Crafting a compelling product vision | Ebi Atawodi (YouTube, Netflix, Uber)

[00:00] I do not believe in being liked. I believe in being loved. [00:03] right and that's a very very different thing when i said this once in a meeting we're like [00:11] right but it took me a while in reading a lot of books to come to a definition of love and love is [00:18] the choice [00:19] to extend yourself, [00:21] for the spiritual growth of oneself or another. [00:25] Right? [00:26] It's very big and lofty and whatever, but it's, you're literally extending yourself. [00:30] for somebody else or yourself self-love [00:33] And that's love. And when you're extending yourself, [00:37] You're not nice. It's not always nice or like. It sometimes is, you know, having hard conversations. It's knowing that, oh, [00:45] You know, there's a human... [00:46] They know I care about them. So when the feedback is coming, [00:50] like raw. [00:51] They know that it's in their best interest because I've shown enough times that I genuinely care about the person behind the role. [00:57] Today my guest is A.B. Atawoudi. A.B. is Director of Product Management at YouTube, overseeing the creator experience, [01:06] Previously, she was director of product management at Netflix, [01:09] and head of product for Uber Wallet, Checkout, Pay, and Financial Products at Uber. [01:14] A.B. shares the most tactical advice I've ever heard on how to develop a vision for your product, along with a bunch of very concrete ways to communicate your vision to your teammates and to executives. We also dig into the craft of product management and how to get better at it, along with what A.B.'s learned about creating a strong product culture on your team and across the company. A.B. is such a wonderful human and clearly an amazing product leader, and I'm excited for you to get to learn from her.

[01:44] short word from our sponsors. [01:48] This episode is brought to you by Sidebar. Are you looking to land your next big career move or start your own thing? One of the most effective ways to create a big leap in your career, and something that worked really well for me a few years ago, is to create a personal board of directors. A trusted peer group where you can discuss challenges you're having, get career advice, and just kind of gut check how you're thinking about your work, your career, and your life. This has been a big trajectory changer for me, but it's hard to build this [02:18] Senior leaders are matched with highly vetted, private, supportive peer groups to lean on for unbiased opinions, diverse perspectives, and raw feedback. Everyone has their own zone of genius, so together we're better prepared to navigate professional pitfalls, leading to more responsibility, faster promotions, and bigger impact. Guided by world-class programming and facilitation, Sidebar enables you to get focused, tactical feedback at every step of your journey. [02:43] If you're a listener of this podcast, you're likely already driven and committed to growth. [02:47] A Sidebar personal board of directors is the missing piece to catalyze that journey. Why spend a decade finding your people when you could meet them at Sidebar today? Jump the growing waitlist of thousands of leaders from top tech companies by visiting sidebar.com slash Lenny to learn more. That's sidebar.com slash Lenny. [03:08] You fell in love with building products for a reason. But sometimes the day-to-day reality is a little different than you imagine.

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[04:50] I want to start by talking about vision. [04:53] Every product manager I've ever worked with and managed, Vision has always been this development area for every single one. It's always this, like, you need to get better at it. [05:02] Crafting a vision, telling your story, [05:04] It's also this very powerful tool that product managers have to align teams, [05:07] to be more successful in the products they're building. [05:10] And you have a really neat way of thinking about a framework for developing a vision and then telling the story. [05:15] What are elements of [05:17] a good vision for a product or even a company. [05:21] I think the first piece is that you absolutely need to have one. Let's just start by saying that. Regardless of what level you are in the company, so people say, oh, I'm just a junior PM or whatever level, there is some – [05:35] micro macro vision being tough because it's essentially [05:40] If you want to clean [05:42] And the pilot was like, I don't really know where we're going, but I'm a really good pilot. The company needs to fly 400 flights this year, so I'm trying to make that happen. But trust me, we'll get there. There might be turbulence. I'm not sure. You know, you probably would be thinking twice about staying on that flight, right? What happens is you get on there and it's like, our destination is Miami. I'm dreaming of beaches. And it's going to be 24 degrees when we get there. [06:12] the destination and that's the vision not to be confused with the mission which is we want to find people where they're going safe right that's not it's like a picture so that's the start i want to just

[06:23] delineate between vision and everything else that people think of vision is. So really, [06:28] I think there are a couple of key elements. The first one is it needs to be lofty. [06:33] So it needs to be something that feels... [06:35] It almost [06:37] scares you in an exciting way, [06:39] right like oh my god this is something i could get up every morning if we did that god damn but at the same time it needs to be realistic and attainable so i cannot feel [06:50] So pie in the sky that. [06:53] It feels so out of reach, right? And of course, there are leaders and people who have really, really big visions, and they see beyond the rest of us, but that's not most people. Most people, it needs to feel, you know, within reach. And then I think the key thing is it needs to kind of be in a vacuum from the limitations of today. Because the whole point of going to the future and saying, [07:14] I time traveled five years out is to say, OK, I've come back to tell you what we need to fix. [07:19] in order to get there. Or I've come back to tell you what we need to put in place now so that we will get there, right? And so you have this kind of three components. And if those come together, and they are grounded, of course, in a problem that people are excited about, you've got your vision. [07:36] Now, the how and how that vision manifests really depends on what you want to do. There are simple ones you can do, there are big ones you can do, but those are like the core pieces in my mind. [07:46] Can you just summarize them again? Are there some examples you can share? Here's a really good version that it hits on these. And then if you have another example of a bad vision.

[07:54] That would be really helpful. [07:56] yeah so four things so it has to be lofty has to be realistic it has to be [08:03] devoid of the any tech or limitations of today. [08:07] And it has to be grounded in a very clear and potent problem. [08:13] Here's a problem. [08:16] Awesome. And then, yeah, are there any examples either from places you've worked or visions? Absolutely. Yeah. What I particularly love, so a lot of my product thinking and my product chops and craft, I really owe to Uber. So when I think about things, there's something really magical there, and one of our... [08:33] values at the time was making magic. So I use the word magic all the time. But [08:40] So mission, [08:42] push a button, get a ride, transportation is reliable as running water. I used to be in Nigeria. [08:49] That tagline did not scale because water was not that reliable in Nigeria. So they went for a slightly more inclusive version, which is reliable transportation everywhere and for everyone. Right. So that's the mission. That doesn't really tell me what the image looks like when I get there. Right. But that's like when I wake up every day, I'm like, why do I work in this company? It's that make transportation reliable everywhere for everyone. [09:12] And I'll talk maybe later about how that came to-- we were able to use that to actually challenge the then-CEO, Travis Kalanick. [09:19] The vision was... [09:21] a world where you get to this continuous trip so that you do not need parking.

[09:27] because cities, 25% of the average city is parking spaces. [09:32] Like you're in San Francisco, you'll see buildings, just floors, just for parking. Right. You have like basements just for parking in a world where we have housing problems. We have ridiculous prices for rents. Just imagine if you could free up all of those spaces. [09:49] for all kinds of things, right? Homes, restaurants, [09:54] you name it parties you know warehouse parties especially they're the best that was the vision you could kind of see it right you're like oh [10:02] I could see a world. I mean, I live in Amsterdam. I have a bicycle. [10:04] I can see it. Every other day, they're getting rid of cars and actually converting the parking lots on the street into communal gardens. [10:15] Right. So it's not it's not crazy. It's attainable. But now doing that for the whole world, what does that look like? And that's how things like UberPOL came in, where in a world where the average car has one point five people in it. [10:28] We can maximize that. And then we can get this connected trip where the car is just moving. And then maybe the car is autonomous, so you don't actually have to drive that car. And so it just doesn't need to stop. [10:38] I guess it needs to charge at some point. [10:43] So that's it. I think that's a really good vision. I think one that's lofty, [10:47] And I dance between whether it's attainable or not is Elon Musk saying, you know, we're going to get to Mars. He believes it. He believes it so much that sometimes I'm like, I guess we're going to Mars, you know. But then there was the other one of we want a car that's electric and we want that car to be beautiful so that we will get to a car that's accessible to everyone. And that's kind of followed through.

[11:12] So, yeah, I mean, the beautiful things about Visions is that, [11:15] It helps you decide, is that the work? Like, do I care about this problem? Is it something I want to do? And then you can take it or leave it. [11:22] I think with the lofty slash attainable balance, I think Elon Musk is an interesting example where [11:27] It may feel impossible, but as... [11:29] an inspirational leader, you almost convince people that it is possible through your confidence [11:35] You're being in the details, helping people see like maybe there's a path. So I think there's an interesting... [11:39] Opportunity there to be a leader. [11:41] Yeah, absolutely. You've mentioned this kind of difference between mission and vision a couple times. It'd be cool maybe just to, can you summarize that again? Just like what is, [11:50] the difference between vision and mission in your mind. [11:53] I'll use an analogy. Let's say we wanted to go hike. [11:57] We wanted to go up to Mount Everest. [12:00] The vision would be once we're up there, me describing the picture of what we're going to see. [12:04] We're going to get there. I'm going to look around. We'll be the Hamalayas. Be beautiful. You'll be above the clouds, probably out of breath. You know, that's the vision. It's like I fast forward into the future. I hold time and I'm in that place and I'm describing the picture. Right. And so 20, a car and city without parking. [12:25] You can see that, right? And we've all watched sci-fi movies. You can see Mars, Red Planet. So that's the vision. [12:32] And then the mission is the purpose of why we're doing that. Like we're going to do this. [12:37] to demonstrate that we're able to do it. [12:40] and making sure that we both get there together.

[12:43] It's a very simplistic one, but I'm just giving-- that's the purpose. We're doing it because we want to prove to ourselves that we can-- [12:49] Summit Mount Everest, which I will not be doing anytime soon. But, you know, and, you know, we're doing it to prove to ourselves something that we can do it and we're capable. And we will do that by making sure that we look out for each other. Because you can get to Mount Everest and I'll have all the people with you. [13:05] right that's actually a a team bonding challenge that i've done once upon a time it's actually very very very uh interesting interesting so that's your vision [13:15] And then the mission is like the purpose. [13:18] and some set of guiding principles as to what will allow you to achieve that vision. [13:23] That's really handy. [13:25] Simple way to think about it, I'm just taking notes as you're talking, and I totally agree with this. [13:28] The mission is essentially the why and why you exist and the purpose for your team slash company. [13:33] And the word vision almost tells you what it is. It's like what it looks like. [13:38] when you get there. [13:39] Awesome. So that's exactly how I think about it. I actually have this post that I'll link to in the show notes. [13:43] that talks through mission and vision strategy. I'll give a bunch more examples real quick. Just kidding, I pulled it up as you're chatting just for folks to have more examples. [13:51] So a couple of mission examples real quick. [13:55] TED, their mission is to spread ideas. They're around to spread ideas. [13:59] Stripe's mission: Increase the GDP of the Internet. [14:01] IKEA's mission to create a better everyday life for many [14:04] for the many people. [14:06] So I think that's exactly what you're talking about there, like the purpose, why do we exist? [14:10] And then visions, so Microsoft's vision, a computer on every desk and in every home.

