You Did Everything Right, So Why Is the System Breaking?
Prologue: Operator's Guide To Product Led Growth - The Product-Led Growth coordination crisis that turns strategy leaders into human glue
Welcome to a Premium Momentum Architectureâ„¢ Edition of THE Different MBA.
These posts go deeper—built for product leaders who design teams that build less and win more.
Premium members get full access to Clarity Drops (deep dives), 1·2·1s (quick insights), and the full ClarityStack of tools and playbooks.
Transform your build approach: Run a Clarity Sprint | Find your Momentum Spark | Lower your Decision Tax
You used to walk into strategy meetings with confidence.
Clear frameworks, solid data, logical next steps.
You were the VP who could see around corners—who translated market opportunity into executable roadmaps.
Your PLG metrics are phenomenal:
Trial signups up 43%
Activation rates at all-time highs
Product-qualified leads flowing consistently
The strategy is working exactly as promised.
But something changed. You're not just leading strategy anymore.
Now you spend half your time in coordination meetings trying to explain:
Why sales can't find the leads product qualified
Why customer success didn't see the churn coming
Why the "self-serve" customer needs three departments to onboard successfully
Ironically, your metrics validate the strategy. But strategy didn’t account for scale—especially coordination scale.
The frameworks that got you here assume coordination happens automatically.
Welcome to coordination whack-a-mole.
The Slow Erosion
It started subtly.
A handoff here, a context-setting meeting there:
"Can you help sales understand the product usage data?"
"Can you explain to CS why this trial user is different?"
"Can you bridge the gap between what product built and what customers actually need?"
You said yes because you could see the connections others missed.
You said yes because coordination seemed temporary—once everyone understood the PLG motion, it would run itself.
That was eight months ago.
The Daily Reality Now
Monday: Explaining to sales why the PQL they're chasing already churned
Tuesday: Mediating between product and CS about feature requests from trials that won't convert
Wednesday: Reverse-engineering why the "activated" user needs enterprise sales support
Thursday: Debugging why marketing's messaging doesn't match the actual product journey
Friday: Wondering when you became the person everyone calls when PLG breaks
You used to feel like the sharpest person in the room.
Now you just feel like human glue.
The Coordination Intelligence You're Missing
Here’s what every PLG playbook missed:
They were written by product people, for product people.
The operational architecture that makes PLG actually scale?
That conversation happened without operations leaders in the room.
Which means…
You inherited a growth engine with no coordination manual.
Think AI will help? That only makes the issue worse. AI accelerates everything— except coordination intelligence.
The AI Acceleration Urgency
Why This Matters Now
Your product team just discovered they can ship features 3× faster with AI-assisted development.
Marketing can generate trial demand at unprecedented scale.
But every new capability amplifies the coordination gaps.
AI democratizes building. It weaponizes coordination problems.
But that’s only half your problem.
The coordination crisis nobody saw coming
When customers can build their own solutions with AI, they're not just choosing between products anymore—they're choosing between experiences.
Your retention isn't competing against other PLG companies. It's competing against customers who can now solve their own problems.
The only sustainable differentiation? Coordination that delivers meaning, not just features.
The companies that architect this partnership now will have first-meaning advantage when building becomes commoditized.
Operations leaders see this coming. Product leaders are still optimizing activation.
The Missing Partnership Nobody Talks About
Your operations leader already knows:
Which "activated" users actually retain (and why)
Where self-serve breaks down before customers complain
What enterprise conversations really need (beyond product demos)
They're sitting on coordination intelligence that could transform your PLG strategy.
But they're positioned as cleanup crew, not strategic architects.
The Strategic Blind Spot
Your operations leader isn't in your PLG strategy meetings. Why would they be?
PLG is about:
Product experience
User activation
Self-serve conversion
Operations handles:
Support tickets
Process optimization
But here’s what you’re discovering:
PLG creates coordination complexity
that only systematic operational thinking can solve.
The Coordination Problems You’re Inheriting
Handoffs between self-serve and human touch
Intelligence gaps between product usage and business outcomes
Workflow breakdowns when trials become enterprise deals
What you need is a strategic partner who thinks systematically about coordination architecture.
You have one.
You just haven’t positioned them as a PLG co-architect yet.
The Strategic Recognition
What You’re Really Building
You're not just building a growth engine.
You're building a coordination architecture that transforms operations from cleanup crew to strategic amplifier.
You're not just optimizing PLG.
You're creating a systematic partnership that restores your strategic capacity while scaling customer success.
You're not just improving handoffs.
You're installing operational intelligence that makes every PLG decision compound instead of compete.
What Coordination Success Actually Looks Like
Imagine walking into Monday's leadership meeting with:
✅ Predictive intelligence about which trials need enterprise support (before they ask)
✅ Handoffs that feel invisible to customers but amplify internal efficiency
✅ Retention strategies built from ops insights, not just product metrics
✅ Coordination that scales with growth instead of breaking under pressure
This isn't theoretical. It's what happens when operations becomes your PLG co-architect instead of your cleanup crew.
Rewiring PLG: The Missing Operating System
In Future series installments, we’ll uncover the new path to Product-Led Growth in the AI-era
Part I: Why PLG Coordination Breaks Down
The specific gaps PLG creates—and why operations partnership is the systematic solution your strategy needs.
Part II: Customer Journey Operations Framework
How to position your operations leader as PLG co-architect—and build coordination that serves strategy instead of consuming it.
Part III: The Partnership Implementation
Systematic approaches to PLG operational excellence that amplify your strategic decisions across every customer touchpoint.
Part IV: The Competitive Advantage
How PLG coordination mastery positions you as the VP who solved what others couldn’t—through strategic partnership, not personal firefighting.
The Promise
Instead of: Coordination firefighter holding PLG together manually
You become: Strategic leader who engineers coordination as competitive advantage
Instead of: Catching fallout between departments
You build: Systems that predict and prevent coordination gaps
Instead of: Losing strategic capacity to tactical firefighting
You create: Partnership architecture that amplifies every strategic decision
This isn't about working harder on coordination.
It's about thinking systematically about the partnership that makes coordination compound instead of consume.
You don’t need to become the glue. You need a co-architect.
Want Early Access to the Book?
This is part of the Prologue for my upcoming book:
The Operator’s Guide to Product-Led Growth
Paid subscribers get each chapter, plus behind-the-scenes calls and input on direction
Upgrade to a paid subscription to join the inner circle.👇