Jessica Fain: Why Killing Your Own Roadmap Builds Exec Trust

1. 0:00 – 3:53

   Introduction to Jessica Fain

   1. JFJessica Fain0:00

      As product managers, one of our best sets of skills is curiosity and empathy and trying to understand our users. But the moment that we're talking to an executive, we forget those skills and those talents.

   2. LRLenny Rachitsky0:11

      It's your fault if the leaders didn't buy into your idea.

   3. JFJessica Fain0:14

      People completely misunderstand how executives make decisions, what is going on in the heads. I describe an executive's calendar as a strobe light going off. You wake up at 8:00 AM, you've already got a huge list of urgent things going on. They have not had the time, the energy, the wherewithal to center your problems.

   4. LRLenny Rachitsky0:34

      What are their goals? What are they trying to do? How are they measured? Connect the thing you're pitching them with that success.

   5. JFJessica Fain0:39

      There's ways for us to ask much more interesting questions of our executives. Tell me what the board is pushing you on. Execs wanna be successful, too. They wanna be good at their jobs.

   6. LRLenny Rachitsky0:50

      Sometimes you have the best idea and they just don't buy it.

   7. JFJessica Fain0:52

      One of the biggest things you can do to build trust is kill things, deprioritize things. If you're thinking about how do you be more senior, how do you show up in a way that is in a leadership mindset, you get paid to be a domain expert. Your executive is looking for you to be the deepest person in the room. Bringing your expertise to bear is absolutely crucial. You have to act like a CPO.

   8. LRLenny Rachitsky1:17

      Today, my guest is Jessica Fain, who's been a product leader at Box and Slack and Brightwheel, and now at Webflow. And she has gotten very, very uniquely good at the art and science of influence, and in particular, influencing executives. Influence might be the single highest leverage skill for product leaders outside of AI. We actually get into how AI is changing the skill of influence. I've never heard a podcast conversation get deep into the art and science of influence, how to actually change people's minds, and the mistakes that people make when they're trying to influence leaders. We get very tactical and very specific. There's a bunch of stuff in this conversation that I've never heard before or thought about. I am very excited for you to learn from Jessica. Before we get into it, don't forget to check out lennysproductpass.com for an incredible set of deals available exclusively to Lenny's Newsletter subscribers. Now, let's get into it after a short word from our wonderful sponsors. This episode is brought to you by Omni. Many product teams today are in the process of debating how to ship AI analytics. The hard part is obvious. Having an LLM guess at SQL in production is a huge mess and just a bad idea. Omni takes a different approach. They have a semantic layer built in so that when you embed their analytics, the AI actually knows your business definitions, not just your raw tables. You can test queries, validate the reasoning, and lock down permissions before anything hits production. If you want AI analytics in your product without building the whole stack from scratch, check out omni.co/lenny for a free three-week trial. Companies like Perplexity, dbt, and BuzzFeed use Omni to ship analytics their customers can trust. That's O-M-N-I dot C-O slash Lenny. This episode is brought to you by Lovable. Not only are they the fastest growing company in history, I use it regularly, and I could not recommend it more highly. If you've ever had an idea for an app but didn't know where to start, Lovable is for you. Lovable lets you build working apps and websites by simply chatting with AI. Then you can customize it, add automations, and deploy it to a live domain. It's perfect for marketers spinning up tools, product managers prototyping new ideas, and founders launching their next business. Unlike no-code tools, Lovable isn't about static pages. It builds full apps with real functionality, and it's fast. What used to take weeks, months, or years, you can now do over a weekend. So if you've been sitting on an idea, now is the time to bring it to life. Get started for free at lovable.dev. That's lovable.dev.

2. 3:53 – 4:47

   Why influence is the highest-leverage skill in product

   1. LRLenny Rachitsky3:54

      [gentle music] Jessica, thank you so much for being here. Welcome to the podcast.

   2. JFJessica Fain4:00

      Thanks for having me.

   3. LRLenny Rachitsky4:02

      It's my pleasure. Let's set this conversation up. We're gonna be talking about the skill and the art of influence, and in particular, uh, influencing executives and leaders, people above you that you want to convince to do things you want them to do. Help us understand why this is worth people's time. Why is this worth the next hour of someone listening to this? Why is this skill so important to people's careers?

   4. JFJessica Fain4:26

      I think as product builders, there's almost not a skill that's more important. Influence and building a momentum behind great ideas is the way that great products actually get built. And if you don't have that influence, if you don't have the buy-in and the backing of your key stakeholders, of your executives, you

3. 4:47 – 6:00

   Why great ideas fail without executive buy-in

   1. JFJessica Fain4:47

      can't build great products.

   2. LRLenny Rachitsky4:48

      Something that I personally went through is just, like, I, I was in a period of like, "I don't need to work on this skill." I'm just like, "I'm just gonna do amazing work. I'm just gonna... It's gonna sh- show itself of... Everyone's gonna recognize it." And you just... Everyone ran into this wall of like, "Oh, man, all these other people are getting promoted." Maybe talk about that 'cause it feels like that's a big trap people run into.

   3. JFJessica Fain5:09

      I think why I wanted to talk to you about this is, you know, when I was an ICPM, I was putting forth ideas. I was trying to reflect what I was hearing from my customers. I was trying to get sort of buy-in and excitement about the work that I thought was really gonna move us forward. And at the time that I'm thinking about, I was a PM at Slack, and some of my ideas got people really excited, you know, got me funding and backing and just really a sense that we could accomplish something great. And some of my ideas and the things that I really, really believed in died on the vine. They went nowhere. And I was so confused and frustrated, honestly, because I felt like, "Hey, I really get this user base. I really understand what's gonna move the ball forward, and I don't understand how these decisions are actually being made behind the scenes."

4. 6:00 – 9:05

   How executives actually think

   1. JFJessica Fain6:00

      And, uh, I was, uh, eight months pregnant, eight and a half months pregnant. April Underwood, who had just been named CPO of Slack, um, she had just come back from maternity leave. We had a two-day overlap, and I sort of got up my courage and I said to her, "April, I've admired you for a long time. I love the way you work. I, I really love the way you think, um, and I really wanna understand it better. If you'd ever consider having a chief of staffI'd love for you to consider me. And when I came back from that maternity leave, I came into a stint as April's Chief of Staff and was later Chief of Staff to Tamar Yehoshua, um, who seceded, seceded April-

   2. LRLenny Rachitsky6:38

      Who's been on the podcast

   3. JFJessica Fain6:39

      ... who's been on the podcast, right. And is now a, a CPO and head of AI at Atlassian. Tamar, don't, um, be mad if I mess up your title. And what I learned through that process is that people completely misunderstand how executives make decisions, what is going on in the heads, in the calendars, in the incentive structures of executives, and instead of really understanding where that exec or stakeholder is coming from, they center themselves. They center their own desires, their own motivations, their own slice of the world, and they end up just not being as successful, both in their career, but also in the types of products that they're building.

   4. LRLenny Rachitsky7:21

      What's an example of that when you talk about people don't understand how product leaders actually make decisions, how they decide what to do, what to listen to? What's an example?

   5. JFJessica Fain7:29

      Oh my gosh. I think the biggest example of this is people don't understand executive calendars, right? A lot of times on Google Calendar, it's blocked. You can't see what they're working on, but I describe an executive's calendar as like a strobe light going off. You know, you wake up at 8:00 AM, you've already got a huge list of urgent things going on. You go from a meeting with finance on a budget to an interview for another executive to a people problem to a legal problem to a product review. And the product manager coming to that product review or the leader who's trying to make a pitch thinks, "I've been prepping for this meeting for two weeks, three weeks, maybe six weeks since we last spoke." But the executive coming into that session hasn't thought about you since. They may not have gone to the bathroom today, right? And you have to understand that they have not had the time, the energy, the wherewithal to center your problems, and you have to help them get into that mindset. So this is as simple as execs are people too, right? They are running around context switching in the most insane ways I've ever seen, and everything that comes across their plate is an emergency. So one of the biggest tactics I think is so important is just take 30 seconds at the top of a meeting. Why are we here? What happened the last time we talked? Why is this important to you? Why is this meaningful? And really remember that they are not thinking just about you. They are optimizing for a global maximum and not for the local

5. 9:05 – 10:22

   The fundamentals: context-setting, communication, and empathy

   1. JFJessica Fain9:05

      that you're m- you're optimizing for.

