# AI as Layer: Product Management Fundamentals

**Podcast:** Product Momentum Podcast
**Published:** 2026-10-27

## Transcript

When you say AI is a layer on top, what does that mean?
Can you explain that to us a little bit?
So a lot of people are expecting you to be AI first and build with AI, an AI enablement of your product.
So when I say AI is a layer on top, it's another tool, another skill that as a product manager you have to have in your arsenal, but it's not something that's going to be 10 years from now.
the next thing.
There'll be another sling.
You mentioned that you've got three tactics for product managers to use today to kind of reinforce fundamentals.
Tell us about those.
Yeah.
So the premise of my talk is that you...
can still do good product management without having to ask for permission and you don't have to be loud about it.
You can do it quietly and still stick to the fundamentals.
Make sure that you are putting the human in the center and making sure that you're answering for the human.
You can make sure that you are tied to a business solution that you So that's number two.
It's setting a metric and working towards that metric.
And then the last one is to have the end in mind, making sure that you have a goal and a problem that you're solving.
So those aren't new.
Those are the foundations of product management.
We spend so much time talking about product in the AI space, but I think there is a large part of our community.
especially at enterprise where not everyone is working on the bleeding edge solutions, right?
How do you keep them motivated when all the attention and all the, it seems like all the budgets are going towards the bleeding edge stuff?
I think it goes back to OKRs and are you hitting your objectives and, you know, making sure people are bought into working on the metrics that are going to move them towards their objectives so you make sure that everybody still feels valuable because those keeping the lights on work.
that they're what brings in the money, what, you know, the cash cows from the company.
So you have to make sure that you, as a leader, also are voicing to those people, this is still important, this still matters.
Do you think some of the challenges that we're seeing today in terms of motivation, right, or lack of clarity, how much of that is just AI or how much of that is like a combination of AI and kind of like our post-pandemic working structure?
I do think that with the...
All of the movement and the dynamics of our car environment, a lot of people are off-roading the responsibility of creating a good strategy to AI.
And that's what's leading to a lot of the problems, is people are taking the accountability and the ownership of saying, I'm responsible for leading this organization, and here's what the direction we're going in, and here's how we're going to get there, and here's the sound strategy.
They're saying, okay, just go build something, and that's how we end up with AI slot.
Dan, we just had an awesome talk with Alicia Dixon.
This one was one for the product managers.
Tell us all about it.
Yeah, you know, it was really great speaking with a product leader about some of the day-to-day that goes into being a product manager, especially when you're trying to figure out clarity over strategy and outcomes and challenging assumptions and kind of work together to push the right direction.
Yeah, one of our most practical episodes yet.
Let's do it.
Here we are.
at Mind the Product Conference in Chicago.
We are sitting down today with Alicia Dixon.
You are the director of product management at Marriott.
Before that, you were at Walmart, Dell, a whole bunch of household brands.
I found out also that we share a similar alum.
We both went to CUNY Brewer College.
So thanks for coming and hanging out with us today.
Happy to be here today.
Someone jumping right in, right?
World is crazy.
AI has made the...
the pace of change seem like it's almost exponential.
But you're talking about your thesis is that as product managers, this isn't the first time.
Do you like to just describe how product management is staying the same in these chaotic times?
Sure.
So when we spoke before, I actually had a different thesis that I'm going to talk about today because I did some more research.
So my original thesis was that product management would have these pendulum swings back and forth between you had to be very business oriented or technically oriented.
And when I did more research, I realized that the foundations and the good parts.
Don't go away.
So product management started in the 1930s with actually as part of brand management at P&G.
A guy named Neil McElvoy sent a memo out and was talking about how someone should own this brand, someone should be responsible, or whether or not it's successful, how it performs, understanding if it's going to do what the cost card wants it to do.
So that was the basis, the main foundation for product management.
And then in the 1950s is when HP picked it up.
So that's when it moved over to technology.