[14:14] very much like what does it look like when we've achieved it. [14:17] uh tesla create the most compelling car company of the 21st century [14:21] It's kind of in between, but I think that's close. [14:24] Lyft, a world where cities feel small again, where transportation and tech bring people together instead of apart. [14:30] How sweet. So that's one where it's very warm and fuzzy, and I love it. Maybe this is my Uber explanation. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But like... [14:38] You can see a computer on every desk. That's what I mean by it has to be realistic. Yeah. [14:44] Yeah. [14:45] Yeah, awesome. [14:47] What is a vision like concretely in... [14:51] as a document in your experience. So we've talked about vision so far mostly as like this tagline, like a sentence. Is that usually all you need when you're thinking about a vision, your experience? Do you often suggest going further into like a [15:03] Doc Deck [15:04] storyboards along those lines. [15:06] So I have a very simplistic framework. I actually don't know who put it together at Uber. [15:12] But I say as well, one of the most powerful skills is, [15:17] of a product manager storytelling, right? [15:21] You look at generation after generation after generation, what people pass on as stories. They're not numbers, they're not stats, they're stories. And actually when you blend stories with numbers, [15:31] So if you do numbers alone, or numbers with stories, or stories alone, [15:35] the gap is so wide in stories alone so it's not metrics blended with stories it's a story just a pure story right this doesn't mean don't be out so

[15:46] One of the very simplistic tools that I've used, and I use it as well right now at Google, [15:52] When my team ships a product, they'll put the vision in their mind [15:56] what the vision was they set out to do. Right. And it's once upon a time. [16:02] like the problem. [16:03] and then [16:05] Write something. [16:06] And then write something. [16:08] And then one day, [16:10] Something happened. [16:12] And as a result, [16:14] the state of the world where we're trying to be. [16:16] It's very simplistic. [16:19] but in its simplicity is the magic because you're like – [16:22] I'm a PM, I'm trying to solve problems. [16:26] the once upon a time, where were we, right? Like, what is the thing that we're trying to solve? So I'll give you a simplistic one. I know the team didn't do this for Shorts, but, like, the Shorts team at YouTube, once upon a time, [16:39] YouTube was fun and videos and Zoom and all of that. And then one day it became this really polished thing and a lot of people were producing really polished, very one hour content. And then because of that, a lot of people felt maybe I couldn't create because I can't tell a one hour story. And because of that, people decided, okay, I'm just going to watch and consume and not create. [17:02] And then one day we launched shorts. [17:05] 60 seconds. And because of that, anyone can now express themselves again and bring back the joy and magic of YouTube. So it's like, [17:13] You know, it's very simplistic. I'm just using that into the teams who built this. I know this is not your vision. I'm just giving a story. But I remember this when we did it for Uber as well. We were talking about...

[17:26] You know, the loyalty for drivers and someone had this framework. And I thought, holy cow, this is it. So that's a very simplistic version. [17:33] You can go one step up. The one I like to do, and I know that Amazon does this a lot, but is I write a nice article. I'll write the headline because. [17:44] if the vision has come to pass, right, and it's gone well, [17:49] Someone's going to be writing, hopefully, some sexy headline about the thing that you built. So I go to the future and I write the headline I want to see. I write the subtitle, just that. And I'll actually use the, you know, I'll mock it into the page of like TechCrunch or Verve or something just so it looks realistic. And I'll put that in the deck. [18:07] Just to kind of like, this is where we want to be. [18:09] And then if I really want to go deep, then I'll write the rest of the article. Right. So that's a very simplistic one. That's like another version. One that I use and I show that in a lot of my talks is. [18:21] I was trying to tell a story when I was at Uber, and I was like, you know, okay, words are amazing, but a picture tells a thousand words, right? [18:28] So, [18:30] I wrote out the thing and I worked with my design partner at the time and he literally took out a pencil and drew the future. [18:36] And the vision I was trying to show was this world where you could walk into any store, any bodega, mom and pop shop, wherever you are in the world. [18:46] and actually top up your Uber balance. [18:49] So even if you don't have a credit card and you have cash, you can also experience this cashless, seamless, you know, experience. And that can scale all over the world.

[19:00] And he literally drew a bodega, it looked like a kiosk, like the ones in Nigeria, in my country, you have a side loan. And then he drew that and he had the person with cash and a receipt. [19:10] just showing like your top up was successful. [19:14] And we built that product. It did not exactly in that way, but we built that product. Sorry for another day, but like, or maybe later, but that's, it took four years to build it. That image got people so excited about, oh, it's possible. [19:27] I can see that. This is awesome. So essentially, these are three ways to communicate your vision. [19:32] The first is this kind of Mad Libs approach, which is really simple, so the framework [19:37] And is there something we can link people to that we talk further, kind of have this template? Okay, cool. [19:41] Okay, cool. So in the show notes, you'll find a little template that you can plug in play here. [19:45] But the idea is once upon a time, [19:48] Blank. And then... [19:49] blank, and because of that blank, [19:52] And one day something happened, and that's essentially the [19:56] The vision is like what happened, like the big change that you're going to create. [20:00] And then... [20:01] As a result of the thing that happened, [20:03] How did you leave people feeling? What did you change in the world? What's the dent in the universe that you made? [20:08] Can you just share this Mad Libs real quick again? Just like what's the framework real quick? [20:14] Once upon a time, [20:16] The thing that happened. [20:18] then one day and you can actually put the date in 2026. [20:24] Right and because of that I [20:27] And because of that, and I usually like to end it with, and finally,

[20:32] This was the last thing you left the world with. [20:35] Beautiful. It's interesting. It kind of follows the... [20:39] the hero's journey a little bit, where it's like, here's today's world, [20:42] And then here's a problem that you ran into and this challenge you had to overcome. And then here's how we've defeated the foe. And then... [20:48] Here we are back in our default world again. [20:51] Okay, so that's one path. The other path is to write kind of the backwards, working backwards approach, write an article. [20:57] I think the press releases, like to me, it's like dumb to write a press release. No one reads press releases anymore. So I like that you think of it as a TechCrunch article. [21:03] Yes. Is there something you remember where you did that actually with a product like you wrote an article of a product you're launching? At Uber, we were talking about cars. Then it was like, well, push a button, get a ride. It could be push a button, go anywhere. And so one of the things I started talking about, and this is the beauty of Uber, it allows you to kind of challenge the status quo. [21:22] I started pushing this idea of [21:25] if we need to have this more multimodal trip where I could take a, you know, ride a bicycle or scooter, then I get to the train station, buy my ticket, scan in. Then from there, I go into an Uber maybe, then I come out on the other end and I get a scooter. Whatever that is, it's this connected single trip. And the reason I was doing that was I was a platform PM. [21:48] And surprise, surprise, I always say platform PMs, you have to be... [21:53] an order of magnitude even more but stronger, I think, [21:57] at like vision setting because you have to build the foundations of stuff you don't even know is coming. So I do these exercises with my partner teams to kind of figure out,

[22:06] even if they don't know it, like force a vision out of them. Just to say, is this where we're going? Because then as somebody building the commerce infrastructure for Uber, [22:15] I need to know what I need to build if that is a scenario that's actually going to happen. And we were also thinking about this world where you could like tap to pay with your Uber phone. So there were all these crazy ideas. [22:25] I wrote a headline of, you know, Uber really wants to replace your, you know, like wants to replace your, I put it as like your Clipper card in San Francisco because I wanted my San Francisco buddies to kind of relate to what I was saying. So Uber is now replacing your Clipper card. All you need is your phone and the app. [22:44] And I wrote it out. [22:45] And, you know, we didn't go and build that product, but we built the payments and commerce infrastructure for the team that did. And we were very involved at the beginning when it was getting kicked off of how does this look in a world where, you know, you can use Uber to pay for transport. You can do that today. So, yeah, that's a real life example. [23:05] And that was an article that you ended up writing of what the announcement would look like? Or is that using this? Okay, awesome. It was the article framework. It was literally the New York Times headline. They even had their logo. [23:17] And then I had the subtitle, [23:20] and [23:21] Later on, over time, I wrote the actual article, the whole thing. But I started first with that just to kind of provoke a response. And what did you see as the impact of having that? What kind of benefits did you see having this article that you could pass around? Do you have any memories of like, wow, that was really helpful here? It's two things. So you'll hear me say...

[23:39] College management is clarity and conviction. [23:42] And in writing the headline, you have to focus. Headline is not like, [23:48] It's not a PRD, right? It's a headline. So when I've done this, like what is the impact of this going to be? What's the feeling I want to leave people with? And it forces you to get to that clarity of, OK, we solve this problem. This is actually going to be the painkiller that we're solving. And let me translate that painkiller into. [24:06] They have a headache, they no longer have a headache. Do you know what I mean? So I think it breaks clarity. So for me as the PM, I'm like, this is why I'm saying this is important. Then you have the subtitle. So they usually have a headline and a sub bit. You just launched a way to something, something. And you have to write that as well. Like, what is the thing we're launching? [24:23] Is that realistic? [24:25] And then using that to kind of socialize the idea to say, [24:29] This actually could work. [24:31] Right? [24:32] And I didn't go home and build it. Somebody else went and did it, but... [24:36] We had already thought about it and bit that into our platform vision of we need to support these different kinds of ways to pay. [24:43] There's another interesting one. You're going to go to the third one, which is, [24:48] you know, write the story, [24:50] write the article that someone else will write or visualize it. [24:53] right and visualize it two things have actually happened one a year and a half ago [24:59] in a strategy session I was running at YouTube, [25:03] I actually took a screenshot of the Google Play Store [25:07] I mean, I use an iPhone, but I work at Google, so I was trying to be, you know, so I took the Google Face store. And then I, you know, and then I created rounded rectangles, just blank rectangles, four panels.

