Bruce Lee and The Art of Product Management

As I decided to leave my work at Revolut, I suddenly found myself with something rare: time. And one of the things I did? I watched the final season of Cobra Kai and the new Karate Kid: Legends movie 😁. And they took me straight back to my childhood.

I grew up in Turkey in the 80s and early 90s. Back then, one of our favorite things to do with friends was to watch VHS movies together during weekends. We didn’t have streaming or fancy home theaters; just a small tube TV, a video player and a bunch of action and horror films we rented from the local video shop.

Some of those movies were martial arts movies. And that’s how I first really discovered Bruce Lee. I was amazed by how fast and strong he was. I even signed up for karate lessons for a while (and got an orange belt), though I was probably more excited about showing off than learning real moves.

Now, many years later, I’m living in Berlin, building products and leading product teams. I’m not doing karate anymore, but I’m still inspired by Bruce Lee, especially his ideas about movement, learning and discipline. And the more I learn about his philosophy, the more I see how much of it relates to product management and leadership.

Bruce Lee wasn’t just a martial artist. He was a builder. He challenged the status quo, rejected rigid styles and created his own (Jeet Kune Do) not as a final form but as a living, breathing process. That sounds a lot like product work to me.

I believe that many aspects of Bruce Lee’s philosophy speak directly to the challenges we face in building products. Let’s take a few of his most famous quotes and see how they apply to product management and leadership today.

🌀 Adaptability, Not Rigidity

“Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless — like water… Be water, my friend.”

This is probably Bruce Lee’s most well known quote and for good reason. Water doesn’t resist. It adapts. It flows around obstacles. It fills any space. That’s not weakness, that’s power.

In product management, being water means embracing ambiguity. Requirements change. Users behave differently than expected. Stakeholders pull in opposite directions. Roadmaps shift. Our job isn’t to fight it. It’s to adapt, absorb and find the path of least resistance.

“Notice that the stiffest tree is most easily cracked, while the bamboo survives by bending with the wind.”

Flexibility is not just a nice-to-have. It’s a survival skill.

Too many times, I’ve seen teams stick to a roadmap or a solution long after it stops making sense. Why? Because it’s hard to admit the plan was wrong. But rigidity is not strength. It’s fragility.

We need to bend with the wind. Especially in fast paced environments, the ability to adjust without breaking is what keeps you in the game.

“Using no way as way, having no limitation as limitation.”

This one might be the clearest product principle of all.

There is no one-size-fits-all. The minute you think you’ve found the “only” way to build, you’re already falling behind. Our users evolve. Our teams evolve. So must our approach.

Nearly every great product I’ve seen came from teams that asked: What if we tried something else?

🛠️ Craft, Focus and Mastery

“Research your own experience. Absorb what is useful, discard what is useless and add what is specifically your own.”

This is the foundation of Jeet Kune Do and it’s exactly how I approach product work.

Not every best practice fits every team. Not every framework deserves to be followed to the letter. What matters is taking what works for your context, letting go of strict rules and not being afraid to remix things.

At Getir, I saw firsthand how rigid playbooks often failed in fast scaling environments. We needed agility, not ceremony. We built our own rituals around standups, grooming sessions and stakeholder syncs. We designed our own artifacts and processes for product discovery. We threw out the rest.

“I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.”

Depth matters more than variety.

In product, it’s tempting to try every growth hack or feature trend. But mastery comes from repetition, refinement and learning what works deeply. If your team keeps switching direction before getting feedback, you never give anything a chance to grow.

“The successful warrior is the average man, with laser-like focus.”

Focus is the hidden multiplier.

As product leaders, it’s easy to chase shiny things. New features. New tools. New metrics. But focus means clarity of purpose. It means saying “no”. It means helping your team protect their energy.

When I started leading payments at Getir, team was trying to handle several major initiatives at once. We were tired, burnt out and making nearly zero progress. Eventually, we cut it down to one. It was scary. But in three months, we delivered a feature (a retry and routing mechanism) that moved the needle more than the last year’s worth of work. All because we found our focus.

🎯 Risk, Simplicity and Clarity

“Don’t fear failure. Not failure but low aim is the crime.”

Failing is not the problem. Staying small is.

Some of the best things I worked on began as failed bets. A failed feature led to the discovery of a better customer need. A missed target forced a change in pricing that worked better.

Failure isn’t the end. It’s feedback. The real mistake is aiming for what feels safe instead of what feels meaningful.

“Simplicity is the key to brilliance.”

This is one of my personal mantras. Product complexity often grows like weeds. If you don’t actively trim it, it will overtake everything.

Simple doesn’t mean basic. It means clear. It means elegant. It means not making users think more than they have to.

I’ve never regretted cutting features. But I’ve regretted every time we over-complicated something in the name of “completeness.”

🧭 Intuition and Presence

“Don’t think, feel! It is like a finger pointing away to the moon. Don’t concentrate on the finger or you will miss all that heavenly glory.”

Data is important. Strategy is important. But so is instinct.

Sometimes, as a product leader, you feel something before you can prove it. That doesn’t mean acting on gut alone, but it means respecting the experience and intuition that come from years in the game.

Don’t get stuck in analysis paralysis. Listen. Observe. And move.

“Walk on. Don’t dwell on the past. Don’t dream of the future, but concentrate your mind on the present moment.”

Product management has a lot of forward looking energy. Roadmaps. Goals. Projections. But you build momentum in the present.

Stay grounded. What’s the one thing we can improve today? What’s blocking us right now? What do our users need this week?

🏹 Aim with Purpose, Not Attachment

“A goal is not always meant to be reached, it often serves simply as something to aim at.”

Sometimes your roadmap isn’t a promise, it’s a direction. A north star. Teams often get frustrated when they “miss” goals, but Bruce reminds us that the act of aiming itself is powerful.

It’s okay if not every metric moves. It’s okay if priorities shift. The important thing is that we’re working toward something that matters.

👊 Do > Plan

“Knowing is not enough, we must apply. Willing is not enough, we must do.”

You can sit in all the strategy meetings in the world. You can fill out your shiny JIRA boards, polish your slides and wordsmith your problem statements. But until something ships, nothing happens.

Product work is action oriented. It’s learning by doing.

Great teams move. They validate. They adjust.

As Bruce would say, don’t just be willing. Do.

Bruce Lee died young, but his impact is timeless. He was a martial artist, yes. But more than that, he was a thinker. A maker. A challenger of norms.

In many ways, he was a product person before we had a name for it.

He taught us to adapt, to simplify, to act. He taught us that style is a trap if it’s not serving your purpose. And he taught us to move through the world with both intensity and grace.

As someone who grew up watching his films and now spends his days building products and leading teams, I see those lessons everywhere. Whether I’m in a strategy session, a 1:1 with a team member or staring at a stubborn metric refusing to improve, Bruce Lee is never too far away.

Be water, my friend.

And yes, I still occasionally do a nunchaku spin in the elevator trips when I am alone 😁. Some habits die hard.