   2. LRLenny Rachitsky9:06

      Essentially, this is how to help someone in this world that is running around from meeting to meeting without context on most things, maybe hasn't had time to go to the bathroom. How do we help them see what you want them to see and maybe buy into your vision and suggestions?

   3. JFJessica Fain9:21

      Yeah. I think that, um, you know, one of the ways that I phrase this is how do you get the best out of your exec? How do you help them be their best selves? We often think about how we show up in a meeting or the doc that we wrote or the prototype that we've got ready, but we don't think about how they can be at their best. How do we give them the right kind of information in the way that they communicate? You know, we as product leaders have to be communication chameleons. We have to be speaking their language, like love languages, right, but appropriate for work. Um, and you have to think about do they really, uh, turn a spark with a design, with a customer story, with a dashboard, with an experiment, and how do you understand how their best brain, how their best expertise gets turned on to give you the best of themselves? But part of that is literally just setting up the meeting effectively so that they can have the context, the wherewithal, the sort of breath at the beginning of the meeting to,

6. 10:22 – 12:59

   Stop pitching for approval—start co-creating with execs

   1. JFJessica Fain10:22

      to dive into it.

   2. LRLenny Rachitsky10:23

      The other thing I always tell, uh, people I've managed is it's your fault if the leaders didn't buy into your idea. Like, it's not... You can't just be like, "Ah, they never, they just don't see it. It's not my fault. I- they- they agreed to do something else." Uh, I always tell them like, that's just you not able to influence them and convince them that you're right.

   3. JFJessica Fain10:40

      Yeah. And I- I- Annie Pearl, who was my first PM manager back at Box, uh, she's now-

   4. LRLenny Rachitsky10:45

      Also former podcast guest

   5. JFJessica Fain10:46

      ... also former podcast guest, uh, former CPO at Calendly and Glassdoor and now at Microsoft, and Annie's just the best. She always said to me, "It's not my fault, but it is my problem." And I think that that's the vantage point that a product leader has to have, especially if they're trying to put themselves in the, in the shoes of an executive. As product managers, one of our best sets of skills is curiosity and empathy and trying to understand our users. But the moment that we're talking to an executive or to a stakeholder, we forget those skills and those talents, and we begin to think about our ideas, getting that approval, getting to the next meeting, whatever it might be, the incentive that we are driving. We don't think about the curiosity and empathy for what they're thinking about, for what their incentives are, for how their day has been. And if we can take some of those skills of building great products and think about our executive as our key user here, then we can have a much, much more productive conversation. You know, I think one of the most disastrous things you can do is going into a meeting just looking for approval for your plan. Instead, if what you go in with is how can I learn? How can I strengthen this plan? How can I use the domain expertise, the context, the, um, the experience that this person brings to the table and imbue that into my product work? Both the executive will like you better because they will feel like you have actually built product alongside them, but you will also end up with a, with a better product. You know, I often hear people say to me, "Oh, they just don't get it," right? "They don't see what I see. They're not in my meetings. They don't know how hard this is."Fine. If you don't respect that person, if you don't believe they know something you don't, you need to quit. You need to go work somewhere else. But if you respect them, if you think they have something to offer you, that they got to the place that they're at because they learned and they developed a skill that you're trying to gain, awesome. Take the feedback, take the insight, ask questions, and don't just treat it like a rubber stamp because that's a failure state, and it's a failure state

7. 12:59 – 15:44

   Influence vs. politics (and why people get it wrong)

   1. JFJessica Fain12:59

      that they don't like.

   2. LRLenny Rachitsky13:00

      I wanna dive deeper into this stuff, but first, something on my mind is some people might be turned off by this topic in terms of it may feel icky of just like, ugh, I don't wanna try to be this, like, manipulative person and, you know, deal with politics and influence. Like, I just wanna do awesome work. Why do I have to do this? Speak to that person that's kinda just, like, feels icky about building this and working on this and being this person.

   3. JFJessica Fain13:24

      Yeah. I think that when people frame this as politics, they're completely missing the point. Politics is manipulating outcomes and people for your own gain. Influence is about increasing the odds that your good ideas survive. And I think what happens is people actually let ego and let their own narrative, their own scope of influence get in the way of empathy, right? So this isn't politicking, this is learning. If we treat our stakeholder conversations as discovery interviews, as a way to strengthen our ideas, then we end up in a much, much better place. A- and if we do that in a, in a genuine and low ego way, um, I'll give an example here. Um, Noah Weiss, who succeeded, um, uh, Tamar Yehoshua as CPO of Slack, and also-

   4. LRLenny Rachitsky14:15

      Also former podcast guest

   5. JFJessica Fain14:16

      ... also a former podcast guest. [laughs]

   6. LRLenny Rachitsky14:17

      [laughs] Boy, what a, what a run we're on here.

   7. JFJessica Fain14:19

      Oh, I, uh, no, yeah, and I- I've learned so much from Noah. We sat down, uh, to write product principles for Slack. And, uh, Ethan Eismann, our head of design, um, was leading that initiative, but really this was a lot about codifying the early ideas that made Slack great, especially from a product principles and, and sort of craft perspective. And we started talking about this, um, and Noah had been at Slack early on, and he, he pulls out, like, a small notebook that he kept in his bag and he said, "You know, I actually have a section of this notebook that I've been keeping things I learned from Stewart over the years." Now, it, he hadn't been keeping that notebook because he said to himself, "Oh, one day we're gonna write product principles and I'm gonna want these quotes on hand," or, "I'm gonna show off that I have this." No, it was for genuine learning and growth of his own ideas and place as a product leader that he was taking those. And, and what it allowed him to do was reflect back to Stewart ideas and principles that he had, but also grow his own product sense intuition and f- as an organization it then allowed us to scale those principles. Um, and, and I think it was a really, really important part, and we worked with a lot of the sort of early Slack folks and the people that had really developed that culture, but it was folks who had really tried to grow and learn. They weren't trying to politic. They were trying to build great products, and that's

8. 15:44 – 17:20

   How to disagree with execs without losing trust

   1. JFJessica Fain15:44

      the approach we have to take.

   2. LRLenny Rachitsky15:45

      Okay, so what if you're not working for a Stewart? Which most people... You know, Stewart also a former podcast guest. I feel like, uh, just the alumni of Slack, holy moly, just, like, this is a, just the fact that I've had-

   3. JFJessica Fain15:56

      We had a really good run.

   4. LRLenny Rachitsky15:57

      What a... Just the fact that I have so many of these people on the podcast, what a sign of an incredible team. Okay, so yeah, so most people do not work for a Stewart that has incredible product sense, really cares about craft, and, uh, you know, most people are like, "I d- he's so," or, "She is so wrong about what we're doing. This is such a mistake. They don't listen. They don't know what they're talking about." How do you deal with that?

   5. JFJessica Fain16:19

      One assumption I have of, of how p- folks may misunderstand this skill is that they have to be a yes-man. They have to take everything that the, um, the leader said and do exactly that. That is absolutely wrong. You get paid to have an opinion. You get paid to be a domain expert. And in a lot of ways, your executive is looking for you to be the deepest person in the room, especially if they're good at their job, right? They're looking for you to be the expert. And so bringing your expertise to bear is absolutely crucial. Um, you know, Ilan Frank, who was, who was my boss at Slack as well, is now CPO of Checkr, he always had a customer anecdote in his back pocket. Like, I can hear him in my head saying, "I was just on site last week with so and so and they said blah, blah, blah." Right? He always brought his expertise to bear, and many of the executives at Slack were not from a strong enterprise background, so he could bring that to the forefront. I think that has to be married, again, with that

9. 17:20 – 19:08

   Going in to learn, not to convince

   1. JFJessica Fain17:20

      curiosity and empathy. If you hear something that you don't agree with, this is something that, uh, a guy on my team does super, super well right now. You know, he'll hear something that flies in the face of, of what he's, the data he's seeing, the insights he's gotten, his experience in his domain expertise, and he'll say, "That's so interesting. What led you to believe that?" That kind of question is actually curious about this person said something that I think is dumb, but there must be something behind it. And so if I actually care what's behind it, and what you end up doing in that, in that question is co-creating with the person who offered the opinion in the first place. You're able to say to them, "I'm interested in what led you to that belief, your experience. Did you have a meeting last week? Are you getting pressure from the board right now in a certain way? What is leading you to that belief?" I think one thing that really trips people up is execs are so good at seeming certain. They say things in an authoritative way c- with confidence, with surety because so much of their work is having to make those ultra-fast decisions with little information.But if this is someone who is also a learner, who is also has a growth mindset, then if you are able to help them unpack why they believe something and then respond with your own domain expertise, you are able to get to a better solution together.

