Ken Sandy: Influence Was Always the Point

Most conversations about artificial intelligence and the product manager begin by asking whether the role survives. This one begins somewhere more useful: by asking what the role was ever actually for.In this episode of On the Subject of Leadership, I speak with Ken Sandy—author of The Influential Product Manager, a longtime executive coach to founders and chief product officers, and an adviser to boards.His argument is not the consoling one. The documents, specifications, and roadmaps that product managers are most often judged by, he contends, were never the work. They were the residue of the work. The work was always the influence—the grounding in evidence, the advocacy for the customer, the patient assembly of agreement among people who do not report to you. If that is right, then the arrival of tools that can draft a specification in seconds is not so much a threat to the discipline as a solvent applied to it: it dissolves everything that was never essential, and leaves the…