Lenny Rachitsky: belief

Transcript context

…... Lenny. So I think that whether it's big S or small S, these are incredibly satisfying processes to go through in the end. So once you get to the end, they're incredibly deeply satisfying. But with anything in life that is very deeply satisfying at the end, they have a ton of challenge, frustration, and dead ends while you go through it where you kind of get a lot of self-doubt like, "Hey, will you ever reach the end?" And I just want to sort of normalize that. That's actually normal and I want people to expect that as they go through it. And I think that's what makes it even more rewarding when you get to that sort of point where you start to see things connecting. The second thing is I would say that the person who's leading the charge on these efforts has to be really good at connecting diverse viewpoints and keeping them all moving forward. And it's not easy, it's very hard because sometimes you have people who take you in different directions and you have to keep it all hanging together. So in terms of picking people who have that skill, who are good integrators, who are good connect the dots, I think it's critical for these to be successful. And in some ways low ego because it's not like... They do get to introduce their own ideas, but truly, it's about bringing the team together. So that's the skill that you should look for for these leads. And then the third piece is I would say that I would just approach these with a little bit of a lighter touch and more playful sort of approach, because it's an intensive process, it's a long process. And people can get tired, they can find it grindy. So just having a little bit of playfulness along the way goes a long way in making it feel more tolerable for the people going through it. So those are some thoughts about either of these processes. That was really important context, especially this will be frustrating throughout. It sounds really beautiful and great and smooth as you describe it. In reality, there's a lot of pain that goes into... Because you're making hard decisions. A lot of people have opinions, they have perspectives, there's data that's... Rarely is there clear answer from the beginning, so I think that's really important context. I wanted to actually come back to your point you made about how Elon made this point about life shouldn't just be about solving problems. I think part of that quote is just like we should work on things that are awesome and exciting and inspiring, that aren't just immediately pain solvers. And he's very good at that, just inspiring people to what could be, and we should be thinking much bigger than we are. I was actually at an interview with Zuck where he said the same thing. He's probably inspired by Elon. He's like, "I've just gotten to a point in my career where I want to work on awesome stuff, stuff that is just awe inspiring, not just- Exactly.…

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