The art of product management | Shreyas Doshi (Stripe, Twitter, Google, Yahoo)

Introduction

The introduction provides an overview of the topics covered in the podcast and introduces the guest, Shreyas Doshi.

About Shreyas Doshi

• Shreyas Doshi is a product management expert who has worked at several major tech companies.

• His insights on product management are often contrarian and based on his real-life experiences.

• In this podcast, he shares five key ideas related to product management.

Sponsors

• This episode is sponsored by Coda, an all-in-one doc that combines documents, spreadsheets, and apps.

• It is also sponsored by Product Board, a tool that helps teams build products that matter.

Five Big Ideas from Shreyas Doshi

In this section, Lenny Rachitsky interviews Shreyas Doshi about five of his most popular ideas related to product management.

Idea 1: Pre-Mortems

• Pre-mortems are a way to anticipate potential problems before they happen.

• To conduct a pre-mortem, imagine that your project has failed and identify the reasons why it might have failed.

• Pre-mortems can help you identify potential issues early on and take steps to prevent them from happening.

Idea 2: Time Management for Product Managers

• Product managers need to be intentional about how they spend their time.

• Prioritize tasks based on their impact and urgency.

• Use time blocking to ensure that you have enough time for important tasks.

Idea 3: The Three Levels of Product Work

• There are three levels of product work: strategy, execution, and iteration.

• Each level requires a different set of skills and mindset.

• Focusing too much on one level can lead to tension on your team.

Idea 4: Execution Problems Are Often Strategy Problems

• Many execution problems are actually caused by underlying strategy problems.

• To avoid this, make sure that your strategy is clear and well-defined before moving into execution.

• Continuously evaluate your strategy as you execute to ensure that it is still relevant.

Idea 5: Prioritization Pitfalls

• One common prioritization pitfall is focusing too much on urgent tasks at the expense of important ones.

• Another pitfall is relying too heavily on data without considering other factors like user feedback or intuition.

• To avoid these pitfalls, use a framework for prioritization that takes into account both urgency and importance.

Bonus Topic

In this section, Lenny Rachitsky and Shreyas Doshi discuss a bonus topic related to product management.

Bonus Topic: The Importance of Empathy in Product Management

• Empathy is an essential skill for product managers because it helps them understand their users' needs and pain points.

• To develop empathy, spend time talking to users and observing their behavior.

• Use empathy to inform your product decisions and create products that truly meet your users' needs.

Early Life and Career

In this section, the speaker talks about her childhood, her parents' influence on her career choices, and how she ended up pursuing a degree in computer engineering.

Childhood and Career Aspirations

• The speaker grew up in Mumbai with parents who had a significant influence on her career aspirations.

• Her father was a businessman who manufactured spices, and she often helped him with packaging and marketing.

• Her mother was a homemaker, so the speaker spent a lot of time with her growing up.

• The speaker's early career aspirations included becoming a doctor or teaching French after being good at it in high school.

Pursuing Computer Engineering

• The speaker ultimately pursued computer engineering because it was common for those good at science and math to do so in India.

• She moved to the United States for graduate studies but dropped out of the PhD program after realizing academia wasn't for her.

• She worked as an engineer at startups before getting into product management while working at Loud Cloud.

Transitioning to Product Management

In this section, the speaker talks about how she transitioned from engineering to product management.

Discovering Product Management

• The speaker got a taste of product management while working as an engineer at Loud Cloud when managers would send her to customer meetings.

• She enjoyed understanding customers' needs and thinking creatively about solving them.

Moving into Product Management

• The speaker did product work without having the title for about a year while also being an engineer.

• She realized that while she was a good engineer, she would never be a top 10% engineer and became increasingly interested in product management.

• The speaker is grateful for the people who gave her a chance to do product work and helped her transition into product management.

Moving from Engineering to Product Management

In this section, the speaker discusses how engineering can be a great place for people to start their career if they have a technical background and enjoy building software. They also talk about how it's common for PMs to move into PM because they aren't going to make it as an engineer.

Starting in Engineering

• Engineering is a great job, particularly on empowered teams.

