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and many of the companies that I've either worked with or advised coached over the past few years it was all about outcomes like everyone was outcomes outcomes outcomes which is right you want to make sure you're doing the right
Search this video
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thing with the right goal and that's fine and some folks you know myself included at certain points like swung way too far on the outcome strain and forgot that output is an indicator of that so if you have a team that's doing
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all of the ideation and figuring out you know how to make decisions quickly and getting the right documentation and instead of the right product briefs and design griefs and experiment briefs all the things that we know go into to
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successful product development that's great but if you're also not shipping a lot of things to Market quickly enough then it just doesn't matter that much welcome to Lenny's podcast where I interview world-class product leaders
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and growth experts to learn from their hard-won experiences building and growing today's most successful products today my guest is Nikita Miller a huge thank you to Camille Ricketts for recommending Nikita and for connecting
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us Nikita is senior vice president and had a product at the not worldwide before that she has a VPR product at Dooley and before that she was head of growth and retention at Trello for over five years in our conversation we dig
1:21
into how product managers and people getting married are similar a bunch of advice on getting into product management a really cool framework for how to align roles and responsibilities within your cross-functional teams a
1:34
bunch of advice for working effectively as a remote and distributed team and the one question that Nikita asks constantly to get the most out of her teams Nikita is amazing and I am excited for you to learn from her with that I bring you
1:46
Nikita Miller after a short word from our sponsors this episode is brought to you by wealthfront anyone paying attention to the stock market over the past few years knows it's been a wild ride many people who made risky stock bets during the
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with you important disclosures and details can be found in the show notes are you hiring or on the flip side are you looking for a new opportunity well either way check out lennysjobs.com Talent if you're a hiring manager you can sign
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up and get access to hundreds of hand curated people who are open to New Opportunities thousands of people apply to join this Collective and I personally review and accept just about 10 of them you won't find a better place to hire
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product managers and growth leaders join almost 100 other companies who are actively hiring through this Collective and if you're looking around for a newer opportunity actively or passively join the collective in it's free you can be
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anonymous and you can even hide yourself from specific companies you could also leave anytime and you'll only hear from companies that you want to hear from check out lennysjobs.com Talent Nikita welcome to the podcast yeah Lenny
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thank you I'm excited to be here I'm excited to have you so I don't know if you know this but I'm actually having a kid in a couple months and I've been doing a lot of reading as you do when you're going to be a parent and I was
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reading a lot of stuff on the bump which turns out I realized it was something that it was in your umbrella of products and then a part of the not worldwide yeah yeah and then I realize you all have that for pregnancy you have a site
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to help you with proposals you have a site for obviously wedding planning and vendors and and just party planning in general and so is the general strategy to have like be there for every adulting milestone in life is that is that the
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plan yes that's a nice way of putting it we talk about it as being there for the big celebrations in life like we have these celebratory moments that Mark adulthood and so to be part of that Journey we primarily focus in the
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wedding space but yes across the whole journey it feels like the one the two pieces you're missing are divorce and funerals is that the plan or uh do you want to stick to happy things I think we're sticking to celebrations I think
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we're leaning on the world needs a lot more celebration right now so helping folks do that you're here okay cool it's a really smart strategy makes a lot of sense like once you get someone you know with their wedding and then they
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kind of expand from there and they're friends too interesting right because they register on the nod and they're register that's right you're right yeah genius so we're going to talk about some of the things you've learned along your time there but
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I wanted to start with your previous gig at atlassian and specifically leading growth and retention at Trello many people listening to this podcast either use Trello and love Trello or thinking about using Trello and so I
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thought it'd be interesting to hear just like who's who do you find Trello is the most ideal for when is it good and smart to go with Trello versus like jira or linear or sauna or something like that few things so I think Trello initially
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started out as being the kind of task management or planning tool for anyone as opposed to the others you just mentioned which tend to be in software right in our industry and that's who we're we're geared towards Trello when
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it first started was very much on being Simplicity of design being easy to use tactile easy to onboard you don't need customization you can use it in single player mode or multiplayer mode and so that meant that at the beginning we got
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a lot of people using the product that were small businesses that were families that were people planning their weddings potentially and then over time as our users became more sophisticated or had more problems to solve that's how I
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think we evolved and grew with them so some of it's around you know this this concept of progressive disclosure where you start with a small problem and as it gets more sophisticated Trello grows with you where they think some of the
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other products they start with complexity and if you want something simpler you kind of have to pull things away or tease things apart and that was definitely something that helps Trello stand out I think now many years later
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you'll find that Trello is very fully featured and fully powered and we lean into that or they now lean into that a lot more but that wasn't always the case so it sounds like Trello broadly was meant for a lot more than just software
