Let’s talk about High Agency: an attitude I’ve seen in every successful product manager & leader I’ve known.
Some ppl are born/raised with High Agency. It can also be developed later in life.
High agency is a prerequisite for making a profound impact in one's life & work
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High Agency is about finding a way to get what you want, without waiting for conditions to be perfect or otherwise blaming the circumstances. High Agency People either push through in the face of adverse conditions or manage to reverse the adverse conditions to achieve goals
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Highly Talented, High Agency people are Game Changers for their teams & companies.
Highly Talented, Low Agency people are everywhere around us. These Frustrated Geniuses might have a success or two, but, in the long run, end up capitulating to “the system”.
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Some Go Getters become Game Changers because of their High Agency.
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Game Changers are not very common and, once discovered, they’re expensive to hire.
When you find them, do whatever you can to get them on your team.
When hiring, I prefer Go Getters over Frustrated Geniuses.
In all cases, the third factor to look for is High Integrity.
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My policy: Never compromise on Integrity, not even for Game Changers.
Now, back to High Agency.
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What Low Agency vs. High Agency looks like:
Note Low Agency Bob’s instinctive reaction when faced with a tough challenge. Note how everything is an “other” problem, not a "Bob problem"
Note how everything High Agency Alice says comes from a place of what 𝘴𝘩𝘦 can control
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Now, I’ve worked with, managed & mentored 100s of PMs & leaders during my career. And I can’t tell you how many times I’ve come across an otherwise talented PM whose impact & career is being held back because they are like Low Agency Bob.
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I’ve also come across PMs who have done incredibly well in their career, despite not having fancy degrees from fancy universities, mainly because they are like High Agency Alice.
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And that is why I listed High Agency as one of the necessary traits for product managers when I summarized Product Management in one tweet a couple of months ago.
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By now, we’ve looked at what High Agency is and why it's important.
Naturally, the next question is:
How does one cultivate High Agency?
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My first recommendation here would be to read the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, one more time. The framework of Circle of Influence and Circle of Concern is something I’ve gone back to countless times whenever there’s a temptation to recede to a Low Agency mindset.
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Observing and adjusting your language and self-talk is an important aspect of cultivating High Agency.
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Here’s my own answer to the question of cultivating High Agency. Here I’ve split High Agency into the Traits you need & the Skills you need. To cultivate High Agency, work on these component Skills & Traits. Ownership Mindset is perhaps the most important of the 3 Traits.
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High Agency is related to the concept of “Jugaad”.
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.@RealCharlesLee has a good thread with concrete examples and situations where PMs can demonstrate High Agency. I see these types of Low Agency tendencies all the time, even from exceptionally talented PMs.
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Last but not least, cultivating High Agency won’t be easy.
But I assure you that it isn’t inscrutable magic. You can learn it
And I also assure you that becoming a High Agency individual will be profoundly rewarding for you & for the people you work with
All the best!
❤️
Footnote 1:
High Agency, from a recent presentation in which I share a few of my own experiences with it at Yahoo, Google, and Twitter:
Footnote 2:
In the 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership, the authors talk about To Me and By Me (among other things). This is another way of thinking about High Agency.
This thread is now available in article format, in case you want to re-read it in one place, bookmark it, or share with friends or colleagues who aren't on Twitter
Lack of time is a perpetual source of stress in the product manager’s journey.
No matter how well you’ve prioritized, no matter what milestone your product has just reached, there is a near-infinite list of really important things you could be doing that you just cannot do.
There are many well-known resources & principles for managing time: systems such as GTD, “managing your energy, not your time”, prioritization formulas, Eisenhower Matrix, etc.
These are no doubt useful, but for product managers, these systems leave a lot to be desired.
Why do companies with major resources & distribution make products that are mediocre & often fail to reach their potential?
There are a handful of reasons, many of which you already know. But there is one under-discussed reason: Operators Optimizing for Optics
Thread:
To understand this, let’s start with a story.
START OF STORY
Acme Inc has brilliant, visionary founders (Alice & Bob), amazing culture, has built a well-loved product, and thereby created a business much larger than the early people (including the founders) had ever imagined.
With this growth, they’ve had to hire a bunch of Operators: leaders who are skilled in scaling process, teams, operations, and overall execution. So far so good. As the business & the customer-base grows, it is a no-brainer for Acme to tackle adjacent areas of opportunity.
Some reflections since turning on Twitter’s Super Follows two weeks ago.
800+ superfans have joined 🙌🏾
Biggest benefit:
I am tweeting a lot more freely because I know I am speaking to superfans who understand what I am about. More advanced & nuanced content. Fewer unsent drafts
Biggest surprise:
The community aspect of Super Follows has been A+ thus far.
While not a primary goal, it was 1 of my hypotheses for doing Super Follows. And it has vast exceeded everyone’s expectations. I polled folks yesterday for feedback, and community was mentioned by most
Many super followers mentioned that they are now using Twitter more frequently & are replying/sharing a lot more freely with the community than they might in public, because of shared alignment.
One super follower said it best: people writing without fear of being misunderstood
As they grow in size, teams within megacorps and startups tend to implicitly bias more towards Project Thinking and not enough Product Thinking.
Product Thinking is a mindset and a process that, once you see, you cannot unsee it.
Product Thinking, Project Thinking, a thread:
From my experience working in individual contributor & leadership roles over the past couple of decades, and from my advising work with a number of fast-growth startups, I have often seen myself and founders / CEOs / execs worry about these things:
And, having been in the trenches of product work for a large part of my career, and having managed / mentored / coached hundreds of PMs & PM Managers, I have often seen myself, and other ICs & managers worry about these things:
1) Be proactive 2) Begin with the end in mind 3) Put first things first 4) Think win-win 5) First understand, then seek to be understood 6) Teamwork & creative cooperation 7) Continuous improvement
Basically, the habits in the classic book.
I know that many Product Managers will ignore this because they want something more advanced.
They have already read Covey's book at age 23, so there's nothing more & nothing new to learn from it.
They want an edge over others, so they seek & love esoteric advice & tactics.
And yet, 9 out of 10 times when I am working with extremely smart & ambitious PMs who are struggling (not getting promoted, not getting the performance reviews they think they deserve, not executing well, etc.) it is because they have forgotten one (or more) of these 7 habits.