This is What Top 1% PMs Do Differently | Amit Fulay (VP Microsoft)

The more ego less you are, the better you build trust. And what I mean by that is if you are the kind of person who puts user company before yourself, right? You think you take a company point of view. If you're the kind of person who says, hey, I actually don't need that many people for this project, I can do it with less, I think we are working on the wrong initiative, we need to change it because this is not additive or I'm willing to do this for the other team. You know, you're wearing that hat, what's right for the company, what's right for the user, as opposed to being about yourself or your team or your project. That's what builds trust. Because people look to you as someone who can partner well with others, someone who always tries to strive to do the right thing. If you really think about what will help you stand out, who's the person who actually takes a broader view and tries to do the right thing, even though it might not be in the short term very beneficial to you, that's the best way to gain trust. I mean, you know, how many people would say, hey, the product we are working on, we should stop doing it because, you know, it's very rare to see. And the more folks do that, they build that trust and credibility that they're always trying to do the right thing.

Cool. Welcome, everyone. So my guest today is Amit Fule, VP of Communication Products at Microsoft. Before Microsoft, Amit spent 15 years building products at Meta and Google. He also teaches a popular course on how to level up from a middle manager or senior IC to become an influential product leader at your company. So really excited to discuss this topic with him. Welcome, Amit.

Hey, thanks, Peter. Thanks for having me. And congrats on your success with your newsletter. I've been following you. Really good to see.

Yeah, it's great to learn from product leaders like yourself. So first topic, let's talk about, you know, how folks can influence product leaders. Right. And maybe the first step is to recognize what kind of leader you yourself are. And I think you have a really good framework for this. Can you talk a bit about that?

Yeah. I mean, I've seen product leaders who spike on like three different types of skills. You know, there are thinkers, there are builders, and there are harmonizers. I made up that word. But the essential idea is if you worked with an influential product leader, you've probably seen them be really strong at one of these aspects. Thinkers are your typical visionaries. You know, big ideas people. They're the kind of folks who get excited about the product craft, where to take your product. Your builders are more operators, really good at getting things done. Might not be the biggest visionaries, but really understand how to execute, have the context of the company, the trade offs, you know, attracting the right talent to get stuff done. And harmonizers are, you know, folks who are really place a huge premium on collaboration. You know, they have all the good relationships, they optimize for people. They are the kind of people who can do the tough negotiations really fine when. And I've seen, you know, product leaders typically fall into one of these buckets. Not to say that leaders don't have all of these skills. They do, they have a combination of these. But what I've found is there's a default and there's a strength as a superpower which typically falls in one of these buckets.

Yeah. And so how do you like, if I want to influence each type of product leader, how would I go about thinking about this?

Yeah, and I think that's a good question because you probably need to deploy different tactics. Right. I'll give you a very simple example. And I'm sure PM's listening to this podcast can relate to, you know, you go into a product review and you know what kind of a product leader it is based on, which line of questioning they pursue. Right. Let's say you have a new product proposal. There'll be some leaders who really get into the experience and the pixels and the details. I have worked personally with product leaders who rely a lot on data and how we came about the conclusion, the analysis they want to see, they want to really dig into it. I've also seen product leaders whose first question will be, hey, that's a great proposal, but have you aligned with Team X? Have you talked to this person? Right. Because these are the harmonizer kinds. And so all of you, if you're doing product reviews, you know what kind of things the leader has. Now that could change based on the project or time. But typically there's a strength. And so if you first is like you should understand who you're presenting to, know your audience, so to speak. You know, that's like number one thing you do in influencing. But once you have a good sense, you really have to figure out what's the best way to appeal. If you, let's say if you're pitching a new idea, how do you maximize your odds of getting approval for that idea? That's your influencing goal. And so once you know the leader, I think you can rely on, on logic you can rely on storytelling and narrative. You can make sure you've done all of the, I have aligned, I have talked, you know, that kind of conversation. So you can prepare once you know what kind of product leader it is. And what I've seen, typically when you stumble is when you have a visionary product leader and you're going in with a lot of data and reason, or when you have a product leader who's very data oriented and you're doing, you know, a lot of storytelling and you know, if they are receiving this, they might think this is full of fluff. Show me kind of the proof points. Right. And so I think that mismatches what people stumble over. So understand kind of where the context is, who the leader is, how they see the world, what their strengths are. And I think you're much able to frame it in a way that increases the odds.

