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

1. 0:00 – 4:31

   Ebi’s background

   1. EAEbi Atawodi0:00

      I do not believe in being liked. I believe in being loved, right? And that's a very, very different thing. When I said this once at a meeting, people were like, "Hmm?"

   2. LRLenny Rachitsky0:10

      (laughs)

   3. EAEbi Atawodi0:11

      (laughs) Yes. Right? But it took me a while and reading a lot of books to come to a definition of love, and love is the choice to extend yourself for the spiritual growth of oneself or another, right? It's a very big and lofty and whatever, but it's... You're literally extending yourself for somebody else or yourself, self-love, 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, you know, there's a human, they know I care about them, so when the feedback is coming, like, raw, they know that it's in their best interest because they've... I've shown enough times that I genuinely care about the person behind the role.

   4. LRLenny Rachitsky0:58

      (instrumental music) Today my guest is Ebi Atawodi. Ebi is Director of Product Management at YouTube, overseeing the creator experience. Previously she was Director of Product Management at Netflix and Head of Product for Uber Wallet, Checkout, Pay, and Financial Products at Uber. Ebi 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 Ebi's learned about creating a strong product culture on your team and across the company. Ebi is such a wonderful human and clearly an amazing product leader, and I'm excited for you to get to learn from her. With that, I bring you Ebi Atawodi after a short word from our sponsors. 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 trusted group. With Sidebar, 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. If you're a listener of this podcast, you're likely already driven and committed to growth. A Sidebar personal board of directors is the missing piece to catalyze that journey. Why spend a decade finding your people when you can meet them at Sidebar today? Jump the growing wait list of thousands of leaders from top tech companies by visiting sidebar.com/lenny to learn more. That's sidebar.com/lenny. You fell in love with building products for a reason, but sometimes the day-to-day reality is a little different than you imagined. Instead of dreaming up big ideas, talking to customers, and crafting a strategy, you're drowning in spreadsheets and roadmap updates, and you're spending your days basically putting out fires. A better way is possible. Introducing Jira Product Discovery, the new prioritization and roadmapping tool built for product teams by Atlassian. With Jira Product Discovery, you can gather all your product ideas and insights in one place and prioritize confidently, finally replacing those endless spreadsheets. Create and share custom product roadmaps with any stakeholder in seconds, and it's all built on Jira, where your engineering team is already working, so true collaboration is finally possible. Great products are built by great teams, not just engineers. Sales, support, leadership, even Greg from finance. Anyone that you want can contribute ideas, feedback, and insights in Jira Product Discovery for free, no catch. And it's only $10 a month for you. Say goodbye to your spreadsheets and the never-ending alignment efforts. The old way of doing product management is over. Rediscover what's possible with Jira Product Discovery. Try it for free at atlassian.com/lenny. That's atlassian.com/lenny.

2. 4:31 – 8:14

   Four key elements of a product vision

   1. LRLenny Rachitsky4:31

      Ebi, thank you so much for being here. Welcome to the podcast.

   2. EAEbi Atawodi4:35

      Thank you for having me.

   3. LRLenny Rachitsky4:36

      It's my pleasure. First, I just want to give a big thank you to Andre Albuquerque, who is the founder of 1 Month PM, who actually posted on LinkedIn about how much of a fan of yours he is, and that I need to have you on this podcast. And so here we are. I want to start by talking about vision. Every product manager I've ever worked with and managed, vision has always been this, uh, development area for every single one. It's always this, like, you need to get better at crafting a vision, telling your story. It's also this very powerful tool that product managers have to align teams, to be more successful in the products they're building, and you have a really neat way of thinking about a framework for developing a vision and then telling the story. What are elements of a good vision for a product or even a company?

   4. EAEbi Atawodi5:21

      I think the first piece is that you absolutely need to have one (laughs) , just to start by saying that, regardless of what level you are in the company. So people say, "Oh, I'm just a junior PM," or, you know, whatever level, there is some micro/macro vision that you need to have, because it's essentially... If you go on a plane, 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 (laughs) 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.

   5. LRLenny Rachitsky6:05

      (laughs)

   6. EAEbi Atawodi6:06

      And it's going to be 24 degrees when we get there. And he always paints, or she paints this image of the destination, and that's the vision. Not to be confused with the mission which is, we want to fly people where they're going safe, right? That's not, it's like a picture. So that's the start. I want to just delineate between vision and everything else that people think a vision is. So really, I think there, there are, uh, a couple of key elements. The first one is, it needs to be lofty. So it needs to be something that feels, it almost scares you in an exciting way, right? Like, oh my God, this is something I could get up every morning and, oof, if we did that, goddamn.

   7. LRLenny Rachitsky6:45

      (laughs)

   8. EAEbi Atawodi6:45

      But at the same time, it needs to be realistic and attainable. So it cannot feel so pie-in-the-sky that it feels so out of reach, right? And of course there are leaders who, 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, "I time traveled five years out," is to say, "Okay, I've come back to tell you what we need to fix 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. Now, the how and how we make 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.

   9. LRLenny Rachitsky7:46

      Can you just summarize them again? And are there some examples you can share of here's, like, a really good version that hits on these? And then if you have another example of a bad vision, that would be really helpful.

   10. EAEbi Atawodi7:56

       Yeah. So four things. So it has to be lofty, it has to be realistic, it has to be, uh, devoid of the, any tech or limitations of today, and it has to be grounded in a very clear and potent problem, user

3. 8:14 – 11:43

   Examples of lofty but attainable visions

   1. EAEbi Atawodi8:14

      problem.

   2. LRLenny Rachitsky8:14

      Mm-hmm.

   3. EAEbi Atawodi8:16

      Yeah.

   4. LRLenny Rachitsky8:16

      Awesome. And then, yeah, are there any examples either from places you've worked or visions?

   5. EAEbi Atawodi8:20

      Absolutely.

   6. LRLenny Rachitsky8:21

      Yeah.

   7. EAEbi Atawodi8:21

      Um, one 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, I say, well, there's, there's something really magical there. And one of our values at the time was, uh, making magic. So I used ma- the word magic all the time. But so mission, push a button, get a ride, transportation as reliable as running water. I used to be in Nigeria. That tagline did not scale because water was not that reliable in Nigeria. (laughs) So they went, went for a slightly more inclusive version, which is reliable transport sanitation everywhere and for everyone, right? So that's the vision. 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. And I'll talk maybe later about, like, how that came to, we were able to use that to actually challenge the then-CEO, Travis Kalanick. The vision was a world where you get to this continuous trip so that you do not need parking. Because cities, 25% of the average city is parking spaces. Like, you're in San Francisco, you'll see buildings, just floors just for parking, right? You'll 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 for all kinds of things, right? Homes, restaurants, you name it, parties, you know, warehouse parties especially. They're the best. But that was the vision. You could kind of see it, right? You're like, "Oh, I could see a world..." I mean, I live in Amsterdam. I have a bicycle. I can see, I can see it. Every other day, they're getting rid of cars and actually converting the parking lots on the street into communal, uh, gardens, 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 Uber Pool came in, where in a world where the average car has 1.5 people in it, we can maximize that, and then we can get this connected trip where the car's 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, right? I, I guess it needs to charge at some point, but ... (laughs) But that's the ... That, so that's a, I think that's a really good vision. I think one that's lofty and I, I, I dance between whether it's attainable or not is Elon Musk saying, you know, we're gonna get to Mars. He believes it. (laughs) 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, oh, we want a car that's electric, and we want that car to be beautiful so that we all get to a car that's accessible to everyone, and that's kind of followed through. So yeah. I mean, the beau- beautiful things about visions is that it helps you decide is that a worth ... Like, do I care about this problem? Is this something I want to do? And then you can take it or leave it.

