Anuj Rathi: preference

Transcript context

…Maybe spending a little more time here. So, smart, you're probably not going to be able to do a lot about. In terms of grit or influence, is there anything you can share about what you've seen most helps people develop at these skills other than just doing the job for a while, and then starting to get better at this? Yeah. I think even smartness, I think 80% of that smartness, I think, is something that's very achievable. You don't need to be outstanding on that. Domain knowledge, for example, is something just like... An average smart person with no domain knowledge versus you armed with a lot of knowledge around domain and so on can already take you there, but you can take better decisions. I think first one is more about decision-making, problem identification, problem solving, and all of that. So I think that really can be developed at least to a level where you are very effective. Drive, I think, is probably the hardest to coach, probably the hardest. I've not seen people with less drive actually eventually turning out with a lot of drive, et cetera, but they can be inspired. I think you need to be a person who can think about it that way, but the third one, influences, I think, there's no negotiation there. You need to really think that, "I have to be good at this one." There's another framework that, Lenny, I wanted to talk about. When I look at product leadership in general and how do you think about different people and so on. When is it a product manager problem, or your problem, or a company problem? There are only three reasons, again, why things do not happen the way you want them to happen as a leader. You can look at a person, and you would say either that person can't do, which is a capability issue, or they won't do, which is a motivation or an alignment issue, or they were not set up to do, which is really your problem, that you didn't set up the ways of working now design properly, or we are okay as such and such, and so on, and so forth. So, as a leader, it's almost the opposite of what we talked about, great influence and raw sharps. Do you have the right people in terms of capability? If not, is the right answer for us to coach them or to really put them... or mentor them and so on, or move them to some other place because maybe their capability is suited elsewhere? If they won't do, why won't they? Are they not aligned to you? Do they not agree with your vision? Do they not just have enough time? So on and so forth. So you need to really go deeper there. Why won't they do? There are different answers for that, but if it's a setup issue, and at least I've realized that apart from what product managers can do, almost 70%, 80% of problems why things don't happen are a setup issue. Product leaders or other leaders have not thought through what OKRs are doing to my company, not really fully thought through around org design. If you've read the book called TEEN Topologies, that's one interesting book which starts with Conway's law and essentially saying, "Show me an engineering architecture, and I will actually tell you what the org design of this company is," but that also manifests itself in products that you can basically look at a product. In most cases, you will be able to say what was org design that led to this kind of product. I have heard that book mentioned a couple of times recently. I got to check it out just to the three you just shared, which is another three. I love it. Can do, won't do. What was the third one again, didn't do?…

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