   2. LRLenny Rachitsky18:50

      I love these very tactical phrases and tips for how to deal with someone, say a leader. Say you're-- let's just say this is like, you know, they're a director of product, VP of product, CEO that you're trying to convince to agree to a plan. So one phrase, the phrase you're suggesting here is, uh, "That's so interesting. What led you to believe that?"

10. 19:08 – 26:05

    How to present ideas

    1. LRLenny Rachitsky19:08

       Um, anything else along these lines? Say you're pitching a product or an idea to, say, a VP of product, and they're just like, "Mm, what el-what else would, what else, what else works?"

    2. JFJessica Fain19:17

       The earlier that you can understand the belief system and the things that are important to them, the better off you're going to be. So very, very early on in this process, what is top of mind for them? I can count on one hand when I was chief of staff how many people asked me for advice before going into a product review with our CPO or our other executive team to say, "What do you think is most important to them right now?" Use the people around them, their EA, their chief of staff, the people who have successfully pitched ideas in the past, and say, "What worked? What do you think they're worried about? What are the risks?" And in an age of the tools of AI that we have, this is so much easier than it's ever been, right? You can ask Slackbot, "What has Rachel been posting about lately? What f- what do you think is most important to her?" A colleague of mine up here on, on our product leadership team trained a GPT on a bunch of, um, transcripts from past product reviews that are all publicly available, and we expect that our PMs are running their PRDs or their, their pitches through that to say, "What's Rachel gonna push back on? Where are there weaknesses in this ideas?" You can also train things on where are your own weaknesses. I know I've gotten feedback in the past that my data is a little thin, or that this kind of UX thinking is thin. Give me feedback on that. Claude's amazing for this. And so I think that the, the first step is actually just saying, "What's important to them? What do they wanna hear?" and anchor on that. I think the second piece is going in to learn, not to convince, and the earlier on you do that, the better. So we have something at Webflow, uh, called Office Hours. As early as you can, you are having these conversations to align on strategic direction, maybe even before you have a one-pager. You know, uh, we implemented something at Slack with Stewart because we realized we were coming to him with, like, done designs, and he was like, "What the fuck is this? Uh, this is completely different than how I had this in my mind." So Ali Rayl, early Slack employee, implemented something called, "Hey, Stewart, what do you think?" [chuckles] And we would just sit with him for half an hour and say, "What do you think on this topic? What's your belief system? What's your past experience?" And we started with a user interview, right? We started with, we actually wanna download your expertise here. And I think that when you engage execs in that way, it's really, really valuable. Like, one of the things I see people do poorly is they don't ask for the time. They-- You know, this is sort of in counterpoint to what we were talking about before with how busy their calendars are, but they're afraid to ask for more time to get that insight. But sometimes if you don't, you miss the point.

    3. LRLenny Rachitsky21:57

       Something that we hear a lot on this podcast is as a product leader, as a leader of any kind, you wanna have a point of view. You wanna come into a discussion with here's, here's our options, here's what I think is the right solution, and then at the same time, as you're describing, you wanna come across as, "I wanna learn. I'm not here to convince you. I'm here to just, like, help understand your worldview and where you think the right path is." How do you think about just those two kind of that balance of I have something I believe is right and, okay, but I'm here to learn and get your feedback and see what you think makes sense?

    4. JFJessica Fain22:30

       Okay, so my advice on this may be a little paradoxical because, um, I think people make mistakes in both directions on the poles here. On the one hand, I think there's an error people make of trying to show too much work, trying to tow too much upfront proof point. We talked to sixteen participants from these fifteen GOs, and this is the statistically significant, and the exec is like, "I'm so bored, I'm gonna die." I remember I did this in a review once, and literally the person I was most trying to convince glazed over, got on their phone, and I totally blew the meeting because I was trying to prove that I had done my homework. Put it in the appendix, right? They don't need to know every single detail. The baseline expectation is that you did your job and that y- this, that this is built on a solid foundation of your domain expertise. On the flip side, I think there's some balance of showing your work that helps elucidate why your solution is best. So one of the mistakes I see people giving is-- is doing is giving only one option. I think that people, if you say... I mean, this is also, like, classic pricing and packaging strategy. Uh, give three options and the Goldilocks i-in the middle is the perfect one, right? But I think that what that actually allows you to do is say, "Hey, we considered. We are not dumb. We did not miss something. You think we missed something, but no, no, no, we actually considered this." So we had a recent product review with my manager, Rachel Wolan, uh, she was a recent guest on How I AI, and we, uh, brought a doc, a, a sort of reasonable approach to what we thought was the sort of problem and strategic space we were going after. It didn't go well. It really didn't match her expectations, and the feedback she gave us, which was really, really the right feedback, was, "I don't understand how you're thinking about the permutations of possible here," because we had only given one option set. And so what we did following that review is we said, "Hey, we really wanna sort this out. We wanna get moving. We wanna show-"Um, that we can really get building on this, on this product, and alignment is the next stepping stone for that. Can you meet in two days? And we turned around a new doc in two days that actually showed all of the options we had considered but hadn't brought to that first review. And once we elucidated all the things we considered and why we thought they would or wouldn't serve the outcomes we were driving and the technical complexity behind them, she was like, "Oh, yeah, okay. I see why the solution that you're proposing makes the most sense for what we're trying to accomplish." But in the first version, in the first meeting, we hadn't kind of shown that, and we hadn't workshopped it through her. And so sometimes it, you know, really tactically, you, you wanna have that available to you. It's not necessary to put all 15 options you considered, but at least be ready to show them. Have them in an appendix, have them in a draft Figma file, whatever it is. Um, [chuckles] we, uh, we, we used to have this rule after a design review with Stewart. We'd go through the design review, and he'd say, "No, do it exactly like this. I want, you know, the button here and the interaction to be this." And frankly, he always had better ideas than, than we did, but we would come back, and we called it Stewart plus two more. So we did exactly what he asked for and then two other versions that we felt good about. And then it gave us a, a forum for conversation to debate the merits of each

11. 26:05 – 28:22

    The Minto-style approach and tailoring your communication to each exec

    1. JFJessica Fain26:05

       type of approach.

    2. LRLenny Rachitsky26:06

       Awesome. Okay, so there's a bunch of advice here. One is the default is don't go in with, "Here's our whole process that landed on this suggestion," uh, but have that ready 'cause they may ask for that if they don't buy into it. Another is present options, and then there's a, "Here's my point of view. Here's why I think this is the right one." And then if they dig in, you have... be ready for more options. Have you, have you ever looked into the Minto Pyramid way of presenting stuff?

    3. JFJessica Fain26:31

       No, I don't know what that is.

    4. LRLenny Rachitsky26:32

       Okay. So this is-- There's this, uh, lady, Barbara Minto. She, uh, she's, like, from the '50s, I think. She was the first female, uh, consultant at McKinsey or something like that, and she kind of figured out the best way to present information to execs is, uh, is, uh, backwards. Essentially, it's instead of here's our process, here's all the things we did, here's our set of conclusions, and then here's our recommendation, it's flip it. Start with, "Here's our recommendation, and then here's the things we explored, and then here's the evidence behind that." It feels like that's kind of what you're describing.

    5. JFJessica Fain27:04

       Yeah. I think that's a really good way of doing it. I think my only gloss on that would be that people are really different, right? Like, execs are people, too, and so one of the things that I think is really important is understanding what is the literal format, storytelling, pre-work that is gonna work for that person. You know, some people hate a PowerPoint, and it's just gonna crush their soul if you start doing that. Um, uh, some people o-only wanna see the data and not the user, you know, the, the qualitative research. Um, and so I do think it is about really understanding their communication style. And execs, if you're listening to this, it's really fucking helpful if you tell people because you actually know what you like and don't like, and so just tell people. "I prefer a doc. I want no upfront explanation. I want 10 minutes of quiet reading time, and then we can come back together." That's a particularly effective, um, means for, for very busy people and short meetings, um, and especially in remote work, where presentations just don't work very well. Some execs are willing to do pre-reads, some aren't. Um, and I, I think you just have to be willing to accept that they are also human, and you're trying to give them the best shot at inculcating the information in the way that is

12. 28:22 – 30:24

    Why Jessica doesn’t like the question “What’s top of mind for you?”