   8. LRLenny Rachitsky11:22

      I think with the lofty/attainable balance, I think that Elon Musk is an interesting example where it may feel impossible, but as an inspirational leader, you almost convince people that it is possible through your confidence and your being in the details, helping people see, like, maybe there's a path. So I think there's an interesting opportunity there to be a leader.

   9. EAEbi Atawodi11:42

      Yeah,

4. 11:43 – 13:23

   Vision vs. mission

   1. EAEbi Atawodi11:43

      absolutely.

   2. LRLenny Rachitsky11:44

      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 the difference between vision and mission in your mind?

   3. EAEbi Atawodi11:53

      I'll use an analogy. Let's say we want to go hike. We want to go up to Mount Everest. The vision would be once we're up there, me describing the picture of what we're gonna see-... we're gonna get there. We're gonna look around. We'll be in the Himalayas. It'd be beautiful. You'll be above the clouds, probably out of breath. (laughs) 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, a city without parking, you can see that, right? And we've all watched sci-fi movies. You can see Mars, red planet. So that's the vision. And then the mission is the purpose of why we're doing that. Like, we're gonna do this to demonstrate that we're able to do it and making sure that we both get there together. Uh, 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 summit Mount Everest, which I will not be doing anytime soon, but (laughs) just... But, you know. And that, you know, we're doing it to prove to ourselves something, uh, that we can do it and we're capable, and we will do that by making sure that we look after each other. Because you can get to Mount Everest and not have all the people with you. Right? That's actually a, a team bonding challenge that I've done once upon a time. It's actually very, very, very, uh, intricate and interesting. So that's your vision, and then the mission is like the purpose and some set of guiding principles as to what will allow you to achieve that vision.

5. 13:23 – 15:00

   Examples of visions and missions from notable companies

   1. EAEbi Atawodi13:23

   2. LRLenny Rachitsky13:23

      That's really handy. So simple way to think about it, I'm just taking notes as you're talking and I totally agree with this, the mission is essentially the why and why you exist and the purpose for your team/company. And the vision, like the word vision is, almost tells you what it is. It's like what it looks like when you get there. Awesome. So that's exactly how I think about it. Actually, I have this post that I'll link to in the show notes that talks through mission and vision strategy and I'll give another, a bunch of more examples real quick. Just okay, I pulled it up as you're chatting, just for folks to have more examples. So a couple of mission examples real quick. At TED, their mission is to spread ideas. They're around to spread ideas. Stripe's mission, increase the GDP of the internet. IKEA's mission, create a better everyday life for many, for the many people. So I think it, that's exactly what you're talking about there, like the purpose, why do we exist? And then visions, so Microsoft's vision, a computer on every desk and in every home. Very much like what does it look like when we've achieved it? Uh, Tesla, create the most compelling car company of the 21st century. It's kind of in between, but I think that's close. Lyft, a world where cities feel small again, where transportation and tech bring people together instead of apart. How sweet.

   3. EAEbi Atawodi14:31

      So that's one where I get, it's like, it's very warm and fuzzy and I love it. Maybe this is my Uber (laughs) Yeah. ... explanation but like, you can, you can see a desk, a computer on every desk.

   4. LRLenny Rachitsky14:41

      Right.

   5. EAEbi Atawodi14:41

      That's what I mean by it has to be realistic.

   6. LRLenny Rachitsky14:44

      Yeah.

   7. EAEbi Atawodi14:44

      Yeah.

   8. LRLenny Rachitsky14:45

      Yeah. Awesome. So what is a vision like concretely in, as a, as a document in your experience? So we've talked about vision so far mostly as like this tagline, like a sentence.

   9. EAEbi Atawodi14:57

      Yeah.

   10. LRLenny Rachitsky14:58

       Is that usually all you need when you're thinking about

6. 15:00 – 20:51

   A simple framework for outlining a vision

   1. LRLenny Rachitsky15:00

      a vision in your experience? Do you often suggest going further into like a doc, a deck, a storyboard, something along those lines?

   2. EAEbi Atawodi15:06

      So I have a very simplistic framework. I actually don't know who put it together at Uber, but I, I, I see as well one of the most powerful skills of a product manager is storytelling, right? Because you look at generation after generation after generation and what people pass on are stories. They're not numbers, they're not stats, they're stories. And actually, when you blend stories with numbers, so if you do numbers alone or numbers with stories or stories alone, 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 analytical. So one of the very simplistic tools that I've used, and I, I, I use it as well right now at, at Google, when my team ships a product, they'll put the vision in there to remind what the vision was that they set out to do, right? And it's once upon a time, write the problem, and then write something, and then write something, and then one day something happened, and as a result, the state of the world where we're trying to be. It's, it's very simplistic, but in its simplicity is the magic because you're like, you know, "I'm a PM, I'm trying to solve problems. Uh, uh, once upon a time, where were we?" Right? Like, what is the thing that is, 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, you know, YouTube was fun and people had cat videos and zoo 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, you know, a lot of people felt maybe I couldn't create because I can't tell a one-hour story. And because of that, you know, people decided, "Okay, I'm just gonna watch and consume and not create." And then one day, we launched Shorts, 60 seconds, and because of that, anyone can now express themselves again and bring back the joy and magic of YouTube. Uh, so it's like, you know, the... It's very simplistic and I'm just u- using that and to the teams who built this, I know this is not your, your, your vision. I'm just giving li- a, a story. But I remember this when we, we, we, we did it for Uber as well, we had, we were talking about, 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. 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 news- I, I write a news, um, article. I'll write the headline. Because if the vision has come to pass, right? And it's gone well, someone's gonna be writing, hopefully, (laughs) some, you know, some sexy headline about the thing that you've built. So I go into the future and I write the headline I want to see and I write the subtitle. Just that. And I'll actually use the, the, you know, the... I'll mark it into the page of like TechCrunch or Verve or something just so it looks realistic and I'll put that in the deck, just to kind of like, "This is where we wanna be." And then if I really wanna go deep, then I'll write the ar- the rest of the article.... right? So that's a very simplistic one. That's, like, another version. One that I use, and I, I, I show that, uh, in a lot of my talks is, 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? So 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. And the, 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, and actually top up your Uber balance, right? So even if you don't have a credit card and you have cash, you can also experience this cashless, seamless ex- uh, you know, Uber experience, and that can scale all over the world. And he literally drew a bodega. It looked, it looked like a kiosk, like the ones in my, in Nigeria, in my country, you have like a sign for them. And then he drew that, and he had the person with cash and a receipt just showing, like, your top-up was successful. And we built that product. Uh, not exactly in that way, but we built that product. That's a story for another day, but like, or maybe for later, but that's

   3. LRLenny Rachitsky19:21

      (laughs)

   4. EAEbi Atawodi19:21

      ... the story. (laughs) It took four years to build it, but that image got people so excited about, "Oh, it's possible. I can see that."

   5. LRLenny Rachitsky19:29

      This is awesome. So essentially these are three ways to communicate your vision. The first is this kind of Mad Libs approach, which is really simple, so the framework... And is there something we can link people to that where you talk further, kind of have this template?

   6. EAEbi Atawodi19:40

      Absolutely.

   7. LRLenny Rachitsky19:40

      Okay, cool. Okay, cool. So in the show notes, you'll find a little template that you can plug and play here. But the idea is once upon a time, blank, and then blank, and because of that, blank. And one day something happened, and that's essentially the, the vision, is like what happened, like the big change that you're gonna create.

   8. EAEbi Atawodi20:00

      And then, as a result of the thing that happened, how did you leave people feeling? What did you change in the world? What's the dent on the universe that you made?

   9. LRLenny Rachitsky20:08

      Can you just share this, uh, this Mad Libs real quick again, just like what are the, what's the framework real quick?

   10. EAEbi Atawodi20:14

       Once upon a time, the thing that happened. Then one day, and you can actually put the date, in 2026.

   11. LRLenny Rachitsky20:24

       Hm.

