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McAllister: Correct Product Strategies Fail Without Earning Stakeholder Support

Ian McAllister · What it takes to become a top 1% PM | Ian McAllister (Uber, Amazon, Airbnb) · Nov 20, 2022 · at 36:24

Ian McAllister reflects on product management lessons learned during his time leading product teams at Airbnb and Amazon.

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“Well, I would say that if you have a certain approach, now you may be, you believe it's the right one. It may be the right one, but if you don't build the support and the relationships, you know, 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 as a way to mitigate that risk that the right product and the right direction and the right strategy. It may not land if you don't have that support that you need.”

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