Lenny Rachitsky: belief

Transcript context

…Even implicit in that question, to me that's that question of, "Oh, how do I do it without being any risk of ever pissing anyone off?" That's a piece of the resistance right there. And so this is a great example of the type of work that we have to do, right? Because in theory, asking is easy, "Oh, you just try some way and maybe people are pissed off and maybe they're not." But probably it's going to be fine and you'll have the chance to try again and iterate and work from it. But often we get stuck so we don't get to go through those levels of iteration because we want to make sure we're going to get the outcome. We say, "Oh, well, I'm not willing to ever piss anyone off ever. And so I'm just going to be stuck at this step because I haven't figured out what's going to guarantee me." And of course, there's no guarantee. We can never guarantee that people are going to feel a particular way. So part of asking for what you want effectively is actually bringing some compassion for yourself. Of course, we all want to be sure that the way we ask is going to be effective and no one is going to be mad at us and we're going to get all of our dreams come true. But we don't get that. I wish we did. That would be nice. But is that worth not pursuing your dreams in life? Such a good point about what you identified and the way... I think a lot of people that think about it, it's just like, "I'd always do this without causing anyone any pain or risking anything going wrong. " I think that's, to your point, part of it. So you talk a lot about founders. You work with a lot of founders, a lot of listeners here are not founders, they're product managers, ICs on teams, other functions that don't have "power". Is there anything that you suggest these folks do differently or think about this differently or is it kind of the same thing? In the end everyone has power in some way. How would you think about this if you're just, say, a product manager, individual contributor? I think one of the most important balances in terms of the asking step is both asking clearly, but asking with great humility. And this actually works whether you're in a position of power or not because I think a lot of folks will go so far to the end of humility. They say, "Well, I'm not going to say this out loud at all." But in fact, if you're willing to say, I really disagree with this product decision and I would really prefer that we make this different decision. I know it's not my call and I'm just one opinion and a lot of people are going to see things differently and that's fine, but it's important to me that you know that. So what do you think? Are you willing to reconsider this?"…

Stored transcript either side of the excerpt. The highlighted words are the published quote; the surrounding text is unedited source, never generated.