   12. EAEbi Atawodi20:25

       Right? And because of that, and because of that. And I usually like to end it with, and finally, this was the last thing you left the world with.

   13. LRLenny Rachitsky20:34

       Mm. Beautiful. It's interesting, it kind of follows the, um, the hero's journey a little bit where it's like here's today's world.

   14. EAEbi Atawodi20:42

       Mm-hmm.

   15. LRLenny Rachitsky20:42

       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 here we are back in our default world again.

7. 20:51 – 23:29

   Other methods for outlining a vision

   1. LRLenny Rachitsky20:51

      Okay, so that's one path. The other path is to write kind of the backwards, working backwards approach, write an article. 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.

   2. EAEbi Atawodi21:03

      Yes.

   3. LRLenny Rachitsky21:04

      Is there something you remember of where you did that actually with a product, like you wrote an article with a product you were launching?

   4. EAEbi Atawodi21:08

      At Uber, we, we, we were talking about cars. Then it was like, well, PushaButtonGetARide could be PushaButtonGoAnywhere. And so one of the things I started talking about, and this is the beauty of Uber, it allowed you kind of challenge the status quo. I started pushing this idea of if we need to have this more, uh, multimodal trip where I could take a, you know, ride a bicycle or a 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, and surprise, surprise, I always say platform PMs, you have to be an order of magnitude even more, like, stronger I think at, like, vision setting because you have to build the foundations of stuff you don't ev- even know is coming. So I would do these exercises with my partner teams to kind of figure out, even if they don't know it, like, force a vision out of them (laughs) just to say, "Is this, is this where we're going?" Because then as somebody building the commerce infrastructure for Uber, I need to know what I need to build if that is a scenario that's actually gonna 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. And 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 'cause I wanted my San Francisco buddies to kind of (laughs) relate to what I was saying. So it was, "Uber is now replacing your Clipper Card. All you need is your phone and the app." And I wrote it out. 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 your, your Uber to pay for transport? You can do that today. So yeah, that's a real life example.

   5. LRLenny Rachitsky23:05

      And that was an article that you ended up writing of what the announcement would look like? Or is that using this-

   6. EAEbi Atawodi23:10

      That was-

   7. LRLenny Rachitsky23:10

      Okay, awesome.

   8. EAEbi Atawodi23:10

      It was, uh, it was the, uh, article framework. So it was like, it was literally the New York Times.

   9. LRLenny Rachitsky23:14

      Hmm.

   10. EAEbi Atawodi23:15

       All of the headline, even had their logo. And, um, and then I had the subtitle. And later on over time, I wrote the actual article, like the whole thing. But I started first with that just to kind of provoke a response.

8. 23:29 – 26:41

   The impact of writing clear headlines

   1. EAEbi Atawodi23:29

      (laughs)

   2. LRLenny Rachitsky23:29

      And what did you see as the impact of having that? Like, what kind of benefits did you see having this article that you could pass around? Is, do you, do you have any memories of like, wow, that was really helpful here?

   3. EAEbi Atawodi23:37

      I think it's two things. So you'll hear me say product management is clarity and conviction. And in writing the headline, uh, you have to focus. Headline is not like... It's not a PRD, right? It's a headline. So when I've done this, like, what is the impact of this gonna be? What's the feeling I want to leave people with? And it forces you to get to that clarity of, okay, if we solve this problem, this is actually gonna be this, the painkiller that we're solving. And then we translate that painkiller into they have a headache, they no longer have a headache, right?

   4. LRLenny Rachitsky24:08

      Yeah.

   5. EAEbi Atawodi24:08

      You know what I mean? So I think it brings 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'll usually have the headline and then, like, a subbit-They've just launched a way to something, something and you have to rate that as well, like what is the thing we're launching and is that realistic? And then u- using that to kind of socialize the idea to say this actually could work, right? And I didn't go off and build it, somebody else went and did it, but we had already thought about it and bit that into our platform vision of we need to be able to support these different kinds of ways to pay. There's another interesting one, um, about, y- you're gonna go to the third one which is, you know, write the story, write the article that someone else will write or visualize it, right? And the visualize it, two things have actually happened. One, a year and a half ago in a, uh, a strategy session I was running at YouTube, I actually took a screenshot of the Google Play store. I mean, I use an iPhone but I work at Google so I, I was trying to be ... You know? So I took the Google Play store and then I, I've, you know, and then I created rounded, uh, rectangles, just blank rectangles, four panels, and then I printed that out and I gave everyone a sheet. And I said if we realize these, we solve these problems, 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, the, you know, make money or express yourself or what, what, what are we trying to say and what is, like, the mock, the hero mock, the marquee mock that we're showing? And then again, it forces people to think, oh goodness, we can't show everything so it's got to be three or four things that land the big rocks that will solve this problem, right? So 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. And it's n- it's actually quite beautiful to see. So that's a very simplistic visualization that's not like a beautiful sketch or a video.

   6. LRLenny Rachitsky26:11

      I really like that as just a, a reminder that when you're ... Even the article approach of, like, announcing the thing instead of the traditional press release or even, like, a TechCrunch article. It's 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 gonna see this update in the App Store, let's just-

   7. EAEbi Atawodi26:29

      Right.

   8. LRLenny Rachitsky26:29

      ... see what that would look like as we announce it in the App Store. Could end up being a tweet, could end up being podcast, you know, there's all these different channels so I think that's gives people more ways of telling the story if it's not gonna be, like, a press release.

9. 26:41 – 28:24

   Using mockups to frame your vision

   1. LRLenny Rachitsky26:41

      Okay. And then yeah, so you talked about this third approach of the des-

   2. EAEbi Atawodi26:43

      Yeah.

   3. LRLenny Rachitsky26:44

      ... like mocking up essentially the vision.

   4. EAEbi Atawodi26:46

      Mm-hmm.

   5. LRLenny Rachitsky26:46

      I always feel like if you have a designer helping you craft your vision, it's such a unfair advantage.

   6. EAEbi Atawodi26:52

      Yes.

   7. LRLenny Rachitsky26:52

      So definitely try to get a, rope a designer in to help you tell a story 'cause just one-

   8. EAEbi Atawodi26:57

      Absolutely.

   9. LRLenny Rachitsky26:57

      ... just one design is gonna, like you said, worth a thousand words as they say.

   10. EAEbi Atawodi27:02

       The thing though is it's such a ... I feel like it's an easy copout 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-

   11. LRLenny Rachitsky27:13

       Yeah.

   12. EAEbi Atawodi27:13

       ... in the App Store, right? Like, still tell the story 'cause the story you should be able to tell this like I'm obsessed with Steve Jobs. You should've ... You know, he, he would say tell the story without slides, right? So that mocking it up 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, low fidelity mocks. Like do not use I don't have a designer to be the excuse for why you don't bring it to life, right?

   13. LRLenny Rachitsky27:43

       And often the designer sees it and they're like, "This sucks. I'm gonna make it better."

   14. EAEbi Atawodi27:46

       Exact- 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 and they were like, "Okay, I see where you're going and it's exciting. I mean, I have some cycles. I'll spin it up."

   15. LRLenny Rachitsky27:58

       Yeah.

   16. EAEbi Atawodi27:58

       They, they spun up a lo-fi one, loved it and they're like, "Actually, I'm just gonna make it pretty." And they made it pretty and we got it. I mean, now I'm a director so I can ... I- I have a bit more agency with resources, but I was like a L4 PM, like a, you know, not even a senior PM when I did my first vision exercise.

   17. LRLenny Rachitsky28:15

       Okay. This is awesome 'cause I think it's really vague, this idea of I need to develop a vision, and I think you've shared some incredibly tactical clear steps you

10. 28:24 – 32:58

    A step-by-step approach to developing a vision

    1. LRLenny Rachitsky28:24

       can take. I also want to take talk about how to actually develop the vision. I think you have kind of this step-by-step approach. Is that right?

