Lenny Rachitsky: recommendation

Transcript context

…Yeah. I think that's a really good way of doing it. I think my only gloss on that would be that people are really different. Execs are people too. And so one of the things that I think is really important is understanding what is the literal format, storytelling, pre-work that is going to work for that person. Some people hate a PowerPoint and it's just going to crush their soul if you start doing that. Some people only want to see the data and not the qualitative research. And so I do think it is about really understanding their communication style. And execs, if you're listening to this, it's really fucking helpful if you tell people, because you actually know what you like and don't like. And so just tell people, "I prefer a doc. I want no upfront explanation. I want 10 minutes of quiet reading time, and then we can come back together." That's a particularly effective means for very busy people and short meetings, and especially in remote work where presentations just don't work very well. Some execs are willing to do pre-read, some aren't. And I think you just have to be willing to accept that they are also human, and you're trying to give them the best shot at inculcating the information in the way that is meaningful to them. So there's a bunch of tips here that I want to summarize for how to set yourself up for success. One is what you just described, which is just think about how do they respond best? What kind of setup do they respond best to? Is it a presentation? Is it a here's what we recommend, here's three options. Is it data, something else? So there's just understand, here's what this person likes. They want a five minutes fast conclusion. Why? Then there's your advice of ask people that know them, what is top of mind for them right now? Because they may be like, "This is the big bet we're making right now. If it's not aligned with that, they're not going to care." So it's like either ask them or ask people around them, what's top of mind for them right now. And then there's this idea of simulate almost, simulate them, feed all the previous meetings with them into say a Claude project or something like that, create a little GPT and run your idea by them. And like, what would you say? I will tell you, I am not a big fan of the what's top of mind for you question. This is a hot take because I think that what often people do is they think through their top priorities, their top experiences. If we were trying to do a research study to understand the day-to-day lives of our users, we probably wouldn't say what's top of mind for you. We'd say, "Tell me how you spent your day." We'd say, "What's the most urgent priority for you right now that you're really scared about messing up? What pressures are you facing?" And so I think there's ways for us to ask much more interesting questions of our executives. I recently did this with our CEO. I said, "Tell me what the board is pushing you on because everyone's got a boss. And even a CEO who seems so powerful and competent and sure is getting pressures, right? What are you seeing as the key inputs to your success?" The other thing people don't realize is execs want to be successful too. They want to be good at their jobs. And how can you help them? In the best case scenario, your incentives at a local team level or product organization level really closely align with their incentives that you're working on something that really matters to the company. If you're not, you really should be having that conversation because you'll be in misalignment from the start. But if you actually have alignment, point out that alignment. How is the metric that they're trying to move, the OKR they're responsible for, the board pressure that they're under going to be improved by the thing that you are proposing and how do you get there together? So I think that one of the things people really miss out on here is what are the success criteria for an exec? And how do you model your world to amplify that success so that both of you can be more successful?…

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