• It's a great place for people to start their career if they have a technical background and enjoy building software.

• Sometimes people want their first job to be product management, but trying out engineering first can provide exposure to many different things.

Moving from Engineering to Product Management

• It's common for PMs to move into PM because they aren't going to make it as an engineer.

• Having a technical background as a PM is such a bonus.

Working at Loud Cloud

In this section, the speaker talks about working at Loud Cloud, which was Mark Andreessen's second company. They discuss how they were hired as an engineer but ended up managing the vendor relationship with Opsware due to the split of the company.

Joining Loud Cloud

• The speaker joined Loud Cloud after interviewing with them for nine months.

• The company split into two companies: one got acquired by EDS and the other became Opsware.

Managing Vendor Relationship with Opsware

• The speaker was given the task of managing their relationship with Opsware despite being hired as an engineer.

• Having no idea how to manage vendor relationships, the speaker got an opportunity to work with many folks over at Opsware.

Lessons from Yahoo, Stripe, Twitter, Google

In this section, the speaker shares one thing they took away from each of the companies they worked for: Yahoo, Stripe, Twitter, and Google.

Yahoo

• The importance of building multiple services under a single account.

• The challenges of acquisitions where there are some raving fans of the service that are perhaps not entirely happy about their beloved service being acquired by a large company.

Stripe

• To be added.

Twitter

• To be added.

Google

• To be added.

The Power of Thinking Big

In this section, the speaker talks about how working at Google helped him understand the power of thinking big and how it became a normal part of his operation. He also discusses how Google pursued billion-dollar opportunities for its ads business.

Thinking Big at Google

• Working with other teams made the speaker realize that many teams limit their potential to achieve great things.

• At Google, people were encouraged to think big by default, which helped ingrain the habit in the speaker's way of operating.

• The ads team at Google had an unwritten rule that if something wasn't going to generate more than $100 million in revenue, it wasn't worth pursuing.

• Pursuing big opportunities was a clear goal for Google's ads business, even if those opportunities weren't obvious.

• Sometimes, they had to create those opportunities themselves. For example, innovations like video ads were not obvious but were pursued anyway.

Downsides of Thinking Big

• One downside is that sometimes trends are missed because it's not clear whether they're a $100 million or billion-dollar opportunity.

• Despite this downside, thinking bigger about Stripe Connect helped make different decisions about what to prioritize and at what pace to go after them.

Combining Network Effects with Core Product Differentiation

In this section, the speaker talks about his time working at Twitter and observing firsthand how combining network effects with core product differentiation can lead to long-term success.

• Twitter's combination of core product differentiation and network effects has enabled it to have staying power.

• Despite being around for a long time, there is still no product like Twitter.

• The combination of high energy, sound judgment, low ego, and small teams at Stripe was impactful in the speaker's growth and thinking as a leader.

Learning from Founders

In this section, the speaker talks about what he learned from working with founders at Yahoo and Google. He also briefly touches on his interactions with Larry Page at Google.

• The speaker didn't work much with the founders at Google but appreciated Larry Page's strategic insight and ability to simulate the future to make better decisions.

• No bullet points for Yahoo or Twitter founders mentioned in this section.

Lessons from Working with Jack Dorsey, Patrick Collison, and John Collison

In this section, the speaker talks about his experiences working with Jack Dorsey, Patrick Collison, and John Collison. He shares some of the lessons he learned from them.

Learning from Jack Dorsey

• The speaker recalls a time when they were discussing a potential acquisition and how he was on the fence about it. Jack asked him a simple question that made him realize they had not talked about how the acquisition would make their users love Twitter more.

• The speaker learned to be more rigorous in his thinking and approach by focusing on what makes users love their product.

Learning from Patrick and John Collison

• From John, the speaker learned a lot about marketing and how to talk about products in terms that customers understand. He also learned to separate the effort involved in building something from talking about it.

• From Patrick, the speaker learned how to think and communicate more clearly.

• Overall, both Patrick and John taught the importance of setting an example for the culture you want to create in your organization.

Five Big Ideas for Product Management

In this section, the speaker discusses five big ideas for product management.

