Your 2026 goals will fail if you’re optimizing for the wrong metric.
Why most PMs plan for skill development when they should be planning for market positioning.
I spent two hours yesterday watching product managers share their 2026 learning plans on LinkedIn.
Fifteen new AI tools to master. Three frameworks to memorize. Five certifications to earn. Two books on prompt engineering.
Everyone’s building the same skills. Which means everyone’s becoming equally replaceable.
Here’s what nobody’s saying: the gap between where you are and where you want to be isn’t a skills problem. It’s a positioning problem.
We Keep Walking Into the Same Trap
You already know how to be a product manager. You’ve shipped products. Made trade-offs. Navigated stakeholders. Built roadmaps that actually worked.
But when January hits, we all do the same thing. We make lists of skills to acquire.
Learn Figma. Master SQL. Get better at A/B testing. Figured out how to use awesome tools/platforms like ElevenLabs. Understand machine learning. Read that book everyone’s talking about.
The logic seems solid: better skills equal better opportunities.
Except it doesn’t work that way anymore.
ChatGPT can write your BRD. Cursor can build your prototype. Perplexity can do your competitive research. The skills you’re planning to learn are the exact skills being commoditized fastest.
I’m not saying skills don’t matter. I’m saying they’re no longer the differentiator you think they are.
What Actually Makes You Valuable
A few months back, I got a call from a startup building developer tools.
They’d built something they believed solved a real problem - tools that help engineering teams maintain long-term knowledge about what was built and how it worked. The kind of thing that saves new senior engineers months of archaeological digging through codebases.
They had a roadmap packed with features. What they didn’t have was a way to prioritize which features would actually get them past the security reviews, procurement processes, and organizational skepticism that keep most dev tools out of enterprise environments.
They didn’t ask if I knew the latest prioritization framework. They didn’t care which AI tools I used. They never mentioned my product management certifications (which, for the record…I do not have).
They asked: “How do you figure out which features will actually get senior engineers to champion your tool internally?”
The answer came from living through both sides. Building Leafed taught me what developers actually care about versus what they say they care about. Ten years in corporate environments taught me how features get adopted when security teams, procurement cycles, and risk-averse engineering leaders are involved.
That specific combination - technical empathy plus enterprise navigation experience - that’s what they needed. And it’s something you can’t learn from a course.
I don’t know where they ultimately took it after that conversation. I’m watching from a distance to see if they succeed. But the point stands: they weren’t buying skills. They were buying perspective that only comes from doing the thing.
Your value isn’t what you can learn in 2026. It’s what you uniquely bring that can’t be replicated by someone spending three weeks with Claude.
Think about it: what combination of experiences, domain knowledge, and point of view could you never fake with six months of study?
That’s your positioning.
Ask a Different Question
Stop asking: “What skills should I develop?”
Start asking: “What unique value stack am I building?”
A value stack isn’t a resume. It’s the combination of things you’re doing that nobody else is doing quite the same way.
Mine looks like this:
Newsletter writing every week (developing clear thinking, building an audience)
Shipping Leafed to app stores (developer empathy, understanding constraints)
Consulting with early-stage founders (pattern recognition across companies)
10+ years in both enterprise and startup environments (translating between worlds)
None of these individually makes me special. Product managers write. PMs learn to code. Plenty of people consult.
But together? That specific combination? That’s positioning.
The newsletter serves as a distribution channel for my consulting. Consulting surfaces insights for the newsletter. Building Leafed taught me what founders actually deal with. My corporate experience helps me translate startup chaos into frameworks that founders can actually use.
Each piece amplifies the others.
Your Actual 2026 Plan
Here’s what’s going to happen this week.
Most product people will save three “Top AI Tools for Product Managers” articles to read later. They’ll add “Learn Cursor” to their task list. They’ll buy that course on prompt engineering that’s been sitting in their cart.
They’ll feel productive. They’ll feel like they’re investing in themselves.
And six months from now, they’ll wonder why nothing changed.
Because skills aren’t strategy. Learning isn’t positioning.
Here’s what I would do instead.
Pick one thing you’re building in public. Pick one domain you’re going deeper into. Pick one point of view that’s actually yours.
Not all three at once. Just one. The thing that feels most natural to who you already are.
If you’re exploring healthcare SaaS, start writing about what you’re learning. Not generic “how to build in healthcare” content for healthcare. Your specific observations about what works and what doesn’t.
If you’re figuring out AI product integration, document the decisions you’re making. The trade-offs nobody talks about. The failures that taught you something.
If you’re navigating the corporate-to-startup transition, share what you’re discovering about how to translate your experience into startup currency.
Pick your angle. Go narrow. Get specific.
Because when someone needs exactly what you’ve been building, there’s no substitute.
What This Looks Like in Practice
Your 2026 goal shouldn’t be “learn Python.”
It should be: “Build credibility in [specific domain] by [specific method].”
Examples:
“Become the go-to person for product-led growth in fintech by analyzing 50 PLG strategies and documenting what works.”
“Develop expertise in AI tool integration by testing 30 tools in production and writing case studies.”
“Position myself as the corporate-to-startup translator by documenting 12 real transitions and the patterns that predict success.”
Notice the difference?
Skills are inputs. Positioning is outcomes.
Skills are generic. Positioning is specific to you.
Skills can be learned. Positioning must be earned through doing.
Stop Planning, Start Positioning
If any other product person could copy your 2026 plan with access to the same courses, you’re not building positioning. You’re just keeping up.
Keeping up isn’t enough anymore.
The market doesn’t need more product managers who know the same frameworks. It needs people who’ve done specific things and can help others do them too.
Those LinkedIn posts you saw yesterday? The ones with the learning lists and course recommendations?
They’re all building the same skills. Which means they’re all competing for the same roles.
You don’t have to.
This week, pick one thing you’re building that you couldn’t fake with AI and three months of study time. Not eventually. This week.
Write one post about it. Ship one mini version of it. Tell one person about what you’re learning from doing it.
That’s your 2026 plan.
Everything else is just keeping up.
Until next week,
P.S. Want to connect? Send me a message on LinkedIn, Bluesky, Threads, or Instagram.