For the past 20 years, Teresa Torres has championed the cause of product discovery. We’ve made progress, she says, but there are plenty of companies and teams out there who don’t know much about their customers – and still think they have all the answers. Is AI exacerbating the problem?

In this episode, Teresa returns to Product Momentum taking us on a rollercoaster ride that begins in a pre-ChatGPT world full of hopeful optimism in which product leaders were (slowly, steadily) recognizing the value good Discovery brings – but then spirals through phases of grief as AI-powered Delivery seems to have reclaimed our attention.

As you’ll hear, Teresa remains bullish on AI. But she’s also concerned that AI is pulling us in the wrong direction, making it easier and faster to build and, thus, putting even more emphasis on Delivery. Ever the optimist, Teresa believes that product builders can use the same technology that created today’s predicament to help us course-correct, refocusing our attention on high-quality Discovery practices.

Here’s a few of our key takeaways:

AI Might Be Helping Us Build the Wrong Thing

In our earlier episode with Teresa (58 / Innovate with Product Discovery, published shortly before the release her Continuous Discovery Habits, a must read for anyone in the software space), Teresa talked about how the product community under-emphasized Discovery and over-emphasized Delivery. It was a time highlighted by a gnawing anxiety that we were building the wrong stuff. Since then, the trend was moving back toward a focus on Discovery, Teresa says, until AI changed the trajectory again.

“AI is making it easier and faster to build software,” Teresa says. “But as we do, we’re once again putting even more emphasis on Delivery and forgetting to ask whether we’re building the right thing?”

AI’s Double-Edged Sword: Broad Participation vs. Product Coherence

Teams across the organization are now contributing to software development – a positive trend that Teresa calls awesome.

“We want to empower product teams and draw people closer to the customer to impact the product in positive ways,” Teresa says. “But it’s equally terrifying: who’s creating product coherence, and how do we make sure [each team] is serving the market and not their own specific needs?”

The Opportunity Solution Tree: A Structure Of Discovery That Doesn’t Change

With the Opportunity Solution Tree, Teresa provides teams with “a simple underlying structure that gives us a mental representation” of the interaction between what success looks like (outcome), our customers and their needs (opportunity space), and impact on our customers and our business.

“Do I think that’s ever gonna change?,” Teresa asks. “I don’t. We’re always gonna have to create value for our business. We’re always going to have to create value for our customers. Hopefully, we are doing one thing to accomplish both – not doing competing things.”

As AI enables more people to be makers, teams and organizations will learn new skills and allow everyone who wants, to contribute while still delivering a coherent product that serves their users.

“I actually think that’s gonna be net positive in the long run,” Teresa concludes.

You can catch even more of Teresa’s insights by checking out her podcast, Just Now Possible, which releases new episodes every Thursday. And, beginning this month (Jan. 2026), Teresa and Product Talk are launching a new course called, Business Fundamentals.

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Phil Hornby is an experienced product leader, coach, and technologist whose mission is to help product leaders think clearly, make strong decisions, and take powerful action that drives high-impact outcomes. He’s a regular speaker at product events and is co-host of the “Talking Roadmaps” YouTube channel and podcast.

If Phil were asked to distill product management down to its core, he’d tell us, “We’re paid to have an opinion.” Not simply putting a ‘licked finger to the wind,’ but trusting your experience and intuition to make high-quality decisions. Ah, and also to remember: there’s a difference between a high-quality decision and the “right” decision. There’s no way to guarantee that we make the right decision, Phil says, but there’re plenty of ways we can improve our odds.

Here’s what we learned:

Empowerment Is ‘Making Decisions that Stick’

At its most fundamental level, doing Product is decision making, Phil says. “That that’s like the whole heart of it. When we use the term empowered to describe product teams, we talk about their ability to make decisions that stick. If you can’t make a decision stick, then you’re not empowered. It’s really boiled down to this: empowerment is at the heart of all product work.

Trust = Character + Competence

Trust is an essential component in any relationship. Perhaps even more so in the often high-stakes world of product management. Phil’s hypothesis is that high-quality decision making cannot occur in its absence.

