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Ian McAllister

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71
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2022-11-20
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2022-11-20
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1
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  1. “Yeah, I guess Twitter is a great place. Ian McCale, I-A-N-M-C-A-L-L-L-L is my handle. And then, you know, I've started a newsletter. I'm not that frequent, to be honest. I have a lot of good intentions and a bunch of ideas. Ian McAllister.substack.com. And so that's something to kind of connect and feel free to subscribe. And if hit me up on Twitter if you have ideas for posts or questions and if I can answer in a tweet, I will. If not, I might put it on the queue of things to write about. Yeah, thanks for having me on, Lenny. It's like we were talking earlier about writing or doing other things. And like the value of that is just like making connections with people. And so that was what I was one just to reconnect with you is awesome and to whatever extent I get a chance to make new connections in the world. That's a good thing.”

    2022-11-20 · Lenny's Podcast · What it takes to become a top 1% PM | Ian McAllister (Uber, Amazon, Airbnb) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “I say Gibson Biddle. I think that he is one just tremendous amount of product experience that I think is valuable. I respect the fact that he takes the time to share it. He doesn't have to, but he does. And he's also a great communicator. And he invests in being, you can tell, like, you know, he measures CSAT out of his talks and things like this. Like he's invested over his career to be a great communicator. So I think he's a good kind of role model for me and I think for others out there.”

    2022-11-20 · Lenny's Podcast · What it takes to become a top 1% PM | Ian McAllister (Uber, Amazon, Airbnb) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “I'm old, so I didn't have this when I was growing up. Like, I remember going to the library and like sending away for a brochure in the back of a magazine and things like you, like learning was not so easy back then. The internet obviously was a huge resource and is. But then YouTube as well to see somebody do it. It's also interesting to see somebody live. So anyway, I'm a fan.”

    2022-11-20 · Lenny's Podcast · What it takes to become a top 1% PM | Ian McAllister (Uber, Amazon, Airbnb) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “It's probably not too interesting, but to be honest, YouTube, it's like the eighth wonder of the world. I just every day I'm amazed if I want to learn about something new. Like a couple summers ago, I had some time off. And so I basically taught myself how to do woodworking and built a kitchen and other stuff. And so it's just like it continues to be this resource and this jewel that helps me kind of grow and learn about anything.”

    2022-11-20 · Lenny's Podcast · What it takes to become a top 1% PM | Ian McAllister (Uber, Amazon, Airbnb) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “I don't know. I mean, there's not one specific thing, and there's no right answer, which maybe makes it unfair, but just maybe a little self-reflection, and maybe they will have understanding their strength. And that might be a good bit of self-awareness about what makes them different where they can harness that. That makes them a better PM or engineer or something. And so that's kind of what I'm looking for. But there's no set answer. It's more just to throw them off balance.”

    2022-11-20 · Lenny's Podcast · What it takes to become a top 1% PM | Ian McAllister (Uber, Amazon, Airbnb) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “When I'm coming out of left field, I ask people at this stage in your career what have you learned about yourself? How are you different from other people? No one's prepared for that.”

    2022-11-20 · Lenny's Podcast · What it takes to become a top 1% PM | Ian McAllister (Uber, Amazon, Airbnb) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “Yellowstone, that's definitely my favorite. Can't wait for the next season. Montana is my happy place, although I'm probably the kind of person that they rail about in the show. So it's kind of ironic. And I think the movie was everything everywhere all at once. I love movies that are not predictable. And I thought that was just very creative.”

    2022-11-20 · Lenny's Podcast · What it takes to become a top 1% PM | Ian McAllister (Uber, Amazon, Airbnb) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “How I built this is really interesting just to kind of decompose how interesting businesses and products came about. And then just because of my work, EV News Daily is kind of a daily digest of what's going on in the electric vehicle space. So that's a very good use of my time, five minutes a day to get up to speed.”

    2022-11-20 · Lenny's Podcast · What it takes to become a top 1% PM | Ian McAllister (Uber, Amazon, Airbnb) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “A getting real by 37 signals? It's specifically the chapter on epicenter design. I've shared that many, many times. You can link to it. That's definitely the most thing I shared. For fun, the wool trilogy by Hugh Howey, he's probably my favorite author and a great series. And then for learning, just a recent one that I thought be super fascinating was energy and civilization by Vaklav Smil. So it might not be on the bestseller list, but I thought it was interesting.”