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teams Building Product yes it started off I think being inspired by software teams and wanting to understand how to move and manage tasks easily that was the origin story but then very quickly became the kind of tool that anyone
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could use to manage anything and now I think we're back more the product is way more towards the software development and that's a lot more of the the competitive Advantage but I think the people that are excited about Trello and
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the ones that made Trello really impactful weren't necessarily software got it when you think back to your time helping grow and retain folks on Trello is there like a big win or something you're really proud of that you think
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back to is like that was a huge success in that time to help Charla grow more or be more successful yeah that's a probably not what you'd guess so when I started Trello I actually joined to build out trello's Enterprise business
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and so a lot of our growth and retention was actually about how to get more teams kind of into the product and then spreading it throughout the org so not only software teams but sales teams or marketing teams and so the big push
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there was around collaboration how do you create a shared perspective for everyone working on a project not just a software team so we had a good time thinking through what's the customer experience but obviously in the context of Enterprise which for Trello
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at the time was really tricky because it's such a customer first product I think shifting our mindset to understand like Enterprise and team specifically as a cohort was very different and I think we've done a pretty good job of
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that or the team did a good job of that and I think being a part now of The atlassian Suite kind of definitely leaned into that even more was there like a specific feature that unlocked a lot of opportunity or is it just broadly there's a bunch of little
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things you have to add I think it was broadly a bunch of little things so all the Enterprise features that you can imagine that all products need to kind of operate at the Enterprise level smaller features around you know labels
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like how do you color them how do you name them when do they appear when you invite people do you invite individuals or do you invite teams so a lot of the work was around going from like single player or two three player mode to 5 10
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20 people got it coming back to the question of like Trello versus direct because I think this might be interesting to people just like if you're trying to decide should we use Trello should we use jira what's like a
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simple way to think about which way to go as a Founder maybe or as a product team I think that smaller teams especially folks that are ideating right when you haven't landed on what you're going to build yet I think Trello is a great product for that for pulling ideas for prioritizing them for for tracking how we're progressing through like Discovery I think troll is really great for that for things that have been decided and are ready to go
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and are really in the break down these tasks and assign it to people then something like jira is probably a better use case but I'm sure there are people that'll disagree with that cool building for PMS is what you were doing while you
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were working in Trello I imagine that's kind of a Bittersweet experience I imagine some sense they're like an amazing Market to sell to and the other they're probably really annoying but it's like a surprise maybe or a lesson
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about working on building products for product managers I think you're right it is a Bittersweet place to be I think I I less thought of it as building for product managers and just thought about it in the context of productivity
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overall and productivity software in itself is really what's bittersweet because there are a lot of trade-offs and when you're dealing with a software team for instance how you measure productivity or Define it for a PM or
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designer or engineer or a data scientist is probably really different and so the impossibility of solving for all of those use cases I think is always what's challenging and we know that no one product is actually going to solve all
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of those use cases no matter what the marketing tag lines are out there and so it was really challenging to figure out well what are the core things that a product manager might need to see or a designer or a developer and how do
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you make sure that that core is there so like you get the 80 and and then you spend time on the 20 that you know that a very small segment of users are going to use but they're probably your core so so maybe you spent some time there but yeah the answer is no one's going to be happy and with Trello in particular it was challenging because for a while we were in that we built a product that was easy to use for everyone and so then trying to really
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narrow in on well what is a software development use case and what do we really need for that and that might be very different from what a mom and pop you know shop is going to need or someone planning their wedding is going
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to need that's a good segue to something else I wanted to ask about you used to build for product managers and they build for people getting married I'm curious what is similar about those two groups and what's maybe most different yeah um a lot of similarities
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so folks planning their weddings I mean think of it as an emotional high-stakes thing that you're hopefully gonna do once and so the pressure is really there the pressure and expectations are really high not unlike product managers or
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other folks in software and ultimately wedding planning is this huge project right where you have a bunch of stakeholders friends family you need to manage multiple vendors and the time Horizon for a wedding once you engage is
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anywhere from like 12 to 18 months so it is a long time project so yeah I think there's a lot of similarities there some of the things that are a little bit different in terms of how we're building the product is the amount of decisions
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probably that need that go into wedding planning are far more than you would imagine so one of the reasons being at the knot is so interesting is we go all the way from planning tools so actively how do you help people find employees
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inspiration and plan their wedding day to day to our Marketplace or two-sided Marketplace we have our e-commerce business that's supposed to be registry and paper and obviously our affiliate businesses and the ads businesses so
