High Agency Product Management

A key ingredient for breakout product successes.

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Entrepreneurs are often thought of as “High Agency” individuals — people that can execute a vision despite all odds and despite all the naysayers around them. Eternal optimists and sometimes even borderline delusional, they live in a parallel reality where anything is possible. Jeff Bezos is a good example of a very high agency individual of our times, but there are many others —People we know and work with, people who are known to get stuff done despite all odds. My ex-boss from the last PM job I had was a super high agency guy.

People like Jeff are wired in a way where they are unable to believe stories of failure that others tell them. Instead, they believe that they are in total control of the narrative of the story — and they can ultimately bend outcomes to their favor.

I recently came across a widely shared Twitter thread related to this topic and since then I have been thinking about the specific personality traits that would classify somebody as having, or acting with, high agency.