Yeah, that's a great point. And I guess you get this understanding from experience presented to them, but also maybe from your boss or your chain of command.

Right.

Hopefully you can get some intel from that.

Exactly.

So I found hard in my career, if I'm one particular type, to influence another type. Right. So for example, I think I'm probably in the builder type. I like to execute and just iterate and craft really good products. And then if I have to present to a leader who only thinks big picture, it's harder for me to actually make it work. Yeah. So do you have any advice for this for people who have this default mode that doesn't really match with the other leader?

Look, I think there are obviously big thinkers and I think you have to project your idea out in order to show where this get what the potential is. I mean vc, if you're pitching a new idea in a startup, this is the kind of thing VCs demand out of you all the time. You might have a great product build, but typically it'll be like, how big can this be? What's the tab? How much can you capture? Because they are looking for returns and so, you know, it's not, it's not an atypical ask. A lot of leaders will be, this is good, but how big can it be? And is it strategic enough for us to invest in it? And so if you are in that position where you're like, hey, I've built something, I would say spend time in, you know, just doing a little bit of 10x thinking and like, what is the success case when you magnify the idea, when you scale it out, how big could it be? I'LL give an example. In my early days at Google, I was working on Google Wallet. It's like super early, before it was a NFC based wallet. And I distinctly remember in one of the reviews Larry was there and you know, Larry was very famous for his 10x thinking. He genuinely thought big, kind of. That's how he operated. He pushed us. We were talking about interchange rates and how, you know, credit card companies charge an interchange rate and how do you absorb the cost or do you pass it to consumers? And in that review we had all this data prepared on interchange rates and how much can we absorb and modeling. And Larry was like, wait, why don't we buy a MasterCard? Right? And it was a question that, you know, stumped everybody in that room because it was a provocative question. But that's the kind of thinking he had, which is like, if we were to buy MasterCard, can we get rid of these rates? And so, you know, you'll see a lot of leaders push. You push and help you expand your thinking. And I think more you do it yourself, I think better off you're going to be.

Yeah. So maybe like removing yourself from like the PM of a Google Wallet and like think like if you were the CEO, like what would you do with this project?

Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Unconstrain yourself and like magnify in the best case. Now you don't have to make stuff up, but you have to be able to articulate what's possible, you know, what's possible in your imagination. I think that is a skill. Now not every leader is that way. Right. I have found some supremely pragmatic leaders. Not that they're not capable of, but they'll really talk about, hey, I just don't see why this would ever become big. And in which case what you build is the one that you really need to prove out. But yeah, I think you need both set of things.

So speaking of, you know, product leaders, product management, there's been a lot of talk about some people posting like product management is dead or something. Right. And there's been a lot of flattening of layers recently. You know, people using AI potentially to place product managers. So I guess given all these different trends, like, do you think there's like one type of leader that's, you know, maybe a best position to excel right now? Or is this, don't think you need all three to make this work.

Yeah, yeah. So first on, I know like Death of X kind of makes for a really interesting, provocative meme. I don't know if I subscribe to that. I don't know if, you know, particular discipline is done or anything. I do know all of us will have to evolve. And this is not just product managers. Right. This applies to engineers because you see GitHub, Copilot and all the other things where you can automate a lot of, you know, coding stuff. It applies to designers and marketers and all of us. But I think of it more as something that evolves. And you know, you really try to imagine if all of us have these tools and the tools, AI tools, and they get more and more sophisticated, what would it look like three years from now and five years from now? And my sense is, you know, are just these names and descriptions of these roles are going to change. I mean, imagine, Peter, if you're doing a startup five years from now and you start from scratch, you're probably not going to hire engineers, designers. The way we know today. You'll have a group of people who are, you know, really passionate about a problem and trying to figure it out. And you have all these tools. You could design it and you could prototype it and build it. And it doesn't matter who was a PM or engineer. You'd all like product maestros, so to speak. Right? It's like. And so the way. But then when you think about that, what's going to be valuable a few years from now is almost interdisciplinary skills. Right. And your ability to just have a little bit multifaceted understanding of data and engineering and design principles and to marshal those tools to build something. I feel like that's where we are going and that's what we got to equip ourselves with. So to your question, what kind of leaders? I mean, I think the leaders who succeed are the ones who have been kind of empathy and have the ability to pick the right problems. And the way you get it done is we are all kind of generalist in some ways with a lot of tools at our disposal and we can build whatever we dream of.

