customers—they co-develop them. That means:

Deep 1:1 interviews, not just surveys.
Asking about workflows and pain points, not features.
Sharing rough concepts and letting the customer poke holes in them.

What This Looks Like in Practice

You’ll know your PMs are getting it right when:

Product decisions feel earned, not just presented.
Stakeholders describe the product team as collaborative, not aloof or “off on their own.”
Customers tell you your product team “gets them.”

And yes, when meetings get a little messier—because people are actually thinking and contributing.

Final Thought

Silence isn’t success. Agreement isn’t alignment. If your product managers are hearing only yeses, they may be skipping the hard conversations that build real confidence.