    1. JFJessica Fain28:22

       meaningful to them.

    2. LRLenny Rachitsky28:23

       So there's a bunch of s- uh, tips here that I wanna summarize for how to kind of set yourself up for success. One is what you just described, which is just think about how do they respond best. What kind of setup do they respond best to? Is it a presentation? Is it a here's what we recommend, here's three options? Is it, uh, data, something else? So there's, like, just understand. Here's what this person likes. They, they don't wanna-- They want it, like, five minutes, fast conclusion, why. Uh, then there's your advice of ask people that know them what is top of mind for them right now because they may be like, "This is the big bet we're making right now." If it's not aligned with that, they're not gonna care. So it's like either, either ask them or ask people around them what's top of mind for them right now. And then there's this idea of simulate almost. Simulate them. Feed all the previous meetings with them into, say, Cloud Project or something like that, create a little GPT, and run your idea by them and, like, what would you say?

    3. JFJessica Fain29:22

       I will tell you, I am not a big fan of the "what's top of mind for you," uh, question. This a hot take because I think that what often people do is they think through their top priorities, their top experiences. You know, if we were trying to do a research study, uh, to understand the day-to-day lives of our users, we probably wouldn't say, "What's top of mind for you?" We'd say, "Tell me how you spent your day." We'd say, "What's the most urgent priority for you right now that you're really scared about messing up? What, um, pressures are you facing?" And so I think there's ways for us to ask much more interesting questions of our executives. Um, I recently did this with our CEO. I said, "Tell me what the board is pushing you on," because everyone's got a boss, and, uh, even a CEO who seems so powerful and competent and, um, and, and sure is getting pressures, right? What are you seeing as the, the, the key inputs to your success?

13. 30:24 – 32:10

    Understanding incentives to unlock buy-in

    1. JFJessica Fain30:24

       The other thing people don't realize is-Execs wanna be successful too. They wanna be good at their jobs, and how can you help them? I mean, in the best case scenario, your incentives at a local team level or a product organization level really closely align with their [chuckles] incentives that you're working on something that really matters to the company. If you're not, you really should be having that conversation because you'll be in misalignment from the start. But if you actually have alignment, point out that alignment. How is the metric that they're trying to move, the OKR they're responsible for, the board pressure that they're under going to be improved by the thing that you are proposing, and how do you get there together? So I think that one of the things people really miss out on here is what are the success criteria for an exec, and how do you model your world to amplify that success so that both of you can be more successful?

    2. LRLenny Rachitsky31:25

       Okay. That is such an important lesson. Before we, uh, follow that thread, just to clarify this question of what is top of mind, your advice, uh, was ask people around them what is top of mind for them. Don't ask them directly this question.

    3. JFJessica Fain31:37

       Top of mind has become this sort of trope, right? It's, uh, it's execs write a weekly writeup of what's top of mind, and it sort of becomes this generic, uninteresting, sort of neutralized frame. And so I think the question, "What's top of mind for you?" has actually lost some of its firepower, and instead, we have to get at what is the emotion, the, um, the sort of drive behind it and, and what's the spicier question that'll get a more

14. 32:10 – 35:10

    Aligning product work with company strategy

    1. JFJessica Fain32:10

       interesting answer.

    2. LRLenny Rachitsky32:11

       So then b- going back to those incentives piece, such a powerful lever for getting anyone-- basically to get anyone to agree to what you want, which is what is, what are they, what are their goals? What are they trying to do? How are they measured? How is the success for them? And then how is the thing you're pitching them aligning with that and will help them achieve that specific goal?

    3. JFJessica Fain32:32

       Right. And in a product-- in building products together, your incentives should be making your users successful, making your business successful because of that. And so what do they actually believe about that? It's not just about, oh, they want a promotion, or they don't wanna get fired, or they wanna hit their KR. Those are very, very real human things, but in an ideal world, in product work, it is really based on building incredible products for your users, and therefore great outcomes for your business. And so I think a big part of this is actually understanding their strategic insights and what they believe is gonna move the business forward, um, most effectively. So after I was chief of staff, I took over Slack's core product team. We worked on channels and emoji and search and messaging, and there was a real feeling from our executive team that we had a bit lost our mojo around product craft, and we talked about, you know, painting the insides of the cabinets. We really wanted such an amazing experience for our users. That was one of the things that makes, made Slack great in the first place, was just it really felt like a product that took that usability to a 10X place. And there was a sense that I had heard from our leadership that we weren't quite there, and we had lost some of that, and that was so, so important to who we were and how we showed up for our users. And so we implemented something, uh, called the Customer Love Sprint. Uh, we said, "Okay, engineering, stop what you're doing. As an entire team, we're gonna spend two weeks just painting the inside of the cabinets." The only rule was engineers got to pick what they worked on. We, we supported them from a PM and design and, and customer support perspective. We gave them tons of ideas, but engineers could pick what they worked on. The only rule was that you had to ship something. You had to ship something that was good for users. And what we did is, you know, you could call this a bug bash. You could say, "Okay, you gotta fix these, uh, you know, these, these rough edges, these, these misses in the product," but we made it a huge deal. We made it really exciting and fun, and we had a big, really fun judging competition that our executives took part of, and we really brought back that part of our culture that we had lost out on a bit. And it spoke to what our executives believed was a differentiation for us and how we were going to show up in the market, show up to our users, grow our user base by making it feel special. And we were s- able to say, "Oh, we shipped 65

15. 35:10 – 37:31

    Quick summary

    1. JFJessica Fain35:10

       improvements this week, this, this sprint," and, and that felt really, really aligned with what they were trying to accomplish from a company perspective as well.

    2. LRLenny Rachitsky35:18

       Okay. So to summarize the kind of tactics so far, one is align your pitch with the person you're trying to pitch is incentives. I don't know if the grammar on that sentence works, but what are they try- what does success look like for them? Connect the thing you're pitching them with that success.

    3. JFJessica Fain35:37

       Yeah. I think that, um, aligning your incentives is, yes, really, really important in a product pitch. If you're thinking about a product pitch, how does it connect to the company goals? Are you trying to, um, improve conversion rates? Are you trying to grow enterprise customers? Are you trying to be perceived in brand? Are you trying to break into some new category? Of course, you have to align on a new pitch. I think the inverse of this is how do you use that incentive structure to also inform regular roadmap, not, uh, you know, just net new product ideas or net new pitches, but you're actually imbuing your entire team and your thought process with that incentive structure. It's a deep understanding. How did the OKRs get to be the way they are? How did the positioning statement get to be that way? How do I understand that and deeply embed it into my team's culture so that we're reflecting what-Our exec team, our leadership has said is important.

    4. LRLenny Rachitsky36:35

       So basically everything should feel like it's a cohesive set of priorities based on some outcome y'all agreed to in the mission.

    5. JFJessica Fain36:43

       Yeah. And I think a, a big part of this is also metrics and data and what you're actually measuring your, your own teams on. You know, we talk a lot about, uh, leading and lagging indicators, um, or in the nonprofit world, this is called theory of change. Uh, there are many steps. You yourself and your individual team may not be able to directly move enterprise revenue or directly move conversion rate, but you believe, and the company has a belief, that painting the inside of the cabinets, having an exceptional customer experience will be the thing that leads to customer retention, customer conversion, um, user satisfaction. And so how do you make sure that your metrics and the things that you're proposing to actually shift ladder up really, really clearly to those and that your

16. 37:31 – 40:49

    Disarming the executive

    1. JFJessica Fain37:31

       executive agrees to that?

    2. LRLenny Rachitsky37:32

       Okay. And then a, a second lever is trying to not go into a conversation, even though you are trying to influence them, it's to go into it with an open mind and, and a learning mindset. You use this phrase, uh, "That's so interesting. What led you to believe that?"