Yeah, I mean, like the best people I've worked with are people who like already defined by their job title, right? Like they would like do some PMs will do some design or engineers with product opinions, you know.

So I mean, you think of CEOs of a startup and in some ways it's the closest proxy we have today because as a CEO, early on you are doing, you know, you're conceiving the idea, you're recruiting, you're a recruiter at some point, you're pitching, you're marketing it, you're building it. I mean, you kind of require all sorts of these skills. Imagine all of us, you know, operating in that mode because AI just enables that, and that's kind of how I think about it.

Okay, awesome. So how does that mesh with, you know, like the traditional PM career ladder? Right. Like, you know, everybody wants to become a VP like yourself. How do you. What is actually. What do you think will actually be required to break into senior product leadership in this new world? Or maybe the same skills that's always been required.

I think what's. What's going to be unique to us in some ways as humans? Like, forget product and the career ladder and leadership. You know, what is unique to us that we can bring that all these tools can't do or all these intelligent tools can't do. And I feel like it still is a deep understanding of human problems and human behavior. Right. Your ability to actually figure out some of these things in this society to go after, and the deeper understanding you have, I think that is what is going to separate out. Because the cost of building, I mean, if you look at the cost of building anything has been going down even before the AI stuff. Right. It's so much easier to build an app and deploy. We've been seeing that transition, and it's going to probably come to zero because you can just. Whatever you can dream of, you can build. So who's got that imagination and empathy? I think that's really the skill you need.

Got it. Yeah. And that is kind of like the evergreen skill, right, that I think people should have for. For. For life, you know, and it's also.

The toughest to master because it sounds so easy in theory. It's like, you know, we. I, I mean, I personally also have used this word so many times. You got to have empathy, but you, if you just really deconstruct it and unpack it and like, what is it required? What does it really mean? It's not as, as straightforward as it seems.

Yeah. Like maybe talk a little bit more. More about that. Is it about, like, you're in the right listening skills or. Why is empathy so hard?

You know, because, I mean, increasingly we are shaped by our own world. I mean, I don't know if we want to get philosophy on this podcast, but you look at the macro and you look at what are the top problems in the world. Okay, number one problem, this is what who talks about is access to drinking water, right? Three and a half billion people don't have access to drinking water. Loneliness is one of the biggest Epidemics. And so you look at these problems that are so widespread, but you look at what people like us in some ways in technology are solving and focusing on. I find that to be. There's a huge gap and you don't have empathy because you don't live in those shoes. Right. You've not lived in those shoes of a lot of the people. And we kind of solve our own problems.

Yes.

You know, our shipping of groceries should go from 60 minutes to 15 to 5, to maybe it's automated. I never have to think about. And there's a huge gap between that and what the rest of the world might see. So, you know, I, I do think there's a little bit of blooding of the boundaries that we, we have to go through and to live in the, the shoes of people and the problems. Yeah, build that empty. Yeah.

Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah. I think everyone here is like solving first world problems, not like what most of the world faces.

And a lot of times we are all solving our company problems.

Yes. And so let's kind of switch gears a little bit. Let's talk about within a company. You know, how do you build that credibility? How do you build that trust and kind of, I guess like a personal brand to a certain extent. And I think you have this really good post about the career trust ladder, about how like growing your career is basically about gaining trust. So what are the steps of this ladder?

