Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
00:56:28 · Lenny Rachitsky, Oji Udezue
[00:56:28] S1: I love that phrase. I'm gonna use it now. I have just a few more questions before we get to our very exciting lightning round, and these are kind of random two topics that I wanted to chat on. One is this concept that you call forest time. It's a post you wrote about the importance of forest time. Can you just describe what that is and why it's so important and and then also just how to do this? [00:56:48] S0: I operate. I'm an operator right now, meaning that I'm building things. I work for a company. But I also advise and invest, which is different. When I'm advising, I'm looking from above, from outside. I have a bird's eye view, and I'm able to say, you know what? This will work. This won't work. What have you done? Can I look at the results and then, you know, cycle the advice based on what I'm? What you're seeing and what I'm seeing. When I'm operating, I'm I'm building a team, I'm hiring, I'm managing all the thing... Elena, shout out, that hates sometimes. Right? [00:57:26] S1: For now.
00:57:26 · Oji Udezue
[00:57:26] S0: And and that's what I'm doing. When you are operating, you you have the fog of war. Like, it is so intense that you don't have the attention to have a bird's eye view constantly. And so forest time is the idea that you make time within your week, within your month to see the forest for the trees. Most of the time when you're operating, you're seeing the tree, which is the problem in front of you. But sometimes you need to see the forest so you can figure out if there's an alternate path different from the one that you are currently on your campaign. And so it's time to elevate, to get some bird's eye view to see the entire landscape and see if there are alternative paths through the current problems that you're you're escaping. And I think that it has to be very intentional. And intentionality there is some... I have published a workflow, a document that helps you make that step, to make that elevation. Like, what are the issues? What are alternative ways to solve this potentially that I'm not seeing, etcetera? And what I try to do is I try to create that first time for my executive team as well because it's not just me that suffers from this, it's most everybody. In fact, it's most PMs, because PMs are so influential that it spoke of the wheel of product creation and product development that we often... You know, you're you're you're... It's a sine wave. Right? You are discovering and shaping problems, and then you are commanding and captaining execution, and it's endless. And there are endless meetings. And so you need to create time for forest time for elevation. If you don't, you become less effective over time. It's just attrition.
00:59:14 · Lenny Rachitsky, Oji Udezue
[00:59:14] S1: And then just to make it even more concrete for people, what are examples of forest time? Is it taking time off? Is it advising on the side? Is [00:59:19] S0: it It is taking a day off. At the end of a month, a full day or two days. And instead of just playing golf, although that's fine, it is doing a workflow... Worksheet to to survey the forest specifically. And sometimes people... Managers are like, wait. You're giving people a day off when they should be working harder and harder, and I think it's completely worth it. It's not about working harder, it's working smarter. It's about seeing more options than you see. And so I'm very happy to give that time to product managers, to product executives or design executives or engineering executives, because I think that if they do it properly, then we'll have better execution in the long run. Let's put it this way. We aim in product development. We aim for maybe like 10% of the time and then we execute and build for the other side. It's not just... I mean, there's more stuff we do. If your aim is off, then you're you're $12,000,000 incorrectly of people's time. And so forest time should improve your aim. That's the entire point because your aim is the precursor to a huge amount of investment. And so I think it's it's well worth it. [01:00:37] S1: I love this. So specifically, what you do with your team is once a month, you give them a day to do this kind of worksheet that you put together. [01:00:44] S0: Mhmm. Yes.
01:00:44 · Oji Udezue, Lenny Rachitsky
[01:00:44] S0: Mhmm. Yes. [01:00:45] S1: And then that worksheet is in this post that you wrote. That way, you know, point to. Is that right? [01:00:49] S0: Correct. Correct. [01:00:49] S1: Amazing. Okay. Great. This is very practical advice. I love it. Okay. One last question before a very exciting lightning round. You worked at Bridgewater Associates, which I didn't know until I started digging into your into your past. That sounds creepy. And, Bridgewater Associates famous for what, Ray Dalio's hedge fund, author of Principles and all these other incredible books. And it's a very unique working environment, so I just wanted to ask about your experience there. Specifically, one of the craziest things there is just this thing called DOTS, I think it's called, where people just call out mistakes that people make at the company and it's public. Is that how it actually was? Any memories of that? [01:01:27] S0: Yeah. Yeah. I was a senior management, what's called an SMA, which is the management layer right under Ray's team. And we were the priests of of the of the church of Bridgewater. Bridgewater did things like record... This is public college. I'm not saying anything. [01:01:50] S1: Yeah. You record
01:01:51 · Oji Udezue
[01:01:51] S0: every meeting. Eventually, we created a Dot Collector, which is... Allows you to rate people in real time. So I'm just having a conversation with you. And before the meeting closes, in front of each other, I pull up my laptop and I rate you and rate the interaction. And, you know, in theory, the idea is that if you constantly rate people across hundreds of interactions, then you build a picture of them that is fairly accurate, statistically accurate, that will transcend, you know, maybe, like, emotional relation, besides wisdom of the crowd idea. So that's a theory. In practice, it is emotionally, like, exhausting. And like you said, the little creepy, even the recording. So I think there were things about Bridgewater that I didn't... That I understood intellectually in terms of the purpose that Ray had designed, but didn't quite work. It's like the way I think about this is the theory of the principles are really good. The practice can be quite... And the execution can be quite off and not very human or not very empathetic. But I will say this. Bridgewater taught me things that I don't think any other organization in the world have taught me. Like, one example is Bridgewater thinks of people in three dimensions, their skills, their attributes, their values. Most organizations think about people in terms of just their skills. But it makes sense that people have attributes and values. Right? That people are, you know, timid. People are bold. People like to jump in. People like to stand back. And, you know, all those other things we think about personality and proclivity. Bridgewater tries to establish and measure them and also tries to write job descriptions that say this is the kind of attributes we're looking for, not just the skills we're looking for. And then, of course, values like, you know, are you a thief or are you a principled and so on and so forth. Now that idea of looking at talent or people in general, both in your professional life and in your personal life is a huge addition to me as a professional from Bridgewater. So I am not by any means saying... I'm saying that there were things I didn't enjoy about Bridgewater, things that I learned that I would learn... I've learned nowhere else as well.
01:04:18 · Lenny Rachitsky, Oji Udezue
[01:04:18] S1: Did you take that to what you do today thinking of people in those three different ways and [01:04:23] S0: 100%. [01:04:23] S1: Something like that? [01:04:24] S0: You did? In my in my professional life, in my personal life, when I interview people, I am cognizant of those three things, and I try to extract those three things because I think it improves your success. You know, famously, like, all the weird skill based interviewing at Google was only 50, you know, fiftyfifty predictive. And the reason is Google did not consider the other two things, I believe. Right? You know, Bridgewater was willing to endure 80% attrition to arrive at the best people. Now I don't think it works for them because some of their system was not empathetic of humans, like expecting humans to be computers. But I thought that was a very important insight. Awesome. [01:05:09] S1: Oji, is there anything else that you want to share before we get to our very exciting lightning round?