Lenny's PodcastDriving alignment within teams, work-life balance, and the changing PM landscape | Nikita Miller
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
115 min read · 23,046 words- 0:00 – 3:56
Nikita’s background
- NMNikita Miller
... and many of the companies that I've either worked with, or advised, or coached over the past few years, it was all about outcomes. Like everyone was outcomes, outcomes, outcomes. Which is right. You wanna make sure you're doing the right thing with the right goal and that's fine. And some folks, you know, myself included, at certain points, like swung way too far on the outcomes train and forgot that, uh, output is an indicator of that. So if you have a team that's doing all of the ideation and figuring out, you know, how to make decisions quickly and getting the right documentation and setting up the right product briefs and design briefs and experiment briefs. All the things that we know go into successful product development. That's great, but if you're also not shipping a lot of things to market quickly enough, then it just doesn't matter that much.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
(intro music plays) Welcome to Lenny's podcast where I interview world class product leaders and growth experts to learn from their hard won experiences building and growing today's most successful products. Today my guest is Nikita Miller. A huge thank you to Camille Ricketts for recommending Nikita and for connecting us. Nikita is senior vice president and head of product at The Knot Worldwide. Before that she was VP of product at Duulip and before that she was head of growth and retention at Trello for over five years. In our conversation we dig into how product managers and people getting married are similar, a bunch of advice on getting into product management, a really cool framework for how to align roles and responsibilities within your cross functional teams, a bunch of advice for working effectively as a remote and distributed team, and the one question that Nikita asks constantly to get the most out of her teams. Nikita is amazing and I am excited for you to learn from her. With that, I bring you Nikita Miller after a short word from our sponsors. This episode is brought to you by Wealthfront. Anyone paying attention to the stock market over the past few years knows it's been a wild ride. Many people who made risky stock bets during the bull market are now facing big losses and wondering how to make better informed investments going forward. That's why I'm excited to tell you about Wealthfront's new stock investing product which is specifically designed to help you make better stock investments. It has all the features you'd expect including fractional shares, zero commissions, and a one dollar minimum. But what sets it apart is a unique feature called stock collections. These are groups of stocks created by Wealthfront's investment team that are designed around unique investment opportunities. You can think of Wealthfront stock collections like Spotify discovery playlists, but instead of helping you find new songs, they help you discover new companies and themes to invest in. For example, some popular collections right now are dividend to blue chip stocks, semiconductor leaders, and rising interest rates. And each collection includes a summary of the opportunity and trade-offs to help you make more intelligent investing decisions. To start investing with just one dollar, visit wealthfront.com/lenny. And note, I am a Wealthfront client and they arrange for me to share this product with you. Important disclosures and details can be found in the show notes. Are you hiring? Or, on the flip side, are you looking for a new opportunity? Well, either way, check out lennysjobs.com/talent. If you're a hiring manager, you can sign up and get access to hundreds of hand-curated people who are open to new opportunities. Thousands of people apply to join this collective and I personally review and accept just about 10% of them. You won't find a better place to hire product managers and growth leaders. Join almost a hundred other companies who are actively hiring through this collective. And if you're looking around for a new opportunity, actively or passively, join the collective. It's free, you can be anonymous, and you can even hide yourself from specific companies. You can also leave any time, and you'll only hear from companies that you want to hear from. Check out lennysjobs.com/talent.
- 3:56 – 9:41
How Nikita helped Trello develop enterprise features
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Nikita, welcome to the podcast.
- NMNikita Miller
Yay, Lenny. Thank you. I'm excited to be here.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
I'm excited to have you. So I don't know if you know this, but I'm actually having a kid in a couple months and I've been doing a lot of reading-
- NMNikita Miller
Mm-hmm.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
... as you do when you're gonna be a parent. And I was reading a lot of stuff on The Bump, which turns out I realized was something that was in your umbrella of products and then I-
- NMNikita Miller
A part of The Knot Worldwide, yeah.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Yeah. And then I realized y'all have that for pregnancy, you have a site to help you with proposals, you have a site for obviously wedding planning and vendors and, and just party planning in general. And so is the general strategy to ha- like be there for every adulting milestone in life? Is that, is that the plan?
- NMNikita Miller
Yes. That's a nice way of putting it. We talk about it as being there for the big celebrations in life.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Mm-hmm.
- NMNikita Miller
Like we have these celebratory m- moments that mark adulthood.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Mm-hmm.
- NMNikita Miller
And so to be part of that journey. We primarily focus in the wedding space, but yes, across the whole journey.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Feels like the one, the two pieces you're missing are divorce and funerals.
- NMNikita Miller
Uh, right. (laughs)
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Uh, is that, is that, is that the plan or, uh, do you wanna stick to happy things?
- NMNikita Miller
I think we're sticking to celebrations.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Mm-hmm.
- NMNikita Miller
I think we're leaning on the world needs a lot more celebration right now.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Okay. I-
- NMNikita Miller
So helping folks do that.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Hear, hear. Okay, cool. It's a really smart strategy, makes a lot of sense.
- NMNikita Miller
Mm-hmm.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Like once you get someone, you know, with their wedding and then you kind of expand from there.
- NMNikita Miller
Right. And their friends too.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Mm. Interesting. Right, 'cause they register on The Knot and they're like-
- NMNikita Miller
Yeah. They register on The Knot.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
... "Yo, what's going on here?"
- NMNikita Miller
That's right. They register on... Yeah.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Genius. Well, so we're gonna talk about some of the things you've learned along your time there. But, uh, I wanted to start with your previous gig at Atlassian and specifically-
- NMNikita Miller
Yeah.
- 9:41 – 10:28
Trello vs. Jira
- NMNikita Miller
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Got it. Coming back to the question of, like, Trello versus Jira, 'cause I think this might be interesting to people, just, like, if you're trying to decide-
- NMNikita Miller
(laughs) .
- LRLenny Rachitsky
... should we use Trello or should we use Jira, what's, like, a simple way to think about which way to go as a f- as a founder maybe or as a product team?
- NMNikita Miller
I think that smaller teams, especially folks that are ideating, right, when you haven't landed on what you're gonna build yet, I think Trello is a great product for that, for pulling ideas, for prioritizing them, for, for tracking how we're progressing through, like, discovery. I think Trello is really great for that. For things that have been decided and are ready to go and are really in the breakdown these tasks and assign it to people, then something like Jira is probably a better use case, uh, but I'm sure there are people that'll disagree
- 10:28 – 15:02
Similarities and differences between building for users at The Knot vs. Trello
- NMNikita Miller
with that.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
(laughs) Cool. Building for PMs is what you were doing while you were working on Trello.
