If Westeros taught us anything beyond political murder and dragons, it’s that strategy, storytelling, and ruthless clarity matter, especially when you’re shipping products instead of heirs. Lets check some direct, and maybe sometimes uncomfortable mappings from the iconic Game of Thrones lines to what a product manager actually does and shouldn’t do.

“Chaos is a ladder.” - Petyr ‘Littlefinger’ Baelish

GOT context: Littlefinger watches disorder and uses it as opportunity to climb.

Lesson for PM: When the org, market, or project falls apart, some PMs panic; better PMs diagnose the break, wait for the right time and then step in with a clear path, and become the person who actually delivers stability. You win influence by solving real problems, not by pontificating.

  • Spot cascading failures early (data, ops, user complaints).
  • Wait for the right time, let the chaos brew for a while, jumping in too early will not get you the value you demand
  • Propose a focused triage: root cause → temporary mitigation → long-term fix.
  • Communicate clearly: what we fix now, what we delay, who owns it.

“When enough people make false promises, words stop meaning anything. Then there are no more answers, only better and better lies.” - Jon Snow

GOT context: John Snow when Daenerys tells min that he could have lied to save ass.

Lesson for PM: Commitments do matter, but Over-promising to stakeholders (engineering, sales, execs) burns the team and users. A PM who consistently make promises things just to save his ass in difficult challenging situations, to get out of it easily, then promises, and moreover his words lose value.

“I am the kind of servant that the realm needs. Incompetence should not be rewarded with blind loyalty. As long as I have my eyes, I’ll use them.” - Varys to Daenerys

GOT context: Varys to Daenerys, as he takes a stand to value competence and the realm’s wellbeing over blind devotion, when charged by her “Proven himself loyal? Quite the opposite. If he dislikes one monarch, he conspires to crown the next one.”

Lesson for PM: Stakeholders will often reward loyalty or visibility over effectiveness. The PM’s responsibility is to the users and product outcomes, not to pleasing the loudest sponsor.

  • Be the voice of the user realm: surface evidence when leadership wants vanity features.
  • Build alliances across functions - influence, don’t demand.
  • If a stakeholder insists on a harmful direction, propose experiments or guardrails.

“Any man who must say, ‘I am the king,’ is no true king.”

GOT context: True authority doesn’t require posturing.

Lesson for PM: A PM who shouts titles and demands deference is masking lack of real value. Influence comes from delivering results and enabling others, not from insisting on authority.

  • Lead by enabling not by shouting and intimidating. Remove blockers, clarify priorities, amplify wins.

“Power resides where men believe it resides.” - Varys

GOT context: Varys to Tyrion, when Tyrion doubts himself of being powerless.

Lesson for PM: Perceived legitimacy creates power. PMs often have no formal authority over engineering, design, or sales. The “power” of a PM comes from making teams dependent on your product vision, your roadmap clarity, and your ability to remove risk.

  • Build systems and processes that make your role indispensable: clear roadmaps, stakeholder syncs, decision records.
  • Cultivate trust: your estimates and tradeoffs should be reliable.
  • Create shared success metrics that require cross-functional cooperation.

“Not today.” - Syrio Forel

GOT context: A lesson - we don’t just accept death, not today

Lesson for PM: We don’t accept impractical requests, not today. Saying “no” is one of the most underestimated PM skills. Not every request need to be taken into the roadmap.

  • Explain with a decision framework .
  • Respond with alternatives

“There’s nothing more powerful in the world than a good story.” - Tyrion Lannister

GOT context: Politics is the narrative. Tyrion knows stories move people.

Lesson for PM: User stories and product narratives sell vision and create alignment. A technically brilliant product without a compelling story will stall adoption and funding. A high potential feature might fail to gain consensus if not presented right.

  • Tailor the story: execs want ROI and risk-reduction; designers want user empathy; engineers want clear acceptance criteria.
  • Write crisp user scenarios that show the before/after.
  • Storytelling is a habit, practice it in Grooming and you will be able to nail it in the demo.

“The storms come and go, the waves crash overhead, the big fish eat the little fish, and I keep on paddling.” - Varys

Lesson for PM: Surviving org politics, re-orgs, new leadership, pivots, roadmap resets, and budget winters isn’t about brute force. About 90% of the time things will be turbulent, all around, but as a PM, who is the intersection of it all, you have to ==stand still, endure and keep on progressing quietly.==

“A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone.” - Tyrion

Lesson for PM: PMs who stop learning stagnate. Market intuition and product instincts decay without constant sharpening: domain, users, economics, data, and incentive design.

“If you think this has a happy ending, you haven’t been paying attention.” - Ramsay Bolton

Lesson for PM: The next release is not a happy ending. Over-romanticizing launches, pivots, or OKRs leads to disappointment. Real product success involves compromise, casualties, and unglamorous grunt work. A few lessons:

  • Don’t fall in love with the idea/feature/product, you will be heart broken.
  • Never assume that just this release and things will all be hunky-dory here onwards. A product is a never ending battle