    2022-11-20 · Lenny's Podcast · What it takes to become a top 1% PM | Ian McAllister (Uber, Amazon, Airbnb) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “As opposed to The opposite is if there is a customer problem that feels compelling even before you know the solution, like, yeah, that does feel compelling. And just like with every startup out there, probably a lot of the pitches are like there's a big audience and a painful problem. And it's kind of the painkiller versus the vitamin thing. And then we have a novel way to solve that that is where that's kind of working backwards, but the more often, especially in a big company, you'll have all these ideas because you have more ingredients in the pantry of ways you could combine them and try to feed it someone, but may not be working backwards.”

    2022-11-20 · Lenny's Podcast · What it takes to become a top 1% PM | Ian McAllister (Uber, Amazon, Airbnb) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “Most common thing that I see that's kind of tips me off is that when they talk about something, there's different pieces in the pantry, right? And they're like, we have these ingredients. We could put them together. We could add these two things together and make a meal out of it, right? And so it might be a technology. It might be a service. It might be two different things or the building blocks are there. And what's enabled if you add these two building blocks together is something. But that's not really working backwards. It may be true that there's some leverage or some benefit from the company having these technologies or assets. But that to me is often the first step that these two things look similar. We combine them and it's all goodness in this new thing. So if you start talking about those things or the technology, I think that's a likely case that you're not really working backwards.”

    2022-11-20 · Lenny's Podcast · What it takes to become a top 1% PM | Ian McAllister (Uber, Amazon, Airbnb) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “2008, or something like this. And I sort of asked him, What's your criteria for sort of investing in something new? And he said, well, it's like three things. One, is it a big idea? And then second, is it something we should be doing? So maybe you have an idea, if you have this new way to extract oil from shale, is it a big idea? Yeah, probably could be a big idea. Is it something Amazon should be doing? Probably not. And the third test is there a legitimate plan to succeed. And you got to have all three of those things. And I think the fact part of the working backwards process is that early stage legitimate test of whether this thing has a plan. Because you could have this internal press release or big idea or big idea for solution. But the fact basically says, okay, I've thought through the internal components or the finances or the key technical hurdles or whatever. And so that's one that's not written about as much, how to do the fact. But I think it's another way to kind of build trust that you've been thoughtful.”

    2022-11-20 · Lenny's Podcast · What it takes to become a top 1% PM | Ian McAllister (Uber, Amazon, Airbnb) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “That would just be a meeting with leadership or other folks to kind of review the concept, review the press release, review the fact, and ask questions. And in some cases, that would be the gate to like approving it. That was the case with me and Bezos before we went off and built the team and launched Amazon Smile is I would do these reviews about different concepts. And that was the one that we greenlit. I mean, that's often the case. It's also just a great way to educate other people about what you're trying to accomplish, ground them in the customer problem and solution. And the fact is a whole other concept. It's about the legitimate plan to succeed. One other thing that I use, I got a chance to have lunch with Jeff Bezos, who's probably back in...”

    2022-11-20 · Lenny's Podcast · What it takes to become a top 1% PM | Ian McAllister (Uber, Amazon, Airbnb) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “There's some scale below which it doesn't probably make sense to do this process because there's a little bit of overhead to it. But I think if it's a significant, if it's a new product, absolutely. And I think I'm sure there's some at Amazon that don't use the process. But in general, that was the way and often enforced that you need to working backwards review. Ideally, that would happen kind of at the outset, but sometimes it would be added later. And yeah, I think it's a great thing. Whether you use the mechanism, again, it's a great template to start with and use if you have the flexibility to, but I think it's also possible just to have the spirit and to try to be true to the spirit of working backwards from what you're trying to do for customers and what problem. That's the most important thing. The template is just a mechanism to help ensure that happens.”

    2022-11-20 · Lenny's Podcast · What it takes to become a top 1% PM | Ian McAllister (Uber, Amazon, Airbnb) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “Shared posts on, I know for sure LinkedIn, and I probably should put it on the newsletter on my newsletter that sort of a working backwards template and some posts about how to do the process or tips on how that Amazon does the process. And so I'll make sure to put those up on my newsletter as well and the template's free. Obviously anyone can just copy it and grab it.”

