Product Is All Around Us: How Product Thinking Shapes More Than Apps

Breaking the Illusion of Product

When I first became a product manager, I thought product was what you could see and touch: apps, features, physical things. Something you could point at and say, “we built that.”

Then I moved into a services team, and the illusion cracked.

This team wasn’t writing code or designing screens. Their work was one of the core parts of our customer journey, along with sales, services, customer success, and product. They trained, they supported, they made sure nothing stood in the way of customers actually using what we built.

It wasn’t considered part of “the product team,” even though it had some of the deepest impacts on customers. Their value was big, but not always visible. It was intangible.

The Aha Moment

My aha moment came during COVID, when I volunteered to lead a new service while our ground team couldn’t travel. Suddenly, we lost our ability to “do it for the customer.” The assumption was clear: it was far too complex for them to manage alone. But with COVID blowing in our ears, we had no choice. We had to help them shift to a DIY mode. And to everyone’s surprise, it worked.

I applied the same principles I had always used for building products: discovery, short iterations, fast build–measure–learn cycles, and most importantly, outcome thinking. We even restructured the Trio model to include training and education instead of the traditional design and development. The result was powerful: the service became a growth lever, not a cost center.

We ended up not only enabling customers, creating a whole new offering, and keeping the startup running, we also secured our next funding thanks to this move. The new offering didn’t survive after COVID as it was less viable for the business, but it was the right thing when we needed it most. And what did survive was my point of view. I realized my product work didn’t end just because there was no app to tap into. It was actually bigger than that. Much bigger.

At the time, I didn’t think of it as product work. I was just stepping in during a time of trouble, doing what needed to be done. Only later did I realize: I had been using product methodologies all along without naming them. That was my aha moment — the moment I started asking why intangible products like services aren’t treated as “real” products at all.

Seeing Product Everywhere

When I officially joined the team a few months later, I brought that perspective with me. I decided that if something brings value to customers, I would stop pretending it’s “just service.” Because once you see product everywhere, you can’t unsee it.

It’s in the phone you hold, the app you install, the support call you make, the training you attend. It’s in the way a meeting runs or how you design a family journey. If something creates value for someone, it is a product. You don’t need a fancy title. You only need a bit of product sense, and the principles to build on.

And product thinking isn’t a title or a framework. It’s a lens. A way of asking grounding questions:

• Who exactly are we solving for?

• What problem are we solving for them, and how will we know if it’s working?

• How do we make progress fast while minimizing risks?

• How do we work together while doing it?

You can use that lens whether you are shipping code, running a services org, or just trying to make dinner time a little less chaotic.

Beyond Work

Today, I use product thinking in almost everything: in my product work, in my coaching, in relationships, and in shaping my family journey over the past three years. It helps me see things differently, stay open to change and feedback, try new things, and remain agile.

Product is not a job title. It is how you see the world.