Pre-Mortems

• Pre-mortems are a way of anticipating failure by imagining that your project has failed before it even starts. This helps identify potential problems early on so you can address them before they become bigger issues.

User-Centricity

• Being user-centric means putting your users at the center of everything you do. This involves understanding their needs, wants, and pain points and designing products that solve their problems.

The Art of Saying No

• Saying no is an important skill for product managers. It's important to say no to features or ideas that don't align with your product vision or user needs.

Product Vision

• A product vision is a clear and compelling statement about what you want your product to achieve. It helps guide decision-making and keeps everyone aligned on the same goals.

Execution

• Execution is all about getting things done. It involves setting clear goals, prioritizing tasks, and making sure everyone on the team knows what they need to do to achieve those goals.

The Pre-Mortem Meeting

In this section, the speaker talks about the concept of a pre-mortem meeting and how it can help teams identify potential problems before they occur.

Introduction to Pre-Mortem Meetings

• A postmortem is a review that takes place after an event has occurred to analyze what went wrong.

• A pre-mortem is a meeting that takes place before an event to identify potential problems.

• The goal of a pre-mortem is to prevent the need for an ugly postmortem by identifying and addressing issues beforehand.

How Pre-Mortems Work

• The pre-mortem meeting starts with imagining that the project or initiative has failed six months from now.

• Team members then work backwards from this hypothetical failure to identify what went wrong and what could have contributed to it.

• This approach creates greater psychological safety for team members to talk about concerns they may have had but were hesitant to bring up.

• The shared vocabulary created during these meetings allows team members to talk about things that may fail in the future, including tigers (actual threats), paper tigers (seeming threats), and elephants in the room (unspoken concerns).

Benefits of Pre-Mortems

• Pre-mortems provide catharsis for team members by allowing them to discuss worst-case scenarios in a safe environment.

• They also help prevent surprises by identifying potential issues early on, which can save time and resources in the long run.

Pre-Mortem Meeting

In this section, the speaker talks about the benefits of a pre-mortem meeting and how to execute it.

Benefits of a Pre-Mortem Meeting

• A pre-mortem meeting is a simple idea that can benefit you and your team.

• It helps identify threats that may have been missed or not talked about openly.

• It can result in less need for postmortems and fewer problems.

Execution of a Pre-Mortem Meeting

• Invite people from every function involved in the project.

• For large launches, separate into two groups: one for product engineering and another for go-to-market.

• Start with the prompt "imagine this has failed."

• Alternate between speaking and quiet time to allow everyone to enter their own ideas.

• After sharing, ask people to pick the tiger they find more scary but that somebody else mentioned.

• Create a post-pre-mortem action plan and share it with the team.

Impact of Pre-Mortem Meetings

In this section, the speaker talks about how pre-mortem meetings have impacted projects.

Impact on Projects

• Pre-mortems help identify issues that would have resulted in problematic situations if not addressed beforehand.

• Companies sometimes miss issues that result in massive backlash after launching a feature. A pre-mortem meeting could have helped avoid such situations.

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Understanding High Leverage Tasks

In this section, the speaker discusses how certain tasks can be classified as high leverage (L), normal (N), or low leverage (O) depending on their importance and impact. The speaker provides examples of different types of tasks and how they can be categorized.

Filing Bug Reports

• Filing a bug report can be an L task or an O task depending on the situation.

• For important bugs, it is crucial to file a detailed and explicit bug report.

• For less important bugs, a less detailed report may suffice.

Taking Notes

• Taking notes can also be classified as an L, N, or O task depending on the type of notes.

• For simple meeting notes with only action items, it may be an O task that requires minimal effort.

• However, for more complex meetings with contentious topics, taking detailed notes is crucial and may require significant time and effort.

Classic Examples of High Leverage Tasks

• PMs often know what their high leverage tasks are because they are the ones that bother them the most.

• A classic example is working on strategy but not having enough time due to other tasks.

• It's important to prioritize high leverage tasks even if they require more time and effort in the short term.

