Lenny Rachitsky: evaluation

Transcript context

…Yeah. So I think that for your first six months on a product, probably don't worry about strategy. For your six months, really, you should be talking to customers, researching your product stuff, really starting off by saying, I'm going to learn the strategy, whatever strategy my company already has, and I'm going to do my research, but I'm going to deliver on that strategy. But all this time while you're doing your regular product work, so you're visiting customers and you're analyzing data and all these things, you're probably having ideas pop up in your mind. You're starting to notice trends. You're starting to notice, like, what are the pain points people have? And just stay open to that. And after about six months, I think, is when you can start to put together a draft of a strategy for your own team. So this, I think, you can take half a day, right? Just, like, block it off. Don't take any meetings. You know, put on your headphones, go to a coffee shop, whatever it is you do to kind of get your alone time. And just work on whichever of those three pillars of strategy, whether it's the vision, the strategic framework, or the roadmap. Start with whichever one draws you the most and start writing some stuff down. Just start getting your ideas out there. And this will start to give you that framework. You can then try to take that time, fill it out more, figure out what questions you have. What would you need to know to decide which of these approaches is better? What are the open questions you have? And then you can have something to start meeting with the rest of your product triad. So the engineering lead, the design lead, any other key stakeholders you have on your team and just start working with them and start to figure out how are we feeling about our strategy? One thing I love to look for is like repeated disagreements. Are there any times when like, We're fighting over whether to add this feature and I so strongly believe we shouldn't and you so strongly believe we should. And it's just like ends up feeling like a battle of wills. Anytime you have these disagreements that feel really thorny or they feel like a disagreement in values, that's a sign that really have a disagreement in strategy and that it's worth it to sort of write down what your strategic framework is or what your strategic principle is and address the problem at that level rather than fighting over individual features or individual decisions. It's such a good tactical tip of just like, if there's continued disagreement, that's a sign you either craft a strategy or maybe a principle, which are kind of like related, but sometimes different, just like principles of the product or principles of the team. Great advice. And the point you made about not spending the first time, the first six months on strategy. I love that because a lot of PMs come in and they're like, oh, strategy, I'm going to figure everything out. You can tell us how to build this thing. This all sucks. Everything you all have done before. And so just that rule of thumb of not allowing yourself to invest deeply there for six months. Love that idea. Nice. Yeah, I think as a manager, you usually have a reason for hiring someone. And usually, at least in your head, you think you've hired them to sort of build on the strategy that you've already created. And there will be room for people to create new strategies and change the strategy. But if they come in on day one saying your strategy is all wrong, like raises the question of like, well, then why did you join my team if you didn't believe in my strategy?…

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