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it's a little bit different from SAS productivity tool the business that we're in but a lot of the problems that we're solving for users are actually really similar hmm which one's more uh I don't know stress inducing that's a
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great question I think that uh I mean couples like this is a it's such an emotional thing for people for individuals and their families and their friends so I think I I personally feel like I empathize with that in a way that
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I might that I don't do the same for product even though I'm a product manager because there are many projects and there are always things that we need to manage and that's just part of the gig whereas planning your wedding for
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couples like this is for many the most meaningful time of their lives and everyone does this differently so we have folks that are planning their multi-hundred you know person weddings and they're 10 15 closest friends
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weddings but the emotional side of it is the same and and you don't want to let them down because most aren't going to do it again yeah okay that's what I would have guessed it feels like wedding couples are going to be more stressed
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yeah I just had an idea I imagine you think about this uh we're doing a baby shower right now and uh it feels like you're missing a opportunity to do the baby shower invite platform yes okay we thought about it okay and also registry registry platform yes okay
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so many opportunities all the life moments oh my God one last question about Trello do you have any just Pro tips for someone using Trello and may not be aware of something they could do with Charlotte I think the biggest that
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people probably know about but are often underutilized are power-ups which is basically our Integrations and power-ups are folks that are usually doing things that are more complex often but Trello you know when you think about it with other products like Asana as you mentioned linear some of what people are worried about is that it's just not not powerful enough and power through way to do that and there are dozens and hundreds of
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Integrations that you can use it for so that's worth checking out awesome great tip yeah shifting a little bit and kind of zooming out you've worked at a lot of different companies at a lot of different levels also a lot of different
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geographies uh and I want to chat about that last piece but maybe just broadly what are a few of your biggest lessons about building teams building successful and impactful teams this is kind of my jam excellent but it's kind of what I I
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spent a lot of time thinking about and um I think every company go into you approach it slightly differently for me it usually starts with um for individuals kind of identifying very clearly early on roles and responsibilities like what are the
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expectations of a role so and software for most of us one of the things that I think I've seen done well or contributed to multiple companies is the Triad product design engineering data and what does it look like for these roles and
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data science that's like other yeah you put data in there I'm trying to pull that in that's my that is my mission is product design engineering data not a Triad anymore though but I know yeah something chairs just a chair it's a chair great um so so I think about that a lot like what are the roles what do you expect for each of them and how do you define the responsibilities that we have to each other I know it sounds kind of maybe you know
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on the softer side but I think a lot of what we can solve for in creating strong teams is exactly that and the exercise that I often do is I generally have an idea of what I think the world and responsibilities are and the expectations across these four roles but the exercise especially with leaders in an org is to have them sit down and write them for each other so atlassian has some of this that they do in the form of playbooks but it's
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basically I as a product leader I'm going to write down what I think the expectations and the role and responsibilities of my engineering manager of my designer of my data and then we look at it together and then we arrive at essentially a contract with
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one another about what we think that looks like and what that responsibility is to our teams and from there we Cascade it throughout the org this is very time intensive right as as you can imagine and often leads to a lot of
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debate because depending on the kind of orgs or people's backgrounds our expectations might differ but I think that contract early on is really important this is uh super interesting I want to go two levels deeper yeah so
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what is it that you're like is there a template that you have is there specific questions you're answering is it freeform how do you actually know what to write and sort one of these there is a template there are templates we can
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probably share after this to kind of run the world's responsibilities and it usually comes in a couple of forms it's what the expectations as an IC what's the expectation kind of as a manager or with your team and then what
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is it to each other and what are the things that are shared right so you know when we're running an experiment like a product manager is likely to write a product brief and go into the details of what that means the data science is likely to help write the
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actual experiment brief but we're all putting inputs into it but then when it comes to data and Analysis my expectation is that both of you are doing that together and is the idea the PM writes here's my what I'm planning to do is it the data
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scientist writes on behalf of the PM here's what I expect you to do who's kind of taking the charge into these you write your own so I as a product manager I write what I think my role is and also what I think what my expectations of my
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counterparts are and they do the same and then we review it together and you basically do this you encourage every team within your domain to do this amongst themselves yes that is very cool uh if there's an example you could share
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that we could put in the show notes or a template that would be great we'll do that yeah what have you found as impact that comes from doing this like a before and after what kind of difference do you see having done this on the team
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so I'd see recently I'd say in the past maybe five years one of the things that has shifted and has caught some people by surprise I don't know if it should or not is is around project management right so I think like 10 12 years ago everyone expected that they would have scrum Masters and scrum Masters have like largely in many companies just kind of disappeared but then you think well where did that responsibility go because someone has to
