What can skiing teach us about product management? More than you’d think. In this post, I explore how key principles from the slopes - like deliberate iteration, dynamic prioritisation, and high-quality feedback loops - offer powerful lessons for building better products.
Over the past few years, I’ve been fortunate to work across a variety of Product and Growth roles - helping SaaS products go from zero to scale. More recently, I took a step back to pursue a personal passion: becoming a certified ski instructor.
At first glance, skiing and product management seem like completely different disciplines. One is physical and instinctive, the other strategic and cross-functional. But the more time I spent on the mountain, the more I noticed surprising overlaps. In fact, some of the most valuable lessons I’ve learned about building great products have come not from the office, but from the slopes.
Here are three principles that skiing helped me reframe - and how they’ve reshaped my approach to product management.
In skiing, improvement rarely comes from a single breakthrough. Instead, it’s a process of continuous micro-adjustments: tweaking your stance, refining your timing, responding to terrain. As an instructor, I often help students experiment with subtle changes — not just shouting “lean forward”, but trying cues like “flex your ankles” or “feel your shins in the boots”. These are our A/B tests. Some fail. Some unlock immediate progress.
Progress isn't just about repetition - it's about reflection.
The same is true in product development. The best features don’t emerge fully formed - they evolve. Iteration helps, but only when it’s paired with a clear hypothesis and a sharp feedback loop. I’ve seen teams stuck in endless cycles of shipping without learning. Just like a skier repeating the same mistake without guidance, iteration without insight doesn’t move the needle.
Whether it’s refining onboarding or trying a new growth experiment, the key is structured experimentation: define, test, observe, adjust. Progress isn’t just about repetition - it’s about reflection.
Ask any skier, and they’ll tell you balance is everything - but it’s not about staying still. It’s about constant adjustment: shifting pressure, adapting to terrain, knowing when to push and when to pause.
In product management, the same applies. Roadmaps give direction, but real-world conditions - market shifts, user feedback, team constraints - demand agility. A strategy that worked last quarter may now be obsolete. The trick is learning how to rebalance priorities without losing momentum.
Balance is about knowing which trade-offs matter most - and having the discipline to act on them.
I saw this clearly during COVID. Teams that clung rigidly to their original plans fell behind. The ones that thrived recalibrated fast - shifting focus to digital access, remote workflows, or operational resilience. Like skiing on ice versus powder, the fundamentals stay the same, but the inputs must evolve.
Balance in product isn’t just about managing features vs. tech debt or long-term vs. short-term. It’s about knowing which trade-offs matter most - and having the discipline to act on them.
One of the joys of skiing is instant feedback. You lean too far back, you fall. You try a new turn, and you feel the difference immediately. It’s visceral, fast, and often humbling.
In product, feedback is less direct - but just as critical. User behaviour, analytics, support tickets, and team retros all provide signals. But here’s the catch: not all feedback is equal. Volume doesn’t equal clarity. And worse, some signals (like noisy NPS data or vocal edge-case users) can send you in the wrong direction if not properly interpreted.
The goal isn’t just to collect feedback - it’s to build feedback loops into your process in a way that’s timely, specific, and actionable. For example:
Whether it’s a skier adjusting mid-run or a team adjusting mid-sprint, fast, focused feedback often determines how quickly you improve - or how long you stay stuck.
Skiing started as a passion project, but it’s become an unexpected teacher in my product journey.
Not because product is “like skiing”, but because both reward the same core principles:
Most importantly, both reward presence. You can’t ski distracted - and you can’t lead products on autopilot.
Whether you’re chasing growth metrics or carving turns, progress doesn’t come from perfection. It comes from consistent, intentional improvement. So show up. Stay curious. Make small, smart adjustments. That’s how you get better - on the slope and in the sprint.
If you’re building something ambitious, I’d love to be part of it. Reach out to chat about your next product or growth challenge.
