The Case for Strategic Realism: Why You Shouldn't Abandon the Ideal (Even When It Hurts)
It is easy to dismiss modern product theory as 'out of touch' when you are drowning in bureaucracy. But giving up on the ideal isn't the answer—strategic realism is. Here is how to play the long game without losing your mind.
The “Reality Gap” in Product Management
There is a recurring thread I see on Reddit and in private PM Slack communities that goes something like this:
“Marty Cagan, Teresa Torres, and Mik Kersten are have great ideas, but they don’t live in the real world. They don’t know what it’s like to work in “my company” where Legal needs six weeks to approve a survey and the CEO prioritises features based on who he played golf with last weekend.”
I understand this sentiment. Viscerally.
When you are fighting for inches of progress in an organisation that seems determined to move backwards, reading Empowered or Project to Product can feel less like inspiration and more like gaslighting. It creates a painful dissonance between the job you thought you had and the job you actually do.
But I want to challenge the conclusion that many Product Managers draw from this. The conclusion usually is: “These theories are idealistic nonsense, so I should just stop trying and accept that Product Management is just taking orders.”
That is a mistake.
The authors aren’t wrong. The models aren’t broken. The problem is that we are underestimating the sheer psychological weight of organisational muscle memory. And more importantly, we are trying to sprint a marathon, burning ourselves out in the process.
We need a new approach. Not a new framework, but a philosophy of Strategic Realism.
The Science of Why It Hurts
It is important to understand that the frustration you feel isn’t just professional annoyance; it is a psychological response to structural resistance.
Research into structural inertia theory suggests that organisations are designed to resist change. It is a feature, not a bug. Older organisations have high inertia because their structures and routines are solidified to ensure survival and reliability. When you try to introduce “continuous discovery” or “flow metrics” into this environment, you aren’t just changing a process; you are fighting the organisation’s survival instinct.
As I explored in my previous post on The Neuroscience of Resistance to Change, this resistance is deeply rooted in how human brains, and by extension, human organisations, process uncertainty. The “muscle memory” of the organisation will always pull it back to the status quo until a critical threshold of dissonance is reached.
This fight has a quantifiable cost:
- 71% of middle managers report feeling burned out, the highest of any employee group.
- “Change fatigue” is a primary driver of disengagement, with nearly half of the global workforce reporting exhaustion severe enough to impact performance.
- The failure rate for organisational change initiatives remains stubbornly high, estimated around 70% for decades.
So, if you feel like you are banging your head against a wall, it’s because you are. But that doesn’t mean the wall is immovable. It just means you can’t knock it down with your forehead.
Breaking the Binary: A New Philosophy
If Option A is “Naïve Idealism” (trying to force perfection immediately and burning out) and Option B is “Cynical Defeatism” (giving up and becoming a feature factory), we are left stuck in the middle without a map.
I suspect many of you are reading this and nodding along, perhaps a bit wearily. The dissonance between “what good looks like” and “what we have to do today” is the defining tension of our role right now.
That is why I’m stealing the term: Strategic Realism.
I am proposing this terminology because we need a way to describe this coping mechanism that doesn’t sound like failure. “Compromising” sounds weak. “Giving up” sounds defeated. But Strategic Realism describes exactly what we are doing: making calculated, survival-based decisions to preserve our agency so we can fight another day.
It is a badge of honour, not a mark of shame.
Here is how to apply it:
1. Reframe Resistance as Muscle Memory
When a stakeholder demands a roadmap with fixed dates, they aren’t necessarily being “anti-Agile.” They are exhibiting muscle memory. They have spent 20 years believing in a system where dates equal certainty.
- The Idealist fights the date and loses trust.
- The Strategic Realist provides the date but wraps it in caveats, then works quietly to shorten the feedback loop so the date becomes irrelevant sooner.
2. The “Pocket of Air” Strategy
You cannot oxygenate the whole ocean, but you can create a bubble. Find one small area where you have autonomy, a specific feature, a single squad, a minor internal tool, and run it “the right way.”
- Do the discovery.
- Measure the outcomes.
- Protect the team. Creating this “pocket of air” proves that the model works without threatening the entire organisational immune system.
3. Accept “Good Enough” for Now
This is the hardest part for high achievers. Sometimes, a B-minus outcome is a victory if it keeps you in the game. If you manage to get one customer interview done this month, that is infinitely better than zero. If you manage to shift the roadmap from “features” to “problems” for just one quarter, take the win. Don’t measure your success against a case study in a book. Measure it against where your organisation was six months ago.
Why You Must Not Give Up
The reason I push back against the Reddit cynicism is that the turning point is coming.
As I wrote previously, we are in a transition period. The old models of “project management” are objectively failing to deliver value in the Age of Software. The companies that cling to them will eventually face an existential crisis.
When that crisis hits, when the old muscle memory stops working, the organisation will panic. They will look for answers.
If you have given up and become a cynical ticket-mover, you won’t be able to help. But if you have practiced Strategic Realism, if you have kept the flame of “true” Product Management alive in your pocket of air, waiting for the right moment, you will be the one they turn to.
Marty Cagan isn’t wrong. He is just describing the destination. The terrain between here and there is swampy, foggy, and full of obstacles.
Your job isn’t to pretend the swamp doesn’t exist. Your job is to navigate it without drowning.
Take the pragmatic approach for your sanity, but keep your eyes on the ideal. The industry needs you to survive the journey.