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do project management right and this is different from program management like internal to a team and from my perspective a lot of that now sits with engineering managers which is a little bit different from how it was when I
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started in product where actually a lot of that was put on PMs and some of you might recall cause a lot of issues or product managers because they were the ones that were constantly like what's happening in the Sprint what didn't make
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it Why didn't it make it kind of doing a lot of that work and I think PMS are still responsible to keep track of that but engineering managers are increasingly expected to be the ones that are actively like making sure that Sprint goals for instance are met and
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that's a shift that I've seen recently that we do have to debate often I think one of the most interesting elements of this approach is that the product manager role is so ill-defined and so different every company and so I imagine
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much of the benefit here is just like what the hell is the PMS 100 is there anything that you find is surprising about like what teams end up taking off the PM's plate or putting on the plate that maybe other companies
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don't I think a lot of people end up putting a lot on the PM's video because of that misunderstanding and so you end up looking at something as a group and saying well no one human can do all of those things all the time so let's let's
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talk about what a shared responsibility looks like and what I think is really powerful about the Triad is is that it's a recognition of of like there are shared responsibilities you know who's responsible for making sure that
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everyone understands what we're doing and why the PM leads that but evangelizing that is something that would be expected of designers and Engineering managers and data scientists as well on the data scientist piece you talked
21:58
about how you're trying to embed that or more into product teams that Airbnb where your data scientists were embedded in every team so I totally get that it's not everywhere yeah exactly uh what more can you share there just why you
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found that to be important and how you're approaching that from my experience as a product manager it was always a blocker right getting your hands on the data maybe having someone to troubleshoot with if as a PM you couldn't kind of
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understand or figure it out yourself it was just always a blocker and so then you'd also then have to go and negotiate with other teams about getting someone's resources to look at this problem so that's one the other is just that data
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scientists as with most humans like we get better the more focused we are and the more in-depth we are in understanding the product itself right so if you have someone that's dedicated to a zone or an area of the product then then it's much
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easier for them to spot patterns as opposed to attempting to understand what's happening every time a ticket comes in and so the shift your you push for is instead of like a centralized data team that you convince to give you resources
23:05
you embed the data scientists and do you do you call them data scientists you call them analysts how do you think about that is that also various per company that that depends on the organization and kind of the work some teams require
23:19
data scientists not all some require analysts right so that just depends on what the team's working on and what's needed got it coming back to the roles and responsibilities framework do you encourage teams to revisit that every
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once in a while or is it like this team's done this thing and we're good for a while I encourage them to revisit it and it's usually because something's fallen off the rails like I picked up by a really great at it I'd say every three
23:45
months or like every six months let's have a look and see how this is going but often it happens because there's some conflict or tension or something was missed and someone thought it was theirs or not and we have to do a quick retro what do you find is often that thing that is maybe missed or often causes tension execution it's usually around execution and velocity like not moving fast enough yeah what do you find often is a a way
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to help with that as a as a leader of teams well one just identifying what the velocity issue is it's it can vary so for PMS it's often around the velocity of decision making right how long does it take us to actually from saying we
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need to do a thing to defining it potentially and then deciding are we actually going to do it or how and that I think takes a long time for most most companies most people so velocity of decision making so I think that tends to fall on the PM most
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often the actual execution of it right the the development tends to fall on both pm and Engineering so in engineering I find that um depending on the org you know some folks understand like breaking up tickets into small pieces and why that's valuable and how to do it and that's something that I think everyone in Industry probably needs a refresher on and like why that's valuable and how it works and some of that is also shared by the PM because
25:17
like if you haven't articulated clearly or well enough what we're trying to do then it is hard to kind of break that that apart so yeah those are the two things that are on my mind a lot is there anything else along
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the lines of what you've learned about building successful teams I really love this roles and responsibilities approach out comes and output also comes up a lot and and I think that in many of the companies that I've either worked with
25:45
or advised coached over the past few years it was all about outcomes like everyone was outcomes outcomes outcomes which is right you want to make sure you're doing the right thing with the right goal and that's fine and some folks you know
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myself included at certain points like swung way too far on the outcome strain and forgot that uh output is an indicator of that so if you have a team that's doing all of the ideation and figuring out you know how to make
26:15
decisions quickly and getting the right documentation and instead of the right product briefs and design griefs and experiment briefs all the things that we know go into to successful POG development that's great but if you're also not shipping a lot of things to Market quickly enough then it just doesn't matter that much so that conversation is one that I think we often have to revisit on teams on all the teams I've ever been on that yes
26:41
outcomes are important but also the indicator is around execution and velocity so if that's not in line then a lot of the other things don't matter that much and so when you say uh outcome you're saying here's the goal they're achieving
26:55