Yeah, if I were to split like career roughly into like three buckets. Right. Your early stage, middle stage and late stage. The way to build trust in the early stage is really about striving for excellence, being excellent. Right. You're doing foundational things really well. You follow through. If there's an action item, you get it done. If you say you're going to deliver something on Friday, you actually do it on a Friday. Small things, you're early in your career, your ability to just be excellent, strive for excellent. You're putting a product spec together, you're not winging it, you're thinking deep, you're getting the customer data. I think the more you do that in that stage helps you build the trust. That's been my observation. I mean it's dependability. If you have a new grad in your team, you're really trying to assess if you can depend on them or not. Not that they solve all your problems, but they get stuff done. When they say, I think the middle stage, what I found, the more ego less you are, the better you build trust. And what I mean by that is if you are the kind of person who puts, you know, user company before yourself, right. You think you take a company point of view. If you're the kind of person who says, hey, I actually don't need that many people for this project, I can do it with less, I think we are working on the wrong initiative, we need to change it because this is not additive or I'm willing to do this for the other team. You know, you're wearing that hat, the what's right for the company, what's right for the user as opposed to being, you know, about yourself or your team or your project. That's what builds trust because people look to you as, you know, someone who can partner well with others, someone who always tries to strive to do the right thing. I think that's the best way to build trust. And I think in your late stage as you get into leadership, look, it really comes down to what you stand for. I think, you know, people follow leaders who stand for something in the world, their view of the world, what problems they want to solve, the values they have and how they demonstrate them, how they model them every day. If your actions and your words, you know, there's a mismatch. You don't have trust. If what you say you value, but your decisions don't reflect that, you can have a trust deficit. So really leadership is about, you know, what you stand for, your values and the culture. You said so I know those. Kind of like just simply breaking it down into three stages, right? Foundational, do excellent work as you get into mid management, how much you try to do the right things without putting self above and really what you stand for.

I really like the, maybe because I'm in the middle stage, but I really like your point about being selfless a little bit like not thinking about yourself, thinking about the company and the user. Because that's not the natural thing to do. I think for people who just are over fixated on their career, they're thinking about, okay, how do I get to the next, checking the boxes for the next level or how do I get more scope or more headcount? That's kind of what they're thinking about.

It is, right? It's my project, how big is my team, my impact? And it's not like people mean, don't mean well, right? You should have ambition and you want to push. But if you really think about what will help you stand out. Because if everybody's doing that, who's the person who actually takes a broader view and tries to do the right thing, even though it might not be in the short term, very beneficial to you, that's the best way to gain trust. I mean, you know, how many people would say, hey, the product we are working on, we should stop doing it because, you know, it's very rare to see. And the more folks do that, they build that trust and credibility that they're always trying to do the right thing.

Let's talk about that a little bit. Yeah, so that is like, actually one of the most challenging situations, right? Like. Like you have a whole team around this product and you actually think, like, hey, actually we should stop investing this and like, censor the product. And then who knows if you slice the product, you still have a job or not, who knows? But, like, how do you. Have you had some experience doing this? Like, you had to sunset a product without giving the impression that you kind of screwed up or in some way?

I have. I've worked on products that others thought should be sunset. This was the middle stage of my career. And later on, I've also had to do that. You know, it depends on the context of the company. I feel like it all comes down to opportunity cost. You know, it's really kind of, what traction does your product have? And to our previous conversation, how big can it be? And how do you compare it to the other opportunities your company has? That really is the criteria. I feel a lot of times you use to make these calls. Right. Over and over again. It's not that your product is a failure, I think, you know, because those decisions are actually very simple. Right. This product has got zero traction in the market. It's not going anywhere. I think those are obvious ones that are actually not super contentious in my mind. Right. Because people kind of know, hey, this is not working out. Let's try something else. I think the tougher ones are they're kind of doing okay. They are growing. But then, you know, you kind of look at how big this can be, and at this rate, what is else do we trade off in terms of resources, in terms of kind of our attention, and those are the tougher ones to make. And so again, you know, you take a broader view and you look at what else could be we'd be doing, investing in.

Yeah.

And you have to make those calls.

And when you're evaluating a PM that has, like, who's in this situation? Like, generally speaking, do you think someone who proactively, like, talks about this stuff shows more maturity? Or how do you evaluate PMs who have, like, you know, product basically Failed or like, you know, decided to cancel their own product.

