Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
01:06:47 · Jessica Fain
[01:06:47] S0: Oh yeah. I mean, he's so charismatic and able to really put himself in other people's shoes. I think that it is just a way to ... We just redid our PM career ladder for this year and I led that effort. And one of the things that we noted as a trait of becoming more senior is your product citizenship and how much you are embedding back in the organization and giving back best practices, mentoring others, broadening people's horizons on tooling, technology, storytelling, and of course strategy. And I think that this is such an important part of people's growth that they often undersell, but you can do it at every level in your own area. And it's about connecting the dots back up to what is important to the company. So many times I see docs that are like, "Okay, our KR is to ship this thing." And I'm like, "Why does that matter? Does anyone care?" You have to tell a story. And even if that's true, that shipping is the care, sometimes that's the case, right? But even if that's true, why are you doing that? What is the outcome for the business? Why would the CEO be excited about shipping that? It's usually because of some business outcome or user outcome that you have to tie back to their perspective of. And then I think the flip side of is if you're working on something that doesn't shift one of those outcomes or isn't urgent for the business, do you need to change course? Do you need to say, "Hey, actually, I don't think this is the highest leverage thing right now. We could actually do X to be much more effective for our broader goals."
01:08:40 · Lenny Rachitsky, Jessica Fain
[01:08:40] S1: That's where I was going to go, is just like that's the ultimate trust building move is to tell the leaders, "Okay, here's our goal, here's all these ideas, but we don't think this is the right goal and here's how this doesn't fit in and here's why we should kill this product." [01:08:51] S0: Right, exactly. Right. Think like a CPO. Put yourself in their shoes. You had Stewart on a few weeks ago and he talked about how the CEO is kind of the only one who can really kill things, things that already exist, or really make some of those super, super tough decisions. I think that is oftentimes our culture, but is a mistake. If we each think of ourselves as owners and as contributors to the business and as leaders, we will bring those opportunities up as well to both amplify the business or save it from itself. [01:09:30] S1: Do the job you want versus the job you have. Classic. [01:09:31] S0: Yes. [01:09:36] S1: Okay. Let's talk AI. I feel like you cannot do anything these days without mentioning AI in some way. How is AI changing the skill of influence? What's changed in the past couple years in trying to convince people to do the things you're hoping them to do?
01:09:51 · Jessica Fain
[01:09:51] S0: I think that we are entering a golden age of product management, not of product managers, but of product management and the core skills that made this function the thing that I love to do. More than ever, what we have to do is have really interesting ideas that are grounded in user empathy, curiosity, testing, iteration, but we will still be working in organizations where getting buy-in to those ideas and influencing people to fund not just the V1, but the much more expensive V2, three, four, and ongoing support become 10x more important. And as execution basically plummets in complexity and everyone can be a builder, PMs and product thinkers, which I think is far beyond the product management function, can be so incredibly influenced by those core skills of bringing people along for the ride. So I think that product managers for a long time have made their careers on being the most type A, the Gantt chart master, the best note taker in the business. And if AI is better than you at analyzing data or taking meeting notes or running experiments, what's your job now? So the leverage actually shifts from doing that work and being the synthesizer to deciding what work actually survives and encouraging other people to buy into that process. And I actually think it's just so incredibly exciting because PMs and other functions, engineers, designers are so empowered to bring that first version to bear to get that momentum, to get that signal on product market fit, on user benefit, and then build momentum from that point in a much faster cycle. And so it's actually an incredibly exciting place, but the act of influence, the act of stakeholder management, the act of learning... ... active influence. The act of stakeholder management, the act of learning is the 10X skill.
01:12:06 · Lenny Rachitsky, Jessica Fain
[01:12:06] S1: Awesome. This is such a fun topic. The way I've been thinking about this is just where are human brains going to continue to be necessary and useful in this new world? [01:12:15] S0: I'm terrified. [01:12:18] S1: Maybe nowhere. [01:12:19] S0: Maybe nowhere. [01:12:20] S1: But the way you described it, which I totally agree with, is essentially it's deciding what to do, and getting everyone on the same page, alignment around that. We're all on the same page, here's what we're prioritizing. And then it's like, cool, now let's build it. And that happens so quickly now. [01:12:36] S0: Yeah. And what can you notice that AI can't? AI is not good at being an anthropologist yet. It is based on a corpus of existing knowledge. And I think the best product thinkers, again, across functions that I've worked with, really are able to get to novel insights through that user empathy, through that understanding and through deep understanding of the business dynamics, changing industry, and bringing those together to prioritize ideas that actually really, really matter. We're going to have so much software we won't even know what to do with it, but what software actually works, what software actually matters, what software gets marketed or sold? Or we're going to have to think about not just that the software exists, but that it can get to its final state, and that is going to require people's buy- in to that idea working.
01:12:36 · Jessica Fain, Lenny Rachitsky
[01:12:36] S0: Yeah. And what can you notice that AI can't? AI is not good at being an anthropologist yet. It is based on a corpus of existing knowledge. And I think the best product thinkers, again, across functions that I've worked with, really are able to get to novel insights through that user empathy, through that understanding and through deep understanding of the business dynamics, changing industry, and bringing those together to prioritize ideas that actually really, really matter. We're going to have so much software we won't even know what to do with it, but what software actually works, what software actually matters, what software gets marketed or sold? Or we're going to have to think about not just that the software exists, but that it can get to its final state, and that is going to require people's buy- in to that idea working. [01:13:32] S1: Yeah. The way I think about this right now is just where humans are still necessary and great product thinkers are still necessary is on the front end deciding what to prioritize and build, on the back end, determining if this is good and ready, essentially judgment and taste. And then there's distribution I think is such an underappreciated new bottleneck, because as you said, there's so much shit out there. Just like, how do we get anyone to pay attention to any of this stuff? Every day, there's a new life-changing product. So I feel like that's going to be a big problem.
01:14:06 · Jessica Fain
[01:14:06] S0: Oh, I want you to do a whole episode on distribution because I feel this so much. If everyone thinks they can build the next sales force on their own, by the way, I don't believe that, then you're going to have just a flood of available tools. And who gets the attention? It is still going to be who has the marketing dollars, who has the brand reputation, who is the existing customer base. Distribution is everything. And I think the quintessential example we've seen here is with Gemini and Google's tools and just their total continued dominance in that market because of tools of distribution. And I think it's really fun to see. I think the other piece I would say that's underrated there is trust building, trust with your users, but also with your internal teams. We're seeing even model companies hire at a huge rate right now. So you are still working with colleagues. You are still working with millions of users, and alongside distribution is trust, and that is a function of influence and empathy.