Marty Cagan has shaped how many of us think about product. His work on empowered teams, product leadership, and the value of solving real problems has helped raise the bar across the industry. I have enormous respect for him. I am, and continue to be a disciple.
Photo by Maksim Goncharenok
Which is why his recent essay, Agency vs. Ambition, landed harder than expected.
In it, he argues that some product people simply lack drive. They don’t want to grow. They aren’t curious. They just want to clock in, clock out.
And maybe that’s true for a few.
But if if the analysis ends there — if we don’t ask why someone might appear disengaged — we miss the real story. A story good product managers are trained to uncover. The one that lives beneath the behavior.
First, I agree with his central premise: ambition and agency — especially in the form of relentless curiosity and the drive to improve — are non-negotiable for high-performing teams. But when those traits aren’t readily visible, we should do what good product people do: get curious.
Because too often, the very environments that say they want drive and ownership are the ones that quietly punish both.
It’s easy to look at a product manager going through the motions and assume they’re not ambitious. No spark. No curiosity. Maybe they just don’t care anymore. Maybe they never really did.
But when you get them off mute, off camera, and away from the all-hands, what you hear (and see) isn’t laziness — it’s something else. Exhaustion. Disbelief. Caution learned the hard way.
Too often the very environments that say they want ownership and drive are often the ones that quietly punish it.
As leaders, if we’’re not close to the work it’s tempting to judge motivation by what we see: Is she speaking up? Is he pushing the roadmap? Are they really fighting for outcomes?
But behavior is just the surface. If we want to know what’s actually going on, we need to ask what the environment is teaching people.
What’s rewarded? What’s punished? What’s safe?
Those aren’t character questions. Those are systems questions.
Questions far too many leaders don’t, or won’t, ask.
Once, in a meeting with an executive sponsor, I brought up a project we’d flagged as critical two quarters ago. It had gone red. We needed help. But instead of offering support, he asked (I shit you not):
“Should we just drop these and focus on easier wins? We need green statuses here.”
Later, same call, same sponsor:
“Also, about those dashboards for top-tier customers — are we sure we want them that visible? Might set expectations too high.”
Right. So: don’t work on hard problems. And don’t show it when you’re doing well. Cool.
And then, when ambition fades from the room — when PMs stop raising their hands, or soften their language, or stop pushing — they’re labeled as disengaged.
This is how organizations tax their own ambition. I’ve seen this with nauseating regularity over the last 25 years.
Most product people (people in general) don’t start their careers coasting. They show up hungry. They want to solve things. They want to make stuff better. They want to fee they’re making a difference.
But eventually, they learn. They learn what gets noticed. What gets ignored. What gets them praised — and what gets them labeled.
Push too hard? You’re “difficult.” Deliver too much? You’re “setting expectations too high.” Raise a structural issue? You’re “not solutions-oriented.”
So they adapt. They stay quiet in the meeting. They ship the thing that won’t rock the boat. They stop raising the risky ideas.
From the outside, it looks like a lack of ambition. But from the inside? It’s just strategy. Quiet. Rational. Often reluctant. But still — strategy.
Let’s say you’re seeing signs of disengagement on your product team. Low energy. Low agency. Low initiative.
Here are a few questions worth asking before you assume it’s a character flaw:
- What happened the last time someone on this team took a bold swing?
- What kind of failure gets tolerated here — and what kind gets punished?
- When was the last time leadership shielded the team instead of asking them to pivot?
You don’t grow agency in a vacuum. You grow it in the soil of your company culture — sometimes good, sometimes toxic. And if the soil’s off, the plant’s not going to thrive. The myth is that you either “have it” or you don’t. But most people show up with it. The question is what the environment does with it.
Walter Isaacson once asked Steve Jobs what he was most proud of. He didn’t say the iPhone. He said the teams. The ones he built, protected, and trusted to do hard, ambitious work. That wasn’t humility. It was clarity. Teams — well-led, well-supported — are the only real competitive advantage companies can’t buy off the shelf.
So when you squander that talent? When you erode it from within or refuse to hire it from without?
You’re not just misreading motivation. You’re handing your edge to someone else.