You know, I mean, I. Look, I don't. It depends on what kind of career stage a PM is. I don't expect PMs to always have the judgment to make these calls. Not, you know, but I think what you value in these situations is people who are. Have utmost honesty and objectivity. Right. Who kind of don't. Are not trying to hide the truth, hide the dark spots, embellishing stuff just so that, you know, you continue to do that. I think that harms your credibility. Now, you can be emotionally attached to a product that's in question, but I think your ability to objectively say, hey, let's truly analyze what's the best case here versus what we could be doing. I think that objectivity, whether it's through data or reasoning, that's valuable, Right? That's valuable. More so than trying to sell or BS your way out of things.

Yeah. And I think that's pretty rare too, Right? Because like, like a lot of product leaders, they want to. They constantly want to pitch their product. It's like, you know, I'm going to present the most rosy picture. Like, everything's going well.

There are cultures like that too, where you kind of like selling to each other. And, you know, the truth kind of is in the hallways, not in the meetings. Right. And, you know, you have a problem when this large review and a meeting and everybody presents all this stuff and people come out and they get a coffee and they're like, I don't think that's ever going to work. If you have that disconnect in a company. Right. That's a culture problem.

Yeah.

And so if you find yourself, like always, like, in a sell mode and pitching and not speaking the hard truth, you know, there's a larger problem, not just the product you're working on, but culturally, you got to fix that.

Yeah. So let's go back to building trust. So we talk about one way to build trust is to kind of try to speak the truth. Like, no bull bullshit, like, be honest about the pros and cons. Right. And then what are some other ways? Obviously, if you have credibility, you have a track record. That probably builds trust, too. But, like, what are some other ways to build trust?

Okay, building trust. I mean, look, obviously credibility is a big part of it. It's your tenure, it's your track record, it's what you've done in the past that feeds into that. I would say how you show up matters a lot too, in building trust. You know, you Whether you're open to ideas, whether with. Whether you can take a contrary point of view into account, be flexible enough, that helps build trust with people who work with you. You know, if you are blocking those things out, you're going to get less of the truth and less of that trust from other people to come up with problems for you. Right. So I do think it's not just your credibility, it's how you show up. And the last thing I feel like building trust is your ability to speak the truth. And as simple as it sounds, I know for sure, talking to a lot of folks, it's not always the culture, you know, the bad news doesn't always travel fast. Hey, this didn't work for X. And there's a tendency to defend, to hide, to kind of not tackle those issues. And the more you are able to do it, I think you build a lot of credibility and trust in the organization.

Yeah. But I think. Okay, let's talk about another challenging situation.

Right.

So like, you have a whole management chain and the person at the top might not recognize, you know, all the stuff that's happening on the ground. So maybe you want to speak the truth to that person. But like, you know, you have a manager, you have a manager's manager who might want to present like a more rosy picture or something. Like, how do you deal with like all these different levels?

Yeah, I mean, look, those situations are tricky. I would start with make giving folks in your management chain the benefit of now. Don't assume that, you know, they're not open to having that discussion. Right. I would share with those people.

Yeah.

And if you find like, you're still not making headway, right. Your concerns are still not being addressed, then I think you should go to who you think will be receptive and can address it. Ed Catnall, right. Who was the CEO of Pixar, had this really interesting principle which I kind of really like. And he talked about your communication hierarchy should not mirror your org hierarchy. That information should be, you know, free and fluid and you should be able to connect, not always going through like a chain of command. Now, I know it's easier said than done, but a healthy culture, you're able to do that, right? You're able to talk about issues in the right forums without getting approval from like a bunch of like manager folks. So, you know, if you are in that situation, I know, Peter, you are not. But in general, if somebody is, I would not hesitate trying and going through the channels, but like still pushing for, you know, getting the real data out yeah.

There might be like also like a timing thing too. Like, you know, like if, if you built some credibility yourself.

Yeah.

Then maybe it's. The org is more open to hearing you out when you try to speak the truth about other things.

Yeah. And also helps always to use, you know, come up with, like, what would you do differently? What's the mitigation? If you're going to highlight something's not working well, you also want to suggest what could we be doing instead? Or how could we be doing it better.

Yes.

Because if you don't have the latter, you know, then you're just like a complainer. And like, that harms your credibility too. If you're the. If you're the guy who's only saying this is broken without actually contributing to fixing it. Right. That doesn't build credibility either. So I would like couple the two. But I think what definitely harms your credibility is when you know something is broken and you like, sugarcoat it and you massage it and you try to market your waste out of it. Right. That definitely will harm both the product and your standing.

