Podcast Summary
Authenticity and imperfection: Embrace your messiness and understand everyone is learning and growing through trial and error. Surround yourself with extraordinary peers for unbiased opinions, diverse perspectives, and raw feedback.
Authenticity and imperfection are essential for success. Ami Vora, the Chief Product Officer at FAIR, shared her experience of feeling held back by the perception that successful people have everything figured out. She encouraged listeners to embrace their messiness and understand that everyone is learning and growing through trial and error. Ami also emphasized the importance of surrounding oneself with extraordinary peers, as she did through the Sidebar leadership program, to gain unbiased opinions, diverse perspectives, and raw feedback. Overall, this conversation highlighted the importance of authenticity, imperfection, and community in achieving professional success.
Emotional connection, Trust and Learning: Consider emotional connection with job and people, build trust, embrace curiosity and openness to learning for personal and professional growth
While making career decisions based on logical analysis is important, it's equally crucial to consider the emotional connection with the job and the people involved. The speaker emphasizes the importance of asking oneself, "Do I feel lucky to be there?" and focusing on building trust and relationships with colleagues. Another key takeaway is the importance of embracing curiosity and being open to learning from others, rather than insisting on being right all the time. The speaker shares how this shift in mindset has made her work and life more interesting and productive. Boz, the CTO of Meta, also highlighted the speaker's ability to approach disagreements with genuine curiosity, which led to better outcomes for everyone involved. Overall, the conversation underscores the importance of a growth mindset, trust, and openness to learning in both personal and professional contexts.
Reframing reactions: Reframing initial reactions as opportunities for learning can lead to better outcomes and improved ability to respond effectively in various situations, including product reviews.
Our initial visceral reactions to new ideas or feedback should not be dismissed, but rather seen as opportunities for learning. By taking a pause and reframing our reactions as chances to gain new insights, we can improve our ability to respond effectively and productively. This concept can be applied to various situations, such as product reviews or interactions with influential figures. It's important to remember that everyone, including executives, has a limited capacity for processing information and making decisions. Therefore, focusing on providing recommendations and clear principles can lead to better outcomes for everyone involved. When preparing for product reviews, it's essential to start with the problem you're trying to solve and keep the discussion short and focused. The goal should be to walk away with new principles and insights, rather than specific answers. By adopting this mindset, we can make the most of our interactions and continue to grow and learn.
Recommendation Making: To make clear and well-reasoned recommendations, take a firm stance, limit info, invite a small cross-functional team for accountability, and use metaphors for effective communication.
Making clear and well-reasoned recommendations requires taking a firm stance and deeply understanding the material. It's essential to limit the amount of information to make informed decisions and avoid getting lost in analysis. Invite a cross-functional team to product reviews for cross-functional accountability, but keep the group small enough to maintain a less formal and less stressful conversation. Metaphors and imagery are effective tools for rallying teams and getting points across. The "hill climb" metaphor can help in deciding whether to take risks and make changes, even if it means going through a challenging period. Developing the skill of using metaphors and analogies can provide a fresh perspective and help scale a team effectively.
Shared story or metaphor in product development: Agreeing on a common narrative guides product development, saving time and resources by reducing the need for individual decision-making and ensuring a more unified product. Prioritize execution over strategy to deliver a great product experience.
Creating a shared story or metaphor can guide product development and help teams build more consistent and user-friendly experiences. By agreeing on a common narrative, designers and developers can make decisions that align with the desired feeling or experience, rather than making individual decisions that may not fit cohesively. For example, WhatsApp's goal was to create a sense of face-to-face communication, which informed the design of intimate spaces, joinable calls, and other features. This approach saved time and resources by reducing the need for individual decision-making and ensured a more unified product. Another important aspect is the focus on execution over strategy. While strategy is important, customers ultimately care about the product they use. Therefore, it's crucial to prioritize execution and delivering a great product experience, rather than getting bogged down in long-term planning and philosophical debates. As the saying goes, "Execution beats strategy every time."
Execution and strategy balance: A successful product manager spends a significant amount of time on execution to ensure strategies make it to market and can adapt to changing customer needs and market landscapes, while also striving to become better strategic thinkers through customer research and learning.
While strategy is important, execution is equally crucial. A great strategy with poor execution will not lead to success, and it's essential to learn from failures to improve both strategy and execution. Execution involves the "nuts and bolts" work, such as fixing bugs, writing specs, and ringing donuts, which ultimately leads to customer outcomes. PMs should aim to spend a significant proportion of their time on execution, even as they move up the ranks, to ensure their strategies make it to market and can adapt to changing customer needs and market landscapes. Strategy should change behavior and create better customer outcomes, and PMs can become better strategic thinkers by gaining confidence in their opinions through customer research and learning.
