Lenny Rachitsky: belief

Transcript context

…If you have conviction and it's not clear, then you don't have conviction, quite frankly. If you're like, "I think maybe we should, there are five things we should solve." I'm like, "Then you don't have conviction." So I'll sometimes stress test. And I'm like, "What if I took away all your resources and you only had five, which is the one you're going to build?" I do all these Draconian things that just force clarity. So then the conviction will come out and it's like, "Yeah, but I'm uncomfortable." I'm like, "Okay, so the thing that's making your uncomfortable, go spend time, go spend your research, go spend your cycles on getting higher certainty on that conviction," rather than chasing four things because we're, I don't want to use the word lazy, but too scared to pick a lane. So don't peanut butter. Nobody does anything well by peanut buttering resources, spreading them thin. So that's the conviction. I'll sometimes have someone come to me and say, "We have these two scenarios," and there'll be a document and there'll usually be the typical pros and cons of the options. I'm like, "Let's say we weren't in the room as the leadership team," which is the one the team wants to get behind. Then you'll sometimes see the team hasn't even done the work between themselves talking. I'm like, "No, no, no, no, no. You need to go do the work." And if you have gotten to a point where you have conviction, but there is some risk, then let's talk about the risk that you need by help mitigating or help solving because that's too easy to come to me and be like, "Oh, here's A and B. You do the work and tell me which you one to pick." No way. No, that's not going to make you a better PM. Go figure out why you can't stand by A. So the core to conviction is pick what you think is right. That seems like the core of it. Clarity is being very clear about what you've learned and where you think things are going and then conviction is pick your battle. Here's where we think we need to invest. Right. I like the word battle. Clarity is seeing that you are committed to actually fighting this war in the first place, right? There are lots of other things you can fight. This is the fight you're fighting in and why. And the conviction is how and the way you see the world if you win that battle.…

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