Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
00:22:09 · Adam Ward, Lenny Rachitsky
[00:22:09] S1: So if you think about, let's pull out the set of characteristics. Okay. The characteristics of someone we want is really curious, systems thinker, whatever they might be, maybe two or three things. Then you're thinking about what companies also share that approach to how they hire. And you could literally probably do a quick Boolean or AI String and be like, "Hey, look at all the job openings in the world among these 100 companies, which ones also say these characteristics matter?" So you kind of think about, "Ooh, where could they have maybe picked up some of these skills for a company who also said that matters as well?" And so then you start to build company lists that aren't the normal list you have, but they might show up there too, but let's validate it through the things that we objectively said we wanted for us. [00:22:59] S0: It's so interesting. Systems thinking has come up on the last four podcasts- Systems thinking has come up on the last four podcasts I've done. Such a trending up attribute people are looking for these days. [00:23:08] S1: Yeah, I think it's always been there in a little bit, but I think it's just become really accentuated now in this era. [00:23:15] S0: When you hear the term systems thinking, what's a way you describe what that actually means when people hear that term?
00:23:15 · Lenny Rachitsky, Adam Ward
[00:23:15] S0: When you hear the term systems thinking, what's a way you describe what that actually means when people hear that term? [00:23:21] S1: I learned this pretty early, maybe in the second company I worked for, and it comes around to a fundamental question of what problem are we trying to solve? And so when I think about systems thinking or when I'm sitting around, I'm like, "What is the fundamental root problem that we're trying to solve?" And then, "How do we take this larger problem and break into really small pieces?" And I've fortunately been working with engineers most of my life, and I just really have learned and I admired how they can take something that's really big and break it in and start to tackle that problem as long as you're anchored into what is the overall thing that we're trying to solve here. [00:23:57] S0: Awesome. Very helpful. People always hear these terms, they're like, "Yeah, yeah, I'm a great systems thinker." And so it's always helpful to just hear from different people what that actually means. [00:24:04] S1: I think systems thinking sounds very strategic, but actually I think it's extremely tactical. The very best systems thinkers take these things and put them into very small tactics and tactic by tactic, kind of remove the blocker. [00:24:20] S0: So to close the thread on this step of finding these incredible people, what I'm hearing is mostly it's sit around, talk to people and just jam in a doc probably of, "Here's people that people recommend. Here's companies to look at."
00:24:20 · Lenny Rachitsky, Adam Ward
[00:24:20] S0: So to close the thread on this step of finding these incredible people, what I'm hearing is mostly it's sit around, talk to people and just jam in a doc probably of, "Here's people that people recommend. Here's companies to look at." [00:24:32] S1: Yeah, and there are tools and there's LinkedIn, there's all these things too. But I think the most valuable one is the most time-intensive one, which is spending time and digging into people's networks. We've shared this before, but people on my team whose entire job is to dig into our current employees networks. You could automate that. You could use an AI tool and walk them through a facilitation of it, but nothing beats you and I sitting down every other week for six weeks and diving into people. You're like, "Hey, last session you gave me these three names. I tracked down and then... But what about this person?" You're like, "Oh yeah, they were great too." I'm like, "Oh, what was good?" So you go back to back. "By the way, I'm also holding you accountable for you sending out notes. And what did they say?" "Oh, they didn't reply. You're going to send another note?" And so kind of this one-to-one, hand-to-hand cultivating of signal I think is really important. Of course, those signals go into a system and a database, but the extraction I think is a hugely personal and effective approach.
00:24:32 · Adam Ward, Lenny Rachitsky
[00:24:32] S1: Yeah, and there are tools and there's LinkedIn, there's all these things too. But I think the most valuable one is the most time-intensive one, which is spending time and digging into people's networks. We've shared this before, but people on my team whose entire job is to dig into our current employees networks. You could automate that. You could use an AI tool and walk them through a facilitation of it, but nothing beats you and I sitting down every other week for six weeks and diving into people. You're like, "Hey, last session you gave me these three names. I tracked down and then... But what about this person?" You're like, "Oh yeah, they were great too." I'm like, "Oh, what was good?" So you go back to back. "By the way, I'm also holding you accountable for you sending out notes. And what did they say?" "Oh, they didn't reply. You're going to send another note?" And so kind of this one-to-one, hand-to-hand cultivating of signal I think is really important. Of course, those signals go into a system and a database, but the extraction I think is a hugely personal and effective approach. [00:25:43] S0: This all sounds very time-intensive and slow and lots of work. There's a reason companies don't hire this way, treat everyone as an exec because they're not execs. They're IC engineers, PMs. How do you talk about that trade-off of taking this approach knowing that it's going to take a lot more time and effort?
00:25:43 · Lenny Rachitsky, Adam Ward
[00:25:43] S0: This all sounds very time-intensive and slow and lots of work. There's a reason companies don't hire this way, treat everyone as an exec because they're not execs. They're IC engineers, PMs. How do you talk about that trade-off of taking this approach knowing that it's going to take a lot more time and effort? [00:26:03] S1: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I usually will ask a question, "So founder, in all the things are important to you, where does talent fall into that list?" And like, "Ah, it's number one. Talent is the most important thing." So if talent is the number one thing, it's not about time or this is where the focus should be. And so if talent is number one, then there should be no obstacles in terms of effort or resourcing or time put in to get there because that is paramount to your success. You just said that objectively. And so if both can't be true, you can't say, "Hey, it's the most important thing and I'm going to outsource it," or, "I'm going to hand it over to a recruiting organization to do." If it's the number one thing, that is your focus. [00:26:57] S0: Hearing that, obviously correct. Why would you not do that? And then there's like, "Holy shit, everything's on fire all the time. I have to make time for all this stuff, all these meetings." And it's just like, is there anything you do to help keep a founder and a team on track and just sticking to this plan knowing it's so much work and time?
00:26:57 · Lenny Rachitsky, Adam Ward
[00:26:57] S0: Hearing that, obviously correct. Why would you not do that? And then there's like, "Holy shit, everything's on fire all the time. I have to make time for all this stuff, all these meetings." And it's just like, is there anything you do to help keep a founder and a team on track and just sticking to this plan knowing it's so much work and time? [00:27:13] S1: Yeah. I mean, typically the founder's keeping the company on track around that, the very best companies. And part of it, keeping on track means keeping top of mind. There's also the adage of what gets measured gets done. So if it's an important thing, we measure it just like we might measure uptime or we might measure customer satisfaction or we might measure revenue and we hold those teams accountable. We also hold hiring managers and leaders and organizations accountable to hiring. And so keeping it top of mind, but putting in the right systems around rewards and recognition and all those things around it will help people keep it as a priority. But if you aren't measuring it, they will hand that over. They will shirk that responsibility to somewhere else. [00:28:00] S0: Yeah. One of your big pet peeves is having the recruiters... not basically empowering the recruiters and hiring managers not being deeply involved in the process.