- NMNikita Miller
Yeah.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
I imagine that's kind of a bittersweet experience. Uh, I imagine some sense, they're like an amazing market to sell to, on the other, they're probably really annoying. What's like a surprise maybe or a lesson about working on building products for product managers?
- NMNikita Miller
I think you're right, it is a bitter s- sweet place to be. I think I, I less thought of it as building for product managers and just thought about it in the context of productivity.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Mm-hmm.
- NMNikita Miller
Overall. And productivity software in itself is really what's bittersweet because-
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Mm.
- NMNikita Miller
... there are a lot of trade-offs. And when you're dealing with a software team, for instance, how you measure productivity or define it for a PM or designer or engineer or a data scientist is probably really different. And so the impossibility of solving for all of those use cases, I think is always what's challenging. And we know that no one product is actually gonna solve all of those use cases no matter what the marketing taglines are out there.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Mm-hmm.
- NMNikita Miller
And so it was really challenging to figure out, well, what are the core things that a product manager might need to see or a designer or a developer and how do you make sure that that core is there? So, like, you get the 80% and, and then you spend time on the 20% that you know that a very small segment of users are gonna use, but they're probably your core, so, so maybe you spend some time there. But yeah, the answer is no one's gonna be happy.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Mm-hmm.
- NMNikita Miller
And with Trello, in particular, it was challenging because for a while we were in the, we built a product that was easy to use for everyone, and so then trying to really narrow in on, well, what is a software development use case and what do we really need for that? And that might be very different from what a mom and pop-... you know, shop is gonna need or someone planning their wedding is gonna need.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
That's a good segue to something else I wanted to ask about.
- NMNikita Miller
Yeah.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
You used to build for product managers, now you build for people getting married. I'm curious what is similar about those two groups and what's maybe most different?
- NMNikita Miller
Yeah. Um, a lot of similarity. (laughs)
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Hmm.
- NMNikita Miller
So folks planning their weddings, I mean, think of it as an emotional high-stakes thing that you're hopefully gonna do once, and so the pressure is really there. The pressure and expectations are really high, not unlike product managers or other folks in software. And ultimately wedding planning is this huge project, right? Where you have a bunch of stakeholders, friends, family. You need to manage multiple vendors, and the time horizon for a wedding, once you're engaged is anywhere from like 12 to 18 months, so it is a longtime project. So yeah, I think there's a lot of similarities there. Some of the things that are a little bit different, in terms of how we're building the product is, the amount of decisions probably that need, that go into wedding planning are far more than you would imagine. So one of the reasons being at The Knot is so interesting is we go all the way from planning tools, so actively how do you help people find insbr- inspiration and plan their wedding day to day, to our marketplace, our two-sided marketplace. We have our e-commerce business that's supposed to ... be like registry and paper, and obviously our affili- affiliate businesses and the ads businesses. So it's a little bit different from a SaaS productivity tool, the business that we're in, but a lot of the problems that we're solving for users are actually really similar.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Hmm. Which one's more, uh, I don't know, stress inducing?
- NMNikita Miller
That's a great question. I think that, uh, I mean, couples, like this is a, uh, it's such an emotional thing for people, for individuals and their families and their friends, so I think I, I personally feel like I empathize with that in a way that I might, that I don't do the same for product even though I'm a product manager because there are many projects and there are always things that we need to manage and that's just part of the gig. Whereas planning your wedding for couples, like this is for many the most meaningful time of their lives, and everyone does this differently. So we have folks that are planning their multi-hundred, you know, person weddings and their 10, 15 closest friends' weddings. But the emotional side of it is the same, and, and you don't wanna let them down because most aren't gonna do it again.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Yeah. Okay. That's what I would've guessed. Feels like wedding couples are-
- NMNikita Miller
Yep. Wedding couples are-
- LRLenny Rachitsky
... gonna be more stressed.
- NMNikita Miller
Yeah.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
I just had an idea. Imagine you think about this. Uh, we're doing a baby shower right now and, uh, feels like you're missing a opportunity to do a-
- NMNikita Miller
(laughs)
- LRLenny Rachitsky
... baby shower invite platform.
- NMNikita Miller
Yes. We've-
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Okay.
- 15:02 – 15:41
Pro tips for Trello users
- LRLenny Rachitsky
One last question about Trello. Do you have any just pro tips for someone using Trello and may not be aware of something they could do with Trello?
- NMNikita Miller
I think the biggest that people probably know about but are often underutilized are power-ups, which is basically our integrations, and power-ups are folks that are usually doing things that are more complex often. But Trello, you know, when you think about it with other products like Asanas, you mentioned Linear, some of what people are worried about is that it's just not, not powerful enough, and power-ups are a way to do that, and there are dozens and hundreds of integrations that you can use it for, so that's worth checking out.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Awesome. Great tip.
- NMNikita Miller
Yep.
- 15:41 – 21:10
Nikita’s roles and responsibilities framework
- NMNikita Miller
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Shifting a little bit and-
- NMNikita Miller
Mm-hmm.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
... and kinda zooming out, you've worked at a lot of different companies, at a lot of different levels, also a lot of different geographies, uh, and I wanna chat about that last piece. But maybe just broadly, what are a few of your biggest lessons about building teams, building successful and impactful teams?
- NMNikita Miller
This is kind of my jam.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Hmm.
- NMNikita Miller
It's like- (laughs)
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Excellent.
- NMNikita Miller
Well, that's kind of what I, I spend a lot of time thinking about, and, um, I think every company you go into you approach it slightly differently. For me it usually starts with, um, for individuals kind of identifying very clearly early on roles and responsibilities.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Hmm.
- NMNikita Miller
Like what are the expectations of a role? So in software for most of us, one of the things that I think I've seen done well or contributed to in multiple companies is the triad: product, design, engineering, data. And what does it look like for these roles and data science that's like other, uh, support-
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Yeah. It's interesting you put data in there. That's cool.
- NMNikita Miller
I'm trying to pull that in. That's my, that is my mission. (laughs)
- LRLenny Rachitsky
That's great. I love that.
- NMNikita Miller
My mission is product design, engineering, data.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
It's not a triad anymore though, but, uh, I love it.