Overcoming Procrastination and Tackling L Tasks

In this section, the speaker discusses how procrastination can be a result of fear of not being able to formulate a good strategy. They provide two tactics that can help in targeting L tasks better: placebo productivity and changing location.

Tactics for Targeting L Tasks

• Procrastination on L tasks is common due to fear of not being able to formulate a good strategy.

• Placebo productivity involves intentionally doing neutral and overhead tasks leading up to an L task. This tricks the mind into thinking it's time to tackle the L task.

• Changing location helps fight procrastination for L tasks by forcing focus and shifting mindset.

The Three Levels of Product Work

In this section, the speaker introduces the three levels of product work: impact, execution, and optics. They explain how understanding these levels can help avoid conflicts within teams.

Understanding the Three Levels of Product Work

• The three levels of product work are impact, execution, and optics.

• Conflicts often arise when team members are not aligned on what is most important among these three levels.

• Impact refers to high-leverage tasks that have significant business value but may be difficult or unpleasant to do.

• Execution refers to delivering on commitments made during planning stages.

• Optics refer to how things appear externally or internally within an organization.

Understanding Different Levels of Thinking

In this section, the speaker discusses how people tend to think at different levels and how this can lead to conflicts within an organization. The speaker also explains the importance of internal optics and how it can create energy, awareness, excitement, and opportunities for feedback.

Default Thinking at Different Levels

• The CEO may be thinking at the impact level while a PM may be fixated on the execution level.

• People tend to default to certain levels of thinking but can switch levels with a nudge.

• Conflicts between smart and well-intentioned people or groups within a company can arise due to different levels of thinking.

Importance of Internal Optics

• Optics is about creating awareness of the impact and execution that you or your team is doing.

• Spending time on internal optics creates energy, awareness, excitement, and opportunities for feedback.

• In some organizations, optics becomes the goal instead of being a means to an end.

• Little actions that occur every day determine what kinds of things are appreciated in an organization.

Levels of Product Work

In this section, the speaker discusses the three levels of product work and how to decide which level to focus on based on the situation.

Three Levels of Product Work

• The three levels of product work are impact, strategy, and execution.

• It's important to be aligned with your leader and team when deciding which level to focus on.

• Early stage teams should optimize for execution assuming they have a reasonable hypothesis about what will win.

• Teams should be sensitive to what's right in their situation and decide accordingly.

Execution Problems Are Often Strategy or Culture Problems

In this section, the speaker explains that most execution problems are actually strategy or culture problems.

Most Execution Problems Are Not Execution Problems

• Most execution problems encountered in high-performing environments are not execution problems but rather strategy or interpersonal/cultural problems.

• Leaders are often overwhelmed because they're constantly solving execution problems.

Team Misalignment: A Strategy, Culture, or Interpersonal Problem?

In this section, the speaker discusses how team misalignment is often viewed as an execution problem but is usually a strategy, culture, or interpersonal problem. The speaker provides examples of each and explains how to identify them.

Misalignment as a Strategy Problem

• Misalignment is often caused by pursuing different strategies.

• Lack of strategy causes misalignment in OKRs and priorities.

• Meetings become focused on small details instead of recognizing the bigger picture.

Misalignment as a Culture Problem

• A culture that mainly optimizes for individual OKRs makes it hard for teams to work together.

• Setting up meetings won't solve the issue if there's a culture problem.

• Interpersonal problems between team managers can also cause misalignment.

Signs of Execution Problems

• Infrastructure issues can cause execution problems such as slower movement or outages.

This section provides insights into how team misalignments are not always execution problems. Instead, they could be due to strategy, culture, or interpersonal issues. The speaker gives examples of each and explains how to identify them.

Execution Problems and Band-Aid Solutions

In this section, the speaker discusses how execution problems can arise in organizations and how band-aid solutions are often used to address them. The speaker emphasizes the importance of honesty and memory in identifying whether a problem is an execution issue or not.

Execution Problems

• Execution problems can occur when there is a skill gap between what is required for a project and what team members possess.

• In high-performing organizations, other factors that may contribute to issues are often ignored.

• Organizational memories tend to be short, leading to repeated use of band-aid solutions.

