Lenny Rachitsky: uncertainty

Transcript context

…Keep it simple, have a recommendation. I also think that, I think we misuse product reviews sometimes as ways to get decisions and actually, they should be ways to calibrate on principles. So what you don't want is to come to a product review for every single that you want to make. Instead, what you want is to come to a product review with one decision, but the goal of that decision is to walk out with principles about how to make these decisions in the future so that you don't have to come to product review, but you still have this consistent and coherent product that you're building. And so I think when you flip the frame of reviews to being less about, okay, I'm going to bring this information to an exec, my manager, whoever, and they're going to decide every piece, you're not actually building that much more capacity in the system. You're getting fast decision making, but you're not changing who can make really good decisions. And I think you always want to change the org to constantly make better decisions, and a way to do that is when you bring these sorts of questions, what you talk about is, why did you make this decision? What are the trade-offs you have in mind? Who are you optimizing for? What timeline are you thinking about? What's the risk level we're willing to tolerate? And then you don't have to come back. You have enough information that you can take those principles and run with them. Is there a framework or a process you use for product reviews that might be helpful for people to hear? Just like a agenda or a way of thinking about just how to set up a product review for success? Because a lot of people are trying to set these up at their companies and they're like, I don't know if we're doing this optimally. Yeah, I think everyone's got... I think there's so many different takes on frameworks. I don't have a single system. I mean, actually I think Boz has written about a bunch of this, and I probably most agree with him. Where there's different kinds of product reviews, it's like, what are you trying to solve? What's the timeline on which you're thinking about for these? Is it a philosophy? Is it a strategic shift? Is it a day-to-day product decision? And then keeping it extremely short and pointed and then making sure you walk away with principles, not answers.…

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