Be Known For Something
Pick one thing to be excellent at, get a reputation for it, and let responsibility flow to you
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 90%
Zhang's number one career-acceleration advice for PMs. Rather than being broadly competent, deliberately become known inside your company for one specific excellence — shepherding the most complex launches, the hardest technical problems, the gnarliest regulatory work. Reputation compounds: people flock to give responsibility to whoever is known for being excellent at something. The strength then has to be re-flexed as you move from IC to management.
Origin
Zhang's own path from consulting into gaming (Pocket Gems) without a CS or design background, where she built a reputation first on analytics and then on execution, and carried it into Dropbox, Airbnb, WeWork and Webflow.
Core principles
- 01Reputation, not authority, is what gets a PM scope — you manage no one.
- 02The thing you're known for can be discovered on the job, not only chosen in advance.
- 03Crushing the projects you're given is the mechanism; the reputation is the compounding effect.
- 04The strength must evolve — the same label that lifts an IC caps a manager.
- 05Underneath all of it: get things done and take responsibility for the outcome no matter what.
How to run it
- 1
Pick a candidate specialty
Choose something specific enough to be a label: quarterbacking the most complex cross-functional launches, the most technically complex problems, regulatory-heavy work, deep analytics.
Pro tip Start from the strength you already have from your prior life — Zhang came from consulting and led with an analytics background into gaming.
- 2
Lean into it hard and crush the projects you get
Deliberately lean into the superpower on every project you're given and deliver on it. The reputation is earned by the deliveries, not the claim.
- 3
Notice the strength you didn't know you had
Zhang discovered on the job that she was actually excellent at execution — keeping many plates spinning across the largest studio — which she hadn't known before starting. Watch for what you're unexpectedly good at and add it.
- 4
Convert delivery into scope
When you land something hard — many platforms, brittle APIs, tiny team, tight deadline — the payoff is that people hand you more responsibility because you did something really hard with a small team.
- 5
Flex the strength as your role changes
When you start managing, the label has to change shape. Take the core strength and find new ways to bring it to life at the new altitude rather than repeating the IC version of it.
Watch out Being known as the best executor is not what gets you and your team the most responsibility once you're a manager.
In the wild
With no CS or design background, Zhang joined Pocket Gems and built a reputation on being deeply analytical — analysing her game's data sets and making decisions from them. In doing that she discovered a second strength: execution across many complex moving pieces. She carried the execution reputation into Dropbox, where she knew she could work across many teams and hit a launch deadline.
→ The execution reputation compounded into progressively larger scope: hard, multi-platform launches on brittle APIs with very small teams and tight deadlines led directly to more responsibility.
Common mistakes
Staying known for the IC strength after you become a manager
The label that earned an IC scope — 'best executor' — does not earn a manager and their team more responsibility. The strength has to be flexed to the new level.
Trying to be generally good at everything
Broad competence doesn't produce a label, and without a label there is nothing for people to flock to when they're deciding who gets the next big responsibility.
Is it for you?
Best for
Early- to mid-career PMs who feel stuck at their current scope and want a concrete mechanism for earning more responsibility
Not ideal for
Executives whose role already demands breadth across every product surface, where over-specializing narrows rather than expands scope
From the transcript
“find something that you can be really really good at”
“you can Crush like the projects that you get right like because you're making a name for yourself a reputation and then you're giving more…”
“being known as like the best executor is not necessarily the thing that gives you and your team the most responsibility”
From the episode
Building minimum lovable products, stories from WeWork and Airbnb, and thriving as a PM
Jiaona Zhang (Webflow, WeWork, Airbnb, Dropbox)