Instead of a universal definition, "real progress" is achieved by first defining what change you want to see in your organization. You then adapt your ways of working—strategy, discovery, OKRs—to support that specific goal, rather than just following a generic playbook.

As companies scale, the supply of obvious, valuable work dwindles. To stay busy, employees engage in "hyper-realistic work-like activities"—tasks that mimic real work (e.g., meetings to review decks for other meetings) but generate no value. It's a leader's job to create a sufficient supply of *known valuable work*.

Artist's CPO notes that while frameworks and processes can feel productive, the best product work is often messy and uncomfortable. It involves fighting with stakeholders and making bets on uncertain features rather than fixing known, smaller issues. This contrasts with the idealized view of smooth, process-driven development.

A product roadmap's value is in the planning process and aligning the team on a vision, not in rigidly adhering to a delivery schedule. The co-founder of Artist argues that becoming a feature factory focused on checking boxes off a roadmap is a dangerous trap that distracts from solving real customer problems.

Engineering often defaults to a 'project mindset,' focusing on churning out features and measuring velocity. True alignment with product requires a 'product mindset,' which prioritizes understanding the customer and tracking the value being delivered, not just the output.

To move beyond static playbooks, treat your team's ways of working (e.g., meetings, frameworks) as a product. Define the problem they solve, for whom, and what success looks like. This approach allows for public reflection and iterative improvement based on whether the process is achieving its goal.

When a product team is busy but their impact is minimal or hard to quantify, the root cause is often not poor execution but a lack of clarity in the overarching company strategy. Fixing the high-level strategy provides the focus necessary for product work to create meaningful value.

When handed a specific solution to build, don't just execute. Reverse-engineer the intended customer behavior and outcome. This creates an opportunity to define better success metrics, pressure-test the underlying problem, and potentially propose more effective solutions in the future.

A common OKR failure is assigning teams high-level business metrics (like ARR) which they can only contribute to, not directly influence. Success requires focusing on influenceable customer behaviors while demonstrating how they correlate to the company's broader contribution-level goals.