    2022-11-20 · Lenny's Podcast · What it takes to become a top 1% PM | Ian McAllister (Uber, Amazon, Airbnb) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “Those to dive deeper into the product. Depending on the organization you're at, that may not wash to sort of train your senior leadership to use the process you want to use. And so then it might be a matter of finding the opportunities to try something and saying, are you open to doing something this way, a review of a doc instead of a review of a whatever? So it's a little separate than just working backwards, but I think you just have to acknowledge the environment you're in. And also like unless the organization has a specific format to do this, if it does, you probably just need to use it. Different leaders process information different ways. You may find one format's effective with your leader, but another one to sort of educate a broader organization, but it's very kind of company specific. So despite what I might want to do, I just got to recognize that I have more leverage down with my team versus up or across.”

    2022-11-20 · Lenny's Podcast · What it takes to become a top 1% PM | Ian McAllister (Uber, Amazon, Airbnb) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “It's a blank slate, truly, you could certainly use the working backwards process like Amazon does with the internal press release and then the fac and so forth. So that's fine. But a lot of companies have a different way they go about it. Some companies are very much its slide culture and presentations and so forth. And so as a product leader, you can think about what you do with your team and what you do upwards or across. And so you may have a latitude to use any process with your team. You know, and I've done that at some companies where using documents and if they're supportive of the team and they recognize the value of that, like, oh, actually, this is good and this is a great way to write things down on paper and to have better information content and richer discussion that oftentimes I think people will find that versus a slide with a couple bullets is not great. Then you can kind of build that muscle. And I found it's a great way to kind of teach and use.”

    2022-11-20 · Lenny's Podcast · What it takes to become a top 1% PM | Ian McAllister (Uber, Amazon, Airbnb) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “To try, but that's not the only mechanism that can do it. And eventually, if you do it enough and you build that muscle to work backwards, you can do it in any number of formats, whether it's something in a PRD or some other way. But the key is that you don't just don't think what we could build. You think about the problem and then the solution that solves that problem.”

    2022-11-20 · Lenny's Podcast · What it takes to become a top 1% PM | Ian McAllister (Uber, Amazon, Airbnb) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “Two parts of it. One, there's the concept of working backwards from what you're trying to accomplish, and I still absolutely do that with my teams as well. Like, what are we trying to accomplish for the business or accomplish for a customer? And let's start there. And if they have a problem that is interfering with their ability to be profitable, for their ability, you know, if it's a business customer or it's a customer trying to accomplish a goal, starting with that problem, that's different from the working backwards mechanism, which is the press release and the fact, which was the mechanism that Amazon used to enforce working backwards, which I think is effective. And I've tried to sort of teach that and write some posts about with templates and things like that because it's a great way to start of like the press release has a paragraph about the problem. That's what you write. And then you write the solution paragraph and then the customer quote and then the fact, which is like, is there a legitimate plan to succeed? So if you don't have that muscle to work backwards already and your team, it's a great thing.”

    2022-11-20 · Lenny's Podcast · What it takes to become a top 1% PM | Ian McAllister (Uber, Amazon, Airbnb) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “It wasn't successful. I ended up shutting it down later. And so I learned a lot. This was like the first year or two at Amazon about using the working backwards process, but not really working backwards. And so that's literally if I'm reviewing working backwards press release or fact or even talking with someone about a new initiative. My brain is kind of wired down to not be able to process any information until I focus on the problem and the customer. And then once we start talking about that, then I can engage and kind of literally work backwards to say, okay, how do we solve that problem? And what's the most elegant way to solve it? Or if there's three problems, what's number one or two or three? So it's probably a gap in me that I can't like process information without working backwards from the problem, but I find it to be helpful when people do that.”

    2022-11-20 · Lenny's Podcast · What it takes to become a top 1% PM | Ian McAllister (Uber, Amazon, Airbnb) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “This business of automated merchandising, using community content. And that was kind of the core thing we were doing is to grow that. But there was this Jeff idea that the team was super excited about because I think in some meeting, he'd kind of sketched it out or whatever. And so that there was already all this momentum to like build this thing that was actually a Jeff project. But I should have known at the time, in hindsight, I do because the name they had for this project was ASIN to ASIN linking. And ASIN was kind of the identifier for a product on Amazon. And so it was kind of this not working backwards idea ultimately of like, if you could link two products by a subjective attributes and then you could build a feature around it that allowed customers to vote on these things and then it would be kind of a merchant. So it was not in spirit. It really wasn't working backwards. But the team was all excited. And so we kind of eventually wrote the press release and we kind of did it. And you know what? It turned out.”

