Phyl Terry: recommendation

Transcript context

…Great name. She's wonderful. And it's just a simple thing, what do you, what don't you like and you create it and then you share it in your council. And here's something cool, Lenny. Let's say you and I are in a Job Search Council. You share yours, I share your mine. Now you see a few things about what you don't like. I'm like, "Hot damn, I also don't like those. I forgot, I got to add that." Or you say a thing about what you like, you're like, "Oh, wow, no, that's really important to me, and I left that out." So that's part of the shared learning environment. I'm asking you to do these, but with others who you're walking it through. Now, once you have done that Mnookin two-pager, and it's a draft, you don't have to get it fine, and not everyone knows exactly what they want, by the way, this is important, especially younger people. But sometimes mid-career people too, they're like, "Oh, I'm not... " So I'm not asking you to make a final decision, no, no. We're going to iterate. Okay, we're product people, we're going to iterate. So we're going to take this Mnookin two-pager, this draft that shared with our council, and we're going to go out and do a listening tour. Because guess what? In the job search, we're the product. We're our skills and experience. That's the product that we're bringing to market. So we have to go see what the market wants. Now we have a sense of what we want, but what does the market want and what does some of our trusted friends, what do they think about what I want and what I'm a fit for? And what do they think I'm a fit for now given the market conditions that we have? I will tell you, people are terrified to do the listening tour. They're like, "I don't know, what am I going to hear from people?" Because I asked them to ask a golden question, if you were in my shoes, how would you approach this? I call that the golden question. It's such a creative question. It really opens the conversation. But they think, "Oh no, people are going to tell me all this stuff." No, mostly people tell you this. Once in a while you get a helpful piece of critique, "Oh, you make everything a priority, in which case nothing is, and you could work on that." Super helpful to know. We all have stuff to work on. But I will tell you, once people do the listening tour, they're blown away. I mean, the people who are in jobs, they love, they love helping others if it's done well. Because guess what? They're also anxious themselves, and they want to give back. They want to feel like they're supporting people. You actually end up, and we're going to talk about this, but when you ask someone for help while you've done your homework, you're thoughtful, they want to help you even more. They become invested in you. So the secret about the listening tour is that not only are you getting market research customer feedback on your fit, you're also creating a whole group of listening posts, people who are invested in your success. Just to clarify on that specific point of this listening tour, you write this Mnookin two pager, which basically describes what you want, what you don't want, goals you have, what you hate. And the listening tour is find colleagues, friends, people that are other, say, product managers and get their feedback on what you want, what you don't want, what you hate, what your goals are.…

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