or the impact they're having or is it just the idea like we know what our outcome will be but they're not actually shipping anything like what it when you say output and outcome what what are you referring to specifically the the outcomes are
27:05
understanding what the goals are yeah and what we might do to get there right so okrs that's one one way to talk about that great but embedded in that is and how are we going to get there and the fact is like the more tries you have at
27:19
it the likelier you are to get it right so we're not doubly monitoring like how fast does it get us take us to ship things to Market I see so kind of like if I can rephrase it it's yes a lot of teams like know what they're what talk
27:35
about what they should be doing they have a strategy they have a goal but what you're finding is there's just not a lot of action a lot of times and there's like a huge opportunity just to like get a team to actually shift more
27:45
often and move faster yeah there's not a lot of um like understanding of our role in urgency like right it's urgent and software in particular probably can't forget that because someone else is likely doing something similar or better and faster
28:02
makes me think of uh I think Frank slootman is his name uh the snowflake CEO here with this book called amp it up he talks about how to build thriving software companies and business in general one of his three most important
28:15
recommendations is always have urgency to never let off the gas emergency that things always need to feel urgent I'll I'll check that out um but I think uh product managers like I consider product to be the ones that really need to drive
28:32
urgency say more about that what have you found helps in creating that sense of urgency and continuing to increase output mostly reminding people often right and I don't think that this the question of like well show me a list of
28:48
everything you ship that's never going to work well that doesn't make people feel good about the work that they're doing but but you know let's talk about our experimentation backlog like what do we have in there how quickly are we
29:00
getting those things out those are the kind of conversations that I think help um I think that having a good pulse on competition helps as just a friendly reminder you know that there are others out there doing this and thinking about things
29:17
very similarly possibly to what we're how we're thinking about it so how do we differentiate ourselves and and a lot of that is about like how quickly are we getting many ideas to Market small tangent the um the competition
29:31
site is interesting to me because I've been I've worked at a few companies where I've had worked with Founders who are like we don't have competition right we're the only ones doing this and and then fast forward a few years and you're like here are all the companies that were your competition that you didn't recognize then that are are shipping great product now so this may be a tough question but I think there's always like a sense of we
29:55
can move faster like it's rare that like now we're moving fast as we can do you have any kind of heuristic or I don't know kind of gut feeling of like knowing and sensing like where this team's doing fine versus this team isn't moving as fast as they can
30:09
how much time do we spend on what I'd consider optimizations versus like bigger bets right like and how long does it does it take for that to happen right because you know you you've talked to the folks or been in the companies
30:24
where where you talk about something that by most measures is pretty simple like you know someone goes heads down for a week or two and gets it done and you talk about it and then you know two quarters later someone mentions it again
30:38
you're like oh okay so what are all the things we did in between that time to now why that thing seemingly simple thing didn't get done and I think that's hard to say as a product manager because everything we do is all about
30:49
prioritization and I'm sure there are a bunch of other things that were prioritized but they're like these little things that come up periodically or bug fixes like something is broken you know how long does it take us to
31:01
recognize it and actually fix it do you have a heuristic and speaking of big bets versus optimizations of just how much time slash resources to put into each bucket unfortunately the answer is it depends right if you're working on a business that is
31:16
30 years old and has many Acquisitions or is very different from a startup right or a growth stage company I think it just varies yep that's often what I find one last question along these lines that was on my mind is you're chatting
31:32
when you're finding that a team is not delivering as much output as you would think what have you found Works in helping them recognize that and not get defensive and not you know have all these excuses for this happening just
31:45
like help them see what you see I'll tell you what I do I don't I don't know that I think splits might get defensive sometimes yeah I think but um I'll tell you what I try uh for me the the biggest thing is just you know if if folks are
31:58
working on a Sprint it's very simply like what did you deliver this Sprint that's it just asking questions just ask a bunch of questions what did what did you deliver and the more questions okay fine but what did you deliver to
32:11
production great and how long have you been working on that like how long what was the cycle time so these questions that are that are really just I think seeking to understand because I understand complexity right and so that exists everywhere but maybe helping folks see that as they're reviewing their own work or their teams were goes a long way yeah and it comes back to your your approach of just focusing the output not like yeah what they're
32:39
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33:32
for a long time since 2010 I believe yeah and a lot of people kind of move out of PM and so it's really cool to talk to someone who's been in the field for a while what have you seen in terms of how product maybe has changed the role of
33:44
product management the role of product leadership and also maybe other functions like designer engineering yeah I think the biggest change for product kind of macro is how I'm mainstream it is that I I still find fascinating
34:00
the but getting degrees in product management and going to business school to transition into product management and like the whole discipline and there's a whole business honestly around the business of product management which
34:14
I find really fascinating and didn't exist I think for better or worse it comes with a lot of good and in some ways I think might have removed some of the quirkiness and creativity that probably is required a product uh but
34:27
that's probably a different podcast so that's one just macro in terms of the roles I think that what we're talking before about roles and responsibilities and and defining those for product managers I think product managers are
34:42
increasingly I think a bit more technical or expected to be I think there was a moment where they were Technical and then it was no no we're all generalists and now I think we're going back to PM's need to be more technical I think designers the
34:56
expectation is that they'll be more business oriented right design as a as a means honestly to an end I think that's trending and probably for the better I think the best designers I've ever worked with are also like exceptionally
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Savvy business people and I think Engineers are are increasingly becoming what a more product focused more user focused so you know product Engineers or something Trello I think did really well this idea that great ideas can come from
35:27