    2022-11-20 · Lenny's Podcast · What it takes to become a top 1% PM | Ian McAllister (Uber, Amazon, Airbnb) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “Working backwards is all about the problem and kind of starting there and obsessing about the problem and being guided by it to then go into the solution. So when teams that do it wrong is they don't do that. They don't work backwards. They start, they have something they want to build. We've got these things look similar. These two technologies or whatever. We could combine them and then do this. And if you say we could, and it's not grounded in a customer or customer's problem, you're not working backwards. And then you may use sort of quote unquote, the working backwards process, but you already have the solution. And so you're adding the problem after the solution. You're kind of retrofitting the problem, retrofitting the customer. And so that, I think, is the number one thing is that they don't get the importance of truly starting with the problem that you're trying to solve and being faithful to that working backwards from the problem. When I first started at Amazon and community, we had sort of this.”

    2022-11-20 · Lenny's Podcast · What it takes to become a top 1% PM | Ian McAllister (Uber, Amazon, Airbnb) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “Same because I respected it so much. And then I guess the last attribute of Wilkie, which I really saw was like teaching. And it wasn't just saying this is the right thing or this is what my decision is in a meeting, but teaching the why and why the pattern, the mental model that informs him to think this is the right thing. And so I think he was just great at kind of teaching, taking a moment. It might just take 10 seconds in a meeting to teach. And that's something that I've forgotten in different parts of my career, especially as you get more experienced and you know the right decision to do and you know what you want, whatever, that may be the right thing, but I think you'll have a lot more lasting effect if you could kind of abstract it to a degree and teach the lesson because then that person will hopefully learn the lesson and can apply it to a bunch of future situations and also understand the why more and it helps them kind of sometimes disagree and commit.”

    2022-11-20 · Lenny's Podcast · What it takes to become a top 1% PM | Ian McAllister (Uber, Amazon, Airbnb) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “If you're really paying attention to the product that you operate, it will give you ideas for things you could do to double down on something that's happening well or to prevent something bad happening. And I think that's been a very key reason for Amazon scale. Another thing I really respect about Jeff Wilkie, and I think Doug Harrington has some of this as well, is that the notion of kind of a little bit of tough love, you know, and like, I think that's important. And that neither were assholes, but sometimes, and especially, you know, Wilkie, like you need to get that look kind of like your dad might, you know, look over his glasses at you and be like, hey. And so I think that was kind of the vibe that you would get. It was professional. It was respectful. But sometimes everyone needs a little kick in the ass. And I think that was something. But it was, you know, it almost builds more respect from him and just incredible leaderly behavior, which I really respect. And I try to model and I try to do this.”

    2022-11-20 · Lenny's Podcast · What it takes to become a top 1% PM | Ian McAllister (Uber, Amazon, Airbnb) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “And everyone, there might be 100 people in that room prepared to answer questions about your business. And it had this cascading effect that not only was I or other leaders there on the spot having to answer a question and being prepared, but then I would do the same thing with my team, et cetera. So I was trying to build those muscles in my team such that they could bring their insights and understanding and actions on things in this cascading effect. So that was a mechanism, which is another really big thing at Amazon that led to all these like amazing behaviors. And I think a lot of those mechanisms, you know, came from Jeff Wilkie or he created an environment where they would be developed throughout the organization and then propagated. And so that was one thing, just that operational mindset and rigor that is, you know, being a product leader is not just about building new things. It's about how well you run what you've already built.”

    2022-11-20 · Lenny's Podcast · What it takes to become a top 1% PM | Ian McAllister (Uber, Amazon, Airbnb) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “Amazon PMs for people who haven't worked there in that environment, and that continuous improvement mindset. That's so important. And one of the forums that was a great learning was sort of the WBR weekly business review, or later called consumer business review. So this was a forum where Jeff would lead the meeting. It would be a series of metrics for different parts of the business, everywhere from fulfillment to customer support to traffic to category teams to programs. And I would present on Amazon Smile there. And the way he would run that meeting and kind of enable you to get through a metrics meeting for the entire North American retail business in one hour. And the way he ran that meeting would lead all those leaders to build these muscles because you wanted to be prepared to speak to the variances or trends in your business in a key metric and know your business and know what you were doing based on that thing. And so just this hour a week of probing and asking questions.”