And so now there's just, okay, you have to be a partner.
It should be the bridge between engineers and the customer.
So you add another layer on top.
And then you go to the 1990s with Netscape.
That's when the famous partner managers or the CEO of the product memo was written.
People still tout that one today.
So you add...
a layer of customer centricity and the whole design thinking and all those things.
And then after that, in the 2000s, now we go with agile and then lean and continuous discovery habits, all those things.
So we have had these layers build over decades.
And now AI, and my dearity is AI is another layer going on top of all of that.
Long-winded answer, but...
Yeah.
No, I love it.
I never really bought into the CEO of the product.
It didn't come with a discretionary budget or a country club membership.
Or a car.
So I was always out on that.
Or the golden parachute.
No parachute.
Right.
Why today?
When you say AI is a layer on top.
What does that mean?
Can you explain that to us?
Yeah.
So a lot of people are expecting you to be AI first and build with AI and this AI enablement of your product.
So when I say AI is a layer on top, it's another tool, another skill that as a product manager, you have to have in your arsenal.
But it's not something that's going to be 10 years from now, the next thing, there'll be another screen.
So does that?
Yeah.
Yeah.
So.
You mentioned that you've got three tactics for product managers to use today to kind of reinforce fundamentals.
Total stoppage.
Yeah.
So the premise of my talk is that you can still do good product management without having to ask for permission and you don't have to be loud about it.
You can do it quietly and still stick to the fundamentals of popular activities.
So you can make sure that you are putting the human in the center and making sure that you're answering for the human.
You can make sure that you are...
tie it to a business solution that you, so that's number two.
It's having, setting a metric and working towards that metric.
And then the last one is to have the end in mind.
So don't just do something for the sake of doing it, making sure that you have a goal and a problem that you're solving.
So like, those are new, those are the foundations of product management.
But I talk, I give some examples in my talk about how you can do those and still.
respond to this AI than the end of your VP say, where's the AI?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Do you think that sounds like, sounds a little bit like enabling that concept of like localized strategy that Cassidy Fine talked to us about?
Yeah.
I was actually just going to go there.
So thanks for the set.
Yeah.
Right.
You know, you, you just mentioned you're having an idea of where you're going.
I'm curious.
Advice you have for the product managers out there, especially who maybe the outcomes aren't clear, right?
Maybe from the top down, they're not being communicated.
How can they work from the bottom up in that quiet manner to keep things moving?
Well, so there's actually a paradox in my talk, and I should have said this in my last day.
You do the work quietly, but then you got to be loud about what you're producing, what your value added is.
So I would say for those people, just go to being loud.
They need to still do the same fundamentals, but make sure they're communicating to everybody who will listen of here's what I've learned.
Here's who I've talked to.
Here's what it means.
Here's the outcome that we've gotten so far.
Here's where we still want to go.
Making sure that you communicate frequently.
All of that.
Well, I mean, and yeah, you're a product leader at, you know, some large organizations.
Yeah.
How would you respond to a case where a product manager is maybe suggesting?
an objective because they were uncertain.
Like, how would you coach them?
Of a partner who's...
Yeah, right.
Maybe the objective or the outcome isn't clear to them.
So they're taking on themselves.
I think this is a reasonable objective or outcome.
Help.
So if I'm understanding your question correctly, the leadership has said, go do this thing and they don't quite understand the role?
Or, you know, it's kind of nebulous.
Like maybe there's the PowerPoint deck of strategy that gets communicated, but at the product level.
Maybe it's kind of boundary a little bit.
Do your roadmap, deliver your features.
So like maybe the company, if I used Walmart as an example, the company's going all in on AI agents and shopping, but I'm over here, my last job, I'm working on UGC.
What does UGC have to do with agents?
Yeah.
Like how do I fit that objective into what I do is day to day?
Yeah.
So for those people, I would tell them to get time with their skip.
And frankly, have a conversation and say, this is what I understood the strategy to be.
