How to Reach the Top 25% — and Why It’s Enough

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There’s an old idea, repeated in different forms by Charles Duhigg, Naval Ravikant, Scott Adams, and James Clear:
Almost anyone can become part of the top 25% in a given field — if they find the right intersection of their strengths.

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Why the Top 25% Matters

We often think success means being the best — the top 1%.
But in reality, reaching the top quarter already changes the game.

• In the top 25%, the law of disproportionate rewards starts to work: being above average instantly brings more opportunities, recognition, and leverage.

• It’s also far more achievable than chasing perfection or competing head-on with industry leaders.

You don’t have to be the best — you just have to be unique enough to matter.

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The T-Shaped Skills Framework

There’s a concept called the T-shaped skill model.
It says you need two things to succeed:

1. Breadth — a wide range of competencies, even at a basic level.

2. Depth — mastery in at least one key area.

The combination of both creates a personal or professional profile that’s hard to replicate.

If I take my own career as an example, I’m not “the best” in any single dimension — but the intersection makes all the difference.

• I’m an average entrepreneur — I didn’t build billion-dollar startups, but I’ve run a successful international SaaS business and understand both the owner’s and employee’s perspective.

• A good product manager — with wins across different industries.

• A strong project manager — with 15+ years of experience, PMP and Agile certifications, and experience implementing Scrum, Kanban, and scaled Agile frameworks like SAFe and LeSS.

• I know organizational psychology — with formal education in the field, so I can work with teams beyond intuition.

• I’ve taught hundreds of professionals through workshops and courses on product and project management.

• I’m not the smartest person in the room, but I read about 100 books a year — enough to stay curious and context-aware.

• I’m not a great programmer, but with a technical background, I can communicate fluently with engineering teams.

Add to that a foundation in economics, art, and lifelong sports — and you get a combination that’s not easy to imitate.
Not the best at anything — but strong where these traits meet.

That’s the point: your market fit as a professional lives at the intersection of your experiences.

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Products Work the Same Way

The same principle applies to products.

Successful products don’t win because they’re perfect — they win because they sit at the intersection of unmet needs and user behavior.

Great teams learn to spot these fault lines — where habits, pain points, and workflows collide — and build solutions that seem “obvious” only in hindsight.

In those spaces, even an “average” feature becomes great, because it solves a real problem that no one else noticed.

The best teams see these intersections earlier than others — often reflecting their own multidimensional expertise — and understand where new value is waiting to be created.

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Finding Your Own Fit

Every person is already exceptional at something.
The question isn’t whether you can compete head-to-head — it’s whether you can find the intersection of your strengths and build your unique advantage there.

The same goes for products: the ones that lead markets aren’t the ones that are best in every category, but the ones that redefine what “best” means — by combining strengths others overlook.

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In Project Management

In project and product management, this thinking is crucial.
The best teams — and managers — don’t win by rigid frameworks, but by blending skills:
strategy, empathy, operations, and creativity.

This blend is where real agility happens.
And often, it’s where innovation begins.