Yeah, I love that. I think I got a similar advice before. Like, if you have a problem, you should try to offer some sort of solution. If you have like three different options, you should try to at least make a recommendation on which option you think is best. Like, even if it's like not fully baked, you can try to just like make. You can say it's not fully baked, but you can try to make a recommendation.

And you know, if you're trying to really escalate up in your organization, it's always better to also that you've tried one of those solutions. Like, you know, you want to come across as you've done everything in your capacity and now you're asking for help as opposed to, look, I'm just gonna come and complain to you because you're the senior most person.

Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense. Okay, so let's talk a little bit more about Microsoft. I think you've had a great experience there so far, it sounds like. So, you know, like, before, Microsoft was pretty famous for a lot of internal strife and competition. Right. And like teams competing against each other. And I think the culture has really changed since then. Maybe you can talk a little bit more about this because I think you've been there for a couple years now. Maybe you've seen this culture actually change. Like, how has it happened?

Yeah, yeah, I know we spoke about this a bit in the past, but look, if I would have Just simply stated, there's no hubris anymore. There's no entitlement to success. Which maybe I found when the first time I was here, I'll give you an example. Very recently we had this internal kind of off site conference for some of the senior, most leaders on product and design. And these were a group of folks who work on, you know, some of the biggest products. I would say not just Microsoft, but any software product. There were folks from Windows and copilot and M365 and teams, outlook, you name it. And we had a couple of days of sessions and everybody was coming and presenting on various topics and pretty much everyone was talking about how they can do certain things better. Okay, here's what we're struggling with. X, this is what we need to do. Here's where we got it wrong. This is what we need to do. And you know, I was thinking about that and I was, it was so refreshing because this was not very typical at Microsoft or at most companies. There was no sell. People weren't coming up and saying, look how good their team and their impact has been. If you were listening in that room, you wouldn't know what products these folks are talking about, right? Because it almost felt like everybody's an upstart, everybody's behind. And I think that is the thing that has changed in my mind where there's a lot of honesty, there's obviously you've heard of the term growth mindset and I used to think before I joined is this like a marketing thing, is this real? But I definitely see it's permeated through and people genuinely are striving to do better. No matter how successful, how big the product is, that's what's changed.

And what role has, well, you know, has Microsoft CEO played in this? Like, is it kind of, I mean, I, there's no.

It comes from him, right? It, the change. If you think about he's like the nucleus, the epicenter, right? And that's the seismic shift. And I think, you know, his leadership team and you know, that's kind of just permeated through, but definitely he was the catalyst because that was the only delta between the previous one and this company.

So, so if you were to summarize some of, you know, satya superpowers, like, is it like listening very well? Is it like being authentic, you know.

Being empathetic and also being decisive? I mean, he's done some bold moves. That's right. You look at the acquisition of LinkedIn, acquisition of GitHub, all of the partnerships We've done, you know, yes, there's the empathetic side of him, but he's also very decisive and very bold in some of these things. And, you know, it's a combination of all those things that makes him super effective.

I really wish. I think as humans, we're all wired to actually hear about the struggle and the vulnerabilities. Like that, to me, is much more interesting than you posting about your accomplishments. So I actually hope that both in job interviews and we're trying to tell a story during all hands, the leader who is actually authentic and honest about the stuff, I have a lot more respect for.

Yeah.

So let's talk a little bit more about your elite product leadership course. Like, what are some of the main topics that you cover in this course?

