Three product operations leaders expose the uncomfortable truth behind product ops failures — and it's not what you think.

Jennifer Bronson has spent years building documentation and Notion spaces teams asked for — then never used. The fix? Treat product ops like a product. Build with your users, not for them.

Karin Cross-Smith reframes everything with one brilliant metaphor: driving a car. You don't think about starting the engine or reversing the driveway — you just get to the coffee shop. That's what great PLM should feel like. Invisible, frictionless, essential.

Amanda Herbert adds the final piece: sometimes it's not a skill gap at all. When teams consistently underperform, the problem is often the system they're operating in — not the people.

Key takeaways:

• Stop building for PMs. Build with them.

• The best governance is the kind nobody notices.

• Training completion rates mean nothing. Measure behaviour change.

• If the system is blocking the behaviours you want, no process fixes it.