- NMNikita Miller
I know. It's like, uh, yeah, quartet something.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
A quad. It's a chair. It's just a chair.
- NMNikita Miller
Yeah. It's a chair. Great.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Yeah.
- NMNikita Miller
Um, so, so I think about that a lot, like what are the roles? What do you expect for each of them? And how do you define the responsibilities that we have to each other? I know it sounds kind of maybe, you know, on the softer side, but I think a lot of what we can solve for in creating strong teams is exactly that. And the exercise that I often do is I generally have an idea of what I think the role and responsibilities are and the expectations across these four roles, but the exercise especially with leaders in an org is to have them sit down and write them for each other. So Atlassian has some of this that they do in the form of playbooks, but it's basically I as a product leader, I'm gonna write down what I think the expectations and the role and responsibilities of my engineering manager, of my designer, of my data. And then we look at it together and then we arrive at essentially a contract with one another about what we think that looks like and what that responsibility is to our teams. And from there we cascade it throughout the org. This is very time-intensive, right? As, as you can imagine, and often leads to a lot of debate because depending on the kind of orgs or people's backgrounds, our expectations might differ. But I think that contract early on is really important.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
This is, uh, super interesting. I wanna go two levels deeper.
- NMNikita Miller
Yes.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
So what is it that you're... Like, is there a template that you have? Is there specific questions you're answering? Is it free form?... how do you actually know what to write and sort one of these?
- NMNikita Miller
There is a template. There are templates we can probably share-
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Awesome. Great.
- NMNikita Miller
... after this to kind of run the roles and responsibilities, and it, it usually comes in a couple of forms. It's what the expectations as an IC, what's the expectation kind of as a manager or with your team, and then what is it to each other, and what are the things that are shared, right? So, you know, when we're running an experiment, like a product manager is likely to write a product brief and go into the details of what that means. The data scientist is likely to help write the actual experiment brief, but we're all putting inputs into it. But then when it comes to data and analysis, my expectation is that both of you are doing that together.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
And is the idea the PM writes, "Here's my, what I'm planning to do?" Is it the data scientist writes on behalf of the PM, "Here's what I expect you to do?" Who's kind of taking the charge in each of these?
- NMNikita Miller
You write your own.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Mm.
- 21:10 – 21:56
Why scrum masters are disappearing and what shifts are happening on teams
- NMNikita Miller
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Mm. Is there anything that you find as surprising about, like, what teams end up taking off the PM's plate or putting on the plate that maybe other companies don't?
- NMNikita Miller
I think a lot of people end up putting a lot on the PM's plate.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
(laughs) Yeah.
- NMNikita Miller
Because of that misunderstanding. And so you end up looking at something as a group and saying, "Well, no one human can do all of those things all the time, so let's, let's talk about what the shared responsibility looks like." And what I think is really powerful about the triad is, is that it's a recognition of, of like there are shared responsibilities, you know? Who's responsible for making sure that everyone understands what we're doing and why? The PM leads that, but evangelizing that is something that would be expected of designers and engineering managers and data scientists as well.
- 21:56 – 23:27
Why every team should have a data scientist embedded in it
- NMNikita Miller
- LRLenny Rachitsky
On the data scientist piece, you talked about how you're trying to embed that more and more into product teams. At Airbnb, we, or data scientists were embedded in every team, so I totally get that.
- NMNikita Miller
It's not everywhere. (laughs)
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Yeah, exactly. Uh, what more can you share there of just why you found that to be important and how you're approaching that?
- NMNikita Miller
From my experience as a product manager, it was always a blocker, right? Getting your hands on the data, maybe having someone to troubleshoot with if as a PM you couldn't kind of understand or figure it out yourself. It was just always a blocker. And so then you'd als- then have to go and negotiate with other teams about getting someone's resources to look at this problem. So that's one. The other is just that data scientists, as with most humans, like, we get better the more focused we are and the more in depth we are in understanding the product itself, right? So if you have someone that's dedicated to a zone or an area of the product, then, then it's much easier for them to spot patterns as opposed to attempting to understand what's happening every time a ticket comes in.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
And so the shift you're, you push for is instead of like a centralized data team that you convince to give you resources, you embed-
- NMNikita Miller
Right.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
... the data scientists-
- NMNikita Miller
Embed them.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
... in the team.
- NMNikita Miller
Right.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
And do you, do you call them data scientists? Do you call them analysts? How do you think about that?
- NMNikita Miller
That also varies per company. (laughs)
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Mm-hmm.
- NMNikita Miller
That, that depends on the organization and kind of the work. Some teams require data scientists, not all. Some require analysts, right? So that just depends on what the team is working on-
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Mm-hmm.
- NMNikita Miller
... and what's needed.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Got
- 23:27 – 25:27
The proper cadence for the rules and responsibilities framework, and problems around execution
- LRLenny Rachitsky
it. Coming back to the roles and responsibilities framework, do you encourage teams to revisit that every once in a while, or is it like, "This team's done this thing and we're good for a while"?
- NMNikita Miller
I encourage them to revisit it, and it's usually because something's fallen off the rails. Like, (laughs) I think if I were really great at it, I'd say, "Every three months or like every six months, let's have a look and see how this is going."
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Hm.
- NMNikita Miller
But often it happens because there's some conflict or tension or something was missed and someone thought it was theirs or not, and we have to do a quick retro. Mm.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
What do you find is often that thing that is maybe missed or often causes tension?
- NMNikita Miller
Execution. It's usually around, uh, execution and velocity.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Mm. Like not moving fast enough or-
- NMNikita Miller
Not moving-
- LRLenny Rachitsky
... kicking balls.
- NMNikita Miller
... fast enough, yeah.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
What do you find often is a, a way to help with that as a, as a leader of teams?
- NMNikita Miller
Well, one, just identifying what the velocity issue is. It's-
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Hm.
- NMNikita Miller
It can vary. So for PMs...... it's often around the velocity of decision-making, right? How long does it take us to actually... From saying we need to do a thing-
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Hmm.
- NMNikita Miller
... to defining it potentially and then deciding are we actually gonna do it or how. And that, I think, takes a long time for most, most companies, most people. So velocity of decision-making, so I think that tends to fall on the PM most often. The actual execution of it, right, the, the development tends to fall on both PM and engineering. So in engineering, I find that, um, depending on the org, you know, some folks understand like breaking up tickets into small pieces and why that's valuable and how to do it. And that's something that I think everyone in industry (laughs) probably needs a refresher on.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Hmm.
