Revenue and Customers, Not Feature Counts
Good PMs focus the team on revenue and customers. That's the scoreboard. Bad PMs focus the team on how many features the competition is building, which feels like strategy but is really just anxiety with a spreadsheet.
The distinction shows up in planning too. Good product managers think about delivering superior value to the market during product planning, and about market share and revenue goals during the launch. Bad PMs confuse the two: they think value means matching a competitor's feature list at a lower price, and they mix up delivering value with the mechanics of pricing.
This is the CEO frame again. A CEO doesn't measure the business in features shipped. Neither should the person acting as CEO of the product.
“Good product managers focus the team on revenue and customers. Bad product managers focus the team on how many features Microsoft is building.”
Key idea
The scoreboard is revenue and customers. Feature-count comparisons with competitors are a distraction dressed up as strategy.