Last year, a friend of mine — a product manager at a growth startup — walked into his quarterly roadmap review feeling confident. He had elegant slides, validated customer requests, and sweet-looking design concepts. As he presented, he could see the polite nods around the table. When he finished, the CEO paused and asked:

“Okay, but how does this create value?”

My friend stumbled. He talked about customer happiness. He talked about reducing friction. He talked about better experiences.

The CEO pressed again: “Yes, but how does this create value for us?”

The meeting didn’t go well.

It turned out, the CFO’s eyes were on the financial forecast. The CRO was looking at pipeline. The CEO was thinking about the next funding round.

“Customer value” wasn’t enough for them.

And if we’re honest, many of us have been in that same spot.

It’s because there is a bottom line truth that no one talks about in Product Management:

At the end of the day, nobody funds, acquires, or promotes “customer delight.” They fund growth, profit, and valuation.

So, if we can’t connect our product decisions to those outcomes, we’re not creating value. We’re just creating noise. And everyone hates noise.

“Value creation” is one of those phrases we throw around in meetings, strategy decks, and Product Management discussions. We want to build products that “create value.” We tell our teams to focus on “delivering value.” We promise our executives that our roadmaps are “value-driven.” We organize our teams around “value streams.”

But are we all clear on what “value” actually means? Be honest.

More importantly, are we as Product Managers fully aligned with what the execs, founders, business owners, board, and investors consider as “value”?

Because I’ll tell you: at the end of the day, that’s what really matters.

When we’re not aligned on what delivers “value”, we risk working on the wrong things. We risk talking past decision makers and hiring managers. We risk doing a lot of work — shipping features, launching initiatives, iterating endlessly — without actually creating meaningful impact for the business.

And that’s how we get sidelined, ignored, commoditized, or placed in a box.