    3. JFJessica Fain37:50

       Right. And I think in that is, um, a disarming of the executive. You know, again, going back to like how do you get the best out of them, you want them to feel comfortable. You want them to feel like they can be honest with you. I think something I see people miss often is they don't follow the subtle threads that executives lead them, the sort of breadcrumbs of opinions. You know, in a, in a, a sort of more clear-cut scenario, your leader, your executive will say to you, "Okay. I'd like a brief on exactly this thing. Write it generally this way. Let's review it in a week." That's a very clear-cut ask. But very, very often the asks are more subtle. "I wonder if... I'm thinking about... Have you considered..." And what I find is that people don't take the bait, and the best people do. So I'll give you an example. Just last week, um, you know, we've been working a lot on as, uh, skills get democratized across Webflow, everyone can do design, everyone can ship code, uh, everyone can write a PRD, how are we enabling people to move as fast as their brains and tools will make them? Uh, Rachel, our CPO, said, you know, "Hey, Kev," our head of design, "we're gonna have to think about design reviews at some point." And within an hour, Kev had had a Loom put together of, "Hey, here's a framework of high-risk design changes, low-risk design changes, blast radius, release processes, and how we might allow anyone in the organization to have designs shipped to production." That was a thread. She didn't ask him to do that. He didn't need to follow up in that timeframe, but he recognized that the organization's incentives are to keep empowering people, to keep everyone moving fast, to keep everyone, um, really excited about what they're building as well, and he knew that he could slot in and respond to this feedback really, really quickly. A lot of times I see people don't take that invitation from the executive to actually engage on the feed- the subtle feedback they're giving. You know, uh, an example from my past where this didn't go as well was, um, we were in a strategy review, you know, sort of a quarterly strategy review, and it was probably the fourth time I had heard Tamar ask, "I wanna see-- I'm interested in seeing the top 10 use cases on X." And the fourth time it happened, she got really frustrated. She said, "We've talked about this so many times before. Why don't we have this documented?" And I think it's because people are not picking up on the cue that there's really something deep underneath. There's really a, an important piece of feedback or a question that they're not pulling on. Maybe you think that that's not an important thing to do, and then you need more information about why they think it's important. Because if you just let it go and you don't respond to the feedback or respond to the ask, that person loses faith in you that you're gonna follow up

17. 40:49 – 43:32

    Speed matters: why fast follow-up builds momentum

    1. JFJessica Fain40:49

       on the thing that they believe is important.

    2. LRLenny Rachitsky40:51

       It also sounds like a really g- good way to influence is you take the reins, and here's where I think we could go with this, and here's the answer to your question.

    3. JFJessica Fain41:00

       Absolutely. I mean, I think if you're thinking about how do you be more senior, how do you show up in a way that is in a leadership mindset, you have to act like a CPO. You have to come in with that perspective. You have to come in with a solution. You have to follow the thread that they've asked about. You have to do it quickly. Um, one of the missteps here is, you know, people treat these interactions as so high stakes, and sometimes they are, but one of the ways that you, you fail at that interaction is you wait too long to, to engage on the feedback. If you wait a week for the follow-up items that you discussed in the meeting, that exec has moved on, and you've missed your chance to actually respond to the feedback in a, in a, in a quick manner. You will get so much more excitement, enthusiasm, brainpower from them if you keep the ball rolling in a, in a timely manner.

    4. LRLenny Rachitsky41:54

       And obviously there's like, you know, everyone's so busy. There's already so much work on their plates. You can't just hop on everything an exec says. There's also this, like, classic advice of sometimes execs just say something, and everyone takes it so seriously. "Oh, I have to do that." And sometimes they're just saying it in passing. So it's probably all... You know, it's a balance of, like, take the opportunities, don't hop on every single thing.

    5. JFJessica Fain42:13

       Yeah. And a great question to ask in that, in that scenario is, how strongly do you feel about this? So if you hear something that they say really strongly, um, or how urgent do you think that is? Or, "Hey, here's what the team is working on now. Do you think that that trumps these priorities?" And if they say yes,Listen. [laughs] Do the thing that they say trumps it, right? It's not about jumping on every request or taking every piece of feedback. It's about contextualizing it and why they believe that, what they think the urgency is, and then actually responding to that. So more often than not, they'll say, "I wonder if we could do this kind of study." And people will go and say, "Oh my gosh, we have to go run that study right now. We have to deprioritize everything else." But if you say to them, "Hey, that's a really cool idea. I, I like that. Do you think that that's more important than these three other studies or three other projects that we're working on now?" And they'll say, "Oh, no, no, no, that's just like a random idea. Put it on the backlog." I think that, um, execs are moving so quickly that they won't always give you that context of urgency, and so you have to ask for it. Uh, this is something I've been working on getting better at as a leader. This is just an idea, um, this is a mandate, this is something I wanna see. But, uh, it's hard. Sometimes it's hard to remember to do that because your brain is spinning

18. 43:32 – 47:00

    How to run high-impact meetings (the 60-second rule)

    1. JFJessica Fain43:32

       with ideas.

    2. LRLenny Rachitsky43:33

       This comes back to your point about, uh, getting into the mind of the person in the meeting, the leader. They're running around all day. Uh, I think you called it a strobe. You're just like, bam, another meeting-

    3. JFJessica Fain43:42

       Yeah

    4. LRLenny Rachitsky43:42

       ... next meeting, next meeting, next meeting, without a lot of context, and they just say things, and sometimes it's important to them, sometimes not. Which comes back to one of your tips at the beginning of this chat is spend 30 to 60 seconds at the beginning just giving them a little context on what the heck. What would you recommend in that 30, 60 seconds? What are some kind of key bullet points of what you wanna communicate?

    5. JFJessica Fain44:02

       Yeah. In the 30 seconds I would say, "We're here to discuss XYZ. Last time we met, we left it off here. The goals of today's meetings are ZYX. We're going... Here's how we're gonna run this meeting." And then stop talking because the moment you go off o- over 60 seconds, you've lost them. And, and oh, I think the other really important thing I would add there is to say, "Was there anything else you were hoping to cover today?"

    6. LRLenny Rachitsky44:27

       That was awesome. I love this advice. I'm excited to tweet this out [laughs] just to summarize these bullet points you just shared. Uh, that is so cool. I love that. And to your point, if 60 seconds flies by, you may think you're talking for 60 seconds, it often ends up being five minutes, so your advice of keep it under 60 seconds, just like try to actually do that.

    7. JFJessica Fain44:46

       Try to actually do that. I think the other thing here is, you know, this o- often depends on what kind of meeting, what, what you're actually doing. You know, in our culture, we do a lot of sort of silent read of docs or watching a Loom, um, in the meeting and then coming back for conversation. I think one of the things that I've seen be really effective in coming back for that conversation is oftentimes a, a leader will smatter your doc with 100 comments and you're like, "Oh my gosh, what is actually important here?" So what I often do is I have a section at the top to say themes for discussion. I bubble up some of the biggest and most controversial pieces that can only be discussed live, and anything they've said that they're just curious about, what's the timeframe for this? What's the staffing need for Y? I can answer offline. I can answer in a follow-up. What I can't get again is the time for discussion with that group. And the safer that they feel in that discussion and the more that they think that you've understood what is the most sort of spicy or controversial, that's where you get to the good stuff and you really get their insight and input. So I, you know, put a section at the top and say, "Topics for discussion that I'm reading through the comments. Rachel, was that right? Did I sort of get your thoughts right? Anything you would add to this?" And then we can talk about, uh, the, the, the, the really good stuff that gets us to a better outcome.

    8. LRLenny Rachitsky46:06

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19. 47:00 – 49:15

    Why influencing execs is part of your job

    1. LRLenny Rachitsky47:01

       We've talked about aligning your incentives and goals with their goals, uh, going in with an open mind, setting context at the beginning of the meeting, understanding how they like to be presented to. What else can we learn to become better at influencing execs? And let me just do a quick tangent.

    2. JFJessica Fain47:19

       Yeah.

    3. LRLenny Rachitsky47:19

       As people are listening to this, they may again be like, "Oh my God, all this BS I have to do. I just wanna do awesome work. Why am I spending all this time learning all this meta work of how to convince someone of a freaking thing? I just wanna build awesome products, drive, you know, growth for the business and the product, and this sucks." I think it's again important to remind people this is just the way things go. You need to influence people in power to agree with your approach. That's just the way it is. You can't just be like, "Nah, no one, no one understands me. It sucks. Uh, it's not my fault."