    2. EAEbi Atawodi28:31

       Mm-hmm.

    3. LRLenny Rachitsky28:31

       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 and there's a lot of ways to do it. You know, it's not like you need to make a beautiful deck that you can just write it out. You could write a press release, you could write a tweet, or you could get a designer help you-

    4. EAEbi Atawodi28:50

       Yeah.

    5. LRLenny Rachitsky28:50

       ... mock it up or just mock it up yourself. Awesome. Okay. So let's talk about your suggestions of how to actually go about developing and figuring out the vision for your product.

    6. EAEbi Atawodi28:59

       You know, there, 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? And so I empathize with the, the customer, the problem. I put myself in their shoes. I really get a visceral understanding of what those problems are and we'll ... I'll talk about it 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 if we solve this problem, what does the world look like? That's the vision we've just been talking about. And then finally, evangelize. So I find just especially at sort of as you get more senior, the life cycle of a product or a group of products gets wider and wider and wider and so I set out a vision, for example, at YouTube last year that was called, you know, Vision 2026, right? And only this year, a year and a half later, are we now at 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, 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 this stage 'cause you're gonna meet a lot of naysayers like oh, but ... You know, that one person's like, "But you know, there's no way the engineering is ever gonna solve ..." Like, there's always gonna be those people, right? Which is why I said you need to come up with a vision that's do-... that's in a vacuum of, like, the technical limitations. 'Cause the limitations of today might not be the limitations of tomorrow. So going back to the empathize, um, uh, one of my, my, uh, uh, peers at work uses this word. He says, "You need to do understand work." And what is understand work? It's crazy to me the number of PMs who never go through their products and go through the onboard- unless of course you're the onboarding PM, but actually go through the onboarding flow, 'cause 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? I have multiple variations of accounts on YouTube. I have multiple var- like, accounts on Instagram, you know, where do... just to... I have in-... multiple accounts on TikTok where I'm, like, just using the product, just like, how does it manifest? What do I like? What's going well? I had the same with Uber. I had Uber, I had other partner apps. I would look at them in payments. So there's this empathize that be- comes very easily if you dog food or... and then cat food. Dog food meaning using your own product, absolutely a must, cat food using your competitor's or other people in the landscape's products. So that's one piece. The other piece is obviously research. But I... (sighs) Research is an interesting one because you, you... I think you use research... I think research is rich when it's giving you foundational problems that are a couple of cycles out, obviously depending on, you know, uh, the level of research you're doing. But your researcher, if you think about the product lifecycle, research is, like, ahead and then UX, right, and then you go into building. It's, like, in that phase. And so I, I find too many people lean into, "And let's go test it. Let's go do some research." It's like, dude, like, 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? 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 (laughs) Spotify, right, for my music. I've used it for years. And I'm like, "Okay, what is it... like, what is it about this new thing they just launched that I love?" And I try to articulate that. So there's that piece, but then the tactical thing that I, I almost make every PM on my team do, I call it top 10 things you should know. It's a living document. So in my org right now,

11. 32:58 – 37:47

    Ebi’s “10 Things” document

    1. EAEbi Atawodi32:58

       you know, I've got, uh, uh, quite a number of PMs. And for each of those PMs, in this living Google Doc, it's like Go/Studio problems, they literally put 10 things, like, 10 problems you should know. And you re-... you revise it. Every quarter, you update it, and they're separate, right? So it's like a living set of problems, and they could be qualitative, they could be quantitative, right? They could be, uh, tech debt. They should be tech debt in there. Um-

    2. LRLenny Rachitsky33:27

       So these are just known problems with the product that everyone-

    3. EAEbi Atawodi33:30

       Correct.

    4. LRLenny Rachitsky33:30

       ... is aware of, and-

    5. EAEbi Atawodi33:31

       Correct.

    6. LRLenny Rachitsky33:31

       Okay. Awesome.

    7. EAEbi Atawodi33:32

       And you, you keep... You kind of farm, like, through the problems. So you keep that doc going.

    8. LRLenny Rachitsky33:38

       Mm-hmm.

    9. EAEbi Atawodi33:38

       And so I first started this at Uber on the money team, and I called it money problems, more money, more problems. 'Cause I do fundamentally believe we should bring joy into everything we try to do, you know? So have fun with it. So more money, more problems. And essentially, it was in partnership with my data scientist partner, so that he... you know, 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. So that living document means that, for me, if I go around, at least my minus one, not just for me, but my engineer, engineering partners' minus ones, and my design partners' minus ones, and we chat them and say, "What are the top five problems for Studio?" They should all have the same answer. That says I've done my job, right? 'Cause then we all know the problems. You can debate them, you can discuss them, you can have sessions where you revise and review them, but we do that, and then we go into a room, and, for example, at Uber, I literally printed them on cards, and I put them on tables, scattered the groups, and had people kind of vote, discuss and vote the ones that is the, the most painful, right? 'Cause then you see the whole thing. So that's the empathize bit. I s-... I'm spending a lot of 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. And that problem is kind of like the North Star. Everything's going on, but there's a North Star that doesn't move.

    10. LRLenny Rachitsky35:09

        Before you move on, th- there's so much there I just wanna touch on that are really interesting insights. One is just this point you're making of when you're trying to develop a vision or thinking about the next step, uh, you should be way ahead of that. Like, you have this doc that you've been working on and consistently update, and it's there way ahead of time. It's not like, "Cool, next year's coming up. Let's start from scratch and figure out what the vision is long term." Two is there's this quote that I think Patrick Collison tweeted that I always think about in these discussions, where a lot of people think of user research, it's like... User research, often people think of user research. You do user research, and that tells you what to do. And he made this point, "No, it should be user research updates your mental model of your customer and what they need and the problems they're having, this doc that you're writing, and then that mental model informs what to build." And so I think that's a big difference. And it connects with what you also said of you should trust your gut and judgment. A lot of people discount, as a PM, like, "I should have no opinions. I'm just gonna listen to what data and research is telling me, and I'm not gonna inform... I'm not gonna try to bias the team." But something I've learned more and more over time is just you should really trust your gut and your instincts, exactly like you said.

    11. EAEbi Atawodi36:19

        If I could put all the research into Bard or ChatGPT, and it could spit out a PRD, then you haven't done your job. (laughs) So basically, that's the qu-... that's... I, I, I...... maybe panicked my team. I came in, I'm like this is it. GenAI, everybody's, like, talking about all the stuff we could do with, like, creating content. But what I want you to think about is, like, what is the value add you bring that an AI, I can't just put into an AI right now and say, "Tell me the big thing based on this research that is ex- that exists." So I've never heard that, uh, quote from, uh, Patrick Colson, but (snaps fingers) I agree. (laughs)

    12. LRLenny Rachitsky36:55

        (laughs)

    13. EAEbi Atawodi36:55

        Spot on, right? And I think this is where, you know, when you think about the qualities of a product manager, I think there are four pillars. Product sense, leadership, execution prowess, and technical ability, right? And it's not product, you know, uh, logic. It's product sense. It's a feeling, right? It's a sense of what is right, and that the exposure to products and the curiosity 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 o-... That's not the job. The job is clarity and bringing this kind of, uh, context really to the, the, the set of problems that are being solved. And you're curing them together, right? That's the key there. It's like you're curating those problems together.

    14. LRLenny Rachitsky37:46

        Mm-hmm.

12. 37:47 – 40:56

    A quick summary of Ebi’s tips

    1. LRLenny Rachitsky37:47

       And one of the challenges I find as a PM is convincing people of your gut instinct of why this is right and, but I think that loops back to the power of vision 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.

    2. EAEbi Atawodi38:04

       Right.

