Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
01:15:56 · Mark Pincus
[01:15:56] S0: All my management principles I got to through desperation. I don't like managing people. I say, "Every day you're managing people is a day of work." And it's a necessary evil for us as product makers, because we can't abdicate and just have someone else be CEO. Because all of a sudden the priorities get messed up, and teams don't have to listen to us, and we're now feedback, not direction. So that's a failing path. So we have to be a CEO. But then the question is, how do we get to spend the most time doing what we love, and the least time doing what we don't? The bigger principle to me that I started to get to was that, "Oh." I'm like, "All of management is just how do we get people to do the right thing when we are not in the room?" So I was like, "Okay, if I give them a hill to take, and if I make them a CEO." Make them a real CEO. I mean, they have operating control degrees of freedom to take that hill however they want, and they can give me a plan, a budget and then do whatever they want within that. What I found was I didn't have to manage them. So they're not coming back to me with questions. And certain kinds of people really want to be a CEO. What I also found was it was incredibly motivating for people. It's motivating to me. I always say I'm a team player as long as I'm running the team. So can I hire other people like that? And I like to say I was a frustrated expert witness when I worked for other people, and those are the best people to turn into a CEO. They're a little bit of a know it-all. They think they have the right answers, and we're going to find out if they do. And so we let them actually be a CEO, and they have all this pent-up demand to actually go and prove that they were right, and that's a beautiful thing. So yeah, I love this principle of make everyone a CEO. And we're going there in Silicon Valley with this idea of get rid of middle management. Brian Armstrong's saying, "Everyone should be an individual contributor. Everyone should be managing a lot of other people." To me, the best CEO is the best player at the position, and is doing the thing they're great at and they're not wasting their time on management.
01:18:18 · Lenny Rachitsky
[01:18:18] S1: You mentioned this idea of an expert witness, and you also have this nugget of advice of staying close to the metal. I love this general advice. Talk about what you mean there, why that's important for someone in their career.
01:18:31 · Mark Pincus
[01:18:31] S0: They go together. We start our careers in our 20s very close to the metal. Meaning we are individual contributors. And we are working on getting the primary data, and building the actual product usually. We're in the trenches. And the people in the trenches are usually closest to the data, closest to probably the right answer, but they're also usually furthest from making the decision. And that's what I call the expert witness syndrome. Because you're called to the stand by the adults, and you plead for what you passionately believe is the right answer. And then you're excused, and then they make a decision and then you have to deal with the consequences, and disagree and commit. What if I'm disagreeing because I'm fucking right, and now I'm committing to clean up your mess because you're wrong? And that's why many of us become founders, because we just are sick of being in that position. You're also closer to the metal. And when you go become a CEO, when you become a founder, part of the paradox of it that I believe we have to be careful about is that we stay close to the metal. And I believe the best product CEOs are in the minutia of the details. All the stories about Steve Jobs, I was so impressed when I heard that he insisted on picking out the carpeting in the conference rooms. And I tried to have that same mentality of micromanaging the really small pixel level details that matter. And I had a great conversation with the founders of Discord, and they came to this conclusion too that they needed to actually be an inverted pyramid. And they said, "We realized that we outsource, we delegate the most important product decisions, the UX to our least experienced people, and they are doing this every day. And we decided to turn that upside down and say, 'We as founders need to be kind of the first and last mile for the product, and we have to be the ones who bless.' Our best use of our time is making these minute decisions that change the product user experience." And so to me, that's being close to the metal. Brian Chesky believes in doing things in non-scalable ways, and doing it himself with the team by hand. There's so many stories about Jeff Bezos and Zuck of the thing that mattered most. They would go and work two days a week deeply with the team on it. And it makes sense.
01:21:20 · Mark Pincus, Lenny Rachitsky
If you were the best product maker in the company, we want you on the field. We want to put you on the ice. We don't want you to spend your time talking to investors, and managing and scaling. [01:21:34] S1: Yeah, Elon famous for this too. You have this line in the book along these lines, "Micromanagement is beautiful. You should micromanage as long as you can."
01:21:43 · Mark Pincus
[01:21:43] S0: I believe that, and I did that building Zynga to a fault. We got to a point that I had all the way to 50 employees. We had a standup call that would go on for two hours, and I had everyone's name on a spreadsheet, and I had what they were supposed to do yesterday and what they're going to do today. And I go through name by name and say, "Okay, did you get that done? Can everyone else verify they got that done? Okay, what are you going to do today?" And I completely micromanaged, but we were much more effective. And then I kept micromanaging things as... I'm like, "If you can be in the room, be in the room assuming that you are the best player." So yeah, I think it's less contrarian saying it now than it was 20 years ago. But when I was building Zynga, we had to apologize for things like micromanaging, or expecting massive results from our teams. And I think I'm happy to see that that's becoming accepted as more... It's closer to best practices today, I think. But my point about that management is get people to do the right thing when you're not in the room. The first principle is be in the room if you can be, as much as you can be. And then only delegate when you get to the point that you can't possibly be in all these rooms at the same time. And then all these management principles are just different strategies to try to get people to do the right thing when you're not there. And I love these non-scalable ideas that actually scale what you're trying to do as a product maker in the right way, and one of the ones I love is this idea of tech assistance, and this idea of a teaching hospital. How do you pass the vampire blood of you to other people? You have this burning mission and passion around your product. How do you spread that to other people and have them spread in the organization? The first thing is put them in the room with you. So the idea of this teaching hospital was, "Okay, I'm just going to put as many people as I can in the room while I'm doing these product management meetings, and have my passion, and ideas, and approach spread to all of them too." And that worked. And then grab someone from the ranks and make them your tech assistant. Have them just follow you around for six months, or 12 months. And make it the mini me. The person who is you in your 20s who was the expert witness, a little bit of a know it all.
01:24:32 · Mark Pincus, Lenny Rachitsky
And start having them follow you around to pick up, learn, and absorb everything you do. And give them projects to test them. And then hopefully, you've created a mini me that you can now put in in a much bigger role somewhere else. And in fact, Andy Jassy at Amazon, everyone on the C staff used to be someone who'd been the tech assistant to Bezos. So that idea actually scales, and you get it for free. [01:25:01] S1: I love this phrase of transferring your vampire blood. Oh, man. Maybe one last nugget from the book along these lines is you have this line of just the number one job of a CEO is to be right. Talk about that. [01:25:14] S0: Well, that's another one that I stole from Bezos. But if I get to pick one thing that you do as CEO, I'm going to pick that you're right. Even if you don't operate the ship or the factory that well, I'd rather that you picked the right product, the right strategy than your phenomenal execution, or inspiring people or managing. Because being in the right body of water matters more than the right boat, and a great boat in a dead lake bed isn't going anywhere. And so I look for that in people, like, "Are they right?" That's the best resume, I could see that you were right about something. And I look for that in the team, and it's less do I like your style, or approach, or your personality fit? I'm like, "I'll take misfits who are right." I'm like, "I want those really smart expert witnesses who are intellectually honest." And the more people you have around you who are right, they're putting balls in the net.