Early in my product management career, I relied heavily on books and frameworks.
I read every product and strategy book I could find. The examples felt impossibly sophisticated, and I often wondered how great product leaders learned to think that way.
Over time, I realized those books weren’t instruction manuals. They were reflections written with hindsight. Real product work is rarely that neat. It’s messy, uncertain, and full of trade-offs. The clarity usually comes later.
One lesson has stayed with me throughout my career: frameworks don’t travel. What works in one company may not work in another because the context is different. Teams are different. Customers are different. Markets are different.
Frameworks are valuable, but they are only tools. What matters more is developing the judgment to know when and how to apply them.
That’s where product sense comes in.
The Five Senses of Product
👀 Sight
See reality, not your roadmap. Pay attention to how customers actually behave, not how you expected them to behave.
👂 Hearing
Listen beyond the words. When a customer says, “This is confusing,” they’re often describing a symptom rather than the root cause.
🤝 Feeling
Trust your instincts, but validate them. Intuition isn’t the opposite of data; it’s often the first signal that points you toward the right questions.
⚖️ Balance
Notice small shifts before they become big problems. Strong product leaders recognize when a team, product, or customer experience is drifting long before it shows up in the metrics.
🥁 Rhythm
Know when to ship. Product success isn’t about moving fast or moving slowly, it’s about moving at the right time.
I still learn from frameworks and from the experiences others generously share. The difference is that I no longer see them as answers. I see them as inputs.
Frameworks help us navigate.
Product sense helps us decide.
And unlike frameworks, product sense cannot be learned from a book alone. It is built through experience, one customer conversation, one difficult decision, and one lesson at a time.