After welcoming our fourth child, I began asking myself: what if I approached parenthood with the same strategic intention as I did towards my career? What if all parents did? Would our children lead more fulfilling lives? Would parents find more fulfillment for themselves because of an improved sense of purpose?
As a product manager, I seek to balance between advocating for a better future (vision and strategy) and delivering outcomes now (tactical execution) to maximize the impact of my products. As a parent, I aim to balance between empowering my children for tomorrow while forming deep connections with them today to maximize their fulfillment in life.
In this blog, I will introduce a six-part framework to describe the role of a parent, represented in an infinity loop to illustrate the enduring impact parents hope to have on their children and the world. I leverage my experience bringing clarity to the role of a product manager which I’ll compare to the role of a parent, highlighting the similar balance between preparing for the future while delivering in the present. I’ll close by suggesting three actionable takeaways to apply towards your approach to parenthood so we can all help our children’s children inherit a world better than the one we entered.
Parents Maximize their Child’s Fulfillment in Life
Parents Empower Their Child for Tomorrow by inspiring them to envision a future and incentivizing independence to enable your child to progress toward that future, having learned from your example for how to live a fulfilling life. Parents Connect With Their Child Today by empathizing and laughing with your child’s individual self to then learn from them, building mutual trust and connection that will carry your child forward. Both empowerment and connection, when balanced, reinforce each other to maximize a child’s potential and fulfillment in life.
Inspire your child to envision and achieve a better future. Instill in your child the unshakable belief that the future holds limitless possibilities, each one shaped by the choices they make today. Encourage them to dream boldly, knowing that tomorrow can be brighter than today. Share your faith that everything happens for a reason and that with time, anything is possible. Teach them to not just hope for a better world, but to actively envision it—for themselves and for others. Show them that a better tomorrow isn’t something to wait for; it’s something to reach for. Motivate them to take small, determined steps every day to turn their aspirations into action, and action into actuality.
As your child dreams for and believes in a brighter tomorrow, you aim to strengthen their independence so that they can more confidently lead themselves and the world towards their envisioned future.
Incentivize Independence in your child to take steps forward, with you behind in support as needed. Establish rules and boundaries, reinforced with positive rewards and praise, not punishments, to provide structure for your child to grow upon and within. Clearly speak and ensure your child understands your expectations to orient their exploratory energy to worthwhile unknowns, not challenging the fabric of what will make a happy and functioning family. Encourage vulnerability and resilience by celebrating failures and disappointments as essential opportunities for growth. Demonstrate that you will always be there for support through any challenging yet constructive pain. Guide your child in their journey of self-discovery. Highlight their individuality so that they take ownership of their life in a direction that leverages and offers their uniqueness towards bettering themselves and the world.
As you witness your child take flight towards the boundless opportunities ahead of them, you find yourself motivated to prove your worthiness of being their parent and to exemplify how a person can live their best life.
Exemplify the type of human you hope your child strives to be like and better than. Be the change in the world you want your children to witness, replicate, and evolve. They are always watching and learning more from what they see you do than compared to what they hear you say. From the little things (e.g., your screen use in front of them) to the medium things (e.g., your work ethic towards your career and lifelong education) to the big things (e.g., how you treat yourself, your spouse, your children, and others) to the biggest thing (i.e., how you view yourself, your life, and the world), set the bar which you wish they aspire to exceed. Show them at every stage of life and through every up and down, what a hopeful, peaceful, vulnerable, and loving human being can achieve (see how these states of being all connect). And share your perspective with them through artistic expression so they may learn from your inner self, in addition to your words and actions. Don’t just set a bar for them to try and jump over. Empower them to go higher than you ever could by building a foundation for them to jump off of.
As you strive to set the best example of a human’s approach to life, you recognize and highlight that humanity is a shared existence requiring every person to empathize with fellow people around them.
Empathize with your child, the unique human that they are. Help your child recognize, appreciate, and leverage their emotions to facilitate their development of their sense of self. Ask why they act, say, or think in the way they do, always starting by assuming the most generous interpretation. Listen to their response. Converse with curiosity about their emotions and source of those emotions. Feel their emotions yourself, lessen the burden of their lows, and amplify their highs, all while validating that their emotions are true and justified (even if their actions are not). Learn who they are, and why, to connect with them deeply as two unique humans in this shared world.
