Lenny Rachitsky: belief

Transcript context

…Well, and I think there's so many decisions all the way down and there's so many micro places where you can zig where others would've zagged. And I think I personally, a lot of where my fulfillment comes from is from feeling like if somebody else were in this job, it would be done differently. And something about the product is different because I was the one who worked on it because I was in the job. And that comes from my unique perspective, my unique point of view, the experiences I've had in the past, my various influences. And I think it's trying to figure out the right level for it so that you're not pushing against an immovable force. It's almost like if you're playing Jenga and you're sort of trying to feel around to find, okay, well, where are the pieces that can move? And when you know how somebody else thinks A, you can find that there are immovable forces. Those are not the battles worth fighting. But there are also areas where maybe they don't know as much, and there's also areas where maybe they're actually kind of scared because they don't know as much. And maybe that's an area where you have an interesting point of view. And so you can step into that role and be tremendously valuable and being tremendously influential. But you can only do that if you have a good frame for kind of what the model is and where are the things where it's like, okay, we are operating on a person's insight here that is itself extremely unique and extremely valuable, and it is the reason this company even exists in the first place. But that, I mean, there's millions of decisions have to get made, you know what I mean? And there's millions of different places that you can put yourself. And so I think it's just kind of constantly feeling out for where are the places that I'm really spiky? Where are the things that I think I do really well? Where are the gaps? And again, you can only find those if you're engaging really good faith and engaging earnestly and really understanding how other people think. There's two really interesting thoughts that I have as you're talking that I think will even further crystallize what you're saying. One is that you're just saying, this is the way the world works. It makes me think about Jeffrey Pfeffer, he was a guest on this podcast. He teaches this class at Stanford Business School about how to gain power in the world. It's like the rules of power. And he talks about, and it's all these ways to influence and win and achieve and gain status and all these things. And he's like, this part doesn't sound fun and great, but I talk about here's the way the world works and is not the way you wish it would be. And what you're describing is the way a company works is the CO in charge and your job is to, they're the boss. And the sooner you understand their vision trumps your vision, the easier everything gets. You're not there to tell the CO, "Here's what we should be building." Right? Their job is to own the vision of the business and the company. Yeah, I think that's true. And if you disagree with it, you probably shouldn't be working at that company.…

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