Lauren Ipsen: evaluation

Transcript context

…Awesome. That's really good advice. One thing that makes me think about, I know I want to get to this last section, but do you think the best product leaders have their kind of story figured out in the future and work backwards from that and have a sense of where they want to end up, or just kind of take it as it goes? Because I'm the latter. I had no plan, I just went to see ... follow the path that was presented. Do you think that is generally true for folks that end up being successful, or do you recommend people think about, "Here's where I want to be in five years, here's what I need to do to get there"? Do you have any guidance there? I mean, for what it's worth, I'm definitely more with you. I don't know where I want to be in five years, so it's tough for me to say. But I do think that typically someone that has the end goal of being a CEO will put the pieces into place to try and get there, and so it's not a bad idea if you do have an end goal of wanting to run your own thing to inch towards that. So maybe you go from being a product specific leader to then operating in some type of GM of a business unit capacity and owning a P&L, and then although it's more of a product oriented role, you're still getting closer and closer to that end goal of COO or CEO. So if it's something like that, then I think that naturally makes sense. Do think people can be enticed by shiny objects, so excited because it's a step up from a title perspective and things like that, and I think that's just so not important in the grand scheme of things. You could be the VP of product or a CPO of what, you know? That's so vague. If someone just says, "I want to be a chief product officer, that's the end goal," I always say, "Of what?" You could be the chief product officer of your household. Is it of a multi-billion dollar consumer brand or ... So I guess what I'm trying to say is work backwards from a goal for sure, but don't allow titles or valuation bubbles or other things to derail something that feels good. If you're in a role and you feel like you're making an impact and you're learning and you're growing and are excited about the work you're doing, do not allow a title of some other company to make you feel like what you're doing isn't worthwhile. I love that advice. So many people just chase some fancy new role, new title, new logo, and end up getting there like, "Man, this sucks."…

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