- NMNikita Miller
On like why that's valuable and how it works, and some of that is also shared by the PM because like if you haven't articulated clearly or well enough what we're trying to do, then it is hard to kind of break that, that apart. So yeah, those are the two things that are on my
- 25:27 – 28:34
Outcomes and output
- NMNikita Miller
mind a lot.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Is there anything else along the lines of what you've learned about building successful teams? I really love this, uh, roles and responsibilities-
- NMNikita Miller
Yeah.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
... approach.
- NMNikita Miller
Outcomes and output also-
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Hmm.
- NMNikita Miller
... comes up a lot.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Mm-hmm.
- NMNikita Miller
And, and I think that in many of the companies that I've either worked with or advised, coached over the past few years, it was all about outcomes. Like everyone was outcomes, outcomes, outcomes, which is right. You wanna make sure you're doing the right thing with the right goal, and that's fine. And some folks, you know, myself included at certain points, like swung way too far on the outcomes train and forgot that, uh, output is an indicator of that. So if you have a team that's doing all of the ideation and figuring out, you know, how to make decisions quickly and getting the right documentation and setting up the right product briefs and design briefs and experiment briefs, all the things that we know go into, to successful product development, that's great. But if you're also not shipping a lot of things to market quickly enough, then it just doesn't matter that much. So that conversation is one that I think we often have to revisit on teams, on all the teams I've ever been on, that yes, outcomes are important, but also the indicator is around execution and velocity. So if that's not in line, then a lot of the other things don't matter that much.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
And so when you say a outcome, you're saying here's the goal they're achieving or the impact they're having, or is it just the idea, like we know what our outcome will be but they're not actually shipping anything? Like what do... When you say output and outcome, what, what are you referring to specifically?
- NMNikita Miller
The, the outcomes or understanding what the goals are.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Mm. Yeah.
- NMNikita Miller
And what we might do to get there, right?
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Mm-hmm.
- NMNikita Miller
So OKRs-
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Yeah.
- NMNikita Miller
... is one, one way to talk about that, great. But embedded in that is, and how are we gonna get there? And the fact is like the more tries you have at it, the likelier you are (laughs) to get it right.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Mm-hmm.
- NMNikita Miller
So we're not actively monitoring like how fast does it get us, take us to ship things to market.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
I see. So kinda like if I can rephrase it, it's-
- NMNikita Miller
Yes.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
... a lot of teams like know what they're sh- what... talk about what they should be doing. They have a strategy, they have a goal. But what you're finding is that there's just not a lot of action a lot of times and there's like a huge opportunity just to like get a team to actually ship-
- NMNikita Miller
Yeah.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
... more often and move faster.
- NMNikita Miller
There's... Yeah. There's not a lot of, um, like understanding of our role in urgency like-
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Mm.
- NMNikita Miller
... right? It's urgent. And, and software in particular, probably can't forget that 'cause someone else is likely doing something similar or better and faster.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Makes me think of, uh, I think Frank Slootman is his name, uh, the-
- NMNikita Miller
Hey.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
... Snowflake CEO. He wrote this book called-
- 28:34 – 29:52
The importance of urgency, and how to cultivate a sense of urgency
- LRLenny Rachitsky
that. What have you found helps in creating that sense of urgency and continuing to increase output?
- NMNikita Miller
Mostly reminding people often.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Mm-hmm.
- NMNikita Miller
Right? And I don't think that this, the question of like, "Well, show me a list of everything you shipped." That's never gonna work. (laughs) Well, that doesn't make people feel good about the work that they're doing. But, but, you know, let's talk about our experimentation backlog, like what do we have in there? How quickly are we getting those things out? Those are the kind of conversations that I think help. Um, I think that having a good pulse on competition helps-
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Mm.
- NMNikita Miller
... as just a friendly reminder.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Hmm.
- NMNikita Miller
You know, that there are others out there doing this and thinking about things very similarly possibly to what we're, how we're thinking about it. So how do we differentiate ourselves? And, and a lot of that is about like how quickly are we getting many ideas to market. Small tangent. The, um, the competition side is interesting to me because I've been... I've worked at a few companies where I've ha- worked with founders who are like, "We don't have competition. Like we're the only ones doing this." And, and then fast forward a few years and you're like, "Here are all the companies-"
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Mm-hmm.
- NMNikita Miller
"... that were your competition that you didn't recognize then that are, are shipping great product now."
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Mm.
- NMNikita Miller
So.
- 29:52 – 31:03
How to determine if your team is moving quickly enough
- NMNikita Miller
- LRLenny Rachitsky
This might be a tough question, but I think there's always like a sense of we can move faster. Like it's rare that like, no, we're moving fast as we can. Do you have any kind of heuristic or, I don't know, kind of gut feeling of like knowing and sensing like where this team's doing fine versus this team isn't moving as fast as they can?
- NMNikita Miller
How much time do we spend on what I'd consider optimizations versus like bigger bets?
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Mm.
- NMNikita Miller
Right? Like and how long does that... does it take for that to happen? Right? Because I... You know, you, you've talked to the folks or been in the companies where-... where you talk about something that, by most measures, is pretty simple. Like, you know, someone goes heads down for a week or two and gets it done, and you talk about it, and then, you know, two quarters later, someone mentions it again. And you're like, "Oh, okay." So what are all the things we did in between that time to now why that thing, seemingly simple thing, didn't get done? And I think that's hard to say as a product manager because everything we do is all about prioritization, and I'm sure there are a bunch of other things that were prioritized. But they're like these little things that come up periodically, or bug fixes. Like, something is broken, you know, how long does it take us to recognize it and actually fix it?
- 31:03 – 31:29
Prioritization between big bets and optimizations
- NMNikita Miller
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Do you have a heuristic, and speaking of big bets versus optimizations-
- NMNikita Miller
Yeah.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
... of just how much time/resources to put into each bucket?
- NMNikita Miller
Unfortunately, the answer is it depends.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Yeah.
- NMNikita Miller
Right? If you're working on a business that is 30 years old and has many acquisitions or is very different from a startup, right, or a growth stage company, I think it, it just varies.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Yup.
- NMNikita Miller
Yeah.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
That's often what I find.