anywhere in the org and any function I think is really magical so as you're seeing PM's becoming more technical I think designers becoming more business oriented Engineers are becoming a lot more product user focused to me that's
35:40
amazing because it means that we're getting closer to what I'd consider like really deep collaboration and it's not to say that we're not experts like there are expertise within that that we expect of folks but that care for other
35:53
disciplines I think is where a lot of magic happens that's really interesting when you say PM's getting more technical what do you when you're hiring interviewing what kind of what are you looking for like PMS need to learn to
36:06
code how technical do you find they I don't think so necessarily I think a lot more PMS are a lot more PMS are taking boot camps or coding classes which I think is all to the good I don't know that it's a requirement but there is
36:19
more of that and I think is very helpful similarly a lot more PMS are taking more you know classes or digging more into Data analysis also really valuable so yeah I don't think it's a requirement I am not like a technical PM I don't have a tech background I think I've been doing it long enough at this point to to you know do okay but I think it's a benefit you said that the PM is becoming more of just like a thing with training classes
36:46
and courses yeah I did a search Once on LinkedIn for how many product managers there are uh guess how many PMS there are in the world uh that have the title PM in their LinkedIn profile a lot I'm guessing a lot two million that's wild
37:01
that's wild yeah and there's 800 000 just in the US and so wow it's like a large a large groups yeah back in my um Ed Tech Days A friend of mine her kids were in school and she came in one day her son was in grade school at the time
37:17
in elementary school and he had a like this you know match to what careers what you see and they had person at a computer this image and it was product manager there was a an option for product manager and that's when I knew I
37:31
was like okay this is this is mainstream we're about to become Consultants yeah I always used to joke no one grows up and it's like I want to be a product manager when I grew up but I think it's starting to it's starting I think yeah
37:44
while we're on that topic I imagine people often ask you for advice on how to get into product management do you have any advice there for folks that are listening though maybe want to get into that there are many ways now I think
37:56
there are a lot of the the typical programs that a lot of the big tech companies have I think is one way I think getting into startups as a product manager is a pretty awesome way to get into product because it's just a lot of problem
38:11
solving the problem with that is you don't have anyone to teach you the right way but the product will teach you the right and wrong way if you know you're with a team that that is moving quickly so yeah I still think that's
38:24
working on smaller products and companies is a great way to get into product management in part because you'll get to touch all of the functions that are kind of required parts of the product discipline and I think it's hard to get that
38:38
experience otherwise the PM role we haven't talked about this it's just like very hard and very stressful and mostly sucks in many ways yes and we could talk about that if you want but uh it was more of a segue to um
38:52
work-life balance which I know you have some strong opinions yeah so I don't know you could take it in your direction but just like thoughts on work-life balance slash how hard the PM roll is the PM role is really hard I feel um especially now that I'm
39:06
managing a lot of teams right and PMs that a lot of love different levels I do find that periodically I'd remind them with like the core of my being that like I know this is hard right like it is hard there are a lot of expectations
39:23
you're expected to be competent across many areas all the time you're expected to have an answer and you're expected to like keep your calm and like not lose your and that's really hard it just is it's stressful right so I think I
39:38
spend quite a bit of time with my team my PM's like helping them understand that I understand that and so when we're problem solving let's probably not solve for everything let's like focus on one of many things that are expected
39:50
so yeah it's really hard on work-life balance as I mentioned to you of like think about this a lot I am currently a mom and as you can imagine like that's a lot to to manage at any given time and so recently when I think about work-life
40:07
balance I don't I don't use the word balance I use optimization right it's this question of like what are you optimizing for right now whether it's today or this quarter this year with the understanding that I don't think you can have it all at the same time all the time and so I'm like increasingly coming to peace with that where that's been interesting over the course of my career it's Chinese with my husband about this yesterday I was
40:34
thinking about it was early in my career I remember when we had big releases like folks would just were non-stop for a couple of weeks we would stay in the office late we would come in early if it was International we just probably
40:47
wouldn't sleep because we wanted to make sure we Q8 everything before we released it like and that was an expected part of the product development life cycle and there was a lot of my early product years and I I just did it and it was very exciting
41:00
and I quite enjoyed it but even then at the flip side of it for me was I also I was a runner back then so if I was training for a half marathon or a marathon then like you know the next week I'd probably do my long run in the
41:12
morning and not start work until 10 a.m like that was my version of balance right and I think we're all lucky enough many of us excuse me are lucky enough especially in Tech that a lot of companies kind of get that form of flexibility so
41:28
now fast forward 13 years it's it is very similar it's like I don't I don't do all of the drop-offs and pickups for the kids but you know there are some weeks where I'm like this is the week I'm gonna do all of the drop-offs and
41:41
Pickups or this is the day and that's felt much healthier for me than this expectation that I'm somehow gonna balance it all and everything is going to be equally great or cared for all the time I think what I'm hearing is uh essentially which I really like and
41:59
agree with is like sometimes you're just gonna have to go Sprint and go hard and work really hard and go long hours and then that doesn't need to last forever and then when it's not enjoy that extra time and I'm kind of like rebuild and
42:14
recharge and do the things you got to do yeah that's that's about right yeah I find the same thing I find that just like working hard is very uh correlated with success and a lot of times it's just a lot of long hours and sometimes
42:26
you can't balance it right for periods of time right and it can also be you know at different points in your life right so right now at this particular moment in my life I'm probably not gonna go hard at a super early stage startup
42:42
right because I believe that you probably need to be in person and working really hard together for long periods of time and not everyone feels this way I know that I've had these conversations with lots of friends and colleagues but so
42:57
personally for me that's probably not the decision I would make at this moment in my life yeah I get that another area I wanted to touch on is remote work and distributed work I believe most of your career your remote or you worked with remote teams
43:10
