Your product work isn't taken seriously

When My AI Products Weren't Taken Seriously 

The Lesson That Changed How I Communicate Value 💡

This is a personal story about a time when I felt my products weren't being taken seriously — and what it taught me about product management.

For quite some time, I worked as a Product Manager at a technology company, one of the fastest-growing companies in Greece, with global presense.

My role was to bring AI products to life for a specific department within the company — products that could improve the customer experience, and ultimately create measurable value for the business.

Introducing AI wasn't simply about building and releasing a product. 🚀

There was a lot of education around what AI could do, what the benefits were, how it could support people's work, and, of course, the inevitable conversations around how AI would change the way we work and whether we should be worried about being replaced by it.

There was quite a heavy onboarding process in the beginning, and that education continued throughout the releases of our AI products.

We had biweekly calls with management, and more frequent workshops, documentation, review sessions, and discussions about how we would measure success and how we would launch each new product.

There was support. There was engagement. And, importantly, there was rarely any strong pushback against what I was proposing.

And yet, something still felt off. 😕

When it came to the wider adoption of the AI products, I often encountered hesitation around launching new experiments or changing existing ways of working.

It sometimes felt like the products were perceived as a nice-to-have rather than something that was solving an important problem for the department.

It felt like they didn't really need them.

And that feeling started to get into my head.

I remember presenting the results of experiments aimed at reducing churn. During the discussion, I received questions about things we had already covered in previous calls.

I started questioning myself. 🤔

Am I solving a real problem?
Are these problems important enough to the business?
Am I explaining clearly enough what we're doing and how the product works?
Am I making the value obvious?

Many questions.

And, as you can probably guess, I went into analysis paralysis.

I was looking for the answer in the product.

But perhaps the answer was somewhere else.

When I saw the bigger picture 🔭

The turning point came when I was pushing for the wider adoption of an AI solution that would replace an existing rule-based approach.

I was talking about the customer experience. I was talking about the improvement in the metrics. I was talking about the results of our experiments.

But this time, I changed the conversation.

I showed them the financial impact. 💶

I said, essentially: "Look at what we are bringing to the table. This isn't only about improving the customer experience. This translates into a significant financial benefit for the business."

And, of course, I shared the exact number.

That was my secret weapon. 

I started talking the commercial language.

I wasn't reporting only the drop in churn or the uplift in conversion. I was connecting those improvements to their financial value.

Every experiment was coupled with its financial benefit.

And it helped. A lot. ✅

I can't tell you that stakeholders suddenly changed drastically or that every AI initiative immediately got a green light.

But bringing the financial dimension into the conversation changed something.

The value became more tangible.

The conversation became less about "this is an interesting AI experiment" and more about "this is what this change could mean for the business."

The economics lesson I had forgotten 📚

There is something slightly ironic about all of this.

I studied Applied Informatics and obtained an MBA.

And one of the things you learn in Economics is that businesses ultimately care about profit — or, in other words, economic value and sustainable returns.

Yet, as a Product Manager, I had become very focused on the product side of the equation:

We identify a customer problem → we solve it → customers benefit → the business benefits.

I still believe that.

But I had forgotten something important:

The connection between those two things isn't always obvious to everyone.

Sometimes, you have to make the connection explicit.

Customer problem.
Product outcome.
Business impact.
Financial value.

None of these are separate. They are different parts of the same story. 🧩

Talk their language 🗣️

Looking back, I don't think I needed to change my product thinking.

I needed to change how I communicated the value of what we were building.

My stakeholders weren't necessarily looking at the problem from the same perspective I was. And that's completely natural. They have different responsibilities, different priorities, and different ways of evaluating opportunities.

My job was not only to build something valuable.

My job was also to make that value understandable to the people who needed to support it.

I thought I had communicated the value.

I realised I hadn't communicated it in the language that mattered to my audience.

And sometimes, that means talking their language.

For me, that language turned out to be euros💶.

Many green lights 🟢 followed after that "apocalypse moment."

That was my story.

But there is another one I found even more interesting. Maria Parpou talked about owning the P&L in her ProductCon talk, and it really resonated with this experience of mine.

I'm leaving the talk here: 🎥 Watch Maria Parpou's ProductCon talk

Now I'm curious:
What's your secret weapon when you need to make people care about the value of your product? 👇