- 31:29 – 33:30
Questions Nikita asks to understand her team’s speed
- LRLenny Rachitsky
- NMNikita Miller
Uh.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
One last question along these lines that was-
- NMNikita Miller
Yeah.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
... on my mind as we're chatting. When you're finding that a team is not delivering as much output as you would think, what have you found works in helping them recognize that and not get defensive and not, you know, have all these excuses for it's happening, just like help them see what you see?
- NMNikita Miller
I'll tell you what I do. I don't, I don't know that I think s- folks might get defensive sometime.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Yeah. I think-
- NMNikita Miller
But, um-
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Yeah, certainly.
- NMNikita Miller
... I'll tell you what I try.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
That's, that's good.
- NMNikita Miller
Uh, for me, the, the biggest thing is just, you know, if, if folks are working on a sprint, it's very simply like, "What did you deliver this sprint?" That's it.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Just asking questions.
- NMNikita Miller
Just ask a bunch of questions. "What did, what did you deliver?" And the more questions, "Okay, fine. But what did you deliver to production?"
- LRLenny Rachitsky
(laughs) .
- NMNikita Miller
"Great. And how long have you been working on that? Like, how long? What was the cycle time?" So these questions that are, that are really just, I think, seeking to understand, because I understand complexity, right, and so that exists everywhere, but maybe helping folks see that as they're reviewing their own work or their team's work goes a long way.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Yeah, and it comes back to your, your approach of just focusing on the output, not like-
- NMNikita Miller
Yeah.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
... what they're planning to do, what they've actually done. This episode is brought to you by Ahrefs. You probably know Ahrefs as one of the leading all-in-one SEO tools used by companies like Facebook, Uber, Shopify, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and thousands more. But Ahrefs is not just for big companies. With their new Ahrefs Webmaster Tools, you can optimize your personal website like a professional for free. You can scan your website for over a hundred common SEO issues that might be hurting your performance in search engines, plus get advice on how to fix those errors. You can have it automatically browse your website's internal and external links and get actionable insights from your backlink profiles, and you can learn what keywords your website ranks for and see how you stack up against your competitors. Visit ahrefs.com/awt and start improving your website's visibility. That's ahrefs.com/awt.
- 33:30 – 36:42
Changes in the field of product management
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Shifting a little bit, you've been a PM for a long time, since 2010, I believe.
- NMNikita Miller
Yeah.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Uh, and a lot of people kind of move out of PM, and so it's really cool to talk to someone that's been in the field for a while.
- NMNikita Miller
(laughs) .
- LRLenny Rachitsky
What have you seen in terms of how product maybe has changed, the role of product management, the role of product leadership, and also maybe other functions like designer, engineering?
- NMNikita Miller
Yeah. I think the biggest change for product, kind of macro, is how, um, mainstream it is-
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Mm-hmm.
- NMNikita Miller
... that I, I still find fascinating, the getting degrees in product management and going to business school to transition into product management and, like, the whole discipline and there's a whole business, honestly, around the business of product management, which I find really fascinating and didn't exist. And I think, for better or worse, that comes with a lot of good, and in some ways, I think might have removed some of the quirkiness and creativity that probably is required of product. Uh, but that's probably a different podcast (laughs) . So that's one, just macro. In terms of the roles, I think that what we were talking before about roles and responsibilities and, and defining those, for product managers, I think product managers are increasingly, I think, a bit more technical, or expected to be. I think there was a moment where they were technical and then it was, "No, no, we're all generalists," and now I think we're going back to PMs need to be more technical. I think designers, the expectation is that they'll be more business oriented.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Mm.
- NMNikita Miller
Right? Design as a, as a means, honestly, to an end. I think that's trending and probably for the better. I think the best designers I've ever worked with are also, like, exceptionally savvy business people. And I think engineers are, are increasingly becoming what I, more product focused, more user focused. So, you know, product engineers was something Trello, I think, did ex- really well. This idea that great ideas can come from anywhere in the org and any function I think is really magical. So as you're seeing PMs becoming more technical, I think designers becoming more business oriented, engineers are becoming a lot more product, user focused, to me, that's amazing because it means that we're getting closer to what I'd consider, like, really deep collaboration. And it's not to say that we're not experts. Like, there are expertise within that that we expect of folks, but that care for other disciplines, I think is where a lot of magic happens.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
That's really interesting. When you say PMs getting more technical, what is, when you're hiring, interviewing, what kind of, what are you looking for? Like, do PMs need to learn to code? How technical do you find they need?
- NMNikita Miller
I don't think so, necessarily. I think a lot more PMs are. A lot more PMs are taking boot camps or-
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Mm-hmm.
- NMNikita Miller
... coding classes, which I think is all to the good. I don't know that it's a requirement, but there is more of that and I think it is very helpful. Similarly, a lot more PMs are taking more, you know, classes or digging more into data analysis, also really valuable. So...Yeah, I don't think it's a requirement. Uh, I am not, like, a technical PM. I don't have a tech background. I think I've been doing it long enough at this point to, to, you know, do okay. But I think it's a benefit.
- 36:42 – 38:40
Advice for people who want to get into product
- NMNikita Miller
- LRLenny Rachitsky
You said that, that the PM is becoming more of just, like, a thing with training, classes and courses like that.
- NMNikita Miller
Yeah.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
I did a search once on LinkedIn for how many product managers there are. Uh, guess how many PMs there are in the world, uh, that have the title PM in their LinkedIn profile?
- NMNikita Miller
(laughs) A lot. I'm guessing a lot.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Two million.
- NMNikita Miller
(laughs) That's wild.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
That's wild.
- NMNikita Miller
Yeah.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
And, and there's 800,000 just in the U.S. and so-
- NMNikita Miller
Wow.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
... it's like a, a large, a large group that I didn't expect, uh...
- NMNikita Miller
That's huge. Yeah. Back in my, um, ed tech days, a friend of mine, her kids were in school and she came in one day, her son was in grade school at the time, in elementary school, and he had a, like this, you know, match to w- careers, what you see, and they had a person at a computer, this image, and it was product manager. There was a, an option for product manager and that's when I knew. I was like, "Okay. This is, this is mainstream. We're about to become consultants."
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Yeah. I always used to joke no one grows up and is like, "I wanna be a product manager when I grow up," but I-
- NMNikita Miller
Yeah.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
... think that's starting to actually be a thing.