    2022-11-20 · Lenny's Podcast · What it takes to become a top 1% PM | Ian McAllister (Uber, Amazon, Airbnb) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  27. “With a press release for a concept, and it didn't have a problem paragraph. I'd skip that. And, you know, we reviewed it and so forth. And he was like, you know what? Maybe if you don't have a problem paragraph, there's not really a problem. And so it was kind of a little lesson to me like, yeah, maybe that is why I did it. I wasn't really working backwards. I kind of had the solution in mind. And so I'd skipped over that part. So that was one just very specific learning about the process from Jeff. So Jeff Wilkie probably learned more from Wilkie just because I had more exposure over my time there. You know, at one point he was my skip level. And I have such tremendous respect for Wilkie or Jaw as he was called internally because he was sort of the consummate like operator. This muscle that I think you learn working at Amazon about being an operator, whether you're not in operations, but any part of the business that I think came from him and I think it was due to him that Amazon developed that muscle. And I think it's one way that separates.”

    2022-11-20 · Lenny's Podcast · What it takes to become a top 1% PM | Ian McAllister (Uber, Amazon, Airbnb) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  28. “And Bezos and Wilkie and others every couple months and just kind of, I would profile a couple different options and use the working backwards process and we'd review some facts. And so there was a bunch of kind of learnings throughout that process. One I found Jeff to be super encouraging. And each time we leave one of those meetings, we maybe didn't find the thing in that meeting. We talk about it and brainstorm a little bit, but he would always leave and be encouraging and with a quote, you know, one time he was like, you know, remember this process doesn't have to be efficient because the prerequisite for efficiency is knowing where you're going. And then he leave the room and whatever. So I just, I found like the rhetoric around Jeff or blowing up or whatever, I didn't find any of that. And I found him to be super encouraging. And he found all these times to sort of help train me in the working backwards process. Like there was a time when I came.”

    2022-11-20 · Lenny's Podcast · What it takes to become a top 1% PM | Ian McAllister (Uber, Amazon, Airbnb) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  29. “Two very different people, but like complemented themselves so well. You know, I didn't have hundreds of meetings with Jeff Bezos while I was there, but I did have a chance, especially in kind of the development of Amazon Smile and then early when I started the social team, to have some of those meetings where I wrote the doc and it was Jeff and 10 other people reviewing the process of kind of doing even before hitting on Amazon Smile, it was really kind of a innovation process, I guess you could call it where we had a goal in mind to increase customers kind of loyalty to Amazon, their direct traffic loyalty, not in the way Prime did, which is a paid program, but to try to come up with another program or way in which customers might start their shopping on Amazon instead of elsewhere. And so I kind of, I was running the gifting business. I just moved over to the traffic org to try to come up with a new program with no team or anything. And then I would meet with Jeff.”

    2022-11-20 · Lenny's Podcast · What it takes to become a top 1% PM | Ian McAllister (Uber, Amazon, Airbnb) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  30. “Build these new muscles and develop these new tools, and I loved it. So that was why I stayed so long. And obviously Airbnb, then it was the time to try something new, which was a great experience. And, you know, kind of a test. You know, I was in Seattle and the company was in San Francisco and spending three days on a road each week was a good learning and ultimately a reason to come back and be Seattle based. But then I chose Amazon again because it was still a great place and I thought I could continue to learn.”

    2022-11-20 · Lenny's Podcast · What it takes to become a top 1% PM | Ian McAllister (Uber, Amazon, Airbnb) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  31. “I just felt like I was learning. I was not only working with smart people that were driven, which was true at Microsoft as well, but there was kind of this DNA in the organization and this wiring that I thought was really effective. And it just kind of clicked with me. And so I kind of molded myself to the environment. And at every step of the way, I felt like I was learning and growing. And I was one of the benefits for me is you get a chance to learn from so many other people in these different settings. You get a chance to read documents that make you learn more so than probably a slide deck. You get a chance to be in weekly business reviews with really smart people and learn from that, not just learn from your own experience, but from everyone else in that room. So I was just a sponge and so much learning happening that I think propelled my career. And so that was why especially the first 10 years that was so fantastic of just like growing and feeling yourself kind of”

    2022-11-20 · Lenny's Podcast · What it takes to become a top 1% PM | Ian McAllister (Uber, Amazon, Airbnb) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  32. “Interesting about Amazon, and it's changed over time is that I think you know pretty quickly whether you're a fit for it or not. And it can be kind of a crucible and a little Spartan. It just clicked with me though because I'm kind of a structured thinker and right brain. And so this idea that like, hey, I could have this business and then figure out one metric or fitness function that determines success. And then my job is to make that number go up and to the right. That kind of fit with me. And then I rewired my brain probably over the first 10 years around this concept. And I just.”