[25:21] And then I printed that out and I gave everyone a sheet. [25:24] And I said, if we realize these, we solve these problems, [25:28] right we solve all these problems that we've identified what would be the screenshots you know when you go on the app store it has like [25:34] the you know make money or express yourself or what what are we trying to say and what is like the mock [25:41] The hero mock, the marquee mock that we're showing. And again, it forces people to, oh, goodness, we can't show everything. So it's got to be three or four things that land everything. [25:51] the big rocks that will solve this problem right so [25:55] Everyone did theirs and then we talked about it. And what was interesting is you find two or three that everyone comes up with if you've done a good job of telling a story around the problems. [26:04] And it's actually quite beautiful to see. So that's a very simplistic visualization. It's not like a beautiful sketch or a video. [26:10] I really like that as just a reminder that when you're even the article approach of like announcing the thing. [26:16] Instead of the traditional press release or even like a TechCrunch article, it's [26:21] where will people find out about the thing you've built, and then use that as a way to frame what you've done. So in your case, it's like the App Store. They're going to see this update in the App Store. Let's just see what that would look like as we announce it in the App Store. Could end up being a tweet. [26:32] Grande Bing. [26:33] podcast. [26:34] There's all these different channels, so I think that's [26:36] gives people more ways of telling the story if it's not going to be like a press release. [26:41] Okay, and then, yeah, so you talked about this third approach of the design, like, mocking up, essentially, the vision. I always feel like if you have a designer helping you, [26:49] craft your vision, it's such an unfair advantage. So definitely try to get a rope a designer in to help you tell a story.

[26:56] Because just one design is going to, like you said, worth a thousand words, as they say. The thing, though, is it's such I feel like it's an easy cop out to be like, oh, but my design design team doesn't have resources. So I'm like, no, that's not an excuse. Start drawing it with your hands in the app store. Right. Like still tell the story because the story you should be able to tell this. Like I'm obsessed with Steve Jobs. You should, you know, you tell the story without slides. [27:26] is just so you can actually bring that narrative and tell that story. And so do an App Store or, you know, sketch it out or use little rectangles to show, like, [27:37] low fidelity mocks like do not use i don't have a designer to be the excuse for i don't bring it to life [27:43] Right. And often the designers see them and are like, "This sucks. I'm going to make it better." Exactly. So that's exactly what I did. I sketched this thing once and I gave it to a designer. It was literally post-it notes [27:53] And they were like, "Okay, I see where you're going, and it's exciting. I have some cycles. I'll spin it up." They spun up a lo-fi one, loved it, and were like, "Actually, I'm just going to make it pretty." And they made it pretty, and we got it. I mean, now I'm a director, so I have a bit more agency with resources. But I was like a L4PM, not even a senior PM when I did my first vision exercise. Okay, this is awesome, because I think it's really vague, this idea of, "I need to develop a vision." [28:20] And I think you've shared some incredibly tactical, clear steps you can take. [28:24] I also want to talk about how to actually develop the vision. I think you have kind of this step-by-step approach. Is that right?

[28:30] Okay, awesome. So before we get to that, just like, again, reminding people what we just talked about, which is just like, here's all these ways of framing your vision. [28:38] And there's a lot of ways to do it. You know, it's not like you need to... [28:41] make a beautiful deck that you can [28:44] Just write it out. You can write a press release, you can write a tweet, or you could get a designer help you. [28:49] mock it up or just mock it up yourself. [28:52] Awesome. Okay, so let's talk about your approach. [28:54] suggestions of how to actually go about developing and figuring out the vision for your product. [28:59] you know there are three pieces if you think about it so one is what i call empathize the second is create so we spend a lot of time talking about create the middle piece and then there's evangelize right [29:13] And so... [29:14] I empathize with the customer, the problem I put myself in their shoes. I really get a visual understanding of what those problems are. I'll talk about in a second the tactical way I have done that across Uber, Netflix and Google in a way that scales. Then the create piece where it's, "Okay, now we've solved this problem. What does the world look like?" That's the vision we've just been talking about. And then finally, evangelize. [29:37] I find just [29:39] especially as you get more senior, the life cycle of a product or group of products gets wider and wider and wider. And so I set out a vision, for example, at YouTube. [29:50] last year that was called you know vision 2026 right and only this year a year and a half later are we now in a stage where it's actually going into the planning cycle we've actually finished all the things we're already in progress we're actually now it's you know funding some of the big rocks that get us there so there's a bit of patience that comes with it and i think some people just like give up when they get to the stage because you're going to meet a lot of naysay it

[30:20] going to solve like there's always going to be those people right which is why i said you need to come up with the vision that's to [30:26] that's in a vacuum of the technical limitations, because the limitations of today might not be the limitations of tomorrow. So going back to the empathize, [30:35] One of my peers at work uses this word. He says, "You need to do understand work." [30:42] And what is understand work? [30:44] It's crazy to me in the number of PMs who never go through their products and go through the onboarding PM, but actually go through the onboarding flow. [30:53] Because we're all in this state of using the product, but actually that first step where I don't have the product, like, what does that look like? [31:00] I have multiple variations of accounts on YouTube. I have multiple accounts on Instagram, you know, where I just have multiple accounts on TikTok where I'm like just using the product, just like, [31:13] How does it manifest? What do I like? What's going well? I had to stay with Uber. I had Uber. I had other partner apps. I would look at them in payments. So this is amplifies that would come very easily if you dog food and then cat food. Dog food meaning using your own product. [31:30] Absolutely a must. Cat food using your competitors or other people in the landscape's products. [31:35] So that's one piece. The other piece is obviously research. [31:39] But research is an interesting one because... [31:42] you you i think you use research i think research is rich when it's giving you foundational problems that are a couple of

[31:52] cycles out, obviously, depending on, you know, the level of research you're doing. But your researcher, if you think about the product lifecycle, research is like ahead and then UX. [32:03] Right. And then you go into building. It's like in that phase. And so. [32:07] I find too many people lean into you and let's go test it. Let's go do some research. It's like, dude, [32:13] Thank you. [32:14] Like, [32:15] you're a human look at the products like would you use that like you build some intuition from just exposing yourself to really good products every time you pick up your phone what is it about the apps that you love [32:29] Like, I do think about that. Oh, I love, like, open up my phone. I love Spotify. I also love YouTube music. But I really love Spotify, right, for my music. I've used it for years. And I'm like, okay. [32:39] What is it about this new thing they just know until they love? And I try to articulate that. [32:44] So there's that piece. But then the tactical thing that I almost make every PL on my team do is, [32:51] I call it top 10 things you should know. [32:54] It's a living document, so in my org right now, [32:57] I've got quite a number of PMs, and for each of those PMs, in this living Google Doc, it's like Google slash Studio Problems, [33:07] They literally put 10 things, like 10 problems you should know. And you revise it every quarter. You update it. [33:15] and they're separate. [33:16] Right. So it's like a living set of problems. [33:19] And they could be qualitative. [33:21] It could be quantitative, right? They could be tech debt. They should be tech debt. So these are just known problems with the product that everyone is aware of. Correct. Okay.

[33:32] And you keep, you kind of farm into the problems. So you keep that dot going. And so I first started this at Uber on the money team and I called it money problems, more money, more problems. Because I knew fundamentally we should bring joy into everything we try to do, you know, so have fun with it. So more money, more problems. [33:50] And essentially, it was in partnership with my data scientist partners that he had a team of product analysts and data scientists, and they would pair up with my PMs, and we would have the UX team, the UXR team, the data team, and the product managers and engineering get together and actually look at their problems. [34:09] So that living document means that for me, if I go around at least my minus one, not just for me, but my engineer, [34:18] engineering partners minus ones and my design partners minus ones and we chat them and say what are the top five problems for studio [34:26] They should all have the same answer. [34:29] This hasn't done my job, right? Because then we all know the problems. You can debate them. You can discuss them. You can have sessions where you revise them, review them. But we do that, and then we go into a room, and, for example, I literally printed them on cards, and I put them on tables, scattered the groups, and had people kind of vote. [34:47] Discuss and vote the ones that is the most painful, right? Because then you see the whole thing. So that's the open eyes bit. I'm spending a hard time on this because I can't tell you how many times the clarity of the problem, going back to clarity and conviction, is missing.

[35:04] And that problem is kind of like the North Star. [35:06] Everything's going on, but there's a North Star that doesn't move. [35:09] Before you move on, there's so much there I just want to touch on that are really interesting insights. [35:13] One is just this point you're making of when you're trying to develop [35:17] vision or thinking about the next step. [35:19] you should be way ahead of that. You have this doc that you've been working on and consistently updated. [35:24] And it's there way ahead of time. It's not like [35:27] Cool, next year's coming up. Let's start from scratch and figure out [35:30] what the vision is long-term. [35:32] Tuesday, there's this quote that I think Patrick Halson tweeted. [35:35] that I always think about in these discussions where [35:37] A lot of people think of user research, it's like, [35:40] These are research [35:41] Often people think of user research, you do user research, and that tells you what to do. [35:45] And he made this point, no, it should be user research [35:48] updates your mental model, [35:49] of your customer and what they need and the problems they're having, the stock that you're writing, [35:54] And then that mental model informs what to build. [35:57] And so... [35:58] I think that's a big difference, and it connects with what you also said of [36:02] You should trust your gut and judgment. A lot of people discount as a PM like, I should have no opinions. [36:07] I'm just going to listen to what data and research is telling me, and I'm not going to try to bias the team. [36:13] Something I've learned more and more every time is just you should really trust your gut. [36:16] and your instincts exactly like you said. [36:19] If I could put all the research into BARD or ChatGPT, I would. [36:25] and it could spit out a PRT. [36:27] then you haven't done your job. So basically, that's the... I... [36:31] I'm like, "The Zen, Gen. AI, everybody's talking about all the stuff we could do with creating content." But what I want you to think about is what is the value out of you break?

[36:41] that an AI, I can't just put into an AI right now and say, tell me the big thing based on this research. [36:47] that exists. So I've never heard that quote from Patrick Olson, but I agree. Spot on, right? And I think this is where, when you think about the qualities of a product manager, I think there are four pillars. [37:02] product sense, leadership, execution prowess, and technical ability, right? And it's not product, [37:10] you know uh logic it's product sense it's a feeling right [37:15] It's a sense of what is right and the exposure to products and the curiosity [37:21] will refine that sense over time. And I think that's the thing that people undervalue a lot. It's like you start program managing and just like spitting out what engineering said we can't do, and UX said they could do, and like you become this. That's not the job. The job is clarity. [37:35] and bringing this kind of context really to the set of problems that are being solved. And you're curing them together. [37:43] Right. That's the key there. It's like you're curating those problems together. [37:47] And one of the challenges I find as a PM is [37:50] convincing people [37:52] of your gut instinct of why this is right. But I think that loops back to the power of vision. [37:57] and helping everyone align like here's why we exist and here's where we're going and here's what I'm sensing is probably an opportunity. [38:04] Okay, so just to summarize some of the tips you've shared on this empathize step. [38:08] One is basically... [38:10] Use your research.