Band-Aid Solutions

• Organizations may constantly solve the same problem over and over again without realizing it.

• Honesty and memory are important in identifying band-aid solutions that do not work.

• If a band-aid solution falls off, it's likely that the problem still exists.

Prioritization from a Minimizing Opportunity Cost Perspective

In this section, the speaker discusses prioritization from a minimizing opportunity cost perspective versus an ROI perspective. The speaker explains why focusing on low-hanging fruit or quick wins can be suboptimal in high-leverage roles.

Prioritization

• Instead of focusing on work with the highest ROI, prioritize work that minimizes opportunity cost.

• High-leverage roles have many tasks with positive ROI but should focus on minimizing opportunity cost instead.

Opportunity Cost

• Opportunity cost is calculated as the value of the optimal option minus the value of the chosen option.

• Minimizing opportunity cost means focusing on tasks that provide the most value, not just quick wins.

Minimizing Opportunity Cost vs. Chasing Positive ROI

In this section, the speaker discusses the importance of minimizing opportunity cost and focusing on big opportunities rather than simply chasing positive ROI.

The Basis of Opportunity Cost

• Opportunity cost involves picking certain things that we would have never picked if we just had the ROI mindset.

• This applies equally at the level of individuals and teams in terms of prioritizing work.

Example of Prioritization

• When trying to prioritize for the next quarter, there are five sure things with a small to medium impact and two ambiguous things that could have a bigger impact.

• Often, people choose not to pursue those two ambiguous things because they are satisfied with observing positive ROI from the five sure things.

• However, pursuing those two ambiguous things could meaningfully change the trajectory of your business.

Shifting Mindset

• Sometimes it's necessary to shift from just focusing on positive ROI to minimizing opportunity cost in order to pursue big opportunities.

• Giving teams permission and freedom to explore these opportunities is important as a leader during planning.

• During planning, it's useful to allocate time based on percentage spent on different types of activities (e.g. 70% search and ads, 20% apps, 10% other big bets).

Conclusion

• As a leader, clarifying strategy and rough allocation during planning is important in shifting focus towards minimizing opportunity cost rather than solely chasing positive ROI.

Allocating Resources

In this section, the speaker discusses how to allocate resources for product development.

Resource Allocation

• Allocate 60% of resources towards incremental improvements.

• Allocate 30% of resources towards big new initiatives.

• Allocate 10% of resources towards stability and infrastructure.

High Agency in Product Management

In this section, the speaker talks about high agency and its importance in product management.

What is High Agency?

• High agency is about finding a way to get what you want without waiting for conditions to be perfect or otherwise blaming the circumstances.

• High agency people push through in the face of adverse conditions or often they manage to reverse the adverse conditions to achieve their goals.

Importance of High Agency in Product Management

• As product managers, we are constantly fighting adverse conditions such as not enough resources, challenges with legacy infrastructure, staffing issues, customer problems and more.

• PMS who have had a large impact and exceeded expectations have shown high agency by taking strong ownership, creatively executing through challenges with resilience.

Where to Find Shreyas Online and How Listeners Can Be Useful

In this section, Shreyas shares where listeners can find him online and how they can be useful to him.

Finding Shreyas Online

• Follow Shreyas on Twitter at @shreyas if you have a Twitter account.

• Follow Shreyas on LinkedIn by searching for "Shreyas Doshi" if you don't have a Twitter account.

• Super follow Shreyas on Twitter for a smaller community of product managers, founders, designers, engineers, etc. where they go deeper into topics related to product.

How Listeners Can Be Useful

• Share the ideas that resonated with you publicly or privately with others.

• Ask questions if there are any.

• Help bring greater clarity on what is going on around us when we're working in teams and working on projects and products.

Conclusion

In this section, Lenny thanks the audience for listening and encourages them to subscribe to the show and leave a rating or review. He also directs listeners to lennyspodcast.com for past episodes and more information about the show.

Conclusion

• Thank you for listening!

• Subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app.

• Consider leaving a rating or review as it helps other listeners find the podcast.

• Visit lennyspodcast.com for all past episodes and more information about the show.