This is What Top 1% PMs Do Differently | Amit Fulay (VP Microsoft)
Practical lessons on building trust, influencing leaders, and Satya Nadella's superpowers from Microsoft, Meta, and Google
Dear subscribers,
Today, I want to share an interview with Amit Fulay.
Amit is a product VP at Microsoft who spent 15 years building products like News Feed (Meta) and Google Meet (Google). In our interview, he reveals the three types of product leaders, how to build trust at each career stage, and what AI means for PMs. Amit also teaches a popular on leveling up from mid-level manager to the most influential product leader in your company (get $100 off with this link).
Watch now on YouTube, Apple, and Spotify.
Amit and I talked about:
(00:00) The secret to building trust
(01:43) 3 distinct types of product leaders
(03:29) How to influence each type of leader
(09:29) Will AI kill traditional product management?
(16:02) How to build trust in each stage of your career
(20:16) Sunsetting your own without losing trust
(25:31) Speaking the truth to your management chain
(28:55) Inside how Satya Nadella fixed Microsoft
(32:41) What Amit wished he knew when he started as a PM
How to influence 3 types of product leaders
Welcome Amit! Let’s start by talking about how to influence product leaders. What are the three different types of product leaders?
The three different types are thinkers, builders, and harmonizers.
Thinkers are visionaries and big ideas people. They get excited about product craft and where to take the product in a few years.
Builders are operators who excel at execution. They understand how to get things done, grasp company context, manage trade-offs, and attract talent.
Harmonizers value collaboration highly. They maintain strong relationships, optimize for people, and excel at finding win-win solutions.
Although most product leaders combine these skills, they usually have one primary strength or superpower that falls into one of these buckets.
Ok, so how can someone best influence each type of product leader?
First, you can often identify the type of leader based on their questioning style in product reviews. Thinkers usually dig deep into experience and design details, while builders might focus more heavily on data and analysis. Harmonizers typically ask first about alignment and stakeholder buy-in.
The key is to understand the type you’re working with and tailor your approach:
For visionary leaders, focus on storytelling and narrative
For data-oriented leaders, lead with analysis and reasoning
For harmonizers, emphasize stakeholder alignment and buy-in
People often stumble when there's a mismatch - like using heavy data with a visionary leader or focusing on storytelling with a data-oriented leader. Remember:
Success comes from understanding each leader's perspective and framing things accordingly.
What if someone’s natural style doesn’t match their leader's preferences? For example, I value product craft more than vision or stakeholder alignment.
If you're more execution-focused but must present to big-picture thinkers, practice 10x thinking and project the potential.
In my early days at Google working on Google Wallet, we discussed credit card interchange rates in a review with Larry Page. We started presenting our detailed model forecasts, but Larry asked, "Why don't we just buy Mastercard?"
It was a provocative question that stumped everyone, but it exemplified the kind of expansive thinking some leaders expect. You need to remove yourself from the immediate execution mindset and think bigger. What would you do if you were CEO? You don't have to make things up, but you should be able to articulate what's possible.
Given AI and flatter orgs, which type of leader is best positioned to succeed?
First, I'm skeptical of "death of PM" proclamations - I don't believe any particular discipline is done, but we all need to evolve. This applies across roles - engineers with GitHub Copilot, designers, marketers, everyone.
In 5 years, startups probably won't hire engineers and designers as we do today. You'll have people passionate about solving problems, armed with AI tools that let them design, prototype, and build. The valuable skills will be interdisciplinary - understanding data, engineering, and design to marshal these tools effectively.
We'll all become generalists with powerful tools at our disposal. In this world:
The most successful leaders will be those with deep empathy and the ability to identify the right problems.
What will be required to break into senior product leadership in this new world?
We must focus on what remains uniquely human - particularly a deep understanding of human problems and behavior. When the cost of building is dropping toward zero, the ability to identify societal needs and demonstrate true empathy will be the differentiator.
Empathy is deceptively challenging to master. We tend to be shaped by our world and solve our problems - like making grocery delivery faster and more automated. Meanwhile, billions lack access to drinking water, and loneliness is a major epidemic. True empathy requires stepping outside our bubble to understand diverse human experiences and problems.
How to climb the trust ladder in your company
You mentioned that building a career is really about building trust. Can you walk us through each step of the career trust ladder?
I break careers roughly into three stages - early, middle, and late stage. Each has different ways of building trust.
In the early stage, it's really about striving for excellence and doing foundational things well. You follow through reliably - if there's an action item, you get it done. If you commit to delivering something on Friday, you deliver it on Friday. When you're putting together a product spec, you're not winging it. You think deeply and get the customer data. These small things matter when you're early in your career.
It's about dependability. When you have a new grad on your team, you're really assessing if you can depend on them. Not that they solve all your problems, but they get things done when they say they will.
In the middle stage, I've found that being ego-less helps build trust.
This means being someone who puts users and company before yourself. You take a company-wide view.
Here are some specific things to say to build trust in the middle stage: