Create Clarity: The Core Job of a Product/PM Leader (Strategy, Editing, Meta Execution, Coaching)

The main job of anyone responsible for a product — whether a product leader or, more narrowly, a PM leader — is to create clarity, at both the macro level and the micro level, on what to build, how to build it, and how to expand it (Shreyas Doshi).

Doshi breaks the job into four component tasks:

Strategy and vision ownership — the leader doesn't have to be the sole author of Product Strategy or Product Vision, but must still feel ownership over it.
Product editing — the leader isn't necessarily writing product proposals themselves, but must be a great editor of what the team produces.
Meta execution — the leader isn't responsible for day-to-day sub-team execution, but is responsible for the team structure that lets the team execute efficiently and effectively.
PM coaching — coaching PMs is called out as its own distinct, key part of the job, separate from strategy, editing, and meta execution. Related: Product Judgment Mentorship Pathways (Internal, External, Community).

"their main job is to create clarity and it's to create clarity at the macro level and the micro level" — Shreyas Doshi

The Four Tasks (Doshi)

Shreyas Doshi breaks "creating clarity" into four concrete tasks:

Leading Strategy and Vision — the leader doesn't have to be the sole author of Product Strategy or Product Vision, but must ultimately own the result and stand behind it, even when drafting is delegated.
Product Editing — rather than authoring proposals or executing directly, the leader's job is to be "a great editor of whatever it is that the team is building" — reviewing and sharpening the team's output.
Meta Execution — owning the structure that lets the team execute well (the operating model), not the day-to-day management of sub-team execution, which is delegated to someone else on the team.
PM Coaching — a distinct responsibility, called out separately from the other three: dedicated time and effort coaching the PMs the leader manages, not a byproduct of the other tasks.

"you need to be a great editor of whatever it is that the team is building"

Doshi's framing puts the leader's leverage in shaping what others produce or how the team is structured, not in personally authoring plans or running execution day-to-day.

Doshi: Status Tracking vs. Clarity-Creation (AI's Marginal Role)

Doshi's framing sharpens the clarity thesis into an explicit hierarchy: status tracking — spreadsheets, red/yellow/green updates, escalating delays — is "table stakes... any smart human being can do." The differentiator that justifies a product leader's compensation is a distinct, higher-order skill: creating clarity on prioritization, translating executive/company thinking into something actionable for the team, product strategy (especially important when managing across multiple features/PMs), and coaching PMs on communication and stakeholder management (see Stakeholder Communication Style Taxonomy (Numbers / Business-Impact / Story-Context)). Clarity also runs outward — helping PMs present well to executives and helping the rest of the company understand what's being built.

He caps AI's usefulness here explicitly: "if AI tools help with clarity... they will help to a 5% or 10% marginal degree" — the rest has to come from the manager. This is a specific, quantified instance of the broader caution in Caution Against Abdicating Product Sense to AI Tools against outsourcing judgment work to AI tools.

He anchors the claim in his own before/after arc rather than theory: he was "so bad" at managing PMs that he told employers he didn't want to manage people, was pushed into the role anyway, and only improved once he reframed the job as clarity-creation — later becoming rated among the highest-quality managers at his company. His stated pedagogy for smart audiences ("tell them what not to do, because smart people can figure out what to do") is offered as itself an example of clarity-creation, echoing Doshi's PM Definition: Define the Product, Orchestrate for Success's framing of the PM/leader's job.

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