    4. JFJessica Fain47:51

       Yeah. I mean, it's literally your job, right? They, uh, I think the way that product management has, has worked for a long time is you basically get funding for your ideas in the form of engineering, design, uh, you know, cross-functional resourcing, right? That is, you should consider that VC money that's been invested in you, and your CFO, your CPO, your CEO is expecting a return. And so what is the way that you are showing that you are building great products that, that honors that investment in you? And y- sure, you can go into a startup and be the sole decision-maker, and that is a very, very valid way to work. But if you work with other people, having them excited, interested, passionate, um, bought in to what you're doing-Will make everything easier. It, it is also the job, right? You, you also have to. But I think, I think the thing I want people to take away is that it's really the way to build well. You know, when people are motivated, when they feel purpose, when they feel like this is really something that I believe in, they work harder, they support you more, they talk about you in rooms that you're not in. And so it's, it's just actually the way you deliver great results.

    5. LRLenny Rachitsky49:14

       I,

20. 49:15 – 52:23

    Asking for more resources and thinking in 10x bets

    1. LRLenny Rachitsky49:15

       I think that's such an important framing. Okay, what other tactics, what other techniques work in helping leaders, uh, get influenced? [laughs]

    2. JFJessica Fain49:24

       Yeah.

    3. LRLenny Rachitsky49:25

       That's a good way to put it.

    4. JFJessica Fain49:25

       Get, get influenced. I love that.

    5. LRLenny Rachitsky49:27

       Get influenced.

    6. JFJessica Fain49:27

       I love that.

    7. LRLenny Rachitsky49:27

       Be influenced.

    8. JFJessica Fain49:28

       Um, yeah. We should, we should have like a stamp, like influenced, uh, [laughs] at the end. So I think one of the things that people misunderstand is the constraints that they are bound by versus their leadership. You know, execs are not, um, they, they don't have the same boundaries of budget and headcount and, um, and timeline that you feel. They can move people around in the organization. They can ask for more resourcing. They can get creative. They can elevate projects, kill projects. Um, and so, you know, you have to come to them with that mindset of, hey, with today's resourcing, with this many engineers or this kind of tooling or this kind of investment, here's what, what I can get, but I'm thinking of the 10X case. I'm thinking of the accelerated case, and if that's what you want, and if that's aligned with your incentives, here's what I need to be successful. And so I think that people think, "Okay, well, I've got my pizza team and I've got my four engineers, and what you're asking is not possible." Well, if it's not possible, tell them why not. Come back and say, "You know, the thing that you're asking for, I'm super stoked about that. I need eight more people. I need you twice a week for an hour. I need much closer alignment with our marketing team, and I'm not sure how to get that." You have to think about what are the constraints that hold you back that they can actually help you a lot with. And people miss out on this all the time of not asking for what they need to be successful, especially when the ask from the executive seems unreasonable.

    9. LRLenny Rachitsky51:09

       This is such a good advi- piece of advice of just if you get them excited enough, things can significantly change in terms of resourcing and prioritization. Like your job-

    10. JFJessica Fain51:17

        Right

    11. LRLenny Rachitsky51:17

        ... is to help them see the how massive an opportunity this is and go... And not just give you what you want, but just like, "Wow, okay. Here's the way to unblock this thing. Uh, here's how we can go." Like, "Okay, this is gonna be our new bet, big bet. Let's, let's go big here."

    12. JFJessica Fain51:31

        Yeah, absolutely. This is gonna be our new big bet, and this comes back to aligning with what the company's trying to, to accomplish and also the urgency. So some things, if you added a dozen more people or perfect alignment with go-to-market, yeah, you could get them to market faster. But is that the most important thing for the company goals? Is right now the answer? Is accelerating this in this way actually gonna do more, or is it something else that's actually more aligned? And so I think it's still being so rooted in the company goals, in what the exec is trying to accomplish, in what your users really need to be successful so that you can say, "In order to accelerate our goals, here's what we can, here's what we can do."

    13. LRLenny Rachitsky52:13

        Like, you know, if, if you're in charge of a company, you're-- you'd be so excited if someone came to you with a 10X idea that's gonna-

    14. JFJessica Fain52:21

        Yeah

    15. LRLenny Rachitsky52:21

        ... change the trajectory of your

21. 52:23 – 54:18

    What to do when your idea gets rejected

    1. LRLenny Rachitsky52:23

       product. Like, that's what everybody wants. Uh, and so, uh, that is a really powerful way of approaching all these things. Obviously, not every idea is gonna be a big idea, not every idea is a great idea. A lot of times these take time also. Maybe speak to that, just like, say you have a big idea and they're like, "Nah." What, what are some expectations to set for people that come up with a big idea that just isn't getting any traction?

    2. JFJessica Fain52:47

       You know, it really depends on what kind of organization you're working in. You know, if you're working in a smaller organization, if that big idea is something that you can build on your own or you can build within, versus if you need, you know, a large in- large scale investment. I think the real thing about, um, uh, building toward a big idea, towards something net new, the key is really outside and around the executive. So if the executive is the decision maker on whether we're gonna invest here, they also want to understand from their peers, from other experts, what, what, why this actually matters. If you have something net new that you wanna bring to market and customer success thinks it would really accelerate expansion rates, or, you know, the, the marketing team thinks that, uh, signups would be 10X because of this, if you have that cross-functional alignment, and this is where a lot of these lessons don't just apply if you're going into a, a product executive meeting, but that if you're influencing your cross-functional execs and your cross-functional stakeholders to be advocates on your behalf, I, I think that, you know, we now have more tools than ever to, as, as product folks, build out the V1, right? Prototype something, build your own app, build the messy version of it, get feedback, iterate, and be socializing that in a way that creates a groundswell of buy-in, um, to the point that, you know, the exec can't say no to the

22. 54:18 – 56:50

    Clarifying information

    1. JFJessica Fain54:18

       funding.

    2. LRLenny Rachitsky54:19

       Along those lines, it feels like to me the m- biggest reason that a leader doesn't buy into your pitch is you just have different information. They don't see what you see. They don't-- You don't see what they see, right? They have all this other stuff that they're looking at and trying to decide. Maybe speak to just, like, that skill of trying to-Clarify information on both sides

    3. JFJessica Fain54:42

       I'm thinking about a, a, a tool April Underwood taught me. Um, she said she used to go into product strategy meetings with Stewart and was really trying to extract some of his ideas, but she was always holding the whiteboard marker. And so there was this back and forth between them in the conversation of I'm trying to imbue-- I'm trying to un-understand deeply what you're seeing in the market, what you're feeling in the business, what your instincts are, but I'm also going to package that in a way that is translatable, is actionable, is in a framework that you might not have had in your head. And so that is like a great tool for marrying that leader's instincts with your ability to sort of not synthesize their approach, but really, um, take that approach and, and accelerate it for marrying what you know about the world and what they know about the world.

    4. LRLenny Rachitsky55:40

       So it's kind of what I'm hearing is kind of take it upon yourself to help them to kind of align your worldview with their worldview, and there's this question coming back just like, like help me understand what I don't-- What was the question you had? Uh, oh, that's so interesting. What led you to believe that? Like, these are kind of questions that help you extract what you don't know that they know.

    5. JFJessica Fain56:00

       Yes. And I think there are also really different phases of a relationship. There's a phase when you're new, you may not have so much face time with that person. You don't really know them that well, but I think that this is a place where time spent together really just accelerates your trust with them, your, um, ability to speak freely, to ask difficult questions, to get real feedback. And so, um, especially if you're in a position where you can ask for that time, more casual time, l-less fraught that you're not always pitching an idea, but you can have real conversations, that is also the groundwork for the pitch down the line. Uh, I think people devalue that, that time upfront spent together because it pays dividends for the later pitch.

