Jason Shah: evaluation

Transcript context

…Awesome. That's super interesting. The first two are kind of connected which is really interesting, and it just reminds me of Brian and how detail-oriented he was about everything. He used to review every product launch and every screen of every new product. We had to show him here's what we're launching this week, and he just kind of went through and either blew it up or let it pass. And then I just remember the founders, when they were designing the office space, just looking at pictures of listings they wanted to... Because Airbnb, the office conference rooms were modeled after Airbnb listings, and Jim just looking through hundreds of listings that the team brought him and he'd just picked the ones that he wanted to turn into conference rooms. Also, obviously Steve Jobs. This is a really interesting through line of great leaders is just this huge attention to detail, and there's probably something about once they let go that thing start to kind of diminish. Is that what you find? Yeah, that's such a great point. You mentioned the Jobs example and there's a great book that you've probably read or in your community seen, I believe it's called Creative Selection by Ken Kocienda about the early days of the iPhone, and I think it was Project Purple or something like that, and you're absolutely right. There wasn't no slides, none of this. They brought in the prototypes for each of those reviews and things like how to do typing on a tiny screen and those early keyboards and how to do auto complete, and Jobs was totally in those details from Ken's telling in this book. So, I couldn't agree with you more, and it's something that people miss because most of their exposure to leaders is on a YouTube video or at all hands, and so, they don't really get to see that side of leaders I think, and it's also not what I think from an ego perspective is kind of what people want it to be about. They want to be about making big decisions or commanding a large group of people, and I think it's hard to do that without these pieces. One other thing I just wanted to briefly touch on to your point on how they're connected, it's a really good point, and at the surface it almost seems like they could potentially be the same thing. One thing worth calling out though I think is the idea of something not being above somebody or a person not being above things. I think the biggest thing I take away from that is humility is that nothing is not my job, right? Anything, could be picking up paper off the floor and putting it in the trash, or it could be reviewing a product spec, whatever it is, and then begin the details in my opinion is about craft, right, and really understanding things at a low level such that you're able to reason about it and make good decisions, like Brian with the homepage or Bezos in some cases with customer processes that he got in the weeds on. I think the two together, humility and being excellent at craft, I think is a very potent combination, especially when you throw in the last thing of being able to adapt to any situation. That's really interesting. What it also makes me think about is the reason things are less good often if there isn't a person at the top that's being very detail-oriented, and I find this with the newsletter and this podcast and other stuff is no one's going to care as much about it. No one's going to be like, "Oh my god, I really need to get this right so much because I'm just like, I'm personally feeling responsible for the quality of this stuff and it's like it's on my shoulders to make this awesome." And so, I think that's probably why a lot of the best stuff is led by a singular leader or singular opinion or singular person. A lot of the best startups are just someone's vision is like, "Here, this is what we're going to do," and then the more it becomes a community-driven thing, the less often it ends up being successful. This episode is brought to you by Maven. I've been an investor, an advisor, and a customer of Maven from day one. I even taught my product management course through Maven. Maven is a cohort-based learning platform where you learn alongside peers with a direct connection to your instructor. Maven's got a ton of courses for product managers, founders, and executives to help them level up in all kinds of ways. Over 10,000 people from Airbnb to Coinbase to Google to Tesla have taken courses from real experts and operators that have spent decades honing their craft. As part of their fall season which Maven just launched, there are over 100 new courses starting in the next few weeks. Many of the people I've had on this podcast are teaching courses like Jackie Bavaro on product strategy, Arielle Jackson on startup branding, Emily Kramer on B2B marketing, plus Annie Duke on decision-making, Nir Eyal on behavioral design and how to break into product management with Marily Nika. Check out all of my favorite courses and learn more at maven.com/lenny.…

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