Expressing opinions, Career growth: Being authentic and expressing opinions confidently, while remaining open to feedback and adapting, is crucial for career growth. Women in tech may face unique challenges, but effective communication and expanding one's toolkit can lead to success.
Developing the ability to have an opinion and express it confidently, while also being open to feedback and willing to adapt, is crucial for growth in a career. This was a lesson learned by the speaker during her time at Facebook, where she initially suppressed her opinions to be more likable, but later realized the importance of being authentic and leading with her thoughts. Additionally, women in tech often face unique challenges, including receiving personal feedback and navigating conflicting advice, but learning how to interpret and respond effectively can lead to success. The speaker emphasizes the importance of expanding one's toolkit and not being afraid to adopt different approaches to achieve goals. Ultimately, the ability to adapt and lead with confidence, while remaining open to feedback and growth, is key to success in any career.
Personal growth vs. finding a mentor: Focus on personal growth and expanding skills instead of trying to be someone else, and setting clear, aligned goals for teams to promote collaboration and efficiency.
Everyone's journey to success is unique, and it's essential to embrace your strengths and continue expanding your skills instead of trying to be someone else. Ami shared her experience of feeling the need for a mentor but realizing that everyone can only share their own story. Instead, she advises focusing on personal growth and adding new tools and ways of expressing yourself. Another key takeaway is the importance of setting clear, aligned goals and incentives for teams to avoid duplication of effort and promote collaboration. Ami uses the metaphor of toddler soccer to illustrate the problem of everyone running towards the same goal, leading to inefficiency and lack of coordination. Instead, she suggests decoupling goals and assigning different objectives to teams, ensuring that each team contributes to the overall customer impact. Furthermore, Ami emphasizes the value of acknowledging and addressing the natural tensions and incentives within teams. Instead of viewing disagreements as a sign of conflict, she encourages open, explicit discussions about the best way to achieve the desired outcome. Lastly, Ami acknowledges that there's no perfect organizational structure, and the best approach is to choose the best option given the current context and build processes around it. She encourages leaders to recognize and acknowledge the imperfections while communicating the principles and context behind their decisions.
Leadership limitations: Making suboptimal decisions and accepting limitations are part of leadership, learning to say no and manage expectations are essential skills, and focusing on building relationships is key when starting a new role.
Leadership involves making suboptimal decisions and accepting the limitations of your options. As you advance in your career, you'll face increasingly complex problems and have to learn to say no and manage expectations. The monkey on your back analogy emphasizes the importance of helping your team members solve their own problems instead of trying to take them on yourself. When starting a new role, expect a steep learning curve and focus on building relationships with key stakeholders, such as your CEO. The relationship with a product-minded visionary founder can be challenging, but open communication and a growth mindset can lead to fruitful collaboration.
CEO relationship building: Building a strong relationship with a CEO or executive team is crucial for a successful product role. Open discussions and understanding each other's thought processes can lead to a trusting and complementary partnership. Thoroughly vet potential hires for head of product or CPO roles, focusing on a good fit, understanding working styles, and prioritizing customer needs.
Building a strong relationship with a CEO or executive team is crucial for a successful product role. Instead of just being assigned tasks, having open discussions and understanding each other's thought processes can lead to a trusting and complementary partnership. For founders looking to hire a head of product or CPO, it's essential to ensure a good fit through a thorough vetting process, including spending time together and understanding each other's working styles. Additionally, it's important to hire the right level of seniority for the role and to prioritize the customer's needs above all else. The speaker's career journey from temp to leading Facebook ads and WhatsApp is a testament to the power of networking and persistence. When working in product, focusing on the customer and their needs is key to success, even when balancing business metrics and long-term customer impact. Two recommended books are "The Year of Yes" by Shonda Rhimes and "Sapiens" by Yuval Noah Harari. The speaker enjoys comforting workplace comedies and has not yet seen the Office reboot. No recent favorite product was mentioned.
Daily routine and determination: Creating a simple daily routine with enjoyable activities and having determination to put in the work can significantly enhance your life and lead to success, even if it means feeling uncomfortable at times.
Creating a simple and enjoyable daily routine, like using a favorite electric kettle for making coffee or tea, can significantly enhance one's day-to-day life. Additionally, having the determination and energy to put in the work and try new things is essential for achieving impact and success, even if it means feeling uncomfortable at times. Lani's advice, "You can either have more energy or less ambition," is a reminder of the importance of having the drive to make things happen. Lani also shared her sense of humor with a few jokes, showcasing the importance of finding joy and lightness in life. To connect with Lani further, listeners can find her on her blog, "The Hard Parts of Growth," on Substack, or on LinkedIn. She encourages everyone to be great, kind, and nice, and to make the world a slightly better place.