Judd Antin: belief

Transcript context

…I think it also leads to a lot of the things as you described, people don't like about research. It delays everything. You have to wait for the research to be done to have an answer, to make a clear decision. It also creates this issue that people complain about, that PMs and product teams don't want to just make a decision on their own. They're like, "I will get this additional data point and make sure research tells us this is the right answer instead of just trusting there." God, I guess maybe along those lines, this might be going off a little track, but what's your advice there for, say, product managers or PMs or product teams to not necessarily rely on research for that middle research? I think the reason why so many PMs ask for those middle range questions is because they haven't really gotten deep with their researcher in a way which can leverage it for maximum impact. So if the question is like, "Hey, Judd, you just pointed out a bunch of problems, can you be more solutions oriented?" Well, the solution is simple but not easy to me. It's that we need to restructure the way we make products in a way which integrates research much more fully. It looks like consistent relationships in which researchers, and the work, and the insights they provide are a part of the process from beginning to end. And I think, Lenny, you as a PM, that's how you worked. I remember you, I know who you worked with. You worked with great researchers. But honestly, most product processes are not that way. And so that's when research is a service function. It gets called in right at the end. It's reactive in the sense that a researcher in the room listening and participating in the conversation could have a ton of impact on framing exactly the right question that will drive maximum business impact, maximum product improvement at that moment, and then go do it quick, and get back, and we're onto the next. But they weren't there, the relationship wasn't there. They're not engaged in the project from the beginning. And that's the number one root of the problem. As long as research is a service discipline, I think we're going to be stuck in this spot. When people might be hearing this, on the one hand, it's research has been not as helpful to teams as they thought, and researchers have been spending time on the wrong thing. On the other hand, your advice is integrate research from the beginning, make them more involved throughout. And I think that might confuse people. How should people think about, like, "Research is actually more important? You should integrate them more deeply."…

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