- NMNikita Miller
It's starting. It's a thing, yeah.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Yeah. While we're on that topic, I imagine people often ask you for advice on how to get into product management. Do you have any advice there for folks that are listening that maybe wanna get into that?
- NMNikita Miller
There are many ways now (laughs) . I think there are a lot of the, the typical programs that a lot of the big tech companies have, I think is one way. I think getting into startups as a product manager-
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Mm-hmm.
- NMNikita Miller
... is a pretty awesome way to get into product, because it's just a lot of problem solving. The problem with that is you don't have anyone to teach you the right way, but the product will teach you the right and wrong way if, you know, you're with a team that, that is moving quickly. So yeah. I still think that s- working on smaller products and companies is a way, great way to get into product management, in part because you'll get to touch all of the functions that are kind of required parts of the product discipline, and I think it's hard to get that experience otherwise.
- 38:40 – 43:03
Why being a PM is hard, and thoughts on work-life balance
- NMNikita Miller
- LRLenny Rachitsky
The PM role, we haven't talked about this, uh, it's just, like, very hard and very stressful-
- NMNikita Miller
Yes.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
... and mostly sucks in many ways.
- NMNikita Miller
Yes.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
And we could talk about that if you want. But, uh, it was more of a segue to, um, work/life balance, which I know you have some strong opinions about.
- NMNikita Miller
Yeah. Mm-hmm.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
So I don't know. You could take it either direction, but just, like, thoughts on work/life balance/how hard the PM role is?
- NMNikita Miller
The PM role is really hard. I feel, um, especially now that I'm managing a lot of teams, right, and PMs at a lot of lev- different levels, I do find that periodically I, I remind them with, like, the core of my (laughs) being that, like, I know this is hard, right? Like, it is hard. There are a lot of expectations. You're expected to be competent across many areas all the time. You're expected to have an answer and you're expected to, like, keep your calm and, like, not lose your shit. And that's really hard. It just is. It's stressful, right? So I think I spend quite a bit of time with my team, my PMs, like, helping them understand that I understand that, and so when we're problem solving, let's probably not solve for everything. Let's, like, focus on one of many things that are expected. So yeah. It's really hard. On work/life balance, as I mentioned to you of, like, think about this a lot, I am currently a mom, and as you can imagine, like, that's a lot to, to manage at any given time. And so recently when I think about work/life balance, I don't, I don't use the word balance. I use optimization. (laughs)
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Mm-hmm.
- NMNikita Miller
Right? It's this question of, like, what are you optimizing for right now, whether it's today or this quarter or this year, with the understanding that I don't think you can have it all at the same time all the time. And so I'm, like, increasingly coming to peace with that. Where that's been interesting over the course of my career, I was chatting with my husband about this yesterday, just thinking about it, was early in my career I remember when we had big releases, like, folks would just work nonstop for a couple of weeks. We would stay in the office late. We would come in early. If it was international, we just probably wouldn't sleep because we wanted to make sure we QA'd everything before we released it. Like, and that was an expected part of the product development life cycle, and those were the lot of my early product years and I, and I just did it and it was very exciting and I quite enjoyed it. But even then, the flip side of it for me was I also, I was a runner back then, so if I was training for a half marathon or a marathon, then, like, you know, the next week I'd probably do my long run in the morning and not start work until 10:00 AM. And, like, that was my version of balance. Right? And I think we're all lucky enough, many of us, excuse me, are lucky enough especially in tech that a lot of companies kind of get that form of flexibility. So now fast forward 13 years, it's, it is very similar. It's like I don't, I don't do all of the drop-offs and pickups for the kids, but you know, there are some weeks where I'm like, "This is the week I'm gonna do all of the drop-offs and pickups," or, "This is the day." And that's felt much healthier for me than this expectation that I'm somehow gonna balance it all and everything is gonna be equally great or cared for all the time.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
I think what I'm hearing is, uh, essentially, which I really like and agree with, is, like, sometimes you're just gonna have to go sprint and go hard and work really hard and go long hours, and then that doesn't need to last forever. And then when it's not, enjoy that extra time and kind of, like, buil- rebuild and recharge and do the things you gotta do.
- NMNikita Miller
Yeah. That's, that's about right.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Yeah. I find the same thing. I find that just, like, working hard is very, uh, correlated with success (laughs) and a lot of times it's just a lot of long hours and sometimes-
- NMNikita Miller
Yes.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
... you can't balance it-
- NMNikita Miller
Right.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
... for periods of time.
- NMNikita Miller
Right.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Yeah.
- NMNikita Miller
And it can also be, you know, at different points in your life.... right?
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Right.
- NMNikita Miller
So right now, at this particular moment in my life, I'm probably not gonna go hard at a super early stage startup, right?
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Yeah.
- NMNikita Miller
Because I believe that you probably need to be in person, and working really hard together for long periods of time. And not everyone feels this way, I know that. (laughs) Like, I've had these conversations with lots of friends and colleagues, but... So personally for me, that's probably not the decision I would make at this moment in my life.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Yeah, I get that.
- 43:03 – 47:59
How to manage remote teams and how to do successful, short, in-person meetups
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Another area I wanted to touch on is remote work and distributed work. I believe most of your career you were remote or you worked with remote teams and distributed teams, and that's such a on-trend, uh, thing now, where a lot of teams are working hybrid, working remotely, working with distributed teams. What have you learned about being successful working with distributed and remote teams?
- NMNikita Miller
Yes. That's, uh, my entire career has been with remote or distributed teams.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Wow.
- NMNikita Miller
That's right. Um, when I started, early in my career, I, I lived abroad for a while, I lived in Shanghai, had a core team there, but also worked with a distributed team in Europe and Latin America, which meant all kinds of crazy hours and lots of sprints like we just talked about. Um, things that worked well, one, like documentation, it's a thing. Asynchronous communication, everyone just has to get used to it and better at it. And so increasingly just being better communicators, whether it's on a video or written, I think that's just really important, and everyone building up that muscle is really important. For all of the roles I've been in, this, um, this notion of what does it mean to have really meaningful and valuable in person time that can sustain you for the remote and distributed time is really important. I think a lot of what's happened now in COVID and even now, a lot of teams are, have never met their coworkers. Like they don't onboard in person, they don't have events or off-sites as frequently, and, and I think flexibility is really great, but I think that really, that makes it really hard, and to me what I've figured out, I think, is that it especially makes it hard to solve hard problems.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Mm.