    2022-11-20 · Lenny's Podcast · What it takes to become a top 1% PM | Ian McAllister (Uber, Amazon, Airbnb) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  33. “Could call it getting right, just think of like something I could have done better, you know, and just that same continuous improvement mindset. It's to everything, every role, every experience, every project, every communication. And if you build that muscle to try to do it better the next time and also just try to be a little self-aware about what could have gone better, then I think it's a really good muscle to build.”

    2022-11-20 · Lenny's Podcast · What it takes to become a top 1% PM | Ian McAllister (Uber, Amazon, Airbnb) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  34. “But if you don't build the support and the relationships that they're going to help carry that out and execute on that strategy, it may not get executed as well as you think it should be. And so that's an important part of success. It's a risk that you have to kind of mitigate and trying to earn trust and to do it that way is a way to mitigate that risk that the right product and the right direction and the right strategy may not land if you don't have that support that you need. And so that I think was my learning.”

    2022-11-20 · Lenny's Podcast · What it takes to become a top 1% PM | Ian McAllister (Uber, Amazon, Airbnb) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  35. “Leadership team as well. Is that something where I think in some ways it felt like we were in alignment and getting on stage together and stuff, but it turned out I maybe hadn't spent as much time and effort on that as I thought to get that to build that true support there such that that leader would rally the organization around it as well and we'd be marching in the same beat. And so that was something that I would reflect. Now I think the team did amazing things and Shirley really carrying the torch there and the entire team and so accomplished a lot. But that was a learning about like going back I probably would have spent more time and really tried to do even more on that.”

    2022-11-20 · Lenny's Podcast · What it takes to become a top 1% PM | Ian McAllister (Uber, Amazon, Airbnb) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  36. “Know when I was working with you and the team at Airbnb, I think this is one where JoeBot brought me on to help sort of build out the customer support technology platform, maybe more how Amazon would do it, like to maintain a high level of quality, but to become more efficient as well and to reduce the cost so that Airbnb and me wouldn't have to scale customer support to the same degree the business was scaling. And so, you know, coming, kind of trying to build a new team and develop. And I was pretty heads down doing it the way I thought it should be done and working with the team there in terms of like, let's get a strong analytics framework. Anyway, let's measure all these things and really understand what's going on at the data level. And then let's use the same prioritization muscles that had kind of made me successful at Amazon to prioritize things that were best work backwards. And I think that what I didn't do as much as I should have is obviously really partnering with the customer support.”

    2022-11-20 · Lenny's Podcast · What it takes to become a top 1% PM | Ian McAllister (Uber, Amazon, Airbnb) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  37. “Willing not just bullheaded, which I might have been earlier in my career, maybe still to many people, but charging forth what do I think is right, but taking some more time to try to forge an alliance with someone because if you do that, you're ultimately going to be more successful. So that was just one that I was probably slow to recognize the importance of. And I'm trying to catch up now.”

    2022-11-20 · Lenny's Podcast · What it takes to become a top 1% PM | Ian McAllister (Uber, Amazon, Airbnb) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  38. “I might just talk about earned trust because this is one that I don't think I really didn't put in there initially. And I honestly don't think that I recognize the importance of it early on in my career or even in the middle of my career. And it's been in the last couple years that I really understood the importance of it. You know, my wife Sarah is a product manager in AWS. And so I've kind of, as I mentored her a little bit in her career and I've seen how this is really a superpower for her, it really made me reflect. I'm like, one of the things I could have done better in different roles to earn trust more. And it's, you know, it's not just the basic things, like to be honest and tell two different people the same thing versus different things. I think it's trying to really understand work backwards from that person and what are their goals and what are their organization's goals and honestly spend the time and the energy to try to get to alignment in the same place and be”