    3. LRLenny Rachitsky38:04

       Okay, so just to summarize some of the tips you've shared on this empathize step. One is basically user research, but I think even more importantly, use it to inform the, your understanding of the problem the users are running into and their needs and things like that. 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 upload YouTube videos.

    4. EAEbi Atawodi38:26

       Upload a video.

    5. LRLenny Rachitsky38:26

       Yeah. Is there anything else? So you, okay, there's this doc, uh, that you shared that's awesome. So just basically a running document of known problems people, our users have with our product.

    6. EAEbi Atawodi38:38

       Correct. And as you, when you start getting to the strategic lens, so you have a set of problems. 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." I'll sometimes bring them in at the beginning of the strategy session and give them a template, 10 things you should know. So you use my framework to give me 10 problems.

    7. LRLenny Rachitsky39:04

       Mm-hmm.

    8. EAEbi Atawodi39:04

       'Cause if you say, "Come present," they'll do like 50 slides. Like, no, let's use 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, right? Uh, research, content strategy. I actually had that in my last strategy session, where, like, it was the most mind-blowing 10 things you should know. One of them was, like, the average reading age of an American is 11 years old. Right? And so you start to think of, oh my God, all the text we have. Hmm, maybe we should use images or video or whatever. So bringing this, sort of, multifaceted view of the problems. And then you do the work of, like, sandpapering down to the core thing, and then you have the final 10. So that would be the tactical. If you wanna take it to a more strategic lens, that's how I'd run a str- that, the first day of my strategy session is usually insights. I'll usually do three days, insights, strategy, then big rocks. And the insights piece is this, where we go, like, deep into the problems, and I use this template of 10 things you should know, and then we come out with 10 things, a final list of 10 things you should know, like a consolidated list.

    9. LRLenny Rachitsky40:13

       I really like this additional tip you just shared of, as you're trying to develop a vision for a team, is bring in stakeholders and use this framework to help them crystallize, here's the most important things to me from the product, and things that I think are big opportunities. And then essentially, now you've got buy-in from stakeholders of, hey, at least they've heard me and they understand, and then here's what they came up, came up with. And then I could be like, "No, but what about this thing?" But it at least gives you a way to bring everyone together and-

    10. EAEbi Atawodi40:41

        Exactly.

    11. LRLenny Rachitsky40:41

        ... understand how the process is going. Okay, so this, uh, week of work you just shared. So can you just talk a bit more about this? Like, what, is this you leading the team through an exercise to develop a vision and a strategy?

    12. EAEbi Atawodi40:54

        Correct. Correct. Um...

    13. LRLenny Rachitsky40:55

        Got it.

13. 40:56 – 43:11

    How to use the “10 Things” doc in a strategy session

    1. LRLenny Rachitsky40:56

       And so you said the first three days are aligning and, uh, fully understanding and immersing yourself in insights?

    2. EAEbi Atawodi41:02

       Uh, I, I usually hold strategy sessions of three days.

    3. LRLenny Rachitsky41:05

       Okay.

    4. EAEbi Atawodi41:05

       I have tried to do it in two days. That is the absolute limit, 'cause I think you need to create white space for just the magic to happen. But I usually use a framework that's, it's literally what I call the narrative structure. So when we get into the, the conviction part, right? The clarity is the problems to solve, the conviction is the narrative. The framing of that conviction is insights, strategy, big rocks. So the insights day is just focused on understand work. These five problems, actually using the app, doing tear downs of other apps. It's just like a day of, you know, understanding. So, you know, in the Google Design Sprint, they'll say, "Ask the experts." In a way, I've given the experts a template. That's what I'm doing, (laughs) you know, 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 wanna focus on in which order? Right?

    5. LRLenny Rachitsky41:58

       And who's, who's in these meetings?

    6. EAEbi Atawodi42:01

       Um, I always have four folks who it would be, depending on the, the, the level of the strategy, it would usually be, uh, product, my engineering partner, my design partner, and research.

    7. LRLenny Rachitsky42:13

       Mm-hmm. Got it. Okay, so it's the leaders of the team.

    8. EAEbi Atawodi42:16

       And depending on... The leaders of the team. And depending on the org, I'll bring in data science if it's, 'cause, uh, at Google, we have a more shared data science resource. So I'll usually invite them as one of the partners, right? Come tell 10 things you should know.

    9. LRLenny Rachitsky42:28

       Yeah.

    10. EAEbi Atawodi42:28

        So they'll say, you know, "We need to do more instrumentation," or whatever. But you hit on a fantastic point, which I was gonna connect later, which is when you get to the evangelize stage...Humans love to know you heard them. So imagine, it's like, 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 gonna focus on, and here's the vision," right? And that evange- that, uh, that last stage where you evangelize becomes so much easier, 'cause it's like, "How did you arrive at this vision?" That goes away. Or like, "But you guys didn't solve for that." It's like, "We heard you, and then we parsed them into these 10, and everybody agreed with these 10, and therefore that's why we came up with this vision."

14. 43:11 – 47:48

    The three concentric circles of evangelizing

    1. EAEbi Atawodi43:11

    2. LRLenny Rachitsky43:11

       So let's, let's, um, segue to the evangelize step which I think ... I always talk about, I always think about the Seinfeld meme of when he's trying to get a car reservation, uh, where he shows up and they don't have his car and they're like, "We have your res- reservation, we just don't have your car." And he's like, "That's the most important part of the reservation. You take the reservation, but you don't keep the reservation."

    3. EAEbi Atawodi43:31

       Correct.

    4. LRLenny Rachitsky43:31

       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 or hears it, that's the most important part. So I think it's, uh, super important to understand this, so I'd love to hear your advice on just how to successfully evangelize and share this vision that you've come up with.

    5. EAEbi Atawodi43:50

       In terms of evangelizing, I think about three concentric circles, right? So the core of your vision is your team. And I wanna make sure my team understands the vision, because I'm, we're, I'm basically saying, "Get on this boat. We're sailing to the vision of the Bermu- you know, uh, the Bermuda or, like, you know, some island," and I describe this beautiful island. And they kinda have to be bought in, and like, have conviction that they want to get there to actually 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, or just the designers know the vision. I will literally first start with the, you know, uh, each of the folks that were in the room. We will basically bring our teams together and present an ab- so for example the one we did last year, we presented to what we call studio leads, which are essentially the triads for each of the product teams, PM, engineering, and design, for each of the product teams, and just presented it out. And I had multiple ... We had the first one, then I had one in my PM weekly, presented it again, then, "Hey folks, still any questions?" Because people are still, it's like percolating, it's like the tea bag. It's like, it's oozing out and it's, they, they're trying to understand it and they're trying to stress test it. And what I also do is I write the output of the workshop. So I'll always write the output, like, "These were the insights we came out with. Here is the once upon a time framework. Here's the strategy. Here are the big rocks." And a vision is coming, right? And then we'll do the vision and say that's the ... but this is the vision of where we're going if we do all these things. And that will be a living document. Comments, open for comments, right? No edit, not view only, comments. 'Cause you want anyone to leave comments in there and just feel they had a say. You don't have to respond to all of them. You don't have to resolve all of them, but just, you know, if you put rocks in a, in a washing machine and they, they polish each other. So I actually like, I like this friction. I always like, I go into the forest, I cut a piece of wood, and our job together is to like polish it down into beautiful Danish furniture.

    6. LRLenny Rachitsky45:53

       Wow.