“Trust comes down to two core components,” he says, “character and competence. You want others to look at you and say, ‘That’s someone I can trust.’ That’s the character…. Then there’s competence: ‘Do I think you can make it? Have you got the skills to make that high-quality decision? And those two things combine to provide trust.

‘We’re Paid to Have an Opinion’ – Evidence-informed Decisionmaking

Phil talks about being evidence informed versus data driven, because “data can tell you anything. As product managers,” he adds, “I can massage the data to show whatever the heck I want it to do.

“We absolutely need to bring data into our decision-making process,” Phil continues. “Data is a form of quantitative evidence, but then we need the anecdotes and other feedback to complete the equation. But we’re humans, we also have intuition. And, dare I say it, we are paid to have an opinion – to understand our markets, to bring that tacit knowledge, which some people call product sense, and apply it to the context of the situation we’re in.”

Catch the entire episode with Phil Hornby and learn even more about:

• His 6-step process for raising the odds of making a high-quality decision.
• How product roadmaps reflect your team’s decision tree of what to do and when.
• Why strong opinions are valuable, as long as we’re open to the opinions of others.

The post 178 / Phil Hornby: How To Make High-Quality Decisions That Stick appeared first on ITX Corp..

Michelle Parsons is a dynamic product leader who has led high-growth teams at Kayak, Spotify, Netflix, Hinge, and Lex. Her passion for building community and embracing new challenges has recently brought her to a leadership role in a new startup that helps people reconnect to themselves and one another.

In this episode of Product Momentum, Michelle joins Sean and Dan to talk about “making bets” – not just the seductive big bets that promise game-changing innovation – but also the smaller bets and quick hits that also play important roles in delivering value, validating assumptions, and mitigating risk.

Here’s what we learned:

The Balanced Portfolio Framework

At the heart of Michelle’s thinking is the notion of the Balanced Portfolio Framework – an idea she developed while leading product for kids’ content at Netflix. Under this framework, your roadmap is divided into three buckets – big bets, smaller bets, and quick hits – that help you pursue transformational innovation while delivering consistent value.

As you’ll hear, connecting the dots between them helps to ensure that product work is driven by the value delivered to users and your business.

Big bets start with user insights and clear hypotheses

Big bets are the bold, strategic moves that are super-impactful, but also come with a great deal of uncertainty. They start with user insights and clear hypotheses that address the following questions: What need are we trying to solve? Why does it matter to our users? What metric will this move – and why does that metric matter for business impact?

“These are the things that everyone wants to work on,” Michelle adds. “But they’re never just ‘cool ideas.’ They’re the big innovative features that bring your strategy to life. But they come with a ton of unknowns. Super impactful, but really, really risky.”

Small bets preserve resources and de-risk the big bet

Think of small bets as the “meat and potatoes” of your roadmap – incremental improvements like polishing UX, refining workflows, or optimizing metrics.

Here’s what Michelle says: “The small bets are really about the optimizations and enhancements, the things that consistently create incremental impact for your users. Not only do they touch on macro metrics like retention, engagement, and delight, but they also help to de-risk the big bets.”

Quick hits are the targeted work that accelerate learning

We’re all familiar with those small, fast, low-cost experiments or enhancements. These are the low-hanging fruit that support rapid learning.

“A quick hit is a learning task,” Michelle adds – “not to be confused with a quick win.” Certainly, they can also be quick wins, but “quick hits are really this body of work, discreetly tied a hypothesis or a data point that you want to prove out further.”

Use storytelling to align stakeholders around ‘why’

Michelle emphasizes that roadmap planning is not just an exercise in listing features, but a storytelling exercise. Because many stakeholders – executives, founders, investors –don’t live in the product trenches. To get buy-in, you need to clearly articulate: What problem we’re solving, for whom, why it matters, and how this work moves the needle.

Be sure to watch/listen to our entire conversation with Michelle, so that you can catch her thoughts about:

• How her team at Netflix utilized the Balanced Portfolio Framework.
• The role AI can play in balancing bets that deliver user benefit and business value.
• Michelle’s new start-up plans for building connections and community.

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