    6. LRLenny Rachitsky56:48

       Yeah. I'm glad you went there. That's exactly where I was gonna actually

23. 56:50 – 58:30

    How to build trust and make ideas stick

    1. LRLenny Rachitsky56:50

       g-go is this idea of trust and building and having... you know, giving the person a reason to kind of assume that you know what you're doing. Um, obviously hard to build trust, and, uh, the reason I think this is important is sometimes you have the best idea, and they just don't buy it 'cause they just don't know anything about-- They don't, they don't know what you've been up to. They don't know how awesome you are, how smart you are, how successful you've been your whole life and career, uh, maybe because you're new. What are some tips for trying to build trust with the leader so that these things become easier?

    2. JFJessica Fain57:20

       I think in terms of building trust, it's really important to ground yourself in what they believe. If you are pitching an idea that is wildly different than something they believe, don't bother. You probably have nine other good ideas that are more aligned with the beliefs that they already ha-- that they already hold. Follow those instead. So there's something about just engaging, uh, from a baseline assumption. If they feel strongly about something, okay, maybe you can come back to them once or twice and say, "Are you sure you feel strongly about that? I really see this data." And if they say, "Yeah. I feel really strongly," you probably have to drop it. But in terms of building that long-term trust, I think the biggest things that do that are really hearing them out and actioning on the feedback that you've gotten in the past, having results. You know, it cannot be overstated that impact in the organization, building great products, shipping amazing things quickly, feeding that back to the leader to say, "Hey, we worked with you on this. We shipped it. It went well. Here's the results," that builds you momentum to be able to go back with the,

24. 58:30 – 1:02:27

    Shrinking big ideas into experiments

    1. JFJessica Fain58:30

       uh, the more novel approach or the scarier one. I think the other thing I would say is, um, one of my favorite-- well, actually, one of the only business books I've ever liked is called Switch. Uh, it's about change management, and they talk a lot about shrinking the change, um, which is this brilliant idea. If something seems scary and overwhelming, how do you make it so much smaller so that it's an experiment? It's, uh, a one-week, uh, proof of concept. It's something that feels really small that can get people over the hump of, "Well, I'm not gonna invest in six months for this project if I don't know if it's gonna work." So shrinking the change is a huge way to build momentum and trust, and I think this applies to the way that we develop all products, especially if you're doing something that lasts longer than a month. What are your milestones? What are the chunks at which you're showing outcomes and fit? And this is easier than ever to do with the tools that we have at our disposal. How are we showing that we are taking a much more iterative approach so that you can build that momentum, build that buy-in, and get that trust to, to do the bigger thing?

    2. LRLenny Rachitsky59:35

       That's an awesome, very tactical piece of advice here. To convince someone to do something is just reduce the risk, essentially, reduce the investment to help build trust in, okay, this is showing success. Because obviously, it's much easier to bite off on something that's gonna take two weeks or-

    3. JFJessica Fain59:52

       Absolutely

    4. LRLenny Rachitsky59:52

       ... have very low risk and impact if it's not a good idea.

    5. JFJessica Fain59:55

       Yeah. I think that's absolutely right, and I think what is the type of risk that they are most afraid of too, right? Is it wasting time? Is it time to market? Is it that they don't actually think this is gonna work with customers? So if you can start to... and, and you can and should ask this, what are the outcomes you're most afraid of, right? What would a failure state be, um, for you in, in this experiment? Uh, you know, there's, there's a concept of red teaming, which was originally a military tactic and, and now being applied to businesses. How do you take an outsider's perspective to your idea and not just be so obsessed with your own thinking, with your own concept? Because so often we get wrapped around the axle, especially I, I actually find this happens even more with prototyping. You build a prototype, and you're like, "Oh, it looks so beautiful. I would've never been able to build that before." It's actually, like, not a very good idea, but [chuckles] um, but you get obsessed with it, and you're unwilling to accept that it could fail. I think one of the biggest things you can do to build trust is kill things.Deprioritize things. That is a very, very senior way of thinking, right? And it shows that you have the same aligned incentives as the executive who's thinking about the good of the company outcome, the user outcome, and not just your own.

    6. LRLenny Rachitsky1:01:13

       That is such a good one c- because everyone's always just trying to acquire more resources, more investment, just, like, more features and showing that, "Okay, this is a terrible idea. I know I spent, like, months on this, but no, we should kill this because it's not working."

    7. JFJessica Fain1:01:26

       Right. It's not working and, and here's how I'm gonna know that it's not working, and here's when I'm gonna come back to you with a decision, right? So sometimes we don't know the out- well, a lot of times we don't know the outcome, especially with AI p- native products. And if we can say, "We're gonna test this. Here's how we're gonna know it's working. We'll come back to you on X date." I think one thing that really spirals people out of control is, is a desire for certainty. You know, as human beings, many of us have, have a huge desire for certainty. Now more than ever, that is not possible. Um, and so, uh, one trick that I learned, especially working with engineers who often have a very, very high, uh, desire for certainty, um, is to say, "I don't know the answer right now. I don't know if this is gonna be successful. I'm going to check in with you on X date. That's when we're gonna come back and have another conversation." And so at least there's certainty about the next check-in point, and that can be a really powerful, uh, tool for sort of de-escalating the fears and risks around a given initiative

25. 1:02:27 – 1:06:00

    Common mistakes people make when influencing leaders

    1. JFJessica Fain1:02:27

       or idea.

    2. LRLenny Rachitsky1:02:28

       Okay. Before we get into AI's impact on all this stuff, are there any other common mistakes people make when they are trying to get better at the skill of influence or just any other really powerful tactics for increasing your ability to influence leaders?

    3. JFJessica Fain1:02:45

       Something people miss is the extremely broad context that execs bring to bear from not only their experiences, but the things that they are hearing in their day-to-day life. They understand what other product teams are working on better than you. They understand the conversation at the E-staff level. They've been to executive roundtables, and they are hearing. And one of your jobs is to extract that insight and information and apply it to your ideas. And they want to feel like you care, like you respect that, like you can apply it to your own thinking. And so this, this keeps going back to that curiosity and empathy. What do they know that you don't that you can actually apply to strengthen your thinking or inform the direction that you want to take your team? Um, and I think people just often don't ask those things, um, of, of their executives. They don't, uh, show a curiosity for the expertise that that person has, has brought to bear. And frankly, I think often they don't really care, which is the chief mistake. Um, they should really actually take it into account to strengthen their own thinking.

    4. LRLenny Rachitsky1:03:59

       Yeah. So much of this is about just, uh, coming into it with, like, here's what I... It's just, like, having the same information, and I think there's a point about just, like, believe they know what they're doing is, is so underappreciated. Like, there's a reason they're in this role. There's a reason you're not there. There's a reason this company's doing as well as it is. Uh, and so-- And even if they are wrong, like, they believe they are right, so it's important to understand what they think and know and what information they have access to.

    5. JFJessica Fain1:04:27

       Yeah. And I, I think the other piece of this is for anyone thinking about how they grow their career, how did that person get into the role that they are in? They broadened their context. They saw, you know, sort of had great peripheral vision, and that is a way to show up in a room that is much more senior than you are is keep your domain expertise, keep the things that you know best, but broaden your perspective, broaden your, um, vantage point to think about it in the context of the whole ecosystem, the whole organization, the whole industry, which you often don't get a, a chance to see it. And what happens at that point is you get seen as a strategic thinker. You get seen as somebody who really cares about the company's success and not just your own. And so it is actually a really, really important tool for growth, especially, you know... I had told April when I originally pitched her on being our chief of staff that I, I wanted to take the job because I wanted to know if I, if I wanted to be CPO when I grew up. And, and it's true. I still don't know, um, 'cause it's a really, really hard job, and I have just, uh, way more respect than I ever did before, before that. But I think that if you wanna grow into a product leadership role, expanding your viewpoint, expanding the way that you see problems, and thinking about it from a global perspective is a way to show up as that strategic leader that you say you wanna be.

    6. LRLenny Rachitsky1:05:57

       I love this advice. Just

26. 1:06:00 – 1:09:32

    How to grow into your next role

    1. LRLenny Rachitsky1:06:00

       to make it very clear for people, 'cause it's easy to just like, "Yeah, okay. I'll just, like, expand my horizon." Like, basically, the advice here is, uh, just, like, think on behalf of the entire business, not just your feature, not just your little goal. It's like, what is the business trying to do? Here's how this fits into it. Here's what the le- here's what the CEO broadly is thinking about. Like, here-- The epitome of this to me is Jeff Weinstein, I think is how you pronounce his last name, or Weinstein at Stripe. Like, he's just, like, a PM on a product, and he's just constantly tweeting and sharing, uh, Stripe as a business. Like, he's just, like, thinking about Stripe as the company, and then here's this thing I work on that helps the company.