    7. EAEbi Atawodi45:53

       So like it's okay to have that friction. So do that for a bit, and then once the team has kind of gotten to a place like ... And I'm not trying to get anyone to 100% certainty. I'm trying to get you just on the ride. (laughs) It'll come, right? Then, you know, I kinda go to this sort of s- next layer, which is the stakeholders. Those people that came in and their teams and their managers, go to them and sort of get them bought into the vision as well. And they'll also bring perspectives, right? Uh, "You're missing this piece. We have a lot of engineering, uh, you know ... Support tickets will blow up if you do this thing," right? "What does that look like? We have ... You guys haven't solved the one, the thing we need to do today. You're talking about something five years out." You're gonna get all the variations of feedback. That's okay. The core is that people have bought into that story, and it's okay to have all the ... And then finally, uh, you know, once you've got the feedback from stakeholders, you then go to leadership. And leadership really as high as possible. 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 at an All Hands to present the vision, and we were like, "One wallet, all Uber experiences." And then we had this vision of a world where, 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 had mocks of what that looked like. So go as big as possible. Like, go big. Like let people tell you to tr- pull back. Let your manager use a lasso and pull you back. Like go as much as possible. So then I go to leadership and then I have leadership amplifying that story as much as possible. So those are the, the three concentric circles. Core team, the people who will actually build this thing. Stakeholders, the people that need to be bought in for this thing to be successful 'cause they play a part. And then, and, and adjacent teams, because as we're building this thing it might mean that we tell you no for one of your requests or something, right? And then finally leadership. That's how

15. 47:48 – 49:26

    The cadence of developing a vision and bringing it to life

    1. EAEbi Atawodi47:48

       I would do it.

    2. LRLenny Rachitsky47:48

       It sounds like a lot of work and a lot of time. Do you do this for yearly planning? Do you do this for future, you know, 2026 vision? Do you do this for quarterly plans? What's kind of like the scale of vision that you invest this time into?

    3. EAEbi Atawodi48:05

       So we go back to the four parts of the vision we sent off to you.

    4. LRLenny Rachitsky48:09

       Mm-hmm.

    5. EAEbi Atawodi48:09

       A vision, if a vision is something that's coming next year, write a newsletter. (laughs) Write the newsletter, uh, the headline article version or do the mock. Like the, the re- like when it, you're really getting into a vision, you're talking about something that almost feels attainable but realistic. So it's a long-term thing, right? And so 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. And it, it, the ripple ... I, I talked about evangelizing within the company. It's everything. When I start talking to a candidate-I say, "Hey, my team's mission is expression meets connection. Our vision is this." Then they already, their eyes are like, you can see the twinkle, right? And so the, the ripple effect of this thing is just broad and, uh, 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, at Google so it's like go/you know, studio vision. And you know, people just, people get excited just seeing it. So it's really this evergreen thing that is, we're talking four, even five years. It's not the next six months, right? Because the next six months, do the tweet. (laughs) Do the tweet.

    6. LRLenny Rachitsky49:24

       (laughs) Okay, awesome. I think that's-

    7. EAEbi Atawodi49:25

       Yeah.

    8. LRLenny Rachitsky49:25

       ... very

16. 49:26 – 52:58

    Visions vs. micro visions

    1. LRLenny Rachitsky49:26

       clarifying. And so is this something you encourage your PMs to do is just like always be working on this vision for the next, say, five years? Invest this time kind of in the background as you're, you know, shipping things every day, every quarter to make sure people understand where it's going long term and then it's like this one-off exercise that maybe you repeat every year or two?

    2. EAEbi Atawodi49:45

       I think if you have to repeat the vision every year, you have not created a good vision, 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 bring more fidelity to actually parts of the vision, right? So we had a, a low fidelity mock at a y- at a high, then at one point we did a sizzle reel that actually had like, if this thing is live but we're not creating multiple visions. Remem- 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, it's more, it's you literally rinse and repeat. So the vision is something that is evergreen and lasts at lea- in my mind, at least three years. However, at the sort of, you know, and I'm talking about PMs from L4 all the way to L7 on my team, which is kind of like from a junior PM, senior PM, all the way to GPMs online in my org, all have a variation of a vision that's a three-year thing. Now when they're going into like a sort of micro vision, so that's kind of like a macro vision where maybe they're solving a re- 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. That is a vision, it's a mo- it's a micro vision, but it is a vision. So do that and that's the thing they used to say, "Hey leadership, this is the problem statement. Here's what we think, how might we, uh, solve this big problem and here's what we think it looks like when we ship it." That's a, that's a mini vision. So that's the, the, you know, what, what I'm talking about is this macro vision, but you absolutely can have the, the micro ones along the way.

    3. LRLenny Rachitsky51:24

       Awesome. That is really helpful. By the way, I really like that phrase how might we. I find that extremely useful in communicating like almost a vision basically just like how might we 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. When you ask someone a fertile, a question that leads to discussion and a really good way to create a fertile question is how might we get more people to engage with YouTube analytics?

    4. EAEbi Atawodi51:48

       Amazing.

    5. LRLenny Rachitsky51:49

       It leads to a lot of good brainstorm ideas. So good, uh, good micro tip right there that we included. (laughs) This episode is brought to you by Wix Studio. Your agency has just landed a dream client and you already have big ideas for the website, but do you have the tools to bring your ambitious vision to life? Let me tell you about Wix Studio, the new platform that lets agencies deliver exceptional client sites with maximum efficiency. How? First, let's talk about advanced design capabilities. With Wix Studio, you can build unique layouts with a revolutionary grid experience and watch as 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? Their workflows just make sense. There's the built-in AI tools, the on canvas collaborating, a centralized workspace, the reuse of assets across sites, the seamless client handover, and that's not all. Find out more at wix.com/studio.

17. 52:58 – 55:12

    First steps in developing a vision

    1. LRLenny Rachitsky52:58

       So I want to move on to craft, but before we do that, is there anything else that you think would be helpful for folks to leave with in terms of getting better at vision? Say someone's like, got a development opportunity of like Get Better at Vision. Which of these things you've shared do you think would be maybe something they could start working on? Is it craft this five-year vision? Is it pick one of these three ways to communicate it? Is it change the way they're empathizing to inform the vision?

    2. EAEbi Atawodi53:28

       I'll, I'll give a one point five. I think it's number one, it baffles me and it, 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 I've done that now at Uber and Netflix and Google and it still baffles me the number of people where when I say tell me the top problems that keep you up at night and then I... rambling. I'm like what are we talking about? Like what? Why are we rambling? Th- this is literally the thing that you come to work, this is the thing that should excite you. So like I cannot overemphasize this importance of like, you know, top 10 things you should know but you don't even have to start with 10. I start with 10 and actually I always end up with top three. So at ev- in every deck I'll have three things, like three numbers or four numbers. We just got a new ch- new, new chief product officer at YouTube, right? Because Neal Mohan is now the CEO. When I did my presentation to her, the opening slide is four things you should know 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 vi- like it needs to be visceral and crisp and clear. And then from that, just for yourself, have fun with it. Take out a Post-It note and sketch... if you were to solve this problem, what it looks like. Just start there. Right? Just 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, uh, the, the pictures and the marks. If you can tell the story of like this is a problem and this is the world I see, imagine a world, that enough, that in itself is already you evangelizing the vision.

    3. LRLenny Rachitsky55:10

       Amazing. That is so helpful.

18. 55:12 – 56:39

    Infrastructure is the product

    1. LRLenny Rachitsky55:12

       So essentially make this list of the most biggest problems that your users have with your product. And I think you also include like infrastructure tech debt issues, or maybe internal problems too.

    2. EAEbi Atawodi55:22

       Absolutely.

    3. LRLenny Rachitsky55:22

       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.

    4. EAEbi Atawodi55:27

       Right?

    5. LRLenny Rachitsky55:28

       Okay.

    6. EAEbi Atawodi55:29

       And, and by the way, that infrastructure piece is, I know it's a, a nugget on the side, but infrastructure is the product. Period. Like I, I, people are like, "Oh, tech debt." I'm like, "Yeah, it's a product debt." (laughs) You can't, I cannot build a skyscraper on a shaky foundation. So it is your problem too. It's not for the engineer to like be barging on the door about, "Oh, there's a problem." Um, so that's the other one I'll just call out. That in itself is a problem as well.