- NMNikita Miller
Like, solving a hard problem remotely with folks that you haven't spent in person time with, that you haven't broken bread with, that you haven't, like, disagreed with in person and built that trust is just really hard. In fact, it's much harder. So some of the things I've done even here at like The Knot Worldwide is, periodically when there's a really gnarly problem, I like wave the flag and I say, "Hey, everyone, why don't we try and get together for two days and like hash some of this stuff out? And then we can go back to our remote lives." And I think folks have been maybe unsurprisingly very open to that, 'cause I think w- they see the, like not only the efficiency, but the camaraderie that can happen there as opposed to what was happening potentially on, on a, you know, Hangouts or a Zoom call.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
What does that event look like? Like, where do you do it? What's ro- roughly an agenda?
- NMNikita Miller
One, the agenda is pretty tight before we get there. (laughs)
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Mm-hmm.
- NMNikita Miller
Right? Myself or someone else, we're responsible for making sure that that's an, um, a well-articulated agenda that we all kind of agree on before we even get there. So I think that's one. I think 48 hours, two nights, right? And that's important to me because it is the, tends to still just be hours in a conference room or a meeting room during the day, but you do need to build in the, "And let's go have dinner."
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Mm-hmm.
- NMNikita Miller
"Since we're all in person anyway." Or, "Let's have an extended lunch and maybe an extended day." I think that's just really important and even early in my career when I was working more internationally, the company I worked for was pretty amazing because two or three times a year, the entire company globally came together for a week or two. And it made a, a huge difference and many of the folks that I worked with there are still, you know, friends and mentors.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Are you able to share what was the challenge you were trying to overcome in one of these times?
- NMNikita Miller
Yeah. I, I, I can speak about it generally, which was just-
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Yeah.
- NMNikita Miller
... we had a change in strategy and we needed to land a couple of core decisions about what we might build, and there were lots of documents and lots of conversations and the, back to the velocity of decision making, like remotely, that can be really hard because with time zones, someone sends a doc, you comment on it, you get to the other day by the end of the week, and so days and days have passed and we still haven't landed it, and people have really strong opinions obviously about something that big. So it was like, "Nope, okay. Great." Wave the flag. And not everyone could make it. Most people could, and the folks who could not were, were yes, on a screen.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Was there anything specific in that off-site that helped you get to a resolution?
- NMNikita Miller
In that particular one was one very cross-functional-
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Mm-hmm.
- NMNikita Miller
... and the, the unlock there was giving the data person-
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Mm.
- NMNikita Miller
... (laughs) the space to educate all of us. That was it. It was like, "You have the floor. Educate."
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Yeah, I find that's often the solution is people just don't have all the same information that they're-
- NMNikita Miller
Yeah.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
... ba- basing their decision on, and so make sure everyone starts with the same foundation.
- NMNikita Miller
Right.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Awesome. And it comes back to your, uh, push to get data integrated into every team and make that part of the four quad triad.
- NMNikita Miller
That, (laughs) that chair. It's the chair.
- 47:59 – 49:09
The importance of having overlapping work hours and onboarding in person
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Anything else around remote work or distributed work that you found to be incredibly impactful or important?
- NMNikita Miller
Well, the flexibility of it, that I'm sure we've, you've talked about with others, that is really important. I do think that the Trello! and Atlassian I think did this really well, is having standards around a couple things. The biggest one I think was overlapping work hours. So everyone had general flexibility, but there were some set of hours where everyone needed to be online at the same time for the most part every day, and that made a big difference.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Mm-hmm.
- NMNikita Miller
Onboarding happened in person.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Mm-hmm.
- NMNikita Miller
I think that in-person onboarding for new folks is really important.... especially for, for everyone. For any new person or an organization, I think how we work culturally, having a contact that you can reach out to, all of that I think is really crucial. I'm definitely of the so much of my early learning was in person, and I have no idea how we're gonna replicate that in a non-office setting. It's just really hard.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
How long do you try to have that person in the office for onboarding? Is it, like, a week? Is it a few days?
- NMNikita Miller
A
- 49:09 – 52:58
The advantages of working in different cultures
- NMNikita Miller
week. A week.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Awesome. Shifting a little bit, just a few more questions.
- NMNikita Miller
Yeah. Okay.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
You mentioned you worked in China.
- NMNikita Miller
I did.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
You also worked in the UK for a while. Obviously in the US now. What have you found to be some of the biggest differences in maybe the product culture or just culture in general working in these different areas?
- NMNikita Miller
The confusion around what product management is-
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Mm-hmm.
- NMNikita Miller
... (laughs) is universal.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
(laughs)
- NMNikita Miller
That's, like, not specific to, to US I think, and the fact that it's changing, that I think was the same. Um, I don't know that I found that many differences in terms of kind of the, the, how we approached goal setting, all very similar, the need for urgency. Like, all those principles, I think this, are the same no matter where you are. Part of what I experienced when I started in Shanghai was the feeling that the product managemer- manager was expected to have all the answers.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Mm.
- NMNikita Miller
Which as you can imagine was really overwhelming. And so, I remember because I was young and I didn't know that much about product management, and I definitely did not have all the answers, I spent a lot of time helping the team help me find answers. (laughs) And that was a little bit of a culture shift in our team at the time, and I actually think that's kind of carried me through my entire career, right? Which is trying to figure out how to share the product management load so, like, we're, like, equally responsible for what we're building. So, so that was a good, good, like, unintentional learning that I think has been really important for my career. I think that part of that learning that I've had obviously here and, and in London as well was the figuring out how to make room for creativity.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Mm.
- NMNikita Miller
So in Shanghai and, and also in London at the time, this was a decade now, so many things have changed since then, there just didn't seem to be as much room for ideas to come from anywhere, which I think is also related to what I was saying before.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Mm-hmm.
- NMNikita Miller
So, like, making space for people across functions to share ideas and then across geographies to share ideas, especially in companies where English might have been the primary language, but most of the employees were not native English speakers. Like, there was a lot of time I think that I felt that I, I wanted to spend and I did on just creating space for people to, like, comfortably share their ideas honestly. And, and that for me was really formative, because I think it's been... Yeah, it's, it's really impacted how I've approached my entire career, and I don't know that I would have had I not had those experiences.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
I was, uh, browsing through your LinkedIn post and you said something just like that, uh, on LinkedIn of just, like, how formative that experience was for you.
