PM Anti-Pattern: Fight or Flight

I’ve seen this play out more times than I’d like. A product manager starts with good intentions, then slowly loses control. The roadmap starts drifting. The team stops trusting the process. Stakeholders begin circling with polite check-ins that carry a sharper edge each time. Eventually the PM says they’re burned out, or they leave, or both. Sometimes they really are exhausted. More often, they’ve just run out of good options.

This is a classic PM anti-pattern. It doesn’t fall apart all at once. It builds slowly through a series of small compromises, weak documentation, and a reluctance to make early, uncomfortable decisions that would have kept things cleaner. A year or two later, you look up and realize you’re managing a backlog full of contradictions, your roadmap is trying to please everyone, and your strongest engineers are quietly shifting their attention elsewhere.

Most PMs don’t start out trying to avoid clarity. They’re trying to be helpful. You want to show you can collaborate, remove blockers, and keep things moving. So when someone brings you a request, whether it’s a CSM with a customer ask, sales chasing a deal, or support looking for relief, you say something like, “Let me see where it could fit,” or “Maybe after the next release.” You’re trying to be responsive. You’re also avoiding a hard decision.

That tendency gets stronger in B2B environments. These aren’t abstract feature requests. They’re coming from people you’ve met. You’ve sat in on their QBRs. You understand the pressure they’re under. Saying no feels personal. Even when you know there’s no room, you don’t want to let someone down.

So instead of saying no, you leave things vague. You keep the door open. These soft yesses add up over time, and no one notices until the wheels start to come off. Now you’re facing engineering pushback, a confused go-to-market org, and a leadership team that’s wondering why priorities aren’t moving.

At that point, your options are limited. You can disappoint a long list of people all at once, which takes more political capital than you have left. Or you can step away and start fresh somewhere else. That’s often what happens.

This isn’t a question of willpower or personality. It’s not about being too soft. The core problem is acting like delivery is unlimited. It isn’t. You can’t build everything, and you definitely can’t build everything well. Many requests directly conflict. Customers want different things. Internal teams are optimising for different outcomes. If you keep absorbing requests without drawing clear lines, your roadmap stops making sense, and your team stops believing in it.

The best way to avoid this corner is to be direct early. If something isn’t going to happen in the next 18 to 24 months, say so. Don’t hedge. Don’t delay the decision. Say what’s true, and explain why. What are you focused on? What are you solving? What outcome are you driving? And if you were to take on this request, what would you need to drop?

If you don’t have answers to those questions, you’re not prioritising. You’re just hoping things sort themselves out. They won’t.

Empathy still matters. Most of these requests come from people doing hard, valuable work. The sales rep pushing for a change is chasing a quota they didn’t choose. The support team is buried in repetitive tasks that make it hard to focus on the bigger issues. The CSM who keeps raising the same feature gap is trying to protect a renewal. They’re doing their jobs. You need to do yours.

Understand their goals. Then be honest about what’s possible. That honesty might feel uncomfortable in the moment, but it’s what keeps you credible over the long run.

There are a few habits that help. Make your roadmap visible and easy to follow without a personal walkthrough. Keep your documentation up to date, even if it’s rough. Respond to questions before they start piling up. And when you build internal artifacts, make them useful, not just a box to tick. None of this is glamorous, but it’s how you stay clear and trusted.

If you handle it well, you avoid the cleanup cycle and get to focus on shipping something useful, then move on.

This is one of the more common PM anti-patterns I’ve seen. Not because people aren’t sharp, but because no one tells them that avoiding discomfort is what gets you into real trouble. Clarity feels costly at the time. It costs far less than trying to claw back control after the damage is done.

More PM Anti-Patterns coming soon.