    7. LRLenny Rachitsky55:57

       You're speaking to the heart of every engineer listening.

    8. EAEbi Atawodi55:59

       I know. (laughs)

    9. LRLenny Rachitsky56:01

       Okay, and then the other tip was sketch the solution. Just like do a Post-it, draw it out, see how it feels. I think just like 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 fuzzy picture of what it might be. Amazing. I feel like this is the most tactical and practical piece of ad- segment of advice on how to get better vision. I'm so excited to get this out and for folks to have things that they actually do to get better at vision. I wish, I feel like this could be the whole podcast, but you have more awesome stuff to share.

    10. EAEbi Atawodi56:31

        (laughs)

    11. LRLenny Rachitsky56:31

        So I want to keep going. We're gonna keep you here.

    12. EAEbi Atawodi56:34

        Yeah.

    13. LRLenny Rachitsky56:34

        Extract as much content as we can out of your brain.

    14. EAEbi Atawodi56:37

        (laughs)

19. 56:39 – 59:58

    Clarity and conviction, the main jobs of PMs

    1. EAEbi Atawodi56:39

    2. LRLenny Rachitsky56:39

       So you touched on this phrase that you like to use for describing what is the craft of product management, kind of like succinctly describing the craft of product management. And I know there's like many layers deep in this concept, but just to start, what is this kind of phrase and framework you think of to describe what is product management craft? What is the job of PM basically?

    3. EAEbi Atawodi57:00

       So I, I use, I, I sort of say clarity and conviction. And that's what product management is. It's like you bring clarity and you have conviction. Right? And so you find a lot of time, we've, we've just talked about a number of things, all of those things what they're doing is bringing clarity. And, uh, that clarity especially is still a problem. So you know, even when I, I, I'll just give you a little tactical thing I, I notice. There's some PMs who will send an email and I read the email and I'm like, "What do you want me to do?" Like, "Is this an FYI? Are you saying there's a problem? Do you want me to, you know, help?" Like... (laughs) So just even something as simple as that, I'm just giving... Right? 'Cause 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. All you're doing is bringing clarity so that when you're in a room and someone is going off and doing... 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. Let's, instead of doing foundational research, we're doing, you know, let's do UX foundation when the time comes. Like, that's the kind of clarity you can bring that save cycles. So that's the clarity piece. And if you think about what, what clar- when you think about what clarity is, 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. So that's how I think of clarity. And the, the sort of tactical thing that I use to bring that clarity is the framework I talked about, which is the narrative, insights, strategy, big rocks. It brings clarity to why we're doing what we're doing, how we're gonna do it, and what we're gonna do. And I spend time talking and I can spend time talking about all those, but we talked about the workshop to do that. And I, I actually have, uh, and my EM, my, one of my old EMs, um, who you've actually had on the podcast talks about this a lot. I'm, I made (laughs) every PA, like people have fancy decks. That's great. Clarity comes when you write. And so I made them write two-page documents. I will let you go up to four maybe, but like two-page documents with insights, your strategy, or I use the word approach sometimes, and then the big rocks. And the big rocks are not like a laundry list of 20 things, 'cause if I asked you to make me a cocktail, you would put ice in first, then you would pour the drink. 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. (laughs) So it's like three, four, five things that anyone can remember that are the biggest things that 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.

20. 59:58 – 1:04:59

    Ebi’s narrative doc

    1. EAEbi Atawodi59:58

       Um-

    2. LRLenny Rachitsky59:59

       And 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 strateg- as their plan essentially, like the high-level plan. It's not yet a roadmap strategy. I guess is, do you think of this just like as vision and strategy as this document?

    3. EAEbi Atawodi1:00:17

       This is not vision, 'cause this is not telling us what the solution, what the world will look like if we solve the problem. That's the vision, right? This is actually bringing clarity to the narrative, 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, in the world. And the parallel I just look for is like if this was a startup, 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?... what's the strategy and what are the things you're gonna 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 gonna build these things. I need money, right, to do these things." That's what this is. It's just a narrative. And I think one of the simplest things a PM can have is this narrative that when people come to you and be like, "Hey," we see all these emails, introduction, meet this person, and then the PM is like, "Oh, t- I wanna set up a time to understand what you do." I'm like, "Nope. 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 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 periodically. So that you can refresh every quarter, you can refresh every six months, because it, you, you're kind of adjusting to what's happening in the world, what the problems are. So that's the narrative.

    4. LRLenny Rachitsky1:01:48

       One last question then, just so folks get a sense of where this fits into all their work. Does this come before defining the vision and then the roadmap? Like, where does this fit in terms of vision and roadmap, in terms of the process?

    5. EAEbi Atawodi1:02:00

       So again, this, the, the document is evergreen and updated. So I, I'm a big fan of evergreen documents, because you create this mental thing where everybody just knows go, you know, link, whatever the short link is, bit, 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 kinda 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, 2023 version, whatever that is. 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. Now I already had a vision for the, for the team, but basically for each team, you know, they took the overarching, uh, vision and said, "Okay, let's now bring that to life for like our area." They had a set of problems, they had their, uh, strategy approach we called it, and then they had the big rocks. And everyone wrote the two-pager, right? So we wrote this two-page document and then they circulated around their partners and their engineering teams and got feedback, 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, 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 a, less than three engineers on a problem, consolidate. More than three, it needs a line, right? (laughs) 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 enough UX, you have enough this. It's a bit more tactical. And then you have your roadmap. But then, you know, um, after you've done the inside strategy, uh, big rocks and the roadmap, you can impound or after say, "Okay, let's take a week off," right? Spend time in a room and shape the vision, right? Or let's take a day off. Like I did, I've once done one in a day. The sketches I talked about, we literally locked ourselves in a room. We had, at Uber we had no meeting Wednesday, Google we had no, at YouTube we had no meeting Friday. And I said, "Just block your no meeting Friday. The next one we're gonna get in the room, we're gonna whiteboard." We literally had Post-it notes and the, the designer of course was like, "This thing is ugly," and then made it pretty. And that was the vision. And the vision, I remember seeing so many docs at Uber with literally slides from my doc, right? Saying, you know, "We agree with this vision and so therefore we are gonna build this thing for, and our team to support it." And that's great if you're influencing, right? And I'm seeing it right now in, uh, at YouTube as well, where teams are like, "Oh, I've seen that vision," and they'll refer to it. "I saw your, you know, studio vision and on slide five when you talked about this, this is what we did with it." So that's, that's the, that's how I would do it.

    6. LRLenny Rachitsky1:04:53

       Oh man, I feel like there's so many directions I want to go. You have so many nuggets of wisdom, but I'm gonna get back on track. So you,

21. 1:04:59 – 1:08:20

    Conviction, its role in the job, and how to build it

    1. LRLenny Rachitsky1:04:59

       you have this framework of what a great PM is, clarity. Let's talk about conviction. What does that actually look like?

    2. EAEbi Atawodi1:05:04

       We already spoke about conviction. The conviction is the vision.

    3. LRLenny Rachitsky1:05:08

       Mm-hmm.

    4. EAEbi Atawodi1:05:09

       (laughs)

    5. LRLenny Rachitsky1:05:09

       Where you basically s- very succinctly tell here's where we're going and here's why we're doing this.

    6. EAEbi Atawodi1:05:14

       A feeling... So convi- the definition of conviction is a feeling of what you think the, the way the world should be. It's a feeling. It is not certainty. It is not absolute. It is not perfect, but it's a, a feeling of, you know, I feel like this is the right thing to do. And that's what we're seeing, right, when we talk about product 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 l- is literally you converting the conviction from your head into something that people can consume. And that's the conviction. Clarity, narrative, vision, conviction.

    7. LRLenny Rachitsky1:05:49

       So this is specifically the craft of product management. If you wanna get better at the craft of building great products, these are the two areas I imagine you point your PMs to get more clear on things and then have more clear, more con- is it like more conviction? Is it clearer conviction? How do you think of, like, the skill of getting better at conviction?

