Stop coaching product, move to SLAs

January 30, 2026 at 4:52 PMoperationalmedium

Situation

Stop trying to teach product managers (Brady, Brian, Dawson) how to do their jobs better. Instead, provide prescriptive SLAs - clear timelines and direct questions. If they dont like the dates, they can restructure their requirements. Leave it on the floor and walk away.

Reasoning

The Socratic coaching method has failed with this product team. They interpret questions as attacks. Brady explicitly said he feels attacked when Max coaches him. A prescriptive here is when you can have it approach removes the emotional dynamic and puts trade-off decisions back on product where they belong.

Additional Context

Brian Dawson was offended by Maxs simplified PRD questions. Brady feels attacked by coaching. Max spending significant time trying to teach product best practices with no improvement in output quality. Product creates sprawling PRDs with no exit criteria.

Observed Evidence

Peter: "I want us to be a little bit more prescriptive in terms of what we tell product we need" and "I think were spending a lot of time trying to ensure that we feel collaborative to them... I need us to get out of the coaching game with the product" and "Rather than trying to teach them, I want to just say, this is exit criteria... I can build this system and have it for you by next Thursday. This thing is going to take me until June. Therefore, my date is June" and re Brady feeling attacked: "It does not work for Brady. And he feels attacked when you try to coach"

Confidence Breakdown

33/35
Evidence
25/30
Pattern
19/20
Source
15/15
Corroboration

Source

reflection

AI Confidence

92%

Outcome

Closed without detailed outcome

Decision ID: f95efb49-2414-407b-8ae3-fc0e8d90c7f9