[38:11] But I think even more importantly, use it to inform your understanding of the [38:16] problem the users are running into and their needs and things like that. [38:20] What else did you talk about? Oh, use the product. Like actually be a user of the product. So in your case, it'd be like [38:25] Upload YouTube videos. Yeah. [38:28] Is there anything else? Okay, there's this doc that you shared that's awesome. So it's basically a running document of known [38:34] problems people, our users have with our product. [38:38] Correct. And as you [38:40] When you start getting to the strategic lens, so you have a set of problems, [38:45] What I sometimes will do is, especially if you're, for example, a platform PM, the PMs generally have lots of stakeholders. There'll be a marketing team that's asking for something or an operations team that's like, our market needs this. [38:56] I'll sometimes bring them in at the beginning of the strategy session and give them a template, 10 things you should know. [39:02] So you use my framework to give me 10 problems. Because if you say come present, they'll do like 50 slides. Like, no, that's just 10 things you should know and stack rank them. So I've put the work on you now to give me some color. I hear from marketing, comms, support, research, content strategy. I actually had that in my last strategy session where it was the most mind blowing. [39:25] 10 things you should know. One of them was like the average reading age of an American is 11 years old. [39:31] Right. And so you start to think of, oh, my God, all the text we have. [39:35] So, you know, you're not going to be able to do that. So, you know, you're not going to be able to do that.

[39:44] like sandpapering down to the... [39:47] core thing and then you have the final 10. [39:50] So that would be the tactical. If you want to take it to a more strategic lens, that's how I'd run. The first day of my strategy session is usually insights. I usually do three days. Insights, strategy, then big rocks. And the insights piece is this, where we go deep into the problems. And I use this template of 10 things you should know. [40:07] And then we come out with 10 things, a final list of 10 things you should know, like a consolidated list. [40:13] I really like this additional tip you just shared of [40:15] as you're trying to develop a vision for a team is bring in stakeholders and use this [40:20] framework to help them crystallize, here's the most important things to me, [40:24] from the product and things that I think are big opportunities. And then essentially [40:28] Now you've got buy-in from stakeholders. [40:31] of [40:32] At least. [40:33] They've heard me and they understand. And then here's what they came up with. And then I could be like, no, but what about this thing? [40:38] But at least gives you a way to bring everyone together and understand how the process is going. [40:43] Okay, so this... [40:45] week of work you just shared. So can you just talk a bit more about this? Is this you leading the team through an exercise to develop a vision and a strategy? Correct. Correct. Got it. And so you said the first three days are... [40:58] aligning and fully understanding and immersing yourself in insights. [41:02] I usually have strategy sessions of three days. I have tried to do it in two days. That is the absolute limit. [41:08] Because I think you need to create white space for just the magic to happen. [41:12] But I usually use a framework that's, it's literally what I call the narrative structure. So when we get into the...

[41:18] the conviction part. [41:20] The clarity is the problem to solve. The conviction is the narrative. [41:23] The framing of that conviction is insights, strategy, big rocks. [41:29] So the insights day is just focused on understand work. [41:33] these five problems actually using the app [41:36] doing teardowns of other apps. It's just like a day of, you know, understanding. So, [41:43] You know, in the Google Design Sprint, they'll say, ask the experts. In a way, I'm giving the experts a template. That's what I'm doing, basically. And then the second day is where we now go into, like, the strategy. Like, of all the problems we've seen, the 10, which are the ones we want to focus on in which order? [41:58] And who's in these meetings? [42:00] I always have... [42:03] For folks, so it would be, depending on the level of the strategy, usually, [42:09] product, my engineering partner, my design partner, and research. Got it. Okay, so it's the leaders of the team. The leaders of the team, and depending on the org, I'll bring in data science. If it's because at Google, we have a more shared data science resource. So I usually invite them as one of the partners, right? Come tell 10 things you should know. So they'll say, you know, we need to do more instrumentation or whatever. But you hit on a fantastic point, which I was going to connect later, which is when you get to the evangelized stage, you know, [42:37] humans love to know you heard them so imagine it's like [42:42] You did all the work of bringing them together to say, hey, tell me 10 things. You've asked the questions. You've come back and said, here's the strategy that we're going to focus on. And here's the vision. Right.

[42:52] And that last stage where you evangelize becomes so much easier because it's like, how did you arrive at this vision? [42:59] that goes away or like, but you guys didn't solve for that. It's like, we hurt you. And then we parse them into these 10. [43:05] And everybody agreed with these 10. And therefore, that's why I came up with this vision. [43:11] So let's segue to the evangelize step, which I think I always talk about. I always think about the Seinfeld meme of, [43:17] when he's trying to get a car reservation, where [43:20] He shows up in the nervous car, and they're like, [43:22] we have your reservation, we just don't have your car. And he's like, [43:26] That's the most important part of the reservation. You take the reservation, but you don't keep the reservation. That's the most important part. So I think to me, it's always like you have this vision, you have amazing roadmap strategy, but if no one even knows it, [43:38] Or here's it, that's the most important part. So I think it's super important. [43:42] to understand this. So I'd love to hear your advice on just how to [43:46] successfully evangelize and share this vision that you've come up with? [43:50] In terms of evangelizing, I think about three concentric circles, right? So the core of your vision is your team. [43:57] And I want to make sure my team understands the vision. And I'm basically saying, get on this boat. We're sailing to the vision of the Bermuda or like, you know, some island. And I describe this beautiful island. They have to be brought in. [44:14] And like have conviction, but they want to get there to actually... [44:18] sail on that boat together and so the team is the big the biggest part and it's the whole team it's not like just the pms know the vision we're just the designers of the vision i will literally first start with you know each of the folks that were in the room we will basically bring our teams together and present it out so for example the one we did last year we presented to what we call studio leads which are essentially the triads

[44:41] for each of the product teams. [44:43] PM engineering and design for each of the product teams and just presented it out. [44:48] And I had multiple, we have the first one, then I had one in my PM Weekly, [44:54] Presented it again. Then he looks still any questions because people are still it's like percolating. It's like the teabag. It's like it's losing out. It's the trying to understand it and they're trying to stress test it. And what I also do is I'm right. [45:06] the output of the workshop. So I'll always write the output, like, these are the insights we came out with, here's the ones upon a time framework, [45:14] Here's a strategy. Here are the big rocks. And a vision is coming. Right. And then we'll do the vision and say that this is the vision of where we're going to do all these things. And that will be a living document comments. [45:27] Open for comments, right? No edit, not view only. Comments, because you want anyone to leave comments out there and just feel they have a say. You don't have to respond to all of them. [45:37] You don't have to resolve all of them. But just, you know, if you put rocks in a washing machine, they polish each other. It's actually like... [45:45] I like this friction. I go into the forest, I cut a piece of wood, and our job together is to polish it down to the beautiful Danish furniture. So it's okay to have that friction. [45:55] to do that for a bit and then once the team has kind of gotten to a place i i'm not trying to get anyone to 100 certainty i'm trying to get you just on the ride they'll come right then you know i'm going to go to this sort of next layer which is the stakeholders those people that came in and their teams and their managers

[46:14] go to them and sort of get them bought into the vision as well. They'll also bring perspectives, right? You're missing this piece. We have a lot of engineering, you know, support tickets will blow up if you do this thing, right? What does that look like? We have, [46:28] You guys haven't solved the thing we need to do today. We're talking about something five years out. You're going to get all the variations of feedback. That's okay. [46:35] the cause that people are bought into that story [46:39] And it took Peter Hamill there. And then finally... [46:42] Once you've got the feedback from stakeholders, you then go to leadership. [46:45] and leadership really as high as possible. [46:48] So when I was at Uber and I was like an L5, L6, I had visions going all the way. I mean, I had a fantastic leader. He put me on stage on all hands to present the vision. And we were like, one wallet. [47:00] all Uber experiences. And then we have this vision of a world where [47:04] you know uber eats it could be trains it could be whatever and you have this one uber wallet that can be used for all of them and we have mocks of what that looks like so go as big as possible like go big [47:15] Like let people tell you to pull back. Let your manager use a lasso and pull you back. Like go as much as possible. So I go to leadership and then I have leadership and to find that story as much as possible. So those are the three concentric circles. Core team, the people that will actually build this thing. Stakeholders, the people that need to be bought in for this thing to be successful because they play a part. And then adjacent teams because as we're building this thing, it might mean that we tell you no. [47:42] for one of your requests or something, right? And then finally, leadership.

[47:47] It's hard. [47:48] Sounds like a lot of work and a lot of time. [47:50] Do you do this for yearly planning? Do you do this for future, you know, 2026 vision plans? [47:58] Do you do this for quarterly plans? What's kind of like the scale of [48:03] vision that you invest this time into? So we go back to the four parts of the vision we said a lot. A vision, if a vision is something that's coming next year, write a newsletter, write the newsletter, the headline article version or do the mock. Like when you're really getting into a vision, you're talking about something that always feels attainable, but realistic. So it's a long term thing, right? And so [48:27] You do the work and you take that time because you know that the rewards, when you get everyone rowing in the same direction, will mean a lot more velocity. [48:36] And the ripple, I talked about evangelizing within the company, it's everything. [48:41] Talking to a candidate. [48:43] I say, hey, my team's mission is expression meets connection. Our vision is this. Then their eyes are like, you can see the twinkle, right? And so the ripple effect of this thing is just broad and, you know, big. My eng partner was just hiring for a role. And in the job description, she opened it first with our team mission. And it was like, we have these short links at Google. So it's like go slash, you know, studio vision. And, you know, people just, people get excited just seeing it. [49:13] that is, we're talking four and five years. It's not...

[49:18] the next six months, right? The next six months, do the tweet. [49:24] Okay, awesome. I think that's very clarifying. [49:26] And so is this something you encourage your PMs to do is just like, [49:29] Always be working on this vision for the next, say, five years. [49:33] invest this time kind of in the background as you're shipping things every day, every quarter. [49:37] to make sure people [49:39] understand where it's going long term and then [49:41] It's like this one-off exercise that maybe you repeat every year or two. [49:45] I think if you have to repeat the vision every year, you have not created a good, you haven't done the work. So, you know, I'll give you an example of the one at Uber. What we kept doing was we would... [49:55] Bring more fidelity. [49:57] to actually parts of the vision. [49:59] Right. So we had a low fidelity mark. Then at one point we did a sizzle reel and actually had like if this thing is live. But we're not creating multiple visions. Remember all the things you read, a desk on every table. It's not like every year it's changing or going to Mars. It's not every year. It's something that it's more you literally bring some repeat. [50:22] So the vision is something that is evergreen and lost, in my mind, at least three years. [50:29] However, at the sort of, you know, and I'm talking about PMs from L4 all the way to L7, and my team, which is kind of like from a junior PM, senior PM all the way to GPMs in my org, all have a variation of a vision. [50:42] That's a three year thing. Now, when they're going into like a sort of micro vision, that's kind of a macro vision, where maybe it's solving a small problem. Right. Then they'll just do a mock of what that thing looks like next year. And then in that mock, they'll present like this is the mock of what we think it should look like. It's a vision. It's a it's a micro vision, but it is a vision. So do that. And that's the thing they used to say, hey, leadership.