    8. EAEbi Atawodi1:06:09

       If you have conviction and it's not clear, then you don't have conviction. (laughs)

    9. LRLenny Rachitsky1:06:12

       Yeah.

    10. EAEbi Atawodi1:06:12

        Quite frankly. (laughs)

    11. LRLenny Rachitsky1:06:13

        Yeah.

    12. EAEbi Atawodi1:06:14

        Right? If you're like, "I kind of think, you know, maybe we should, you know, there are like five things we should solve." I'm like, then you don't have conviction. So I'll, I'll, I'll sometimes stress test and I'm like, "What if I took away all your resources and you only had five? Which is the one you're gonna build?" Right? I do all these kind of draconian things that just force clarity. Right? And so then the conviction will come out and it's like, "Yeah, but I'm uncomfortable." I'm like, "Okay. So the thing that's making you uncomfortable, go spend time, so go spend your research, go spend your, you know, cycles on getting higher certainty on that conviction rather than, like, chasing four things 'cause we're..." I don't wanna use the word lazy but, like, too scared to pick a lane, right? So don't peanut butter.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 there'll usually be, you know, the ty- 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, which is the one the team wants to get behind?" And then you'll sometimes hear, the team hasn't even done the work between themselves talking. And I'm like, "No, no, no, no, no. You need to go do the work. And if you have gotten to a point where you have conviction but there is some risk, then let's talk about the risk that you, you need my help mitigating or help solving." 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 gonna make you a better PM. Go figure out why you can't stand by A.

    13. LRLenny Rachitsky1:07:45

        Hm.

    14. EAEbi Atawodi1:07:46

        Right?

    15. LRLenny Rachitsky1:07:47

        So the core to conviction is, like, pick, pick what you think is right. That seems like the core of it, is like be... Clarity is being very clear about what you've learned and where you think things are going, and then conviction is pick your battle. Here's where we think we need to invest.

    16. EAEbi Atawodi1:08:00

        Right. Let me use... I like the word battle. Clarity is saying that you are committed to actually fighting this war (laughs) in the first place, right? Like, there are lots of other things you can fi-... This is the fight you're fighting in and why. And the conviction is, like, how, and the, the way you see the world if you win that battle.

    17. LRLenny Rachitsky1:08:19

        Great.

22. 1:08:20 – 1:17:06

    How to build company culture

    1. LRLenny Rachitsky1:08:20

       Okay. So you gave a talk on product culture and how the company culture informs and, and changes the way the product is built. So you worked at three very different cultures that I'm aware of. Uh, Uber, Netflix, and Google. All very different companies. I guess maybe just as a broad question, what did you see about the culture of the company do to change the way product is built?

    2. EAEbi Atawodi1:08:43

       You think about what Uber has done in the world, and you think about where, where, where we are now, where it's almost... People, like... It's almost so natural to bring out your phone when a 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-forwarded to when my grandmother was alive, she would have thought you were crazy. So just think of all the pieces that had to come together for that to, to, to work. And it was a super, like a super hands-on, zoom out, zoom in, we say boardroom to streets, right? You could roll up your sleeves 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 into what the manifestation is in the, in the, you know, in the city. And I started at Uber as a GM before I became a PM, so I firsthand experienced that. I got my job. There were like seven cars on the road.

    3. LRLenny Rachitsky1:09:38

       Mm-hmm.

    4. EAEbi Atawodi1:09:38

       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 does that look like when drivers don't have a mobile phone, they don't have a car o- map? So there's this big piece of the operations, and what Uber basically did was, "We're gonna work very hard to get the right people in seats. We're gonna give them complete autonomy." Right? And the magic that just came out of that, you know, is the reason that Uber exists. It... And that infrastructure has very much what has allowed a lot of the gig economy actually thrive. Like, setting up these playbooks, trying things, learning, sharing with each other was a very big part of th- the culture. Now over time, I call this kind of like the monolithic culture. There was a culture and the culture never went back and said, "Hold on. Let's revisit this. Does it still serve us? Has the context changed? What are the parts that we need to re- to, to improve, evolve?" Because here's the thing. If you don't intentionally evolve the culture, it will evolve without you. So culture is always gonna evolve. That's just the way humans are. And culture are the norms and beliefs, right? 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? And if you're not going back to revisit that, then the culture just kind of moves on, and then the company's now playing catch-up. Or it moves on in the way you don't want it to, and then the world is kind of like, "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 just because of a miscommunication, really. Right? So this is a really big pi- piece at Uber. The, the spin there on the autonomy was one of the cultural values was principled confrontation and toe stepping. Right? And this was codified in the value system. It's like, forget about levels. Step on toes 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 was... He believed in data and he believed in principled confrontation. He was like, "Go test it out." And we tested it out, and it did well, and that's why cash exists on Uber. Right? 'Cause the culture enabled that. So I've talked about, like, how it evolves and also, you know, the, the badge of Uber. You go to Netflix where it started as a monolithic culture. It was like, it came out of, "Oh, we went through this experience where we had to la- you know, la- cut the org down and we left these sets of people, and they were even... They was performing just as well and had the same output and the same joy. Hey, what did we do right here? Let's, like, distill this down." And distilled 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 at Netflix. But I saw in my time, like very short time at Netflix before I left Netflix to go to, uh, uh, uh, YouTube, um... I saw the culture evolve. Like, in a very short space of time, there was a very high degree of in- intentionality to evolving the culture. Like-What does it mean to entertain the world? Let's evolve, let's discuss, let's change. And so again, going into the, the product, when I joined Netflix, 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, there were debates and debates. I was also part of a lot of conversations around access. Like, in a world when more people are on the mobile phone, do not have a TV screen, might not have a credit card, do we wanna entertain the world or do we want to entertain some people in some places? Sounds familiar, right? (laughs) Um, this is like what we, um, uh, uh, also had at Uber. It's like, do we wanna offer Uber to the world or is it just some people in some places who have credit cards? (laughs) And so, 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, write your argument, but ultimately it's Lenny's decision. And it's funny when the buck stops with you, how 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, I need to make sure I'm..." Remember when we talked about conviction earlier and we said, "How do you get the, the firmness in your conviction?" I saw people do that work. Be like, "Okay, I'm at 95%. Can I get to 99%? What would I need to do that?" And because the buck stops with you, right, in a world where people can sign up to multimillion dollar deals. So like, without any approval, like it's actually quite liberating, but it's the liberation is frightening, (laughs) right? It's so... And so you saw this and this intentionality involving culture, and now going back to sort of s- uh, subscription video on demand, because you would write things down and people kept debating and pushing and pushing, there was no advertising on Netflix. Right? That's a culture that allows the product to sort of evolve and change tenets. And then you see Google where it's very much just this, you know, I, I, I sort of use this, this, uh, story of two little fish swimming in the water, and the old fish goes past them and says, "Hey, how's the water?" And they're like, "Good." And then they swim o- along and they go, "What's water?" (laughs) 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. That's it. Like, what is Googling? We know it when you see it, but what is Google? (laughs) And so it allows for when, you know, you have th- this what I call the, the, the micro-cultures, where the culture within YouTube is different from the culture within Cloud, it's different from the one in Photos, it's different from the one in Maps. People, you'll actually be, hear people say, "Oh, they came from Search 'cause they have, they have a culture in Search which if you say you're gonna 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 and there's a culture in Amsterdam-Noord where all the hipsters are, and there's a culture in West, 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 micro-cultures, but then there is this looser macro-culture that allows the flex of the culture, so it 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's building something that's heavily data-centric, and other part's building something very human, you know, give everyone a voice, show them the world, that's YouTube, right? And you're able to do that because the culture allows that flex.

Episode duration: 1:39:46