and distributed teams and that's such a on Trend uh thing now where a lot of teams are working hybrid working remotely working in distributed teams what have you learned about being successful working with distributed and
43:22
remote teams yes that's uh my entire career has been with remote our distributed teams that's right um when I started early in my career I I lived abroad for a while I lived in Shanghai I had a core team there but also worked for the distributed team in Europe and Latin America which meant all kinds of crazy hours and lots of Sprints like we just talked about um things that worked well one like documentation it's a thing asynchronous
43:49
communication everyone just has to get used to it and better at it so increasingly just being better communicators whether it's on a video or written I think that's just really important and everyone building up that muscle is really important for all of the roles I've been in this um this notion of what does it mean to have really meaningful and valuable in-person time that can sustain you for the remote and distributed time is really important
44:17
I think a lot of what's happened now in covid and even now a lot of teams are have never met their co-workers like they don't onboard in person they don't have events or off sites as frequently and and I think flexibility is really
44:33
great but I think that really that makes it really hard and to me what I've figured out I think is that it especially makes it hard to solve hard problems like solving a hard problem remotely with folks that you haven't
44:46
spent in person time with that you haven't broken bread with that you haven't like disagreed with in person and built that trust is just really hard in fact it's much harder so some of the things I've done even here at like the
44:58
not worldwide is periodically when there's a really gnarly problem I like wave the flag and I say hey everyone why don't we try and get together for two days and like hash some of this stuff out and then we can go back to our remote lives
45:13
and I think folks have been maybe unsurprisingly very open to that because I think they see the like not only the efficiency but the camaraderie that can happen there as opposed to what was happening potentially on on uh you
45:26
know hangouts or a zoom call what does that event look like like where do you do it what's roughly an agenda one the agenda is pretty tight before we get there write myself or someone else were responsible for making sure that that's
45:39
an um a well articulated agenda that we all kind of agree on before we even get there so I think that's one I think 48 hours two nights right and that's important to me because it is the tends to still just be hours in a conference
45:55
room or a meeting room during the day but you do need to build in the and let's go have dinner since we're all in person anyway or let's have an extended lunch and maybe an extended day I think that's just really important and even early in my
46:11
career when I was working more internationally the company I worked for was pretty amazing because two or three times a year the entire company globally came together for a week or two and it made a huge difference and many of the folks that I worked with there are still you know friends and mentors are you able to share what was the challenge you're trying to overcome in one of these times yeah I I can speak about it generally which was just
46:37
we had a change in strategy and we need to land a couple of core decisions about what we might build and there were lots of documents and lots of conversations and the back to the velocity of decision making like remotely that can be really hard because with time zones someone sends a doc you comment on it you get to the other day by the end of the week and so days and days have passed and we still haven't Landed It and people have really strong
47:02
opinions obviously about something that big so I was like nope okay great with a flag and not everyone could make it most people could and the folks who could not were yes on a screen was there anything specific in that off-site that helped you get your
47:20
resolution in that particular one was one very cross-functional and the the unlock there was giving the data person the space to educate all of us that was it it was like you have the floor educate yeah I find that's often the
47:41
solution is people just don't have all the same information that they're basing their decision on so make sure everyone starts with the same Foundation awesome and it comes back to your uh push to get data integrated into every
47:53
team and make that part of the four quad Triad that chair is the chair anything else around remote work or distributed work that you found to be incredibly impactful or important well the flexibility of it that I'm sure we've
48:07
you've talked about with others that is really important I do think that the in Trello and atlassian I think did this really well is having standards around a couple things the biggest one I think was overlapping work hours
48:22
so everyone had General flexibility but there were some set of hours where everyone needed to be online at the same time for the most part every day and that made a big difference onboarding happened in person I think that in-person onboarding for new folks
48:39
is really important especially for for everyone for any new person in an organization I think how we work culturally having a contact that you can reach out to all of that I think is really crucial I'm definitely of the
48:52
so much of my early learning was in person and I have no idea how we're going to replicate that and a non-office setting it's just really hard how long do you try to have that person in the office for onboarding is like a week is it a few days a week
49:10
shifting a little bit just a few more questions okay you mentioned you worked in China you also worked in the UK for a while obviously in the US now what have you found to be some of the biggest differences in maybe the product
49:22
culture or just culture in general working in these different areas the confusion around what product management is is universal that's like not specific to to us I think and the fact that it's changing that I think was the same
49:38
um I don't know that I found that many differences in terms of kind of the the how we approached goal setting all very similar the need for urgency like all those principles I think this are the same no matter where you are
49:53
part what I experienced when I started in Shanghai was the feeling that the product management manager was expected to have all the answers um which as you can imagine was really overwhelming and so I remember because I was young and I didn't know that much
50:12
about product management and I definitely did not have all the answers I spent a lot of time helping the team help me create answers and that was a little bit of a culture shift in our team at the time and I actually think that's kind of carried me through my entire career right which is trying to figure out how to share the product management load so like we're like equally responsible for what we're building so so that was a good good like
50:41
unintentional learning that I think has been really important for my career I think that part of that learning that I've had obviously here and and in London as well was the figuring out how to make room for creativity
50:59
so in Shanghai and and also in London at the time this was a decade now so many things have changed since then there just didn't seem to be as much room for ideas to come from anywhere which I think is also related to what I've seen
51:12
before so like making space for people across functions to share ideas and then across geographies to share ideas especially in companies where English might have been the primary language but most of the employees were not native
