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In the world of product management, few pieces of writing have achieved the legendary status of Ian McAllister’s post on what separates a top 1% PM from the top 10%. With a career spanning over a decade at Amazon—where he built Amazon Smile and led Alexa International—followed by leadership roles at Airbnb and Uber, McAllister has managed over 100 product managers. He has seen firsthand the specific behaviors that accelerate a career and the pitfalls that stall them.
The distinction between a good product manager and a truly great one often isn't about technical prowess or working longer hours. It comes down to a mindset of continuous improvement, a relentless focus on impact over optics, and the ability to work backwards from the customer problem rather than the solution. Whether you are a new associate PM or a seasoned director, understanding these distinctions is the fastest path to leveling up your craft.
Key Takeaways
- Master the triad first: Early-career PMs should obsess over three core skills: communication, prioritization, and execution. Everything else builds on this foundation.
- Trust is currency: As you move into senior roles, your ability to "spend" trust to get resources is directly correlated to how much trust you have earned through delivering on promises.
- Impact over promotion: The surest way to get promoted is to stop thinking about the promotion and start waking up every day focused solely on maximizing business impact.
- The "Working Backwards" trap: Most teams think they are working backwards, but they are actually "retrofitting" a customer problem to fit a solution they already want to build.
- Teach the "Why": Great leaders don't just make decisions; they explain the mental model behind the decision to help their teams build better instincts.
The Foundation: What New PMs Must Master
The list of skills required to be a competent product manager is exhausting. From design intuition to data analytics, the scope can feel overwhelming for someone just starting out. However, McAllister suggests that new PMs should ignore the noise and focus on mastering three specific areas: Communication, Prioritization, and Execution.
Communication: The Answer First, Explain Second
Communication is the skill you will work on from day one until the day you retire. The stakes simply get higher as you progress. A common mistake junior PMs make is burying the lead—providing a winding narrative of background information before answering a direct question.
To improve immediately, adopt the "answer first, explain second" framework. If an executive asks for a launch date, give the date immediately. Then, provide the context or caveats. McAllister notes that effective communication also involves grading yourself. After every meeting or email, take a moment to ask, "How could I have answered that more clearly?"
Prioritization: The High-Leverage Skill
Given the same amount of intelligence and resources, a PM with superior prioritization skills will generate 5x the impact of a peer without them. Prioritization isn't just about ordering a backlog; it is about time management and resource allocation.
"If you simply wake up every day trying to have the biggest impact you can... that's a really good Guiding Light."
Early in his career, McAllister attributes his success not to being the smartest person in the room, but to being the one most hungry for impact. He ruthlessly prioritized projects that would move the needle up and to the right, starving low-impact work of attention.
Execution: The Motor of the Team
If the PM stalls, the project stalls. Execution is about molding the scope into a shippable package and driving the team forward. It involves removing blockers for engineers and designers and ensuring that the team is getting better with every sprint.
The Senior Transition: Thinking Big and Earning Trust
As a product manager transitions from individual contributor to leader, the scorecard changes. While execution remains important, the defining characteristics of a top 1% senior PM shift toward vision and interpersonal capital.
Thinking Big
Senior PMs must learn to hunt for "bigger elephants." This means taking a wider view of what product management entails. It is not just about features and Jira tickets; it is about owning the business outcome. If a constraint in marketing or finance is blocking product success, a top 1% PM views it as their responsibility to resolve it.
When reviewing ideas, challenge yourself to expand the scope. Even if you start small, does the vision have the potential to be massive? Avoiding the trap of incrementalism is key to senior leadership.
Trust as Currency
Perhaps the most critical addition to McAllister’s updated philosophy is the concept of "Earning Trust." In large organizations, trust is the currency you use to buy resources, headcount, and patience for bold bets.
"Trust is just built by repeatedly setting and meeting expectations... You tell the truth without fail, you launch when you say you'd launch, and you own your mistakes."
If you have a history of forecasting accurately and delivering on time, leadership will trust you with larger, riskier investments. Conversely, if you are evasive about failures or miss deadlines without warning, your "bank account" of trust depletes, limiting your career growth regardless of your talent.
Mastering the "Working Backwards" Process
Amazon’s "Working Backwards" method—writing the press release (PR) and FAQ before writing a single line of code—is famous in the tech industry. However, many teams attempt to adopt this process and fail because they miss the core philosophy: obsessing over the problem.
The "Pantry" Trap
The most common mistake teams make is starting with the solution. They look at the "ingredients in the pantry"—existing technologies, partnerships, or assets—and try to combine them into a product. They then "retrofit" a customer problem to justify the thing they already want to build.
To truly work backwards, you must be unable to process information until you understand the customer's pain point. If a press release lacks a compelling "problem paragraph," there likely isn't a problem worth solving.
The Three Tests for New Initiatives
When evaluating new product ideas, McAllister references a framework used by Jeff Bezos. For a project to be greenlit, it must pass three distinct tests:
- Is it a big idea? Does it have the scale to matter to the company?
- Is it something we should be doing? Does it align with our core competencies and mission?
- Is there a legitimate plan to succeed? This is where the FAQ document shines. Have you thought through the P&L, the technical hurdles, and the go-to-market strategy?
"Remember this process doesn't have to be efficient because the prerequisite for efficiency is knowing where you're going."
Leadership Lessons from the Giants
Having worked under leaders like Jeff Bezos and Jeff Wilke, McAllister absorbed distinct leadership styles that shape how he manages teams today.
Operational Excellence
From Jeff Wilke, McAllister learned the power of the "Weekly Business Review" (WBR). This wasn't just a status update; it was a rigorous interrogation of metrics. This process forces leaders to know their business inside and out. It builds a culture where everyone, from the VP to the PM, can explain the variance in a metric and the root cause behind it.
Teaching the "Why"
A subtle but powerful trait of great product leaders is the ability to teach during decision-making. Instead of simply saying "no" or "do this," effective leaders explain the mental model that led to the decision. This allows the team to disagree and commit more easily, but more importantly, it trains the team's instincts so they can make the right call independently in the future.
Conclusion
Becoming a top 1% product manager is not about checking off a static list of skills. It is a dynamic process of self-correction. It requires the humility to grade your own communication after a meeting, the discipline to prioritize impact over politics, and the courage to kill ideas that don't solve a real customer problem.
Whether you are using a formal process like Amazon’s Working Backwards or simply trying to navigate a chaotic startup environment, the guiding light remains the same: define the problem clearly, earn the trust to solve it, and execute relentlessly.
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