Every product was once just an idea — or a pain point — in someone’s mind. That’s why so many people associate Product Management with creativity, as if the PM’s role were to invent brilliant solutions all the time. But here’s an uncomfortable truth: the PM is not (and should not be) “the ideas person.”
Product work is about uncovering real problems, prioritizing rigorously, and deciding what and when to build — always considering what’s happening inside the company and in the market. In other words: ideas are inputs; decisions are the PM’s product.
The danger of the “ideas-owner” PM
It’s common for people to expect the Product Manager to play a creative role — almost like “the inventor of the product.” But when the PM takes on that position as the single source of ideas, the risk of failure increases. That happens because the vision becomes narrow, ignoring data, users, customers, and teammates. Moreover, personal ideas tend to be less questioned and validated, which leads to solutions that don’t address the real problem.
The result can be wasted resources, lack of internal engagement, and ultimately, loss of credibility for the PM. The real differentiator of a great PM lies in curating, prioritizing, and timing ideas from multiple sources — connecting them to the company’s strategy and the market’s real pains.
Where do ideas come from? The E.M.U.C. model
Good ideas can come from anywhere. The challenge is organizing this flow of inputs so nothing gets lost. A simple model is E.M.U.C., which summarizes the four main sources:
- Employees: Support teams bring recurring tickets, Sales shares customer objections, Engineering suggests technical simplifications — it’s up to the PM to connect these dots.
- Metrics: Funnels with sudden drops, task times above expectations, churn rate by reason — data reveals frictions that no one verbalizes.
- Users: Reviews, NPS surveys, interviews, social media posts. Users describe symptoms — it’s up to you to find the cause.
- Clients: In B2B, clients ask for compliance adjustments, integrations, or contract features — often demands with direct revenue or renewal impact.
Practical tip: record each idea with four basic attributes — source, problem hypothesis, affected metric, and next action. Ideas without owners or metrics tend to become noise.
From request to real problem
Not every request describes the real pain. Often, users suggest a solution, but the PM must uncover the problem behind it.
A simple technique is the 3 Whys:
- “We need to export to Excel.”
Why? “To analyze the data better.”
Why? “Because the filters don’t cover our cases.”
Why? “Because we need to combine fields A and B, and the product doesn’t allow it.”
The original request was “export to Excel,” but the real pain was the filter limitation. The solution, therefore, isn’t Excel — it’s enabling combined fields (or improving filtering).
Before moving forward, always check for side effects: performance, security, support, interface complexity. Solving one problem shouldn’t create bigger ones.
Decision criteria: what to build and when
With a list of ideas in hand, the most strategic part of the PM’s job begins — deciding which go into the roadmap now, later, or never. A solid checklist includes:
- Expected impact (on key product metrics)
- Effort (time, resources, technical complexity)
- Strategic alignment (with company vision and business cycle)
- Risks (technical, regulatory, reputational)
- Dependencies (on other teams or systems)
- Learning (what this delivery teaches us)
From these criteria, you can use a quick decision quadrant:
- Kill: low impact, high effort.
- Park: good idea, but wrong timing or no resources.
- Prototype: high uncertainty, worth validating cheaply and quickly.
- Build: high confidence of positive impact, right timing.
A mini practical case
Request: “Add a chatbot to the payment screen.”
3 Whys: reduce abandonment → because users have doubts about installments → because the interest rules aren’t clear.
Real problem: lack of clarity on installment options.
Decision: Prototype with a tooltip and installment simulation.
Target metric: checkout conversion and clicks on simulation.
Expected result: less abandonment, without the complexity of maintaining a chatbot.
Conclusion
Being a PM means living in between: between ideas and strategy, between requests and problems, between data and human context. Your competitive advantage isn’t having the best idea — it’s creating the best process for decision-making.
When you master your idea sources (E.M.U.C.), ask the right questions, and define what and when to build, the product evolves with focus — and the team grows along with it.