[51:06] This is the problem statement. Here's what we think. How might we solve this big problem? And here's what we think it looks like when we ship it. [51:14] That's a, that's a, that's a, a vision. [51:16] So that's, you know, what I'm talking about is macro vision, but you actually can have the micro ones along the way. [51:23] Awesome. That is really helpful. [51:25] By the way, I really like that phrase, "How might we?" I find that extremely useful in communicating. [51:30] like almost a vision basically just like how might we [51:33] Solve this problem. Just that phrase alone is a really... There's this concept one of the PMs I worked with used called "fertile questions." [51:38] when you ask someone [51:40] a question that leads to discussion and a really good way to [51:43] create a fertile question is how might we [51:45] get more people to engage with YouTube analytics. [51:48] It's a lot of good brainstorming ideas, so good micro tip right there that we included. [52:18] unique layouts with a revolutionary grid experience and watches elements scale proportionally by default. No-code animations add sparks of delight while adding custom CSS gives total design control. Bring ambitious client projects to life with any industry with a fully integrated suite of business solutions, from e-commerce to events, bookings and more, and extend the capabilities even further with hundreds of APIs and integrations. You know what else? The workflows just make sense.

[52:48] workspace, the reuse of assets across sites, the seamless client handover, and that's not all. Find out more at wix.com slash studio. [52:59] So I want to move on to... [53:00] craft but before we do that is there anything else that you think would be helpful for folks to [53:07] leave with in terms of getting better at vision. Say someone's got a development opportunity to get better at [53:13] vision. [53:14] Which of these... [53:16] Things you've shared do you think would be [53:17] Maybe something they could start working on [53:20] Is it craft this five-year vision? Is it pick one of these three ways to communicate it? Is it [53:24] change the way they're empathizing to inform the vision. [53:28] I'll give a 1.5. I think it's number one. [53:32] it baffles me and it begs you know i'm somebody who came into product i didn't i don't have a sort of product management career i came into product and [53:42] I've done that now at Uber and Netflix and Google. [53:46] And it still baffles me the number of people where when I say, tell me, [53:50] the top problems that keep you up at night and then I rambling. [53:54] I'm like, what are we talking about? Like, why are we rambling? This is literally the thing that you come to work with. This is the thing that should excite you. So, like, I cannot overemphasize this importance of, like, [54:07] you know, top 10 things to show, but... [54:10] You don't even start with 10. I start with 10. And actually, I always end up with top three. [54:15] So at every deck, I'll have three things, like three numbers or four numbers. We just got a new chief product officer at YouTube, right? Because Neil Noghen is now the CEO. When I did my presentation to her, the opening sign is four things you should know.

[54:30] with these four numbers and four like four insights and so it's like she walks away with that information now so it's like that is probably the most like it needs to be visceral and crisp and clear [54:41] And then from that, just for yourself, have fun with it. Take out a Post-it note and sketch. [54:47] If you were to solve this problem, what it looks like. Just start there. [54:50] Right. To start there. And then if you can at least convince yourself, I don't so much care about the deck. The deck helps absolutely. Or the pictures in the box. If you can tell the story. [55:01] I'm like, this is a problem. [55:04] And this is the world I see. Imagine a world that enough that in itself is already you evangelizing the vision. [55:10] amazing that is so helpful so essentially make this list of the most [55:15] biggest problems that your users have with your product. And I think you also include like infrastructure tech debt issues, maybe internal problems too. [55:22] Awesome. I just want to know this list for every company now. Just like, what are their biggest problems? I wonder what they're struggling with. Right? Okay. [55:28] And by the way, that infrastructure piece, I know it's a nugget on the side, but... [55:35] Infrastructure is the product. [55:37] Mm-hmm. [55:38] period like i people like oh tech debt like yeah it's a product debt you can i cannot build a skyscraper [55:46] on a shaky foundation. So it is your problem, too. It's not for the engineer to be barging on the door about, "Oh, there's a problem." So that's the other one I'll just call out. That in itself is a problem as well. You're speaking to the heart of every engineer listening. I know. Okay, and then the other tip was sketch the solution. Just do a post-it, draw it out.

[56:05] See how it feels. I think just like [56:07] People don't realize just the power of, oh, I have to actually think about what this will look like and not just kind of paint this very... [56:12] fuzzy picture of what it might be. [56:15] Amazing. I feel like this is the most tactical and practical thing. [56:19] piece of advice [56:20] a segment of [56:21] advice on how to get better vision. I'm so excited to get this out and for folks to [56:25] have things that they actually do to get better at vision. I feel like this could be the whole podcast, but you have more awesome stuff to share, so I want to keep going. We're going to keep you here. We'll extract as much content as we can out of your brain. You touched on this [56:41] phrase that you like to use for [56:44] describing what is [56:45] the craft of product management, kind of like distinctly describing the craft of product management. And I know there's like many layers deep in this concept, but [56:52] Just to start, what is this kind of phrase and framework you think of? [56:55] to describe what is [56:57] product management craft, what is the job of PMBs? [57:00] So I use, I sort of say clarity and conviction. [57:03] and [57:04] That's what product management is. It's like you bring clarity. [57:08] and you have conviction. [57:10] Right. And so... [57:13] You find a lot of time, we've just talked about a number of things, all of those things, what they're doing is bringing clarity. [57:19] and that clarity especially is for the problem. [57:21] So, you know, even when I'll just give you a little tactical thing. I know this. There's some PMs. [57:29] who will send an email. [57:32] And I read the email, I'm like, what do you want me to do?

[57:36] Like, is this an FYI? Are you saying there's a problem? [57:40] Do you want me to... [57:42] you know help like so just even there's something as simple as that i'm just giving right as pms it's like we're constantly influencing right by bringing clarity so the clarity all the stuff we just talked about coming up with a list of problems you know really trying to understand what customers care about [58:01] All you're doing is bringing clarity so that when you're in a room and someone is going off and doing that, actually, we don't need that research. I feel like we all know that that's a problem. Like we don't need that research. Instead of doing foundational research, we're doing, you know, let's do UX validation when the time comes. That's the kind of clarity you can break. Let's say cycles. So that's the clarity piece. [58:22] And if you think about what clarity is, [58:27] you define clarity, it's this transparency, it's the simplicity of understanding. That's what the word is, right? It's removing all, it's sifting out all the stuff that's polluting the core thing. That's how I think of clarity. And the sort of tactical thing that I use to bring that clarity is the framework I talked about, which is the narrative. [58:46] Insights, strategy, big rocks. [58:48] It brings clarity to why we're doing what we're doing, [58:53] how we're going to do it and what we're going to do. [58:57] And I spend time talking and I can spend time talking about all of those, but we talked about the workshop to do that. And I actually have in my EM experience, [59:05] One of my old EMs who you've actually had on the podcast talks about this a lot. I made every PM. Like people have fancy decks. That's great.

[59:15] Clarity comes when you write. [59:17] and so i made them like two page documents i will let you go up to four maybe but like two page documents with insights [59:25] Your strategy, or I use the word approach sometimes, [59:29] And then the big rocks. [59:30] And the big rocks are not like a laundry list of 20 things, because if I asked you to make me a cocktail, you would put ice in first. [59:37] Then you would pour the drink. [59:38] You would not put the drink and then put the ice. It'll splash and it's messy. And that's how an endless roadmap looks to me. So it's like three, four or five things that anyone can remember that are the biggest things. If we land this, it gets us closer to solving the problems. Then every other little thing is around. You can kind of fill that around. That's the sand around the big rocks. [59:58] So let's just actually double click on this little framework that you're sharing of Insight Strategy Big Rocks. This is essentially what you ask your teams to share as their plan, essentially, like the high level plan. It's not yet a roadmap. [1:00:11] strategy, I guess, do you think of this just like as vision and strategy as this document? [1:00:17] This is not vision, because this is not telling us what the world will look like if we solve the problem. That's the vision, right? This is actually bringing clarity to the vision. [1:00:26] to the narrative of why we exist. So if you were a company, and I always use these, I feel like we can solve a lot of problems in life if we found a parallel in the world. And the parallel I just look for is like, if this was a startup, [1:00:40] right and you wanted to tell people why you exist and why they should invest in you which is kind of what you're doing as a pm what is the big problem you solve as a company

[1:00:49] What's the strategy? [1:00:51] And what are the things you're going to deliver that would end up in your, the headlines that are coming in the future that you need money for, right? You're telling investors, I'm going to build these things. I need money, right? To do these things. That's what this is. It's just a narrative. And I think. [1:01:05] One of the simplest things a PM can have is this narrative that when people come to you and be like, hey, you see all these emails, introduction, meet this person. And the PM is like, oh, I want to send him a time to understand what you do. I'm like, nope. [1:01:20] Go to go slash my narrative, read it. Then when we set up the time, let me know if you have questions. And guess what? A lot of calls will fall off. [1:01:27] just from that. Or when, you know, someone comes into the team and they're like, what are we about onboarding? Here's the narrative, right? So that's the narrative. And that's the one that you refresh [1:01:38] periodically so that you can refresh every quarter and refresh every six months because you're kind of adjusting [1:01:44] to what's happening in the world, what the problems are. So that's the narrative. One last question there, just so folks get a sense of where this fits into all their work. [1:01:52] Does this come before defining the vision and then the roadmap? Where does this fit in terms of [1:01:57] vision and roadmap in terms of the process. So again, the document is evergreen and updated. [1:02:03] I'm a big fan of evergreen documents because you create this mental thing where everybody just knows, you know, link, whatever the short link is, whatever you use in your company, they remember it and that's the link and that's where I go. Or they know what the name is to search for the document. It's kind of like how we all know good PM, bad PM. It's like it's lived through the test of time. So I believe in evergreen documents. Update the existing document or do like a versioning of the doc, like 2022 version, 2022 version, whatever that is.

[1:02:33] So typically the narrative will happen before, like as you go into planning. So just my team right now, we've just gone through a planning cycle. [1:02:41] Now, I already had a vision for the team, but basically for each team, [1:02:46] you know, they took [1:02:48] the overarching vision, [1:02:52] and said, "Okay, let's now bring that to life for our area." They had a set of problems, they had their strategy approach, we called it, and then they had the big rocks, and everyone wrote the two-pager. [1:03:03] So we wrote this two-page document, and then they circled it around, their partners, their engineering teams, and got feedback. [1:03:09] And that's what they then used to then build out the roadmap. Then they built out the roadmap and said, okay, based on that, this is what the roadmap looks like. [1:03:17] of unpacking those big rocks a little bit more and usually what the rule we gave was like if you have more than three engineers on it less than three engineers on the problem consolidate [1:03:27] More than three, it needs a line, right? So then you have the roadmap, it's just a Google sheet with a list of things, and the resources assigned to it. And that's when we start to see, okay, where are you blocked? You have another UX, you have another this. It's a bit more tactical. [1:03:40] And then you have your room out. But then... [1:03:43] you know um after you've done the insight strategy uh big rocks or the roadmap you can [1:03:50] in parallel or after. So, okay, let's take a week off. [1:03:55] Right. Spend time in a room. [1:03:57] and shape the vision right well let's take a day off [1:04:01] I did. I once done one in a day. The sketches I talked about. We literally locked ourselves in a room. We had an Uber. We had no meeting Wednesday. Google. We have no YouTube. We have no meeting Friday. And I said, just block your no meeting Friday. The next one. We're going to get in the room. We're going to whiteboard. We literally like post-it notes. The designer, of course, was like, this thing is ugly. And they made it pretty. And that was the vision. The vision.