Give a hypothesis of here's what I think you said and let them course correct.
Don't go in and just say, I don't understand this.
Explain it to me.
Make sure that you give it some thought and then go seek clarification.
And if they can't give you an answer out of that conversation, then you've got a bigger problem.
But hopefully you should get clarification from that.
Yeah, I think it's an interest.
We spend so much time talking about product in the AI space, but I think there is a large part of our community, especially we're enterprise, where not everyone is working on the bleeding edge solutions.
Somebody's working on the products they're just keeping the lights on.
How do you keep them motivated when all the attention and all the budgets are going towards the bleeding edge stuff?
How do you keep them motivated?
It goes back to OKRs and are you hitting your objectives and, you know, making sure people are bought into working on the metrics that are going to move them towards their objectives.
And when you hit your objectives, that's a win and you celebrate those wins.
So you make sure that everybody still feels valuable because those keeping the lights on work that they're what brings in the money with, you know, the cash cows for the company.
So you have to make sure that you as a leader also are.
voicing those people, this is still important, this still matters.
Do you think some of the challenges that we're seeing today in terms of motivation, right, or lack of clarity, how much of that is just AI or how much of that is like a combination of AI and kind of like our post-pandemic working structure?
Are you trying to get in trouble?
Yes.
Yeah, I do try to get people in trouble a lot.
That's kind of my thing.
I do think that with the...
All of the movement and the dynamics of our current environment, a lot of people are offloading the responsibility of creating a good strategy to AI.
And that's what's leading to a lot of the problems is people are taking the accountability and the ownership of saying, I'm responsible for leading this organization.
And here's what the direction we're going in.
And here's how we're going to get there.
Here's a sound strategy.
They're saying, OK, just go build something.
And that's how we are.
That's what AI is love.
Yeah.
I think it's also how we're going to end up with cautionary tales of like, oh, we weren't counting on $4 million of tokens done to mass.
Exactly.
But we then released this feature that nobody said that they wanted and nobody agreed to pay for.
And now we're in this.
And I have to get a disclaimer for that previous answer that that is not the thoughts of either of any of my previous employers, recurring employer.
That's my personal thought.
Absolutely.
Nobody get in trouble on today's pod.
So in like.
You've worked for very large organizations, right?
And some of us, I think when we think about like the listenership of this pod, that's actually probably closer to like what the major cohort is, right?
Companies with a thousand plus people.
Where do you see larger organizations in terms of their adoption of AI, but also knowing that because they need to adopt AI, we also need sound strategy.
Do you think that larger organizations?
typically have sound strategy or are they kind of like relying on their size to kind of drive their mind?
And don't name always.
No, not the main names.
Thank you for cautioning me though.
No, I was actually going to say though, I don't think it's a one size fits all.
It's the same for everybody.
I think that there, even within the same company, there are pockets of groups that are executing very well and they have the strategy and they are implementing AI and...
logical manner that is making sense for them.
And then there are other parts of the company that are just creating the slop and like just run, just go do it.
So it really comes down to who the leadership is over that particular tower organization.
It's kind of like David Pereira said, you know, that AI is an accelerant.
You know, if you have strong fundamentals and strong practices, it makes those stronger.
And if you have weak, it makes those worse.
Yeah, that's a good connection.
So as a product leader at a larger organization, what are you looking for from the product professionals under you in order to help drive your business forward and bring ideas to you that you can help greenlight?
What's the best way for product professionals to do that, present their ideas to them?
Present their ideas?
That's me, Brian.
So that's one of the things that AI helps us do really well now is so that you can...
very quickly test an idea without having to have poured a whole lot of time and energy into it.
So what I'm still looking for, though, is the critical thinking and the judgment and the thought of here's...
here's the problem we're trying to solve and now here are some options that ASI is giving me to try to solve them.
So you can present those options and then experiment and test those options and see which one bubbles up to the top as being the right one.
But you have to have that critical thinking and judgment and also to focus on customer at the beginning.
