Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
01:22:28 · Lenny Rachitsky
[01:22:28] S0: I imagine this is something a lot of people struggle with seeing so many people around them doing super well, at least seemingly doing well, everything's going great, I'm growing, this awesome company or just like everything, it's like hard to actually be honest and say, "It's not going great. I'm struggling here. I'm falling behind," because everyone around you is just like on the surface feeling like they're killing it. Before we get to our very exciting lightning round, is there anything else that you either want to leave listeners with, anything else that we didn't cover? Anything else that's important that you wanted to share?
01:23:03 · Fiona Fung
[01:23:03] S1: Maybe one thing is just a suggestion because we talked about how can Claude do automate. One other thing that's really big on Claude Code and Cowork team culture is explicit permission to kill processes that no longer serve us. And so maybe a suggestion is for anyone working on a team or leading teams, what's one process that you either dread doing or is really highly noisy or is really expensive in terms of just a lot of... Or something that's just very manual, pick one thing and first ask is it still having its purpose? For example, when even our planning... Actually, that was my own big first learning when I first joined Claude Code. I'm like, "Hey, maybe we should do a six-month roadmap doc, but we're going to do it super lightweight because I don't want to waste a lot of time planning." And I felt we did a really lightweight process, but that was such a good learning for me because the exercise was good to kickstart conversations and enter aligned, but three months into it, I'm like, "Wait, have we still referenced stuff?" Because so much has changed. So that was also something I... And so that was also something I changed that I myself brought in thinking, "Hey, maybe this will help." So always be open to learning and always ask yourself whatever process you have, is it still serving its purpose just because the field is changing so fast?
01:24:26 · Lenny Rachitsky, Fiona Fung
[01:24:26] S0: I love that advice. I got to follow up on this real quick. How do you think about planning now? Do you do any planning? Is it just a month long roadmap? What's the simple way to explain where you're at with that? [01:24:37] S1: Yeah, I call it JIT planning now, just in time planning. So it is around, because yeah, I think six months was too long. So now for sure some projects will take more than a month, but we try to do a month planning, really lightweight. Actually, there's not even dogs. It's really just us aligning on a little spreadsheet of what we think is important. But even that one, I'm thinking through, hey, every week we should probably still keep what we're trying is here are the month's priorities and we're going to try it out, but I have a feeling like every week we'll probably want to do really quick like, "Hey, just to check, yep, this is still this month's priorities, good." But now we've shrunk it to JIT monthly planning. [01:25:17] S0: So it's monthly meaning for the next month, here's a little sheet/Excel spreadsheet of what we're planning to do for the next month and then every week check-in is this still what we're planning to do for the next month? [01:25:29] S1: Yeah. [01:25:29] S0: So cool.
01:25:29 · Lenny Rachitsky, Fiona Fung
[01:25:29] S0: So cool. [01:25:30] S1: Very, very weird. But even that one, I'm also still feeling, how can we even automate this more? Because I never want it to be feeling like attacked when someone has to update the spreadsheet. So this is actually, just yesterday we're chatting, "Hey, how can we actually automate this?" Speaking to that question, always ask yourselves, "Can we actually automate this better?" [01:25:50] S0: My PM brain is like, "How could you not do something like that? Okay, here's what we're thinking for the next month. Let's just check it once a week, make sure this is..." It's hard to imagine that not happening and you don't have a lot of item on this spreadsheet is what I'm hearing also. [01:26:05] S1: Yeah, we really try focus. So we'll share, here's what we think are the highest priorities. And again, for that agency, given the priorities, then everybody's their kind of item for how they think addresses those priorities. [01:26:19] S0: Is there anything that's like, here's for the next six months bigger bet kind of stuff or is it just let's just think one month ahead? [01:26:26] S1: So usually definitely there's themes of where we think the work. And actually the whole team will bring everyone together every six months. So there will usually kick off some themes, but then it's really the making sure we keep the pulse of what... Because again, even those themes change so fast when the landscape changes.
01:26:26 · Fiona Fung, Lenny Rachitsky
[01:26:26] S1: So usually definitely there's themes of where we think the work. And actually the whole team will bring everyone together every six months. So there will usually kick off some themes, but then it's really the making sure we keep the pulse of what... Because again, even those themes change so fast when the landscape changes. [01:26:49] S0: All right, let's pull out the spreadsheet. Let's take a look. Oh, man, man, this whole podcast could have been just talking about this planning stuff that you do. Okay. I'm going to have to find someone else to talk about this because this is so interesting just how you all plan. Yeah. Okay. Well, Fiona, with that, we reached our very exciting lightning round. I've got five questions for you. Are you ready? [01:27:10] S1: Ready. [01:27:11] S0: Okay. First question, what are two or three books that you find yourself recommending most to other people?
01:27:11 · Lenny Rachitsky, Fiona Fung
[01:27:11] S0: Okay. First question, what are two or three books that you find yourself recommending most to other people? [01:27:17] S1: Ooh, I will say for fiction, actually two authors I recommend to everyone, Margaret Atwood and Haruki Murakami. I mean, I grew up in Canada, so I read a lot of that when growing up, but her books are fascinating because it's almost like speculative fiction of you can squint and say, "Okay, could this actually happen to a society?" So I love her take on speculative fiction and Murakami, I love his magical realism style. But then the one book, so there are authors, but the one book I always recommend to everyone to read at least once a year, The Little Prince, I'm sure we probably all read it at some point in our lives, but I think I read it at least once a year just to remind me to think about what's truly important. [01:28:17] S0: Wow, that hasn't come up a bunch. Okay. I love it. Favorite recent movie or TV show you have really enjoyed? [01:28:25] S1: I haven't watched TV shows. [01:28:27] S0: That's very common across Anthropic people I have on the podcast. Tell me theme.