Lenny Rachitsky: evaluation

Transcript context

…The biggest one is to share your point of view. So this some people are surprised by because they think I'm going to say do a weekly recap of the tasks that you worked on or what you contributed. And that is a good idea, if you want to do it, you can do it. But I think the more highly leveraged way to contribute and manage up is by being more vocal about sharing your point of view. When you just ask your manager, "Hey manager, what should we do?" You're putting a lot of cognitive load on your manager to need to think about the problem, think about potential solutions, craft the solution, and then tell you what to do. Whereas if you instead said, "Hey manager, here's what I think we should do. How does that sound? Where do you see gaps? Am I thinking in the right direction?" You give them something to build off of and that reduces the amount of mental lift that they have to put forth. And so sharing your point of view more readily, backing it up with evidence, that's a wonderful way of making your manager's life easier. And also showing that you are an active rigorous thinker who is thinking strategically about the business. You're not just waiting to be told what to do, you're not expecting them to figure things out and then tell you you are actively looking around the corner trying to solve problems, forming hypotheses in your mind, observing and noticing things. And again, sharing your point of view doesn't mean that you have the perfect answer. You can share that, "Hey, I've noticed this problem popping up in a couple of different places. Here's what I think might be happening." Or when you share a report, don't only share the report and expect your manager to come up with insights and takeaways. You should look at the report too and point out insights and takeaways. So it's really changing that posture from more reactive and more waiting to be told what to do or kind of staying in this narrow box to being willing to share your recommendation, your point of view, share what you're noticing, and this is something that even junior people could do. I was going to say exactly that. I think not only is it something junior people can do, this is a really good way to get promoted and to take on more leadership opportunities. You coming to your manager with, "Here's something I think we should do. Here's a perspective I have. Here's an opportunity." If you were in charge, you're like, how awesome would it be for people to come to me with amazing ideas and have clear recommendations? That sounds great. Everyone wants that. So if you can do that, amazing. Who wouldn't want that? But then what's interesting is similar to how writing helps you crystallize your thinking, you coming in with a recommendation forces you to really think deeply about it because that's putting your reputation on the line. So there's a second order effect of it makes you actually spend more time on the thing and be clear about why you think this is a good idea and do more research. So a lot of wins here. There are a lot of situations where you might have the most visibility into a problem. You might have the most proximity into an issue. And so if you're not speaking up about it and sharing what you're observing, sharing what you're noticing, your manager doesn't necessarily have visibility into that. And so I've heard so many managers say that they want their junior people to speak up more because their junior people have often close contact with customers, with support tickets, with cleaning data, with a bunch of things where the manager would love to hear insights from that.…

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