There is a moment in every Product Manager’s journey when responsibility stops feeling like empowerment and starts becoming a weight. It happens without any announcement. One week you are shaping outcomes. The next you are holding everything together because it feels like no one else will.
I have lived that moment more than once.
And each time, I confused commitment with control.
Product frameworks talk about shared ownership, cross-functional collaboration and empowered teams. Yet inside real organisations, the pressures often move in the opposite direction. Expectations concentrate. The PM becomes the absorber of ambiguity, the translator of chaos, the safety net for gaps that appear between teams. The role expands quietly until it no longer resembles the job description.
This is where the paradox emerges.
The more ownership a Product Manager absorbs, the less effective they become.
The more weight they carry alone, the less room others have to contribute.
The more they try to protect the work, the more isolated they become from the team delivering it.
I have had moments where I told myself, “If I don’t take this on, who will?”
It felt responsible. It wasn’t.
Most products do not struggle because someone took too little ownership.
They struggled when ownership was not shared early enough.
The best work I have seen came from teams where responsibility moved fluidly. Engineers shaped the vision. Designers challenged assumptions. Stakeholders clarified intent. I held direction and coherence, not control.
When ownership is shared, the system becomes lighter.
Ideas become stronger.
Solutions become more surprising.
Alignment becomes easier.
And the Product Manager becomes what the role was meant to be: not the person who carries the work but the person who creates the conditions for good work to happen.
This is the lesson I carry now.
Success is not mine to hold.
It is ours to build.