Yeah, I recently I did a couple of codes. It's been fun. It's an experiment. And I started this course because at least through my journey, a lot of times I felt like in hindsight this was so obvious. Why didn't anybody tell me this? You know, because nobody has a. Nobody teaches you leadership, so to speak. Right. You kind of evolve and you grow and learn on the job. And you, as you go through this stuff, you can sometimes, you know, you're like, some insight would have helped me handle this situation better, handle this context better. And so I felt that a lot. I was like, I wish I knew this one year ago I wouldn't have done that in this way. And so I started this course so that I can actually share those insights. And hopefully some of them are useful for people as they are going through that leadership journey. So that's the genesis of the course. By the way, I donate all the money I make off this course. So it is not for monetary reasons. I generally feel like it's my way of giving back. I cover three things in the course. One is really about communication skills. And I know it's like a often repeated topic, but really, how do you communicate? To inspire, to align everybody, to actually rally people into action? That's like communication is your number one job as a leader. So I spend a lot of time on that. I have a bunch of case studies, bunch of techniques that I talk through. The second is on decision making. How do you think about decisions, which are the decisions you should make quickly versus wait as late as possible? How do you make decisions? And there's a lot of case studies and that, you know, I then give those simulation to students and I tell them actually what the decision was. So it's. It's kind of fantastic to compare notes. And then the third thing I work through is really how do you build teams and great cultures? And you know, it's everything from recruiting to rituals you can follow, things that I've seen work for others. How do you build healthy cultures? How do you see truth always so that you know, there's this notion of power distance. The higher you go up as a leader, the more curated you get the information. Right. And how do you not fall into that trap? So there's a lot of these kind of over my journey, what I've learned from some great leaders, what I've learned by making mistakes, I've tried to capture that into insight. So that's the course. It's been fun.

Yeah. Some of the stuff like some of the stuff you could have spent like you could have wasted years, years on. Right. Like if you realize this like a couple years earlier, you know, and that's the goal.

It's like it doesn't prevent people from making mistakes, but at least you're not making the obvious ones you're making so that you have new learnings.

Let me ask you, let me push a little bit. Like what is something that you wish you realized earlier that probably would have saved like a couple years of time or just made your life easier?

Oh, there's many things like that.

Yeah.

Let me give you a couple of examples. Early, early management. I would spend a lot more time trying get the average performers on my team to be great or low performers to be average. I thought that was kind of my responsibility. Right. Over the years, you realize the best ROI you can get is spending most amount of time with your top performers, making sure they are happy, they are challenged. That's the best way to do it. One of the other mistakes I made was, you know, trying to assume all the PMs have to be good at all the kind of core competencies. Hey, you have to be good at strategy and execution and design. And then I realized, you know, what if I thought of my team as a sports team? You know, if you look at a sports coach, right. Pretty obvious they you play a position and if you're a good athlete in that position, you play, you're a wide receiver. The coach doesn't teach you how to be a quarterback. Right. They look at your potential in one thing and they match you with that. And the more we think about our teams like that, which is, you know, Peter is really good at X. And that's the kind of thing I'm going to opportunity, I'm going to Match with. There are two outcomes with that. One, Peter, as a PM is happier because they're playing to their strengths. And second, you get much better impact because now I'm not trying to put Peter onto a project which he's not really good at. And so how do you craft? You know, this is. This was sounds obvious now to me, but I didn't have that insight earlier. So I thought like, everybody has to grade at everything and I have to get spend X amount of time. And there's many things like that that you. I've learned over the years. And so I just share those so that hopefully people approach their things a little bit more efficiently.

Yeah, that's the problem I always had with this. These like, career ladder things where like, you have to. There's like five boxes and you got to make sure you check all five because people are usually do very well on one or two things. I mean, you can't be terrible at otherwise, but usually they spike on one or two things.

If you notice or detect a superpower that a certain person has and everybody has some special kill, maybe not super early in their career, but as they evolve and if you really capitalize on that and give them the right opportunities, it's such a great team. Obviously you have to make sure you have a diverse team that not all of them spike on one thing versus the other. But I think, yeah. So that kind of mindset actually really helps you craft the right mix on the team.

Yeah. Yeah, I love that. It's like a good person to work for. So. Yeah. So, yeah. So where can people find you and also your course, your option or cohort.

My course is on Maven. You can search for that. You can find me on LinkedIn. I usually on and off share my insights there. I'm active there. Yeah, my inbox is open. Send me a note if you have questions.

Awesome. Well, I mean, thanks so much for making time. I think this is an awesome discussion and I definitely learned a lot. I'm sure you have a lot more to offer in your LinkedIn post and also your course. So.

Hey, thanks, Peter, for having me and good work with your podcast. I've been enjoying some of the guests you've brought recently, so keep up the good work.

Yeah, it's my way from learning from people like yourself. Cool. Thank you.