As we learn more about our child and see them as a separate human to ourselves, we become more motivated to strengthen our friendship with them via shared laughter and joy.
Laugh Together with your child to spread joy. Create an environment and provide the spark that ignites deep laughter in your child to light their soul, your hope, and the world’s collective mood. Experiment with different ways to bring your child joy. Appreciate that often it won’t be you bringing them joy, rather it will be them inviting you into their mindful and happy world. Join them in their passions, while also opening their minds to new opportunities for joyous exploration. Mirror their smiles and laughs with your own to create a reinforcing loop of two humans sharing and growing each other’s joy.
With an improved understanding of the interests of your child, we can deepen our appreciation of their differences which we can learn from to grow as unique individuals.
Learn From your child to improve yourself and their sense of self. Your child, at every stage of life, offers a unique perspective shaped by their personality, life experiences, and evolving understanding of the world. Appreciate this viewpoint for what it is—an opportunity to expand your own. When they are young, learn from their innocent mindfulness and curiosity to become more present and see the world with more curiosity of why it is and how it could be. As they grow, learn from how you advise them and how they act to navigate their social interactions, reflecting on how you can better interact with those around you. As they mature into adulthood, learn from their different beliefs on society’s needs, challenging your own assumptions which may have become outdated. Demonstrate the value of lifelong learning, enabled by humbly accepting that you can learn from anyone at any time. Develop mutual respect so that both parent and child look at the other as someone to teach, and someone to learn from.
As you learn more from your child, the sense of wonderment regarding your child’s potential grows, motivating you to inspire them to reach for higher future highs for themself and the world.
Deepening connection between a parent and child as two individuals strengthens your child’s confidence in their own self, empowering your child to dream openly and aspire to become a better, more fulfilled human. Your child’s growth as an individual expands the possibilities for sharing new emotions, passions, and life lessons between parent and child. This creates an enduring cycle of personal growth and shared connection, propelling both parent and child to live more fulfilling lives, aided by each other.
Parents are Product Managers, the Child is their Product for this World
If we consider the parent(s) and the family unit as the “business,” we can extend this analogy to consider the children as the products, built upon the foundation of the parent(s) as the “platform.” But then who are the “customers?” I believe we exist to advance humanity (see my vision for a 21st century renaissance), making the customers the world.
Leveraging this analogy, what can a parent learn from product management? What is the role of a product manager? What is their goal, how do they go about it?
Product Managers Maximize their Product’s Impact
Product managers (PMs) envision a future state and help their organization work backwards from that to deliver outcomes customers need, thereby maximizing the impact of their products on customers’ lives and the business. PMs discover and clarify customers’ needs, set the strategy to meet those needs, and build the investment pipeline of new initiatives to invest in next.
Once they build consensus on the next step to take, PMs develop the requirements for their product to solve and then work with customers to approve and promote the right solution to customers’ problems. After releasing a product or feature, PMs manage the lifecycle to continuously engage with customers to learn and prioritize how to best improve the product until they replace it and identify how and when that occurs. Product managers tie this customer partnership on existing products into identifying the new products and functionalities to develop next to complete this infinite loop of always innovating on behalf of customers.
Discover and Clarify Customer Needs to Inform the Team (User Flows, Customer Chains, Market Assessments, Trends). PMs identify customer segments, assess opportunities, and analyze market trends to uncover unmet needs. PMs drive customer discovery and distill insights to educate the team about customer pain points, evolve the product to be one customers love, and strengthen the team’s confidence in our product decisions.
Set the Strategy to Align the Team (North Star, 3-Year Plan, Roadmaps). PMs set a clear vision of the future state to work backwards from, outlining long-term goals to get there. PMs prioritize roadmaps using intuition and metrics they’ve defined to measure progress in the desired direction.
Build the Investment Pipeline to Fund New Efforts (PR/FAQs, Business Cases, Goals). PMs propose and justify what to do next, gaining leadership’s support for the opportunity while partnering with engineering to ensure feasibility. PMs simplify the complex need into clear quantifiable program goals to secure funding and kickstart the development team with clarity.
