(2025-07-03) Cutler A Cagan Critique

John Cutler: A Martin Cagan Critique. I would like to write a respectful critique of a recent Marty Cagan article on the SVPG site. (2025-07-02-CaganAgencyVsAmbition)

Why? I very much respect Marty’s work. But the article is either directed at me or people I deeply admire (the timing can't be coincidental), so I thought that in the spirit of open dialogue and mutual respect, I’d write some counterpoint.

What starts as a reflection on the challenges of building empowered teams becomes a statement about individual character, framed as a lack of ambition.

Most great PMs I know are intensely curious and a mix of skeptical and optimistic. They actively seek out inspiration and insights from high-performing teams and companies. But they also ask hard questions about how and when those lessons apply, and whether they’re drawn from survivorship bias or selective storytelling. That’s not a lack of ambition. That’s exactly the kind of critical thinking we need in product management.

If you look at the backgrounds of top performers in any discipline, you’ll find diverse paths. Yes, there are patterns, but they rarely reduce to a single formula like ambition plus agency. Context, timing, support systems, and even luck play a role. Oversimplifying this risks erasing the very complexity we aim to understand in product work. After all, we’d never treat our users as monolithic beings with a single path to success. Why do it to our peers?

We look to the best in our respective field for inspiration… we have institutions such as the Olympics, the World Cup, and the Nobel Prize to help us identify these people.
Studying a rather narrow view of “the best” can be limiting.

Product leaders should embrace critique, not criticize it. People offer critique because they care.

They gravitate towards anyone that tells them that they are just fine the way they are, and that being better is overrated anyway. Imagine a product team that ignored the context of its customers and dismissed their feedback as “just excuses.

Savvy product thinkers take a more nuanced view of constraints. First, they acknowledge that constraints exist. Second, they understand that some are more flexible than others. And third, they recognize that shifting a constraint requires naming it, experimenting, and iterating to see what changes.

In the West, we often glorify relentless striving and restlessness as signs of ambition. But there are other views. In some cultures, growth is rooted in balance, stewardship, and care.

People shape environments, and environments shape people. Efforts to argue that either "the system" or "the individual" is solely to blame are not just oversimplified; they are self-sealing.

The desire to continually improve comes from the ambition to always do better.
I also want to note that the spirit of “continuous improvement” is exactly what’s missing in many tech companies right now. We’re in a time of hasty re-orgs, layoffs, performative pivots, and short-term cost-cutting masquerading as strategy. The kind of steady, grounded, patient improvement Marty advocates for is rare, replaced by cycles of panic, executive churn, and whiplash decision-making

Having written all this, you might wonder whether I truly respect Marty’s work. That’s understandable. The answer is a very solid yes.

I want to end with something a little more personal, and maybe a little nuanced.

I had a brief musical “career” (if you can call driving around in a van on a $15 per diem and below minimum wage salary a career). I played with single-minded geniuses—the epitome of high agency and ambition. Never satisfied. Restless. And often, frankly, assholes. And then there were the stalwarts, the quiet foundations of the band. The ones who held everything together when things got tough. Often frustratingly inclusive, often overlooked. Individualists and communitarians. Verse. Pre Chorus. Chorus. Bridge. The gamut.

And what you learn quickly is this: people take diverse paths to achieve their personal view of excellence, and to achieve collective excellence.

I know the allergy to relativism, the identification with the restless striver, the impatience with those who appear less driven. And honestly, having people who think that way at the table is part of what makes product fun.

What concerns me is that diversity is what drives creativity in product, just like it does any creative pursuit. Diverse belief systems, paths, mental models, etc.

Now more than ever we need to appreciate that there are multiple valid ways to show up and do a good job.

But like any good product manager you should consider different perspectives.