[1:04:22] I remember seeing so many docs at Uber with literally... [1:04:26] slides from my doc, right, saying, you know, we agree with this vision, and so therefore, we're going to build this thing in our team to support it. And that's great. Like you're influencing, right? And I'm seeing it right now in YouTube as well, where teams are like, oh, I've seen that vision, and they'll refer to it. I saw your... [1:04:45] you know, Studio Vision and, you know, [1:04:47] On slide five, when you talked about this, this is what we did with it. So that's that's the. [1:04:52] That's how I would do it. Oh, man. I feel like there's so many directions I want to go. You have so many nuggets of wisdom, but I'm going to get back on track. [1:04:58] So you have this framework of what a great PM is, clarity. Let's talk about conviction. What does that actually look like? We already spoke about conviction. So conviction is the vision. [1:05:07] Hmm. [1:05:08] Where you basically very succinctly tell here's where we're going and here's why we're doing this. So the definition of conviction is a feeling of what you think the way the world should be. It's a feeling. [1:05:21] It is not certainty. It is not absolute. It is not perfect. But it's a feeling of certainty. [1:05:28] you know, I feel like this is the right thing to do. And that's what we're seeing, right? When we talk about chronic sense, it's you're building this feeling of what you think is right. And so you bring that to life. And so everything we just talked about is literally you converting the conviction from your head. [1:05:42] into something that people can consume. [1:05:44] And that's the conviction. Clarity, narrative. [1:05:48] vision conviction so this is specifically the crafter product management if you want to get better

[1:05:53] at the craft of building great products. [1:05:56] These are the two areas I imagine you... [1:05:58] point your PMs to get more clear [1:06:01] on things and then have more [1:06:03] Is it more conviction? Is it clear conviction? How do you think of the skill of getting better conviction? [1:06:09] if you have conviction and it's not clear, then you don't have conviction. Quite frankly, if you're like, I kind of think, you know, maybe we should, you know, they're like five things we should solve. And like, then you don't have conviction. So, [1:06:21] I'll sometimes stress test and I'm like, what if I took away all your resources and you only have five, which is the one you don't know. [1:06:27] I do all these kind of draconian things that just force clarity. [1:06:32] Right and so then your conviction will come out and it's like yeah, but I'm uncomfortable like okay so the thing that's making you uncomfortable go spend time and [1:06:40] So go spend your research, go spend your cycles on getting higher certainty on that conviction rather than like chasing for things because we're. [1:06:49] I don't want to use the word lazy, but like too scared to pick a lady. Right. So don't peanut butter. [1:06:56] Like nobody does anything well by peanut buttering resources, spreading them thin. So that's the conviction. It's like it's also things like people, you know, I'll sometimes have someone come to me and say, we have these two scenarios and there'll be a document. And I'll usually be, you know, the typical pros and cons of the options. And I'm like, so let's say we weren't in the room as the leadership team. [1:07:15] which is the one the team wants to get behind. [1:07:18] And sometimes 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.

[1:07:30] then let's talk about the risk that you need by help mitigating or help solving. [1:07:35] Because it's too easy to come to me and be like, oh, here's A and B. You do the work and tell me which 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. [1:07:45] Right. [1:07:47] So the core to conviction is like pick what you think is right. [1:07:51] That seems like the core of it is like being clarity is being very clear about what you've learned and where you think things are going and conviction is. [1:07:58] Pick your battle. Here's where we think we need to invest. [1:08:00] Let me use, I like the word battle. Clarity is saying 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. [1:08:13] And the conviction is like how and the way you see the world if you win that battle. [1:08:18] Great. [1:08:20] Okay, so... [1:08:21] You gave a talk on product culture and how the company culture informs and changes the way the product is built. So you worked at three very different cultures. [1:08:29] that I'm aware of, Uber, [1:08:31] Netflix and Google, all very different companies. [1:08:35] I guess maybe just as a broad question, what did you see about the [1:08:38] culture of the company [1:08:40] do to change the way product is built. [1:08:43] you think about what Uber has done in the world, [1:08:46] And you think about where we are now, where it's almost – [1:08:50] people. [1:08:51] It's almost so natural to bring out your phone and the car turns up with someone you do not know that you get into and trust them to take you where you're going. Like if you fast forward it to when my grandmother was alive, she would have thought you were crazy.

[1:09:02] So just think of all the pieces that had to come together for that to... [1:09:06] to work. And it was a super hands-on, zoom out, zoom in. We say boardroom to streets, right? You could roll up your seats and go in the streets and then go to boardroom. Operations team that really went into the fabric of a city and tried to convert that mission [1:09:26] into what the manifestation is in the city. And I started at Uber as a GM before I became a PM, so I first had experienced that. [1:09:35] I got my job. There were like seven cars on the road and I had to figure it out. In a country where there's no reliable running water, we want to do reliable transport. So what did that look like when drivers don't have a mobile phone and don't have a car on that? So there's this big piece of operations and what Uber basically did was we're going to [1:09:53] work very hard to get the right people in seats. We're going to give them complete autonomy. [1:09:58] Right. And [1:09:59] The magic that just came out of that [1:10:03] you know, is the reason that Uber exists. And that infrastructure is very much what has allowed a lot of the gig economy actually thrive, like setting up these playbooks, trying things, learning things, [1:10:15] Sharing with each other was a very big part of the culture. Now, over time, I call this kind of like the monolithic culture. There was a culture. [1:10:23] And the culture of everyone went back and said, hold on, let's, [1:10:27] revisit this. Does it still serve us? [1:10:30] has the context changed what are the parts that we need to to improve evolve because here's the thing if you don't intentionally evolve the culture it will evolve without you

[1:10:42] So culture is always going to evolve. That's just the way humans are. And culture are the norms, [1:10:48] and beliefs right. [1:10:49] And beliefs and norms change. That's how humans are. So I always say, what are the things that, what are the good behaviors that you reward and the bad behaviors that you condone? [1:10:59] Okay. [1:10:59] And if you're not going back to revisit that, then the culture just kind of moves on. And then the companies are playing catch up or it moves on in the way you don't want it to. And then the world is kind of like. [1:11:09] Oh my God, Uber, delete Uber, which actually happened. I lived it. It's very sad to wake up and know that you're doing the right thing for the world and see that 400,000 people have deleted your app. [1:11:19] just because of a miscommunication, really. [1:11:23] right so this is a really big piece of uber the spin there on the autonomy was one of the cultural values was principled confrontation and toe stepping [1:11:33] right and this is codified in the value system it's like forget about levels [1:11:38] Step on toes. [1:11:39] if you believe it's the right thing for the business. And I talk all the time about the story of cash, where Travis Kalanick was like against cash. By the way, I think up until he left Uber, he was against cash. But he believed in data and he believed in principal confrontation. He was like, go test it out. [1:11:55] We tested it out and it did well and that's why carriage exists on Uber. [1:11:59] Right. Because the culture enabled that. [1:12:02] So I've talked about how it evolves and also the badge of the Uber. You go to Netflix where it started as a monolithic culture. [1:12:11] It came out of, oh, we went through this experience where we had to cut the org down, and we left these sets of people, and they were even...

[1:12:21] that was performing just as well and had the same output and same joy, hey, [1:12:26] what did we do right here? Let's like distill this down and distill it down to this no rules, rules framework of freedom of responsibility, of, you know, highly aligned, loosely coupled, a few of these sort of tenets. [1:12:40] at Netflix, but I saw in my time, well, very short time at Netflix, so I left Netflix to go to YouTube, [1:12:49] I saw the culture evolve. Like in a very short space of time, there was a very high degree of intentionality to evolving the culture. Like... [1:12:59] What does it mean to entertain the world? [1:13:02] Let's evolve. Let's discuss. Let's change. And so again, going into the product, when I joined Netflix, [1:13:10] there was a whole value of the product would not ever be advertising video on demand. It's subscription video on demand because we believe if we and it was a strong belief, right? It was a belief system. And then over time. [1:13:23] There were debates and debates. I was also part of a lot of conversations around access. [1:13:28] In a world where more people on their mobile phone do not have a TV screen, might not have a credit card, [1:13:35] Do we want to entertain the world or do we want to entertain some people in some places? Sounds familiar, right? This is like what we also had at Uber. It's like, do we want to offer Uber to the world or it's just some people in some places who have credit cards? [1:13:49] And so, yeah.

[1:13:51] I saw that conversation go back and forth and the company allowed a structured way of having these debates. So you would typically be encouraged to write down things. [1:14:02] write your argument, but ultimately it's Lenny's decision. [1:14:06] And it's funny when the buck stops with you. [1:14:09] How? [1:14:11] The whole thing flips on its head. You'd think like it would be chaos. It's actually not. You actually saw people go a lot more methodically around, okay, what? [1:14:20] I need to make sure I remember when we talked about conviction earlier, we said, how do you get the firmness in your conviction? I saw people do that work. [1:14:28] Be like, okay, I'm at 95%. Can I get to 99%? [1:14:31] What would I need to do that? And because the buck stops with you. [1:14:35] right in a world where people can sign up to multi-million dollar deals so [1:14:39] like without any approval. It's actually quite liberating, but the liberation is frightening. That's right. And so you saw this and this intentionality involving the culture and now going back to sort of [1:14:52] subscription video on demand because you would write things down and people kept debating and pushing and pushing. There was no advertising on Netflix. [1:15:01] right that's a culture that allows the product to sort of evolve and change tenets [1:15:06] And then you see Google where it's very much just this... [1:15:10] I sort of use this story of two people [1:15:14] Little fish swimming in the water. [1:15:17] and the old fish goes past them and says, [1:15:20] Thank you. [1:15:20] Hey, how's the water? And they're like...