Develop the Requirements to Guide Engineering (PRDs). PMs drive alignment, in plain language, on how the product needs to function for the customer without defining the solution. PMs adapt these requirements as new information emerges while ensuring all stakeholders understand the rationale for these changes to empower development teams.
Approve the Solution to Launch and Promote the Right Product (Gate Reviews, Promotional Content). PMs advocate for and sign off on the business and customer needs when program teams ask to progress the technical maturity of the product to the next stage (Concept to Alpha to Beta to General Availability). PMs oversee the development of product marketing material, then proactively promote the solution to drum up new business.
Manage the Product Lifecycle to Delight Our Customers (CI Triage, Lifecycle Strategy) Once launched, PMs assess the viability of Continuous Improvement (CI) requests and track product performance to inform the appetite for future investment. PMs develop reinvestment plans for the product’s full lifecycle (from inception to growth, maturity, decline, and decommissioning) to maximize their products’ value and prepare for the next stage.
Intention Fosters Action: Improve Your Impact as a Parent
Just as a product manager must balance vision and strategy with execution, parents must balance empowerment with connection. To be the best parent I can be, I will view this role with even more intention as I do my career, balance between preparing for tomorrow while delivering today, and leverage my partner and other parental figures in my children’s lives.
1) Approach Parenthood with Intention
I am not the perfect parent now, nor will I ever be in the future. But I can embrace the process of perpetually improving my parenting as a lifelong journey. I can view each day and the stressful moments within them not as times to get through, but as opportunities to learn from and to teach.
I will take time to regularly reflect on my approach and weaknesses as a parent, like I do with performance reviews in my career. I will perform something similar to 360 assessment, asking for feedback from my spouse and children along these 6 dimensions I’ve defined in this framework.
2) Find Connection Between Preparing for Tomorrow while Delivering Today
To be the parent I hope to be, I will need to be present in the now, while looking forward to the future I’m collaborating with my children to build. I tend to be future leaning, and will need to seek more balance with the present. But balance implies a trade off, whereas I believe I will find true fulfillment when I see the connection between seemingly opposing elements of this framework.
When asking what my children dream about, I can gain insight into their emotions today from their answers about tomorrow (inspire <-> empathize). When supporting them as they explore new opportunities, I can better understand what brings them joy (incentivize independence <-> laugh together). And when trying to demonstrate fulfilled living, I can teach humility and the value of lifelong education by learning from their questions and perspective (exemplify <-> learn from).
3) Build and Leverage Your Child’s Parental Support Team
It’s no coincidence that the acronym for my parenthood framework (EE-LL-II) resembles the nickname of my wife (Eli). I watch and rely on her exemplary and inspirational parenting to improve and fill the gaps in my own parenting abilities. And I have learned from my parents’ excellent example and continue to benefit from their supportive mentorship. I look forward to the day when I can try and improve on their mentorship to me as I provide guiding support to my children having their own children. Beyond parents and grandparents, I will look for the many other parental figures in our children’s lives to leverage and learn from.
Great products aren’t built in isolation, and neither are fulfilled children. Lean on your team—your partner, grandparents, extended family, teachers, and community—to provide your child with a diverse set of resources, perspectives, and role models. Use this team to fill your own gaps and help you focus on the areas where you can uniquely make the most impact.
Remember Your Time Here Will End; But Your Impact Will Endure
When I leave this world my career will have ended with finality. But my children, and the other people I’ve been a parental figure to, will live on. In the time I have left, I will prioritize the relationship with my wife and the loving environment that foresters for our children. Second comes my ability to effectively parent our children to maximize their fulfillment. Somewhere down the line comes my career (see my North Star for my priorities). But I will continue to look for lessons and strategic frameworks learned in my career to apply to improving my life’s impact, and vice versa.
And I will aim to pay it forward (the blessings I’ve received) to other parents and other children to maximize my (hopefully) positive impact on this world. I have so much to share from my own experiences; but I also have so much to learn from others’. I look forward to hearing your thoughts and to collaborating with you to perpetually advance humanity, one generation at a time!
hanly hopes 
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