- NMNikita Miller
Yeah.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
I know it's not something people can just like, "Hey, I'm gonna go to China and work for a startup," but-
- NMNikita Miller
Serious- Yeah.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
... it sounds like you recommend working at companies of different cultures, 'cause it feels like it kind of, like, is a lens.
- NMNikita Miller
Yeah. I do. I, I also think, you know, my, I am, um, my family, I'm Jamaican. I'm a Jamaican immigrant.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Mm-hmm.
- NMNikita Miller
And so all of our experiences inform, like, how we perform our jobs and how we think about problems and, and being able to, to s- to expand that is... Yes, I would recommend it to every and anyone that gets the opportunity, and I think it's really important as product managers, because I think it's really hard to be a product manager if you cannot empathize, right? With the people and problems that you're solving for, and being out of your comfort zone obviously is, is one way to learn empathy. (laughs)
- LRLenny Rachitsky
I love that. One final question. Is there, before we get to a very exciting lightning round, uh, not to, not to not count that,
- 52:58 – 55:07
The question Nikita finds most useful
- LRLenny Rachitsky
those questions, are there just any, like, frameworks or processes or methods that you've found to be very valuable in your career as a product leader that you would wanna share?
- NMNikita Miller
The question I ask myself and I ask everyone (laughs) in my life probably either whether it's on my team or when folks, friends talk to me, I always ask, "What are you optimizing for?" Like, that's the question. It's, "What are you optimizing for?" And it's, you know, the short, medium, long term in product, but it's the what are you optimizing for today, this quarter, this year, whatever time horizon. And I think that can be just a really illuminating way of thinking about obvious- honestly, like, just how are you spending your time? And I think it works for product as well. Like, every time we talk about OKR or goal setting, ultimately it is what are we optimizing for for some period of time? And I think that always for me, whether personally or in product, is very illuminating.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
I love that. I'm pretty sure I've asked that question a thousand times myself. Uh, one thing I find though is people get annoyed with you just like, "Okay, you're such a, such a PM." Just like-
- NMNikita Miller
I know. (laughs) But it worked.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
It does work. (laughs)
- NMNikita Miller
But it worked.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
What are some instances where you deploy this question? Like, is it in a meeting where someone's asking a question or just like, "What are we optimizing for here?"
- NMNikita Miller
I mean, I ask this question, like, all the time.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Mm-hmm.
- NMNikita Miller
I ask this question to my husband. Like, "What are we optimizing for?" (laughs)
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Yeah. I'm sure, I'm sure he loves it. (laughs)
- NMNikita Miller
He was a PM too, so he gets it.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Okay. Okay. That's helpful.
- NMNikita Miller
He gets it. Um, I ask this to my five-year-old honestly.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Wow.
- NMNikita Miller
(laughs) ...five-year-old. Um, it's, uh, we talk about it a lot. Like, now we're going to quarterly planning, all of us, right? And, and now we have information from Q1, so, so let's look at it and say, "Okay. Given what we know now, what are we optimizing for?" 'Cause it might not be the same thing we did before with new information, or it may be. And that's usually just a...... just then helping us get better at figuring out, obviously, how we're doing trade-offs, right?
- LRLenny Rachitsky
That's awesome.
- NMNikita Miller
Because if, if the first point isn't clear, then-
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Yeah.
- NMNikita Miller
... the trade-offs aren't gonna be clear.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Yep. The other question is what, what problem are we trying to solve here?
- NMNikita Miller
Yeah. (laughs)
- LRLenny Rachitsky
I feel like I need to make mugs and put these-
- NMNikita Miller
Yes. (laughs)
- LRLenny Rachitsky
... uh, put these on some mugs for product managers.
- 55:07 – 59:19
Lightning round
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Well, with that we've reached our very exciting lightning round. I've got six questions for you. Are you ready?
- NMNikita Miller
Uh, yes. I don't think I prepped this, but I'm ready. Yes.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Okay. Well, it'll be the most fun then. What are two or three books that you recommend most to other people?
- NMNikita Miller
These are not product books. I recommend, uh, Ana Akhmatova's You Will Hear Thunder, a book of poetry that is excellent. Um, I recommend almost anything by James Baldwin. The Fire Next Time, I most recently re-read. And on back to software, High Output Management.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
What are some favorite movies or TV shows that you've recently watched that you really enjoyed?
- NMNikita Miller
Um, I'm really into K-dramas right now, and actually, um-
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Is that a Korean drama?
- NMNikita Miller
... Korean dramas right now. (laughs) Um, Crash Landing on You is, you know, it's great. It's a love story.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Wow.
- NMNikita Miller
It's wonderful.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Cool. Very out of the box. I love it.
- NMNikita Miller
(laughs)
- LRLenny Rachitsky
What's a favorite interview question that you like to ask?
- NMNikita Miller
For product managers, if we think about product in the context of artist, scientist, general, general manager, where do you spike?
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Artist, scientist, general manager. Interesting.
- NMNikita Miller
Mm-hmm.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
And is there one you ideally look for the answer, or it depends on the role you're hiring for?
- NMNikita Miller
It totally depends on the composition of my team.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Interesting. Cool. I like that. A different triad. What's a favorite product you recently discovered that you love?
- NMNikita Miller
Arc-
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Mm-hmm.
- NMNikita Miller
... by The Browser Company. I think they're a product that's clearly having a lot of fun, and you can feel that in the product. They, when I first opened it, they have an unveiling experience, which isn't something you'd expect of a browser, and there was something really delightful about it.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Yeah. I imagine you've heard the, uh, interview with Josh.
- NMNikita Miller
I did. (laughs)
- LRLenny Rachitsky
What a guy. What a cool product. I love it. We have a whole hour and a half on it, so-
- NMNikita Miller
Yeah.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
... check that out if-
- NMNikita Miller
(laughs)
- LRLenny Rachitsky
... anyone wants to learn more about Arc. What is something relatively minor you've changed in your product development process that has had a tremendous impact in your team's ability to execute?
- NMNikita Miller
Helping product teams triads, product design, engineering, and data, understand their shared roles and responsibilities.
Episode duration: 59:19
Install uListen for AI-powered chat & search across the full episode — Get Full Transcript
Transcript of episode 4PhfAbRQpbI
Get more out of YouTube videos.
High quality summaries for YouTube videos. Accurate transcripts to search & find moments. Powered by ChatGPT & Claude AI.
Add to Chrome