It Didn't Buzz

Product Management Lessons from Kenjutsu

"Everything is Within" by Marilyn Wells (marilynwellsartstudio.com)

When I started Kenjutsu¹, one thing drove me nuts: my bokken² didn’t whistle.
Everyone else’s did. Even the newbies.
Mine? Silent as a stick.
I’d swing harder, faster—barely a sound. Just pain in my shoulders and shame in my gut.

At some point, I gave up.
I told myself: “maybe whistling a bokken is not for me.”

So for months I focused on the basics—edge alignment, leverage of my wrists, stability, grounded posture, precision, flow.
Still no buzz. But my cutting technique got sharp. I could feel my ‘ha-suji’—the perfect line of the cut. A clean trajectory.

With this mindset, I started outperforming people who’d been training longer than me.

Then one day, a veteran kenjutsuoka³ asked me:
“Ángel, how the hell do you make your sword buzz like that?”
That was puzzling. “What are you talking about? I barely hear a damn thing.”
He grinned. “Man, your bokken sounds like a bullet. Training next to you is scary!”

I laughed.

Turns out, when you’re behind a wooden blade, you can barely hear it. The sound wave goes forward and to the sides, not backward. Your bokken does whistle—just not where your ears are.

The swordsman doesn’t hear the song. The enemy does.

That hit me hard.
Once again, I was chasing the wrong metric!
Because it’s the same in product management — and, quite frankly, in any middle management role.
You sweat blood, carry blame, make calls no one wants to make.
You feel like a fraud half the time —don’t get me started on the other half.

At this point, you may start losing faith in yourself.
I have been there at work too. Many times.

You may end up overengineering solutions, investing too much energy in demonstrating your value, covering your ass, or begging for approval.

Because chasing the sound of a blade, that’s ego — a distraction.

A sword is not a musical instrument.

Instead, focus on the fundamentals —
maximizing the intersection between user needs and business strategy,
aligning every stakeholder and pushing clarity,
delivering the right thing at the right time.

That’s it.

This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t communicate your impact. Just don’t confuse volume with value. If you keep showing up, people will feel it — even if they don’t clap.

So here’s my take:
The sound follows the cut.
And if your bokken still doesn’t whistle —fuck it.
Keep cutting clean.
Eventually, someone will stop and say:
“Hey, your work sounds like a bullet.”

But at that point, you may no longer care about the buzz.

Yame.

1. Traditional Japanese martial art of the sword. It focuses on combat techniques using the katana, and is the predecessor of modern kendo.

2. A wooden sword used in Kenjutsu practice. Simulates a katana safely but still requires skill to wield. Some are balanced and shaped to produce a whistling when swung correctly.

3. A practitioner of Kenjutsu.