[1:15:24] Good. And then they swim along and they go. [1:15:27] What's water? That's a little bit of what you get. And it's like, you know, we have this, you know, respect the user, respect the opportunity, respect each other. And that's all you get. That's it. [1:15:40] That's it. Like, what is Googling? [1:15:42] You know it when you see it, but what is going on? And so it allows for... [1:15:48] when you have this what I call the microcultures where the culture within YouTube, [1:15:55] It's different from the culture within cloud, it's different from the one in photos, it's different from the one in maps. You'll actually hear people say, oh, they came from search, because they have a culture in search, which if you say you're going to deliver two basis points, you're delivering two basis points, right? And there's a different culture in assistant, where it's like, oh, experiment and try things and so on. So the culture almost becomes, it almost feels like a city, right? So I'm in Amsterdam, and there's a culture in the pipe. [1:16:21] And there's a culture in Amsterdam, Nord, where all the hipsters are. And there's a culture in West. [1:16:26] Right. It's the same in San Francisco. There's a culture like if you're in the mission and you're in, you know, all of those things. So essentially what you then end up with is these microcultures. [1:16:36] But then there is this looser macro culture that allows the flex. [1:16:42] of the culture sort of manifests in different ways. And what that means for the product is you end up with a company like Google, where one side of the business is building something like cloud, another part is building something that's heavily data-centric, another part is building something very human, you know, give everyone a voice, show them the world, that's YouTube, right? And you are able to do that because the culture allows that flex.

[1:17:04] When you think of Uber versus Lyft and there's like Airbnb versus there's a company Wimdu that was one of their main competitors. Those are these German guys. [1:17:13] It's interesting in the case of Uber, they're very aggressive versus Lyft was a nice brand. [1:17:19] But in the case of Airbnb, Airbnb was like the very nice... [1:17:22] culture and brand. [1:17:23] And Wimdu was extremely aggressive, just very hardcore. [1:17:27] And it's interesting in some markets, maybe you win going really hard and aggressive and just like, [1:17:32] Like another Uber value, I think, was find your red line. [1:17:35] Exactly. Just like find your limit and get there and that's where you're going to work. [1:17:40] And then in [1:17:41] hospitality, maybe there's an advantage to being in Airbnb where it's like more warm and fuzzy. [1:17:46] So that's interesting that depending on the market, maybe a different culture has a bigger opportunity to win. [1:17:51] Never thought of it that way before. What I saw that was interesting about Uber was there was a core that was very monolithic about, you know, this is the culture. And you hired people from all walks of life. [1:18:04] that, you know, [1:18:06] live and breathe that culture but there was a lot of magic that came out of a culture that also had the city at the core so celebrate cities was one of the core things and you know uh customer obsessed was another value so if you're customer obsessed and the culture says celebrate cities then you know what maybe when we do ice cream in nigeria we're going to put this spin on it [1:18:29] We do Uber ice cream in San Francisco. We're going to put that spin on it. So it was also this element of like I could –

[1:18:35] Nice isn't the word I would use, but it was very accessible to anyone because it met them where they were. The product met them where they were. And I think that opened the roads for like no other company has been able to create ride sharing. [1:18:48] at that kind of scale. It's very [1:18:51] region by region. And I think it's because of that. I think one of the other interesting things about culture is every [1:18:56] team also has its own culture and part of a PM and a PM leader's job is to create that culture and create good vibes and [1:19:03] kind of be the who's... [1:19:05] a recent guest put it, you're like the emotional center of the team. [1:19:08] Is there anything you do on your teams to create that culture to make sure everyone's feeling good and excited and create good vibes? [1:19:16] So I actually spend time with both my VP and my peers, my engineering and design partners, and we have a little acronym called [1:19:25] BM, because it's Brian A.B. Matilde. And I kind of joke, I'm like, bam. [1:19:32] So bam got together and created a cult. We discussed the culture that we wanted to have. [1:19:37] of the team, [1:19:39] Because indeed, it's like, how do you work? And by the way, just fun fact, the reason... [1:19:44] I ended up with Netflix and got obsessed about Netflix actually was when I was an Uber and we started all this, [1:19:50] you know, this evolving beyond this, what we call Uber 1.0. So I'm very Uber 1.0. Like I joined as employee number 1024, you know, like it's a very different Uber. [1:20:01] As the culture was sort of going out, and in a way, in my mind, losing a little bit of

[1:20:06] the conviction that the other one had and becoming kind of like a catch-all. It's pivoted in the right way now, but it kind of swung the other way. I actually had my product marketing partner, [1:20:19] His wife worked at Netflix. [1:20:21] And so he sends me the Netflix culture memo. And to your point, I created... [1:20:26] a culture of Netflix within my team at Uber. [1:20:29] And so the values that actually I have carried through [1:20:32] kind of go back to those i do believe in this freedom of responsibility i will give you freedom [1:20:37] But with that comes responsibility. That means the buck stops with you. We had a similar one at Uber, which was owner, not a renter. But yeah, owner, not a renter. How would you act if this house was yours versus when you rent? Right. And so it's that buck stops with you kind of mentality. [1:20:54] Then there's this other one that I, you know, really think about, which is there's an informed captain. And so... [1:21:01] I'm in too many conversations where I'm like, who is on the hook for this decision? [1:21:06] Like, who cares if this decision is made? It's not like six people with consensus. Like, who is the person? And I'm very big on people on council, especially people. Like, a lot of people are like, well, but they're five in the last. And I'm like, no, no, no, there's one person who owns this decision, and that's the person that we're going to empower. [1:21:21] to get all the context, get all the input, and make the decision. [1:21:25] Right. So it's like the rapid model where you end up with the site. And then I think one for me, and this is just something I'm very passionate about. I'm a you know, I'm a black woman. I think a lot about how I show up in the workspace. And for me, something that's so crucial is I think vulnerability is your strength.

[1:21:45] Right. And so [1:21:47] We're all human. [1:21:48] We're all fantastically flawed in many ways. And so I really, really fundamentally believe in this whole who's the human behind the role. [1:21:57] and how's that human doing and i and i don't optimize for being liked to be very and it sounds very harsh i do not believe in being liked that's 80. i believe in being loved [1:22:08] Right. And that's a very, very different thing. And when I said this once in a meeting, people were like, yes, right. But it took me a while in reading a lot of books to come to a definition of love. And love is love. [1:22:23] The choice is. [1:22:25] to extend yourself. [1:22:26] for the spiritual growth of oneself or another. [1:22:31] Right? [1:22:31] It's very big and lofty and whatever, but it's, you're literally extending yourself. [1:22:36] for somebody else or yourself self-love. [1:22:38] right and that's love and when you're extending yourself you're not nice it's not always nice or like it sometimes is you know having hard conversations it's knowing that oh [1:22:50] You know, there's a human... [1:22:52] you know, Matilde, my engineering partner, or Brian, my engineering partner, whoever those are, they know I care about them, so when the feedback is coming, [1:23:00] like RAW, [1:23:02] They know that it's in their best interest because I've shown enough times that I genuinely care about the person behind the role. [1:23:08] I feel like that brings... [1:23:10] The most powerful thing a team has, you'll see teams just tactically, they'll write a PRD,

[1:23:17] they'll send the prd outside to the world right to the other partners and they're like [1:23:22] Have you spoken to the other PMs on your team? Have they read it? [1:23:25] Because actually, it might help you write a better PRD. And so in my team now, we have our email distro. Gmail allows you to do the plus. [1:23:32] thing plus prd and just ship your prd like even when it's getting baked and people will just help you shape it right because we all care about each other so that's the that's the you know it's very i know fuzzy and and whatnot but i i do really believe in this thing of if we get back to the core of humanity and like there's a human behind the world they have goals and aspirations and if [1:23:56] The rest of it will follow. [1:23:57] Wow. [1:23:59] I love this. You shared a trick for [1:24:02] Getting a sense of if you have a good relationship with your EM kind of along these lines. Can you share that? But this was before we started recording. I did. I did. And it came from when I first got into product management. I was kind of like a PM in training. We called them PM trial. And my engineering manager was an associate EM, so a DM in trial. And we hated each other. We absolutely hated each other. And now we love, you know, there was love in the end. And he's still a very good friend of mine. [1:24:32] down to [1:24:33] First this [1:24:35] I asked this question, do you know your engineering manager's birthday? [1:24:40] It's the day they showed up in the world. It's the most important day for them. It's the day they showed up in the world. Do you know their birthday? [1:24:46] Do you know their work anniversary?

[1:24:51] Do you know why they're doing the job they're doing and what they want to be? Are they trying to be a VP? Are they trying to go to a startup? [1:24:58] What is it? And so... [1:25:00] If you go to this sort of human element of like, [1:25:03] trying to actually bond with the person like we'll do fun things where we'll just go to a show together or something or have lunch or dinner because [1:25:13] If I'm spending half of my waking life at work, right, she sleep eight hours, [1:25:18] The remaining time is 16 hours, and you work to eight hours if you're lucky, right? You work eight hours. If I'm spending that time with someone, I kind of want to have... [1:25:25] fun while I'm doing it. [1:25:27] And you'll have fun when you like each other, you love each other even better. AB, I wish I got to work with you. You're awesome. [1:25:37] By the way, this EM you're talking about is Gergay Oroz, who was on the podcast. He's the author of Pragmatic Engineer. People may be aware of him already. So how about that? And I knew he loved to write. So every time we would do a doc, for example, to leadership, he would start, he would kick it off, even though it was something product centric. He would start writing it. I'm like, great. You're an awesome writer. [1:25:57] Look at him now. [1:26:00] Well, [1:26:01] Maybe as just the last topic, I'd love to hear any cool stuff happening [1:26:05] on YouTube stuff. I think you just launched some AI stuff. There's A/B testing stuff that's coming out. Just like what should people know about? [1:26:11] new YouTube features, especially people like me that aren't publishing stuff on YouTube? Well, I'll go to one of the things we talked about, which is this once upon a time vision. One of the visions we have as a team is, if you go back to the core of YouTube, which is give everyone a voice, show them the world, it's really this...

