Lenny Rachitsky: belief

Transcript context

…I think there are two elements for that. One is having the right people with the right mindset on the team, allowing them and giving them the bandwidth and freedom to innovate. And the second thing is that we're focusing on making things real. So we're not keeping them far or in disconnect from the product and engineering. There's a lot of synergy, there is a lot of discussion, because what happens in teams that are not successful, at least from what I've seen, one, that the team is becoming basically an university, they write papers, but nothing is coming out of that, so nothing finds its well to production. So if you don't introduce that, how do we take it to production from day zero when you're thinking about a new idea? It's rarely that it'll go through that hump cycle and itself in production. And the second thing that companies tend to use these teams is too much tactical. Here is that, "We need something in six month. Go invent it right now," and then they're basically creating another engineering or producting to think about the things that are now in horizon one. So I think in GitHub we found the right balance between having the right people, having the right mindset, but also creating that synergy between the future thinking to how we make it real, so we have a strong relationship, especially between the product team and GitHub Next, to make sure that this relationship are ongoing and ideas are flowing both ways. Today, you're chief product officer at GitHub, which is I think a dream job for a lot of people. Early product managers, senior product managers want to figure out how to get to a place that you're at today. And I'm curious what you found most helped you build the skills that were necessary to be successful in this role? Was it mentors, exec coaches, just doing the job for a long time? Anything else along those lines? Combination. It's never one thing, because the role of the chief product officer is so broad. You're not just the head of products. And that's the mindset that is now evolving in the industry is that a chief product officer is more than just the head of product. They need to have a business thinking. They need to understand their go-to market strategy. They need to understand the sales play. They need to understand how engineering are building products. It's not just about let me write a set of requirements or think about the vision and the future. It's how all these components in the company are operating together to build that product. And some of that you learned from looking into the leaders that you work for and see how they're thinking. From my first boss in the aerospace industry, I learned how to think system. Not to think just on the problem that I'm solving right now, but how the problem that I'm in charge in solving that filter that I'm responsible in tuning is connected to their control system and the ignition system and all of that and how is it eventually being displayed. So that requires me to think from the get-go on the bigger solution, not just my component. So I think that's one. The second thing is really thinking about the people and change management and how you take people with you, because a product manager role is a very influential role and a lot of the things you do is influencing other people. Although everyone thinks that as a product manager you get to do things, you get to write papers, but you need to influence the engineering team to build a product that you want them to build. You need to influence the revenue team to go with a go to market and sell the product the way you envision it. So there's a lot of influencing happening. You need to understand how to do that and building that skillset as a product manager from the get-go is very critical. So for me, it was the fact that I was fortunate enough to do different roles in the industry and learn from different people, but also looking up, looking across, and looking down into the people that I manage and what are the things I could learn from them? What are some of the skills that they have that are not necessarily in my toolbox and how can I adopt them? What does success look like and what are some of the things that make people unhappy? And you don't necessarily want to have these tools in your toolbox. So it's a lot of what's yes and what's no in a combination.…

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