So those are fundamentals that have not changed.
As the leader in your org, how much do you want to know about the experiments before they happen?
For me, I like to be in the weeds and I find it enjoyable.
So I just want to know.
It's like, what did you try?
What did you have at work?
And that's, you know, tinkering around.
But I think that for a lot of leaders, they just want to see the results.
They want to see, OK, our hypothesis was X and that if we did that, we would get Y and then we go to Z.
And they want to hear, OK, did you get the Z or not?
If not, where did you get?
So you really have to understand who your leadership is and how they want to be communicated with and adjust to Fort Newey.
So, you know, kind of thinking down that path to, you know, Marty Kagan was kind of the one of the four thinkers of like the empowered product teams.
But empowered product team doesn't mean like, hey, Sean, go off and product, you know, in a vacuum, right?
Like there is leadership constraints that need to be put on it.
Yeah, how do you provide those constraints to the team so that they can be productive and not end up spinning off and kind of doing their own thing?
So that's the part that still has to be top down.
We talked about the striving and the vision, but also you have to say, okay, shorter term, this is what's most important and go after this.
And then the team gets the power to do that.
So I am up one of the Kagan disciples, I would say, or far.
So that's how he explains it.
And that's my plea as well.
What do you think is like on the horizon?
So you said that, you know, product management, like things happen, right?
But ultimately the fundamentals stay the same and the AI is just the current thing.
What do you think is like, is our agentic systems are like more agentic systems next?
You know, we just listened to Alexa Zhang talk about how the job is actually moving to like designing the system versus designing the product.
Where do you think, what do you think is coming next in terms of like, what is the next thing we've got to be ready for?
Well, I do think agents are one thing, but I actually feel this is going to be a hot take.
I feel like there might be a resistance of customers who reject AI and want people to go back to the artistry and that they're going to see people who are looking for, oh, I want something handcrafted.
I want something that was made by an expert.
So that doesn't necessarily.
relate to software but that's what I see is coming next I think that there are a lot of people who are so afraid of AI but that might be where the trend switch yeah that kind of follows like what Martin was saying yeah I'm like reducing purchasing intent just by mentioning that you've got yeah like my thing does AI like I'm gonna put that back on the shelf yeah yeah right thank you so much for being with us today I think like one of my biggest takeaways And where we kind of, what we, the path that we went down was like, not challenging leadership, but really presenting like, kind of like counter case to some of their assumptions.
Right.
And doing it in a productive way versus like, I don't like this.
Right.
Absolutely.
Right.
So, or this is wrong.
That's not what people want to hear.
People don't want to hear this is wrong.
People want to hear this.
Here's some of the assumptions that I think we've made at this layer and like, here's how it appears, how I'm challenging.
Yes.
You have to go in with the case of, okay, I understood you to be asking for this, this thing.
But when I did more research, I think it's actually this other thing.
And here's why I think it's this other thing.
And, and then open up a dialogue.
You can't just say, no, you were Rami and I'm doing this instead.
That's a good way to get fired.
I think, but I think right with that though, like.
There's also an empowerment, like, it's okay to speak up, right?
It's okay to bring cases, like, don't just take, you know, in order, right, and go do the thing.
Like, if you put the thought in, like, it's okay to say, hey, I'm seeing this against this assumption.
Most leaders that I've seen welcome someone who's going to take the time to do that thinking and present, here's how I saw it and I got these other things, then that initiative will position you well.
Well, this has been awesome for our listeners because we've kind of got a playbook of, like, If you don't like the direction that you're moving in or if you're just being pulled, do AI, you've got a path forward.
I think so.
What's next for you after mind the product?
Were you speaking anywhere else?
I have a lot of preferences that I'm going to as an attendee.
I've been doing any more speaking for a while.
It's got a lot of you.
Yeah.
We believe it.
We believe it.
Thank you so much for being with us today.
Okay.
Thank you for having me.