[1:26:29] YouTube is... [1:26:30] The creators being small, [1:26:33] you know, who want to tell their story, however they want to tell it, whether it's a podcast or live or video or short or post. And we are the creative partner. [1:26:43] Maybe that's another podcast for another day. But I fundamentally believe in when products take on some kind of... [1:26:50] persona right and so we're like okay youtube studio really we're the creative partner when all [1:26:57] We're not making the thing. You're making the thing, but we're your partner in it. We're the ones giving you insights. We're the ones helping you with testing things that might work. And if we could make your life easier, then you could just go do the fun stuff of telling your stories, right? [1:27:27] where they come up with an idea and they kind of flesh it out. In your case, maybe it's finding the person and it's like reading about them. This is like pre-work that they do. [1:27:38] And sometimes they'll do work by looking at tweets or watching other YouTube creators or, you know, listening to other things. And so imagine a world where we can actually use AI to, like, generate content. [1:27:52] ideas for you based on what we know your community of subscribers and viewers are watching right so that's what i'm very excited about in some you know future world where i'd love to you know see you using that it's gonna it's gonna launch next year there's already a version of it in youtube studio you can just type in a word you could be like

[1:28:12] vision and then it will give you ideas and other videos and topics and keywords that are being searched that's one exciting one another really exciting one is we launched thumbnail test and compare so create a spot on a lot of time on thumbnails a lot of time and we've been working a lot with creators we've been very systematic about just getting feedback and getting it out there it's just rolled out um even uh to a bigger set of creators yesterday actually by the time [1:28:42] probably you know you might have it in your hands, Larry. And so you're able to basically put two thumbnails, you know, up to three, two, three or, you know, thumbnails and the system will actually A/B test them. [1:28:56] and see which one actually works versus you sort of designing a thumbnail and insulting it out. So that's another exciting area. [1:29:03] Dreams coming true [1:29:05] I can't wait to try that. It feels like it's like the edit button for Twitter where it's like, come on, why don't we have this? [1:29:10] And here it is. That's awesome. Yeah, I've been trying to do some more testing on that stuff. And there's all these clunky tools people have built that are like hacky on top of YouTube to try to do this for you. So I'm really excited to try that. [1:29:21] Before we get to our very exciting lightning round, is there anything else you want to leave listeners with? Anything else you wanted to touch on or share? [1:29:26] I think. [1:29:27] One of the questions I get a lot of the time is like, [1:29:30] How can I be a peer? [1:29:32] How can I convert into product management? [1:29:36] and [1:29:37] I just want to say, like, I'm this Nigerian girl. I don't have an MBA. [1:29:42] I didn't work in consulting and I'm here. Right. And I genuinely think that some of the best product managers come from something else because you have empathy for being on the other side. And so.

[1:29:57] You know, what I always say to people is like, [1:29:59] There's a power of 10,000 hours. [1:30:02] And you see a lot of stuff I spoke about, there's a lot of this kind of immersing yourself. [1:30:07] So already start doing product management before you're a product manager. [1:30:12] Open up your favorite apps. What are the top 10 problems you see? [1:30:16] in your head design what the world could look like if you fix them right and what you do by doing that is this constant training of your product sense so when the opportunity comes [1:30:26] So you don't get lucky, right, but you get this opportunity meets preparation. [1:30:30] You're already prepared. I love that. By the way, I think you're the third Nigerian guest on this podcast. There's something in the water in Nigeria. [1:30:37] That's creating a lot of great product leaders. They say get you a Nigerian friend. We keep it real. Well, with that, we've reached our very exciting lightning round. Are you ready? [1:30:47] I'm ready. [1:30:49] All right. What are two or three books you've recommended most to other people? [1:30:53] All right. [1:30:54] Really, really love this book called [1:30:58] 48 Laws of Power. I know it sounds very Machianelian. Beautiful book. Another book that [1:31:04] is my absolute one of my absolute favorites is the the garden of small things [1:31:10] It's so beautifully written. [1:31:12] a really wonderful book. And more recently, a book that keeps popping up in my mind is Outliers. [1:31:23] by Malcolm Gladwell. Such a beautiful book because it just goes back to what we talked about earlier. It helps you

[1:31:30] see that there are patterns in certain things. [1:31:33] Right. And that's yeah, I mean, it's been coming up lately quite a lot. I'm a voracious reader, by the way. Find me on Goodreads. [1:31:40] I read a lot. Oh, that's amazing. We will find that. What is a favorite recent movie or TV show that you really enjoyed? Oh my God, the beer. [1:31:50] Just the beer, go watch it. It feels like being a PN. Honestly, the beer is the show. I think it's on Star or Disney. Hulu. [1:31:59] Hulu, that's the one in the US, yes. And it's about a chef. It's just... [1:32:05] So well done. [1:32:06] Beautiful cinematography, but also you feel the heat in that kitchen. You feel it. It's very stressful to watch that show. Yeah. Second season is less stressful, at least. Wait, did you notice the season is less stressful because... [1:32:20] The restaurant is closed. [1:32:22] That's called cinematography. The pace goes down and it picks up when a restaurant's opening it. Oh yeah, that lasts. [1:32:31] Interestingly, The Bear has been the most recurring recommended show on this podcast recently. [1:32:35] There's like a phase of... [1:32:36] There's a phase of Last of Us, there's a phase of White Lotus, and now it's the bear. [1:32:40] We'll see what comes next. I want to be contrary now. I'm trying to think of something else. I've been a huge fan of this new show on HBO called Scavenger's Reign. [1:32:50] If folks haven't seen that, it's incredible. It's animated. [1:32:54] and sci-fi-ish, and it's just like, wow, can't wait to watch more. [1:32:58] Anyway, that's my answer. That's not about me. Let's keep going. What's a favorite interview question that you'd like to ask candidates that you're interviewing?

[1:33:05] Two questions. If there are people that are true, what is your leadership philosophy? The amount of leaders who have never thought about that is quite scary. And if you're just pure product chops, tell me your favorite product. [1:33:18] Product you're most passionate about. [1:33:20] And why? [1:33:21] and I look for the storytelling. Do you start with a problem? You know, I wake up in the morning, I'm always looking for like the mood, music is like the backdrop to my life, and I open up Spotify and it just finds exactly what I need to like. I just told you the problem and the solution, right? So I look for those kind of things. Then I'll ask, [1:33:38] if you could approve it, [1:33:40] What would you do? I love it. [1:33:43] Thank you. [1:33:43] That's an awesome one. [1:33:45] What is a favorite product you recently discovered that you love, whether it's physical or digital? [1:33:51] There's a product I'm using a lot now, very simplistic. It's a product called SeamCycle. [1:33:57] And it basically allows you to set an alarm, but a progressive music alarm. [1:34:04] to wake you up because I don't want that jarring like in the morning. It kind of just gets me there. But it also tracks my sleep using the microphone. [1:34:12] So it tells me whether I'm coughing or whether I woke up or I'm snoring if I'm like in the wrong position. It also shows stats. Like when I'm in Nigeria, I snore less than everybody. When I'm in certain countries, I snore more than everybody. It's pretty cool. [1:34:30] It feels like we have a Nana to watch our kid. It's like a camera that's watching him sleep all day. And I feel like I need that for me because it tells you when he was woken up.

[1:34:36] How long has he been sleeping? That's awesome. It's called Sleep Cycle. Okay, we'll link to that in the show notes. [1:34:42] Do you have a favorite life motto that you often come back to or share with friends or find useful just either in your day life or in work? [1:34:51] I'm going to pull it up. It's a poem called Invictus. [1:34:55] And I love this quote because [1:34:58] he was going through issues with his leg, [1:35:01] and was actually going to like potentially use it and then wrote this quote. I want to read the last part. It's worth reading, looking up. [1:35:10] It says, [1:35:11] It matters not how straight the gate is. [1:35:14] How charged with punishments the scroll! [1:35:17] I am the master of my fate. [1:35:19] I am the captain of my soul. [1:35:21] And the last two lines that I'm the master of my fate, I'm the captain of my soul, is literally my Twitter. [1:35:28] uh, thing, right? My, or expel call, whatever we're calling it now. It's such a powerful reminder of freedom of responsibility. [1:35:37] And also I think I like, I love this touches on something you also shared earlier, just like, [1:35:42] agency over your fate like you are responsible even though you may not be responsible for what happened you're responsible [1:35:48] for [1:35:49] what you're going to do about it. And I think that for being a great PM, that's such an important thing. It's so easy just to complain and like, oh, we don't have our resources. We keep changing plans. We're losing... [1:35:59] engineers but [1:36:00] the more you feel like you... [1:36:02] All right. [1:36:03] in control and you're responsible for what's going on, the better things end up going.

[1:36:07] Absolutely. And that's a beautiful way of putting it. [1:36:09] Amazing. And we'll link to that poem. [1:36:12] Final question. [1:36:13] Before we started recording, you told me you'd do DJing on the side or maybe full-time. I don't know. [1:36:18] I guess one, where can folks find your DJ sets if you put them out? And then two, I guess any advice for someone that wants to start getting into it? [1:36:25] DJ-ness, what could they do to start going down that path to learn how to do it? [1:36:30] It goes back to this. I'm the master of my fate. I'm the captain of my soul. One thing I love and one of the things that's brought me to YouTube is, [1:36:38] It's just the power of what you can learn and learning through YouTube. [1:36:42] And so I used to DJ initiative 15 years ago. [1:36:46] when it was still vinyl. [1:36:48] And then I quit. So I was like, it's either I do design at the time because I started as an engineer, then I was a designer. Either I do design or I do DJing. And I stopped. And then a year ago, my Burning Man camp was like, [1:37:03] We need a DJ. So I needed to go DJ at Burning Man. And so I went on YouTube. [1:37:08] and I just followed all these DJ creators, the game has changed, I will say that. And so I have my mixtapes on YouTube, so if you look for my name, Aby Atowity, [1:37:18] My handle is always abandtowardy, my name and my surname. You'll see all kinds of videos, but you'll also see my mixtapes. And I name each mixtape after a sauce. [1:37:27] So one was called Sriracha. The last one was called Mango Chutney. And there's one coming up soon that I'm calling Jerk.

[1:37:38] Amazing. And then, yeah, I guess as your advice, then just watch YouTube, like go look for people teaching you how to DJ on YouTube and... [1:37:45] Go watch people and I cannot underestimate the power of those 10,000 hours, right, to become an expert. [1:37:52] so just dj like i got this really cheap controller it cost me uh 300 bucks but you can now actually do it on an ipad and even when i'm on flights [1:38:03] I'll like do a full mix on my iPad with the app. [1:38:08] I use this app called DJ Pro AI, and it's like, you know, I don't know, 30 bucks or something. And I just DJ because I'm training, right? I'm just training, and it's for me. Then I'll come home, and I'll do it with the actual controller. [1:38:20] and record it and put it on YouTube. [1:38:23] So cool. [1:38:24] AB, I'm in the AB fan club. Thank you so much for being here. Two final questions. Where can folks find you online if they want to follow up on anything? And how can listeners be useful to you? [1:38:35] I'm on pretty much every social platform. My handle is Avia Talmuddy, my name. Workstuff, LinkedIn, Twitter. [1:38:44] Instagram, all of it. And this is maybe a bigger one. I think... [1:38:50] we will all be more useful to ourselves if we actually spend a lot more time being a bit more present and mindful. [1:38:59] Like the world will be a better place if people just went into themselves and sort of were a bit more mindful. [1:39:04] I'm very big into meditation, so I think that's my ask for everyone.

[1:39:09] Be more mindful. [1:39:10] Reminding me to breathe. [1:39:14] Amazing. What a beautiful way to end it. [1:39:17] AB, thank you so much for being here. Thank you. [1:39:20] Bye, everyone.