Unpack the Mindset Into Teachable Skills
Replace 'product sense' and 'high agency' with the specific competencies underneath them.
- Difficulty
- Advanced
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 87%
Cutler's stated project for the year: stop using mysterious nouns like 'product sense', 'product mindset', 'high agency' as if people either have them or don't, and unpack each into legitimate, teachable skills and competencies. Product sense decomposes into the ability to model problems, systems thinking, decision-making under uncertainty, facilitation, and reading a competitive ecosystem. The same move dissolves the 'should people versus can people' divide into named skills a pragmatist can actually acquire.
Origin
Cutler's own thinking, sharpened in conversation with Craig Daniel (his incoming leader at Toast), who introduced the should/can divide framing. Cutler explicitly frames the unpacking as core to his new role enabling product teams.
Core principles
- 01Any trait phrased as 'you have it or you don't' is an unexamined bundle of skills.
- 02There may be a small personality component — but the interesting question is what skills the person is actually bringing to bear.
- 03Labels like 'high agency person' and 'low agency person' are a dead end; they end the enquiry instead of starting it.
- 04Teachable decomposition is what makes an ability transferable to a team.
How to run it
- 1
Catch yourself using a mystery noun
Flag every use of product sense, product mindset, high agency, 10x, craft. Each is a placeholder for something you have not yet decomposed.
Watch out These nouns feel like insight and function as a stop sign — once said, nobody investigates further.
- 2
Name the observable behaviour that provoked the label
Cutler's example: some people ask 'can we do this, given our constraints and debt' — Uber-pragmatic. Others ask 'should we do this, what should we do here if constraints weren't an issue.' That is the should/can divide, and it is a behaviour, not a personality.
- 3
Decompose the behaviour into competencies
Ask what skills the 'should' person is bringing to bear: a level of systems thinking, an ability to look at the environment, the ability to decouple the current tactics from the optimal tactics. Each of those can be taught and practised.
Pro tip Run the same decomposition on 'product sense': modelling problems, systems thinking, decision-making under uncertainty, facilitation, reading the competitive ecosystem.
Watch out Do not deny any personality component exists — just refuse to let it be the whole explanation.
- 4
Build the competency into hiring, coaching and curriculum
Once named, the competency can go into a job ladder, a coaching plan, or a workshop. The mystery noun could not.
In the wild
Cutler and Craig Daniel discussed environments where some people are locked into 'can we do this given the debt and constraints' while others ask 'what should we do if those weren't an issue.' Cutler joked how easy it would be to just label them can-people and should-people, high-agency and low-agency.
→ He rejected the labelling and instead asked what skills the should-person deploys — systems thinking, environmental reading, decoupling current tactics from optimal tactics — turning a personality verdict into a training plan.
Cutler asks a standard behavioural question, then, once the candidate mentions a colleague, asks them to retell the same story from that colleague's point of view — how would Mary answer this question about you?
→ It surfaces self-awareness and flexible thinking, because most people answer behavioural questions as the hero of the story with colleagues as accomplices — a concrete, assessable competency rather than a vibe.
Common mistakes
Hiring and firing on unexamined labels
Declaring 'they don't have the product mindset' ends the conversation and cannot be acted on. Cutler is explicit that the last thing he wants to do in his new role is tell people they have a product mindset or they don't.
Assuming the label is purely environmental instead
Cutler notes he used to be one of the people who said personal skills count for nothing and bad management kills everything. Overcorrecting to pure environmentalism is the mirror error — the honest position is that both matter and both can be decomposed.
Is it for you?
Best for
Product leaders building competency frameworks, hiring loops, or coaching plans for their teams.
Not ideal for
Quick hiring calls where you need a fast heuristic — decomposition takes time and deliberate observation.
From the transcript
“I'm personally trying to do a better job this year about trying to unpack those things as legitimate skills and competencies so if you think…”
“there's this should can divide which I really like which is some people are just locked into the can they're Uber pragmatic people”
“what skills as the should person bringing to bear on that particular situation maybe it's a level of systems thinking”
From the episode
What differentiates the highest-performing product teams
John Cutler (Amplitude, The Beautiful Mess)