Add 5 Extra PMs Without the Headcount

How AI can help product teams thrive in lean times

Let’s be honest: none of us know where the economy is heading in the next 12 months.

But what’s undeniable is that we’ve entered a phase of sustained uncertainty.

And when that happens, the pattern is familiar:

• Budgets freeze—or shrink.

• Targets don’t move.

• Headcount? Off the table.

Yet your targets stay the same. The board still expects growth. Your CEO still expects delivery.

As a CPO, you have two options.

You can try to squeeze more out of your team.

Or you can use AI to add extra capacity without additional headcount.

You know where the first option leads. Burnout, attrition, and shallow delivery. So lets take a look at the second option: AI.

The 5 PM Capacity Hiding in Plain Sight

Here's the math:

Empowering just one PM with AI can unlock 10+ hours of capacity per week. Across a 20-person team, that’s the equivalent of adding 4 to 5 full-time PMs, without increasing headcount.

This isn’t theoretical. It’s already happening.

Here's what one of our client’s product team achieved after just six weeks.

This isn’t about “buying AI tools.” It’s about unlocking organizational leverage.

How to Get There

If you're wondering where to begin, you’re not alone.

The key isn’t a massive transformation - it’s forward motion.

Here’s the path:

Drive Enablement:

Equip your team with practical AI skills, not surface-level usage. Integrate AI across the entire product lifecycle. The teams above didn’t dabble, they embedded.

Drive Adoption:

Start every work flow with AI. Encourage your team to use AI daily. Use it to write PRDs, market research, analysis, backlog reviews etc. Make it a habit - not a side experiment.

Codify the Changes:

Institutionalize AI across your teams. Build centralized playbooks, create agents, reengineer processes around AI (instead of sprinkling AI on the top). Become an AI-first team.

And you know what is even better? This isn’t a change initiative you’ll need to force.

Your PMs are already asking for it.

AI isn’t a top-down mandate. It’s a bottom-up demand waiting to be unlocked.

Bottom Line

In a flat-budget world, leverage is your only growth engine.

You can keep squeezing and hope for the best - or you can scale your product team with AI.

You can burn them out - or empower them.

You can try to survive the year - or you can deliver results that stand out.

What will it be?

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AI is Reshaping Product Management—Are You Ready?

CPOs who lean in are already seeing:

20%+ productivity gains

Improved time to market

Bigger impact

🚀 Curious what this could look like in your org? Let’s chat.