Introducing the Messy Middle manifesto
For a long time, I’ve been on a journey to help product teams maximize their impact. At the core of that journey was a fundamental question: Why do so many product teams, in an era where we have more data and tools than ever, still struggle to prove and improve the value of their work?
At first, it seemed like a technical problem. Then a goal-setting problem. Then a prioritization problem. But after talking with hundreds of real teams and studying how top companies like Netflix, Amazon, and Duolingo operate, the pattern became clear: Teams weren’t struggling because they lacked data or discipline—they were struggling because they lacked a shared model of how their work actually created value. That’s why metrics drift away from meaning, why alignment fractures, and why being “data driven” so often fails to translate into real impact.
The root challenge is the “messy middle”: the gap between the short-term behavioral metrics you can measure and move quickly with clickstream analytics and the long-term lagging outcomes—like retention and revenue—that ultimately determine business success.
At DoubleLoop, and now at Mixpanel, we’ve started to help product teams solve this age-old problem. And now, we’re sharing our insights with you in this interactive manifesto.
Towards a solution: How product teams can own the future by solving the messy middle
Our manifesto explores three big themes:
1. The structural forces that quietly disconnect effort from outcomes
Even the most well-intentioned systems—roadmaps, OKRs, dashboards—can obscure cause and effect in surprising ways. The manifesto breaks down why that happens and why teams end up optimizing local metrics while the business stays flat.
2. The hidden patterns behind organizations that consistently deliver outcomes, not just features
Across every top-performing company I studied, the same principles showed up again and again. They don’t describe them the same way, but the underlying model is remarkably consistent.
3. The structural shift required to close the gap between work and impact
The manifesto lays the groundwork for a new approach: one that gives teams a durable model for understanding how value flows through their product and how their bets ladder up to outcomes.
These ideas have been years in the making. But now, for the first time, they’re articulated in a single place.
Bringing it to life at Mixpanel
One of the most exciting parts of joining Mixpanel has been collaborating with our design team to turn these ideas into a visual, interactive experience.
Not a static PDF. Not a long essay.
We built a guided walkthrough of the messy middle: where it comes from, why it persists, and what it takes to finally escape it.
Bringing these ideas to life visually—mapping cause-and-effect flows, structural forces, and the patterns behind product outcomes—creates an experience that’s far more intuitive. Our hope is that it helps teams quickly see where they are in the messy middle and sparks new clarity around how their work drives impact.
Explore the Messy Middle manifesto
If you’re a product leader, PM, analyst, growth leader, or anyone who has ever wondered why impact is so hard to achieve despite all the effort teams put in:
Our aim is to give you language, clarity, and structure for something many teams have felt for years—but haven’t had a way to fully articulate.