Lenny Rachitsky: uncertainty

Transcript context

…Yeah, I mean, I think the very natural spike sometimes is you get a domain expert. So there's a specific field, let's take marketplaces, and there is someone who just understands the mechanics of how things work and just really spikes on understanding how you can take certain drivers, what you can do with those drivers and how you translate those drivers to a measurable result. There are people who spike on sales and who spike on just being able to package something in a way that other people cannot package it, right? There are people who spike in process. There are people who will literally, every day, think about how to get people to work together really well, and they just know how to get to the essence of that, how to connect the dots between different teams working together. Some people are really great at product design. I've seen quite a few founders, actually, who can tell you immediately about what kind of interface is going to resonate with people and what kind won't and why. So there's just some examples, but there are many dimensions here. Awesome. As a last question along these lines, I'm going to share a few other skills that I noticed you're incredibly good at, and how about just pick one that resonates with you and share some thoughts on how to get better at that and why that's important. One is influence. You're an incredibly strong influencer. You get a lot of stuff done that I think people would be like, "How did you do that? I have no idea what he just did." Another is you're very good at keeping a very high bar. That's one of the things I learned from you, is just the importance of keeping a very high bar and spending more time on stuff. That's something I remember from you, just like spend a little more time on this doc, make it a little bit better, refine it a little bit more, so that's two. Another is just getting stuff done in focus while also avoiding the limelight. You try to not be in front and center. You haven't done any other podcasts, I don't think you've written a medium post, I don't know if you've tweeted, but you try to just get stuff done behind the scenes and not get attention from everyone. So maybe those are a few. Is there one of those that you want to spend a little time on? Yeah. I mean, first of all, thank you for saying that. Some of those resonate for sure. I think the getting stuff done and being hyper-focused on the job is, it's something that's really important. I mean, at Index here, we also say, "Keep the main thing the main thing." And just like in investing, same thing in operating. You've got to focus on the actual job, versus all the other things that you could potentially be doing. So to me, I remember when I was actually hiring product leaders, and there's some product leaders would do lots of different engagements outside of the company, whether it's investing, advising, speaking, attending conference, all those things, and they were huge red flags to me, because it was clear that this person, there was just something missing in their day to day. They didn't try to put them, all of them, into the thing that they were doing. And so for me, it's really important when I hired people, to hire people who were incredibly mission driven and would dedicate every ounce of energy to keeping the main thing the main thing.…

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