How to stay connected to impact whilst thinking strategically

The Great Strategy Trap: When Career ‘Progression’ Feels Like Regression

You’ve been offered the promotion every Product Manager supposedly dreams of: Head of Product Strategy. More money, more autonomy, a seat at the executive table. So why does it feel like you’re about to lose your soul?

A recent viral Reddit post from a PM who made exactly this leap has the product community in knots. They’ve moved from hands-on product work to pure strategy, and they’re miserable. The post struck such a chord that it’s racked up hundreds of upvotes and dozens of comments from fellow PMs sharing their own existential crises.

If you’re considering a similar move…or you’re already trapped in strategy purgatory…this one’s for you.

The Hollow Promise of Pure Strategy

Here’s what nobody tells you about pure strategy roles: they often feel utterly disconnected from the work that made you fall in love with product management in the first place. You’re no longer solving user problems directly, shipping features, or seeing the immediate impact of your decisions.

Instead, you’re writing strategy documents that may never see daylight, facilitating endless alignment meetings, and managing executive egos rather than building products. The tangible satisfaction of turning user pain into product solutions? Gone. The rush of seeing your feature go live and watching adoption climb? Ancient history.

It’s like being promoted from head baker to menu consultant and suddenly, you’re designing elaborate five-course meals on paper whilst never touching flour again. You know what good bread feels like, but you’re stuck describing texture to people who’ve never kneaded dough. The disconnect is maddening.

Worse still, as layoffs sweep through tech, these pure strategy roles are often the first to go. When companies tighten their belts, they keep the people building products and cut the ones writing about building products. You’ve traded job security for a fancier title and a nagging sense that you’ve become what one Reddit commenter brutally called a “professional bullshitter.”

The Identity Crisis

What used to be about day-to-day satisfaction is now about professional identity. Most great Product Managers are builders at heart. We thrive on the intersection of user needs, technical constraints, and business goals. Strip away the building, and you’re left with an expensive consultant who used to make things.

The Reddit thread is full of PMs who’ve realised that money and prestige can’t replace the fundamental satisfaction of creating products that people actually use. As one commenter put it: “I miss doing the work.”

The Integration Solution: Strategy With Your Hands Still Dirty

Here’s the thing: the best product strategy isn’t created in ivory towers…it emerges from the trenches. You don’t need to choose between thinking strategically and staying connected to execution. The most effective Product Leaders do both.

1. Reframe Strategy as Applied Craft

Stop thinking of strategy as separate from execution. Instead, view it as the highest form of product craft. The ability to see patterns across multiple products, teams, and time horizons whilst maintaining deep empathy for users and respect for technical realities.

Great strategy should feel like a well-tested recipe: grounded in real ingredients (data, user feedback, technical constraints), refined through multiple iterations, and proven to deliver consistent results.

2. Stay Connected to the Kitchen

Build direct touchpoints with product work into your strategic role:

• Own a small product directly: Keep one feature or product area under your direct ownership
• Conduct user research personally: Don’t delegate all customer contact to researchers
• Attend engineering stand-ups: Stay connected to technical realities and constraints
• Review support tickets weekly: Keep your finger on the pulse of user pain
• Ship something monthly: Even small improvements keep your execution muscles active

3. Make Strategy Tangible

Transform abstract strategy work into concrete, measurable outcomes:

• Replace strategy documents with prototype strategies. Build small experiments that test strategic assumptions
• Measure strategy success through product metrics, not presentation applause
• Create “strategy artefacts” that teams can actually use: frameworks, templates, decision trees
• Establish clear threads from strategic decisions to shipping features

4. Design Strategy Roles That Don’t Suck

If you’re hiring for or designing strategic roles, avoid the common pitfalls:

• Don’t separate strategy from accountability: strategic leaders should own outcomes, not just recommendations
• Avoid pure coordination roles: ensure strategic roles include decision-making authority
• Maintain product ownership: give strategic leaders direct responsibility for product areas
• Create feedback loops: build mechanisms for strategies to be tested and refined through real product work

Finding Fulfillment Without Sacrificing Growth

The career ladder doesn’t have to lead away from the work you love. Some of the most successful Product Leaders I know have built careers that scale their impact without sacrificing their connection to craft.

They think strategically whilst keeping their hands dirty. They influence through example rather than PowerPoint. They build products that embody their strategy rather than writing strategies that never become products.

If you’re in a pure strategy role that’s leaving you empty, it’s not too late. Start small: pick up a feature, join user research sessions, attend planning meetings. Reconnect with the craft that made you passionate about product work in the first place.

And if you’re considering a strategic role, ask the hard questions: Will I still be building products? Will I have direct user contact? Can I measure my impact through product metrics? Will I be accountable for outcomes, not just recommendations?

Because at the end of the day, the best product strategies are the ones that ship.