Lenny Rachitsky: uncertainty

Transcript context

…I definitely think the growth mindset is absolutely the most important thing because someone who's constantly growing is going to listen to feedback. Someone who's growing is going to seek out information in areas they're not good at. I had one PM, he was an analyst, he went to move over to PM. He just, he's like, "I don't have a design eye." So I gave him three books. We prepped for the design interview and now he is the head of product for one of the most design oriented products in the world. But he said, "You know what? I know what I don't know. I'm willing to learn." One of the things that we need to do is really have that mindset of I'm not an expert in this. He wasn't even a PM, he was an analyst and he said, "But this is my dream." And just seeing the people who rise to the amazing careers, 10X careers are the ones who have that mindset of growth who say, "I don't want to just work on my strengths. I want to shore up my weaknesses. I want to grow in ways that are asymmetrical." I see this in the best people that I've worked with is they're the ones who are the most hungry, and are willing to do whatever it takes to get to where they want to go. Enough hunger is just hard. It's not something that people can have, that ambition. It's not something people can have at every phase in their life and that's totally okay. It's to say, "I'm going to push when I have the ability to push, I'm going to take a step back when it's time to step back." But I think a lot of people are like, "I'm okay. I'm happy here," and if that's okay for different seasons of your life, but the most successful PMs are the ones that say, when the time is right, I'm going to really push, and I'm going to drink it all in and make it as possible to get as far as I possibly can during this season of my life. For people going through that are wanting to push through that and develop, and maybe in this example, what do you find is worth your time? Do you find courses are a good way to improve? Is it mentors, coaches, just doing the work? Do you have a general mental model of, "Hey, I want to improve it," say design, I don't know. Do you push people to one direction versus another to actually get better at a lot of these things? I think one of the most powerful things that we can do is actually first start in a coaching circle because getting feedback is incredibly important. If you have an amazing manager and peers that give you feedback, that's amazing. But I think often you don't have that. If you can find a coaching circle or mentoring circle of other PMs, they will actually help you see your blind spots, because I think seeing your blind spots helps you to work on them. Second is actually taking that feedback and saying, "Okay, here are the three things I want to work on." So every year, I do a new year resolution, and this is not just for PM, but across the board. I write down, here's the things I want to improve in my life, and here's what I'm going to do to do them. Having a written goal, and the goal isn't checking the box like I'm going to do X. The goal is I want more of this and here's how I'm going to get it. And every year I publish that, and then I give myself a score for the previous year. It's really, as you know, if you measure, you're going to get more of what you measure. Well, how many people are really measuring their careers? How many people are measuring the output of things that they're learning? I really encourage PM your career like you PM your product, you put so much care into writing specs, having goals, having metrics, doing reviews. How is it do you think about your career? Not nearly as much. What I encourage PMs to do is your focus group is your peers. That's where you're getting feedback from. Those are your customers, those are your peers, are the ones who are giving you feedback, who are telling you things you need to work on to make your product, your career better. The second thing is then what are you going to do about it? What a true roadmap. Often, we don't have a roadmap for our career. We have amazing roadmaps to your roadmaps, five year roadmaps, visions, all of those things for our product, and then our blind spot is ourselves. I just tell people, write out what you want to be in two years and five years. Write out your pre-mortem for where your career is going to go, and then work your way backwards. Sometimes, it's just very easy to drift from, "Oh, I have this opportunity, should I take it or not? Someone called me about X, or this company." And not to be intentional, but if you say, "Hey." Somebody called me up and she said, "I would like to be CEO by the time I'm your age." So I said, "Okay, let's work our way backwards." And we did the math and she's not even a manager today, but she's 35. I said, "To be eligible to be CEO, you need to get on a board. You need to be a GM of a very large product. How fast can you get there?" She said, "Well, I'm probably a year or two away from getting promoted and getting the opportunity to manage." "At the pace you're going, you're not going to get there." And so I've been mentoring her and coaching her and finally she found a new role. They're giving her management responsibility.…

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