51:28
English speakers like there was a lot of time I think that I felt that I wanted to spend and I did on just creating space for people to like comfortably share their ideas honestly and and that for me was really formative because I think it's been
51:45
yeah it's it's really impacted how I've approached my entire career and I don't know that I would have had I not had those experiences I was browsing through your LinkedIn post and you said something just like that on LinkedIn of just like how formative that experience was for you I know it's not something people can just like yeah I'm gonna go to China and work first startup but yeah it sounds like you recommend working at companies
52:07
of different cultures because it feels like it kind of like is a lens yeah I do I I also think you know my I am my family I'm Jamaican I'm a Jamaican immigrant and so all of our experiences inform like how we perform our jobs and
52:20
how we think about problems and and being able to to expand that is yes I would recommend it to every and anyone that gets the opportunity and I think it's really important as product managers because I think it's really hard to be a product
52:37
manager if you cannot empathize right with the people and problems that you're solving for and being out of your comfort zone obviously is one way to learn empathy I love that one final question is there before we get to a very exciting
52:54
lightning round uh not to not to not count that those questions are there just any like Frameworks or processes or methods that you've found to be very valuable in your career as a product leader that you would want to share the
53:08
question I asked myself and I ask everyone in my life probably either whether it's on my team or when folks friends talk to me I always ask what are you optimizing for like that's the question it's what are you optimizing for and it's you know the
53:24
short medium long term and product but it's the what are you optimizing for today this quarter this year whatever time Horizon and I think that can be just a really Illuminating way of thinking about obviously honestly like
53:36
just how are you spending your time and I think it works for product as well like every time we talk about okr or goal setting ultimately it is what are we optimizing for for some period of time and I think that always for me
53:49
whether personally or in product is very Illuminating I love that I'm pretty sure I've asked that question a thousand times myself uh one thing I find those people get annoyed with you just like okay you're such a such a PM just like I
54:02
know but it worked it does work but it works what are some instances where you deploy this question like is it in a meeting where someone's asking a question or just like what are we optimizing for here I mean I asked this question like all the time I asked this question to my husband like what are we out I'm sure make sure he loves it he was a pre-m too so he gets it okay okay that's it um I asked this to my five-year-old honestly five-year-old
54:27
um it's uh we talk about it a lot like now we're going to quarterly planning all of us right and and now we have information from q1 so so let's look at it and say okay given what we know now what are we optimizing for because it might not be
54:43
the same thing we did before with new information or it may be and that's usually just uh just then helping us get better at figuring out obviously how we're doing trade-offs right so the first point isn't clear then the
54:57
trade-offs aren't going to be clear yep the other question is what what problem are we trying to solve I feel like I need to make mugs and put these yes amongst for product managers well with that we've reached our very exciting
55:09
lightning round I've got six questions for you are you ready uh yes I don't think I prepped this when I'm ready yes okay well it'll be the most fun then what are two or three books that you recommend most to other people these are not product books
55:25
recommend uh anakmatavas you will hear thunder a book of poetry that is excellent um I recommend almost anything by James Baldwin the fire next time I most recently reread and on back to software high output management
55:43
what are some favorite movies or TV shows they've recently watched that you really enjoyed um I am really into K dramas right now and truly uh Korean Korean drop this right now um crash landing on you is you know it's great it's a love story
56:00
well it's wonderful very out of the box I love it what's a favorite interview question that you like to ask for product managers we think about product in the context of artist scientist General general manager where do you
56:14
spike artists scientist general manager interesting and is there one you ideally look for the answer or it depends on the role you're hiring for totally depends on the composition of my team interesting cool I like that different
56:28
Triad what's a favorite product you recently discovered that you love Arc by the browser company I think they're a product that's clearly having a lot of fun and you can feel that in the product they when I first opened it they have an
56:44
unveiling experience which isn't something you'd expect of a browser and there was something really delightful about it yeah I imagine you've heard the uh interview with Josh I did what a guy what a cool product they love it we have
56:57
a whole hour and a half on it so check that out if anyone wants to learn more about Arc what is something relatively minor you've changed in your product development process that has had a tremendous impact in your team's ability
57:09
to execute helping product teams try as product design engineering and data understand their shared roles and responsibilities awesome call back to our previous discussion and final question what's a pro tip for someone trying to use the
57:26
knot and or one of the other properties oh good question two things but one the big one is probably checking out the not worldwide Marketplace it is the most comprehensive two-sided Marketplace to find your wedding vendors to create your wedding team and you'll find that they're really cool small businesses on there also I'm gonna go check that out Nikita thank you so much for being here I'm gonna go ask my wife what she's optimizing for and read
57:55
something I don't know wish me luck he said she's pregnant right she's optimizing for creating a human probably no yeah that seems right okay I'm not gonna ask two final questions where can folks find you if they want to reach out learn more
58:09
about what you're up to and how can listeners be useful to you I'm on Twitter and Linkedin easy enough to find me I'm very responsive actually or at least I try to be when folks reach out on anything product related and
58:24
ask me questions I think that's always helpful if you have other ways of doing things I'd love to hear about it you mentioned also that you're doing some Angel Investing is there anything you're looking for specifically that you want
58:34
people to ping you about I am doing some Angel Investing maybe a little bit less so recently but I'm starting to ramp that up again so there any early stage seed seed or pre-seed companies out there you can ping me amazing Nikita
58:48
thank you again so much for being here all right thanks a lot Lenny bye everybody bye thank you so much for listening if you found this valuable you can subscribe to the show on Apple podcast Spotify or your favorite podcast app also please
59:04
consider giving us a rating or leaving a review as that really helps other listeners find the podcast you can find all past episodes or learn more about the show at lennyspodcast.com see you in the next episode foreign [Music]