Be the Glue, Not The Bottleneck
One of the most common traps I see product managers fall into, especially as they grow in their careers, is confusing being the glue with being the center.
Yes, product managers play a crucial role in connecting people, ideas, and insights across a team. But too often, in the name of keeping things moving, they become bottlenecks. Every decision, every update, every discussion somehow routes through them. The team slows down. Momentum dies. And the PM burns out.
If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone. Many of us were taught early in our careers to see ourselves as the ones who “hold it all together.” That’s not wrong. But how you hold it together, that’s where maturity separates solid PMs from overwhelmed ones.
Let’s talk about how to be the glue without becoming the bottleneck.
Influence Without Authority
First, let’s start with the basics. Product managers lead through influence, not authority. We don’t sign the paychecks. We don’t assign people to projects. We don’t manage anyone’s career path.
Instead, we build trust. We align people around problems. We facilitate hard conversations about tradeoffs. We make sure that engineering, design, data, and business perspectives are working toward a shared goal.
That’s influence. Not authority. It’s a hard skill, but it’s foundational to this role.
This also means one of our main jobs is not to micromanage. It’s not to dictate. It’s to enable specialists to do their best work without unnecessary friction.
Glue, Not Gravity
Think of yourself as glue, something that connects different pieces together so the whole works better. Not the center of the system. Not the person who everyone waits on to move forward.
I blame some of this confusion on the persistent myth that “product managers are like mini-CEOs.” It’s a lazy comparison that sets up the wrong expectations and encourages the wrong behaviors.
In mature organizations especially, PMs become generalists working alongside functional specialists. Your designer knows design far better than you. Your engineers understand the technical landscape far better than you. Your researcher knows how to gather and interpret user insights better than you.
Your value is not in being the smartest person in the room. Your value is in connecting those dots so the team is aligned, informed, and moving forward.
Why Over-Functioning Happens
Now, early in your career, especially in startups or under-resourced environments, you will wear many hats. You will run the research. You will write the specs. . You will triage the bugs. Doing it yourself often feels faster than explaining it to someone else.
But as you move into more mature environments with larger, more capable teams, this mindset doesn’t scale. You have to evolve from doing to enabling.
If you’re still spending your days chasing updates, writing every spec yourself, and sitting in every meeting, you’re not leading. You’re babysitting. You’re making yourself the critical path. And that’s not helping your team or your product.
How to Avoid Becoming the Bottleneck
1. Build Infrastructure, Not Dependency
Set up regular, transparent processes so the team stays aligned without requiring your constant intervention.
Weekly updates that answer common questions before they’re asked.
Clear communication channels for decisions and progress.
Shared documentation that people can trust.
If people are coming to you because there’s no system, build the system. Don’t become the system.
2. Clarify Roles and Responsibilities
When people aren’t clear on who owns what, they default to bringing everything to the PM. Clarify ownership. Encourage autonomy.
Who makes technical decisions? Who owns design tradeoffs? Who decides how we roll out a feature? Make it explicit. Trust your team to own their lanes.
3. Automate the Routine
Use tools, workflows, and habits to automate the stuff that doesn’t require your brain.
Status updates, task tracking, release calendars, this is admin work. Useful admin work, but admin work all the same. Don’t waste your energy on things machines and simple systems can handle.
4. Shift from Execution to Strategy
Early-career PMs often spend 80% of their time on execution, 20% on strategy. That’s normal. But as you grow, that ratio needs to invert.
If you’re still knee-deep in execution at a mid or senior level, you’re crowding out the work only you can do: shaping the vision, aligning stakeholders, making sure the team is solving the right problems.
5. Encourage Autonomy
Empower your team to make decisions within clear guardrails. Push ownership downward. The best PMs build teams that don’t need them in every room to make progress.
Trust your team’s expertise. Involve them in decisions. Coach them to think through risks. Step back so they can step up.
6. Communicate With Clarity, Not Frequency
Over-communicating doesn’t mean better communication. Be deliberate.
Communicate decisions clearly. Frame tradeoffs. Keep explaining the why, not just the what. Trust your team to fill in the blanks so that you can keep aligning on principles.
What to Do If You’re Already the Bottleneck
If every question routes through you, if the team is stalled waiting for your input, if you’re drowning in pings, it’s time to step back and diagnose.
Ask yourself:
What systems are missing?
What decisions am I hoarding?
What am I doing that others could own?
Where am I prioritizing speed over sustainability?
Then act. Delegate. Automate. Redesign how work flows. Your team will move faster without you as the middleman.
The Takeaway
Being the glue is noble work. It’s necessary work. But glue doesn’t call attention to itself. It works quietly in the background, holding things together, enabling progress.
Your job as a product manager is to connect, not control. To facilitate, not dictate. To empower, not micromanage.
If you’re doing your job well, your team won’t need you in every decision. They’ll move forward with clarity, confidence, and alignment.
And when that happens, you’ll have the space to focus on the work that truly moves the needle.
Do not be the center of everything, but build teams and systems that thrive without you as the bottleneck.