Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
00:46:44 · Lenny Rachitsky, G2 Patel
[00:46:44] S1: I had a conversation with Matt MacInnis, who's COO now CPO at Rippling, and hit a similar piece of advice, which I think is also, it's like adjacent advice, which is "The intensity of an idea or a plan drops at every level that it goes from CO to the next layer and layer. And your job as a leader is to maintain that intensity, not to buffer it from the employees, but to maintain exactly the same intensity."" And it feels like that's in addition to also just keep the story the same. Like don't filter it, don't change it. Although your advice is even different, just like you actually go to the team working on it and tell the story yourself. Don't even let- [00:47:23] S0: I want to make sure that they hear it from me directly so that there's no lossiness. We have this concept in networking called packet loss. When you actually send packets over a wire and you have a loss of packet, then actually there's loss of data. You don't want to have packet loss in your storytelling from you to the person on the front line because- [00:47:43] S1: The direct ethernet Cat 5 connection.
00:47:43 · Lenny Rachitsky, G2 Patel
[00:47:43] S1: The direct ethernet Cat 5 connection. [00:47:45] S0: This is just a direct connection and there's no packet loss of this one. You got to make sure it gets to the intended audience. And I think the reason for that is, as companies get large, they can lose touch with the front lines. Everyone gets really good with the math of the business, but they don't really always preserve the soul of the business. And there's a lossiness that happens, because if you have seven, eight layers between you and the front line, even the message that's coming back to you from them is actually getting lossy. And so what you have to do is just preserve ... And I think what was said earlier about the intensity is the same way, which is you got to preserve the intensity. You got to preserve the sanctity of the message, and you got to preserve the clarity of the message so that everyone is clear on the direction we're going down. And if you can stay clear and stay motivated about that direction and make sure that everyone's on the same page and what needs to be done to execute, you will have success. If not, you'll actually have guaranteed failure. [00:48:45] S1: How do you actually operationalize this without just being overloaded with work and constantly having to meet with every team and remind them of the story?
00:48:53 · G2 Patel
[00:48:53] S0: The first thing I feel is, you have to have very clear thinking because the clarity of thought is what brings clarity of communication. So, you have to spend the time with your team in sweating the details on what it is that you want to do and why you want to do it. The context of why is so lost, and constantly reminding people why it's important and having the least amount of asymmetry between the topmost layer in the organization and the bottommost layer is super. Now, by the way, I'm a Section 16 officer. There are certain things that, for example, you're in a quiet period you can't go talk about to someone else during that time period, but that's not allowed. However, the most amount of context that you can provide them in the way that you can because you're allowed to, the better off you are. And always treat people like adults. What I've found is, oftentimes when you go into corporate environments, like people start becoming very sterile in the facts that they provide. And sometimes it's okay to just say, "Hey, we screwed up here. This was really bad." That's not meant to ... One of the things that I found to be very counterintuitive, because every management book that you read will tell you otherwise. What do they say? Praise in public and criticize in private. I fundamentally disagree with that notion. I think what you have to do is establish enough trust among the team so that you are comfortable critiquing and debating in public. But when you're in private, take that moment to build the trust. Because if you build that trust and you tell them that you've got their back and you create a level of safety there in public, you don't want to be in a mode of posturing. You want to be in a mode of problem-solving. When you're just giving people perfunctory compliments all the time, and everything's just hunky-dory. Rose-colored glass is great. All your dashboards look green, but you're growing the business at 1.5%. There's an asymmetry there, something's broken. It's like, what do we need to do over here? And so what I tend to do is use the exact opposite approach. I tend to be very, very direct in public, be respectful, but be direct in public. This is not working. Let me tell you why it's not working. We got to face the facts. And then be very, very clear with people that you got their back in private.
00:51:29 · G2 Patel
And don't be stingy with words on that front, because I feel like there are times when people are very stingy with words with people in private. You can't be stingy with words over there. And don't be stingy with critique in public, because I think people need to make sure that, "We are solving problems together." And if we don't know the play that we're executing, if we don't know the things that we're going to need to do, then I am not really certain. If you're making collective progress, and I think it's not going to be fulfilling to either you or the recipient at some point, and those compliments will feel hollow because you didn't mean them. Because you were trying to put it in between. Like Ben Horowitz says, and hard things about hard things that you have a shit sandwich. You say something really nice to someone, then you say something that's not really nice, and then you put no, just treat people like adults. Tell them the facts, watch your tone. I still have to work on that. There are times when I get very passionate. People think like, but watch your tone and make sure that you debate. Conflict is a necessary condition of business, but the only way that you can have productive conflict is if you've established trust. And the only way that you can establish trust is by making sure that you spend the time to establish the trust. So spend the time to establish the trust, but then focus on the best idea, winning and actually having the debate.
00:53:07 · Lenny Rachitsky, G2 Patel
[00:53:07] S1: Is there maybe one more lesson that you've learned from this? Or I guess it's something you wish you'd known before getting into this role? Is there anything else that comes to mind? [00:53:15] S0: I was an apps guy. I operated in the apps layer. I worked at Box. And even when I was at EMC, I was building apps that you built for the end user. Infrastructure is a different game. And the thing that I learned about infrastructure is, you don't always get the glory, but you always get the blame. [00:53:41] S1: Perfect.
00:53:42 · G2 Patel
[00:53:42] S0: And you have to be comfortable with the fact that you are working in a way that other people get the glory. Great infrastructure companies, the application companies get the glory when they're running on that infrastructure. So, you have to be hardwired in infrastructure to orient on your ecosystem success, not just your own success. And that is probably one of the lessons that I learned at Cisco in a very stark way, which I didn't fully appreciate it until I got into the details of the infrastructure going, "Wow, if this thing doesn't work," we were ... Every single time, our infrastructure doesn't work. This morning I was with a medical institution, I was with a healthcare company this morning, and they were telling me they were very complimentary. They were thanking us on the partnership. I asked them, "Why are you doubling down with us?" And they're like, "Because when the infrastructure doesn't work, people die. Someone doesn't get dialysis, someone doesn't get a surgery done, and we need to make sure that we're working with someone with the infrastructure is working." And so, I feel like at that point in time, you can't be navel-gazing too much about, "Look how cool you are, because you did something." You have to just make sure that you're really immediately shifting your focus to, what does the customer do and what does the ecosystem do with your infrastructure so that the outcome is achieved? And you have to get very outcome oriented. And I feel like that was something that I always intellectually knew, but I didn't fully realize it until I came here on how important of a mindset shift that is. You are not talking about yourself, you're talking about the system just working. No one will come and tell you, "Hey, Jeetu, thank you so much. My network worked today." But the moment it doesn't work, they're going to call you and say, "You know what? My network's not working, and my people can't work and patients are dying in the hospital." I think you just have to be comfortable with that.