    2022-11-20 · Lenny's Podcast · What it takes to become a top 1% PM | Ian McAllister (Uber, Amazon, Airbnb) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  39. “It's anything that influences the success and your customer's success or anything else. And it just means you don't own marketing or you don't own this other function, but you own it until you find somebody else to own it. And so that's not necessarily thinking big in terms of scale or whatever, but in terms of how you think about your role as a PM and what your ownership responsibility is. And so I think just the more that you don't want to get over your skis as a PM and then you're trying to like change your CFO's mind about something necessarily. But the more you grow that you have to increasingly do that and find the constraints or barriers to your success or your product success and knock them down no matter what they are.”

    2022-11-20 · Lenny's Podcast · What it takes to become a top 1% PM | Ian McAllister (Uber, Amazon, Airbnb) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  40. “Like six questions there, Lenny. Let me see here what I'm answering. I think the think big one is interesting. And one way to think about thinking big, especially as you grow in your career, is most people are like operate within a box. There's a box of, there's product management and these are the things that product managers do. And you basically have build a roadmap and you prioritize features and you work with Eng. And so that might be the typical kind of product scope in tech. Most of my roles were ones where I was kind of a GM, but a really product focused GM. And so I naturally found myself taking a much wider view of what product is across disciplines. And I was lucky enough that I had engineering teams and marketers and analysts and other folks. And so that helped me. But I think as a PM, you can still do that even if those functions don't report to you is take that really wide view of what success for your product is and not have the blinders on its product or tech. It's anything.”

    2022-11-20 · Lenny's Podcast · What it takes to become a top 1% PM | Ian McAllister (Uber, Amazon, Airbnb) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  41. “If you have a choice to work on something that's part of offense, you know, something that drives the business. And like, you know, it's true that executives wake up if something drives dollars or customers or offense things. And, you know, it just maybe shouldn't be this way, but a little less interested in things that maybe less than a risk that just the risk never happens. It comes to pass or a cost center that operates a little more efficiently. It's one lens where that might relate to your success. I think also who you work for, you know, and I think most of us don't get to choose that, especially early in our career and either works out in your favor, which is great. And that was the case for me, especially at Amazon. Some of the leaders I work with, but sometimes it doesn't. But I think the more that you can suss out who you work for, because then the better they are at these skills and prioritizing, one, they're just going to be a better teacher and a better role model to learn from. So I think that's an important thing to think about in any kind.”

    2022-11-20 · Lenny's Podcast · What it takes to become a top 1% PM | Ian McAllister (Uber, Amazon, Airbnb) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  42. “Person should be the one that grows and develops and is tasked and with bigger challenges just because if you're impactful at a bigger challenge, that's even more important for the business. So I think that's a good kind of way to think about the flywheel of product leadership.”

    2022-11-20 · Lenny's Podcast · What it takes to become a top 1% PM | Ian McAllister (Uber, Amazon, Airbnb) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  43. “Well, I mean, I think for junior PMs, right? If you're a brand new PM, then, yeah, you want to have an impact, but you're really just like you have a project or a feature to ship or something like that. And you're often kind of not necessarily told what to, you know, given a lot of latitude to build your own roadmap, but you're asked to sort of ship this. Do you want to spec it? You want to execute and do it. But increasingly, as you grow, there are opportunities to sense out and try to have a bigger impact, maybe start to influence prioritization or roadmaps. It's just that the expectations, it goes from being a nice to have as a junior or for a first-time PM to as you get a little more senior, hopefully if things work the way they should work, that's really how you're evaluated. Yes, you want to treat your team well and you want to do a whole bunch of other things, but take two people. One has a massive impact on the business and one who doesn't, then the right way to work should be that first.”

    2022-11-20 · Lenny's Podcast · What it takes to become a top 1% PM | Ian McAllister (Uber, Amazon, Airbnb) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  44. “I think maybe the last one, which is certainly relevant for a PM, but is really true as well, is driven by impact. And that if you forget about everything else, forget about politics, forget about promotion or having more of a bigger org or whatever, if you simply wake up every day trying to have the biggest impact you can, or if you're a leader, trying to use your team to have the biggest impact you can in the company, which will influence how you build your roadmap and how you do every part of your day. That's a really good guiding light. And I remember my first 10 years at Amazon just naturally, not because I thought about it, I was just hungry to have an impact, take my business, grow it as fast as possible. I wasn't maybe loosely thinking about promotion, but I wasn't thinking about it. I didn't never talk to my manager about it, and I wasn't bringing it up. I was just focused on taking my book of business and making it bigger. And then the net result was I was.”

