Managing Up
This is the third competency in Influencing People, and the one a lot of ambitious PMs are quietly bad at. We get trained to manage down and across. Managing up feels like politics, so people avoid it, and that is a mistake. Your manager and the executives above you are your most powerful lever, and learning to use them well is not careerism. It is the job.
#What it is
Managing Up: The ability to leverage senior managers/executives to help achieve goals, deliver outcomes, and positively influence the strategic direction of the team and company.
The operative word is leverage. Executives have what you do not: budget, headcount, air cover, and the ability to unblock things across the org with one sentence. Managing up is the discipline of giving them what they need (clarity, confidence, early warning) so they give you what you need. It runs in both directions, because you also influence their thinking and shape strategy from below.
#The behaviors
Two named behaviors sit under this competency.
#Strategic Influence & Alignment
Connecting your product vision to the company's strategy, and using rationale, storytelling, and data to influence the people who set direction. The skilled moves are to navigate ambiguity and competing executive interests, champion shared outcomes over your own turf, and build genuine trust with senior functions. This is how a PM's idea becomes a company bet, by being framed in the language of the company's goals rather than the team's preferences.
#Executive Communications
This is a craft specific enough that I gave it its own note: Executive Communication. The essence is to be concise and focused on strategic impact, framed in business terms tied to KPIs and ROI, data-backed, with questions and risks already handled, and delivered calm and solution-oriented. Executives are chronically short on time and long on context, and communication that ignores both will fail no matter how good the underlying work is.
#How it shows up by level
The escalation tracks whose attention you can hold and influence, from your own manager up to the C-suite and board.
| Level | What managing up looks like |
|---|---|
| APM | Keeps their manager informed; flags blockers early; no surprises in the 1:1 |
| PM | Communicates outcomes upward independently; makes asks for help with clear rationale |
| Senior PM | Influences leadership on direction; trusted in exec forums; frames work in business terms |
| GPM / Director | Shapes strategy with executives; manages sideways across peer leaders; owns exec narratives |
| VP+ | Is the executive, and now manages up to the CEO and board (The Chief Product Officer) |
The simplest reframe that works: your manager is also managing up. Every clean, well-framed update you give them is something they can pass upward with confidence. Be the report they never have to translate, chase, or worry about. That reputation is worth more than any single ask.
#How to grow it
- Lead with the answer. Adopt BLUF, bottom line up front, in everything you send up. The detail follows the conclusion, it never precedes it. (Executive Communication.)
- Frame in their currency. Translate "we shipped X" into "this moves the metric they are accountable for" (Business Outcome Ownership, OKRs and Goal-Setting).
- Anticipate the question. Before any exec conversation, write the three hardest questions they will ask and answer them in advance. Half of managing up is doing the executive's thinking for them.
- Build trust in low-stakes moments. Do not let the first real exec interaction be a crisis. Bank credibility through consistent, surprise-free delivery.
#How AI is changing it
The mechanical half here is squarely in the zone AI now handles in minutes: turning a messy quarter into a crisp exec summary, drafting the board slide, pulling the KPI deltas (Competencies AI Commoditizes vs Elevates). I lean on it for first drafts. The high-value half is untouched, though. Knowing which number an executive cares about, reading the currents between competing leaders, and earning the trust that makes influence real are all human work. Think of AI as a fast speechwriter with no standing in the room. The judgment of what to say to whom, and why now, stays with you.
The cynical read, that managing up is flattery and self-promotion, keeps good PMs from doing it, and that hurts their teams. Done right, it is the opposite of politics. You are giving leadership the clarity to make good decisions and securing the resources your team needs. A PM who refuses to manage up is not principled. They are leaving their team under-supported.
#Continue Reading
- Executive Communication for the core craft: BLUF, brevity, business framing, anticipating questions.
- Storytelling with Data for how to make an upward argument land.
- Stakeholder Management for why managing up is the special case where the stakeholder outranks you.
- Strategic Impact for the strategy fluency that makes your upward influence credible.
- Influencing People for how this competency fits the area and the other two.