    2022-11-20 · Lenny's Podcast · What it takes to become a top 1% PM | Ian McAllister (Uber, Amazon, Airbnb) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  45. “And you own your mistakes. And then the other practices just lose trust. You know, if you lie or if you're evasive, if you don't ship what you said you're going to do, if you ignore your mistakes or you repeat them. And so I think just simply having high standards for yourself and think of trust is that like currency, that's going to correlate well as a PM, as a GPM or director of product in any level. That's the thing that you want to build.”

    2022-11-20 · Lenny's Podcast · What it takes to become a top 1% PM | Ian McAllister (Uber, Amazon, Airbnb) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  46. “I think it's truly like the currency of a product leader or probably any leader in any function. Because if you want to ask for more resources to do something bigger, if your leadership doesn't trust you to use those resources well or do what you said you're going to do, you're probably not going to get them. But if you've built trust that you're a good steward of resources and you make a lot of impact with a given team, that's directly going to correlate with your ability to gain more resources. You know, trust is just built by repeatedly setting and meeting expectations. And I think that's a good kind of mantra to think about as a PM, like, you know, my meeting the expectations that I set and not just doing good things, but like calling your shots, forecasting, setting a goal and then hitting it. And if you do that repeatedly, you're going to be in pretty good shape. And there's like so many practices as a product manager, a product leader that build trust. You tell the truth without fail and you launch when you say you'd launch and you launch what you said you'd launch.”

    2022-11-20 · Lenny's Podcast · What it takes to become a top 1% PM | Ian McAllister (Uber, Amazon, Airbnb) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  47. “It's still communicate, to be honest. Like, I think that's the one at every level of product. It's just the stakes are higher. I think Think Big is one for sure. There was a phrase, I think Warren Buffett in the Berkshire Hathaway letter used at some point was like at our scale, we got to hunt for bigger elephants. And so I think at any scale as a PM, whatever your idea is or whatever your solution or the problem you're solving, take a minute at the beginning to say, could this be bigger? Could this be a bigger thing and more impactful than the initial idea, even if the initial idea sounds big? So that's sort of a tool, and that's often where I'd start when my PMs were sort of sharing an idea is I'd try to expand it to the degree it might be expanded, think about it from that perspective, and then maybe you want to still start small, but with a bigger vision in mind. Earn trust is a huge one, and that's kind of why I added it more recently. And it becomes even more important as you get into senior roles, because that's.”

    2022-11-20 · Lenny's Podcast · What it takes to become a top 1% PM | Ian McAllister (Uber, Amazon, Airbnb) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  48. “And then I think communication, the simple tip was just grade yourself after you communicate and try to just take a moment. And after a while, you'll just do it naturally to think about, gosh, how would I have answered that question better? And so the next time you can try to answer that question better, and it's just a continuous improvement process.”

    2022-11-20 · Lenny's Podcast · What it takes to become a top 1% PM | Ian McAllister (Uber, Amazon, Airbnb) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  49. “Yeah, there's no just simple trick, unfortunately, to prioritize other than, I mean, I think working backwards is a good technique to have impact to guide your prioritization. And that is something where it's not a simple tip, but there's a set of practices and behaviors that you can do that will ultimately lead you to prioritize better.”

    2022-11-20 · Lenny's Podcast · What it takes to become a top 1% PM | Ian McAllister (Uber, Amazon, Airbnb) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  50. “The closest thing to like a checklist, right? The post I mentioned, the operator's manual, that was the closest thing to like if you do these things, these specific actions. I think it'll go a long way because a lot of them are guided around not doing the easy pitfalls and communication mistakes like rambling. If you're asked a question and you explain and then maybe you get to the answer, if you just think answer and then explain or sometimes answer and then shut up, that actually is a tactical thing you can do to get better at communicating. And there's some other tips in there as well. So that was my attempt to try to encode, to take some of the ones that we gathered early at Amazon, add some more. The others are”

    2022-11-20 · Lenny's Podcast · What it takes to become a top 1% PM | Ian McAllister (Uber, Amazon, Airbnb) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source