    2. JFJessica Fain1:06:40

       Absolutely

    3. LRLenny Rachitsky1:06:41

       And-

    4. JFJessica Fain1:06:41

       And Jeff and I worked together at Box

    5. LRLenny Rachitsky1:06:42

       Oh, you did? Oh-

    6. JFJessica Fain1:06:43

       Yep

    7. LRLenny Rachitsky1:06:43

       ... that is so cool, right? Okay. So would you agree he's, like, the epitome of this?

    8. JFJessica Fain1:06:47

       Oh, yeah. I mean, he's so charismatic and able to, to really put himself in other people's shoes. I mean, I think that, um, it is just a way to, you know... W- we, we just redid our PM career ladder for this year, um, and I led that effort, and one of the things that we noted as a, a trait of becoming more senior is your product citizenship and how much you are embedding back in the organization and giving back best practices, mentoring others, um, uh, broadening people's horizons on tooling, technology, storytelling, and, and of course strategy. And I think that this is such an important part of people's growth that, uh, they often undersell, but y- you can do it at every level in your own area, and it's about connecting the dots back up to what is important to the company. So s- you know, uh, so many times I see docs that are like, "Okay, our k- KR is to ship this thing," and I'm like, "Why? D- does that matter?" Like, "Does anyone care?" Um, you have to tell a story. Uh, and even if that's true, that shipping is the KR, sometimes that's the case, right? But even if that's true, why are you doing that? What is the outcome for the business? Why would the CEO be excited about shipping that? Uh, it's usually because of some business outcome or user outcome that you have to tie back to their perspective of. And then I think the flip side of is if you're working on something that doesn't shift one of those outcomes or isn't urgent for the business, do you need to change course? Do you need to say, "Hey, actually, I don't think this is the highest leverage thing right now. Um, we could actually do X, uh, to, to be much more effective for our broader goals"?

    9. LRLenny Rachitsky1:08:38

       That, that's where I was gonna go is just, like, that's the ultimate trust-building move is to tell the leaders, "Okay, here's our goal. Here's all these ideas, but we don't think this is the right goal, and here's how this doesn't fit in, and here's why we should kill this product."

    10. JFJessica Fain1:08:51

        Right, exactly. Right. Think like a CPO. Put yourself in their shoes. I mean, uh, you had Stewart on a few weeks ago, and he talked about how the CEO is kind of the only one who can really kill things across a, a, you know, things that already exist or, um, really make some of those super, super tough decisions. Uh, I think that is oftentimes our culture, but is a mistake. If we each think of ourselves as owners and as contributors to the business and as leaders, we will bring those opportunities up as well to both amplify the business or save it from itself.

    11. LRLenny Rachitsky1:09:29

        Mm-hmm. Do the job you want versus the job you have.

    12. JFJessica Fain1:09:31

        Mm-hmm.

27. 1:09:32 – 1:17:55

    How AI is changing influence and product work

    1. LRLenny Rachitsky1:09:32

       Classic.

    2. JFJessica Fain1:09:33

       Yes.

    3. LRLenny Rachitsky1:09:33

       Okay, let's talk AI. I feel like you can't have a... You cannot do anything these days without mentioning AI in some way. Uh, how is AI changing the skill of influence? What's changed in the past couple years in trying to convince people to do the things you're hoping them to do?

    4. JFJessica Fain1:09:51

       I think that we are entering a golden age of product management, not of product managers, but of product management and the core skills that made this function the thing that I love to do. You know, more than ever, what we have to do is have really interesting ideas that are grounded in user empathy, curiosity, testing, iteration. But we will still be working in organizations where getting buy-in to those ideas, uh, and influencing people to fund not just the V1, but the much more expensive V2, 3, 4, and ongoing support become 10X more important. And as execution basically plummets in, uh, in complexity and everyone can be a builder, PMs can, and, and product thinkers, which I think is m- far beyond the product management function, um, can be so incredibly influenced by those core skills of bringing people along for the ride. So I think that product managers for a long time have made their careers on being the most Type A, the Gantt chart master, um, the best note-taker in the business. And if AI is better than you at analyzing data or taking meeting notes or running experiments, what's your job now? So the leverage actually shifts from doing that work and being the synthesizer to deciding what work actually survives and encouraging other people to buy into that process. And I actually think it's just so incredibly exciting because PMs and other functions, engineers, designers, are so empowered to bring that first version to bear to get that momentum, to get that signal on product market fit, on user benefit, and then build momentum from that point in a much faster cycle. And so it's actually, like, an incredibly exciting place, but the act of influence, the act of stakeholder management, the act of learning is the 10X skill.

    5. LRLenny Rachitsky1:12:06

       Awesome. Um, this is such a fun topic. The way I've been thinking about this is just, like, where are human brains gonna continue to be necessary and useful in this new world?

    6. JFJessica Fain1:12:15

       I'm terrified.

    7. LRLenny Rachitsky1:12:16

       [laughs] Maybe never, maybe nowhere.

    8. JFJessica Fain1:12:18

       Maybe nowhere.

    9. LRLenny Rachitsky1:12:19

       But the way you described it, which I totally agree with, is essentially it's deciding what to do and getting everyone on the same page, alignment, uh, uh, around that. Here's we're all on the same page. Here's what we're prioritizing. And then it's like, cool, now let's build it, and that happens so quickly now

    10. JFJessica Fain1:12:36

        Yeah. And what can you notice that AI can't? You know, AI is not good at being an anthropologist yet, right? It is based on a corpus of existing knowledge, and I think the best product thinkers, a-again, across functions that I've, I've worked with really are able to get to novel insights through that user empathy, through that understanding, and through deep understanding of the business dynamics, changing industry, and bringing those together to prioritize ideas that actually really, really matter. You know, we're gonna have so much software we won't even know what to do with it, but what software actually works? What software actually matters? What software gets marketed or sold? Or, you know, we're, we're gonna have to think about not just that the software exists, but that it can get to its final state, and that is gonna require people's buy-in to that idea working.

    11. LRLenny Rachitsky1:13:32

        Yeah. The way I think about this right now is just like where humans are still necessary and, uh, great product thinkers are still necessary is, uh, on the front end deciding what to prioritize and build. On the back end, determining if this is good and ready, essentially judgment and taste. And then there's distribution, I think, is such an underappreciated, like, new bottleneck.

    12. JFJessica Fain1:13:55

        Yes.

    13. LRLenny Rachitsky1:13:55

        Because as you said, there's so much shit out there, just like how do we get anyone to pay attention to any of this stuff? Every day there's like a new life-changing product. Uh, so I feel like that's gonna be a big problem.

    14. JFJessica Fain1:14:06

        Oh, I want you to do a whole episode on distribution because I feel this so much, right? If everyone thinks they can build the next Salesforce on their own, by the way, I don't believe that, uh, then, you know, you're gonna have just a flood of available tools. And who gets the attention? It is still gonna be who has the marketing dollars, who has the brand reputation, who has the existing customer base. Distribution is everything, and I, I think the quintessential example we've seen here is with Gemini and Google's tools and, and just their total, um, continued dominance in that market because of tools of distribution. Um, and I think it's really fun to see. I think the other piece I would say i- that's underrated there is trust building. Trust with your users, but also with your internal teams. You know, we're seeing even model companies hire at a huge rate right now, so you are still working with colleagues. Uh, you are still working with millions of users, and alongside distribution is trust, and that is a, a function of influence and empathy.

    15. LRLenny Rachitsky1:15:11

        Along these lines, what I wonder is we talked about these other two kind of areas, humans are still valuable and great product leaders are still valuable, deciding what to build, knowing if it's ready and awesome. Uh, I wonder how good AI will get at those things because we never thought AI would be amazing at coding, and now it's 100% of code will be soon written by AI. And I've actually been building a bunch of stuff, and I just find Codex and Cloud Code are so good at actually giving you ideas for what to build. I'm just like, "What should I do to make this better?" And it's like, "Here's 10 ideas." And then they're like, "That is a really good idea." So I think it'll get there. People underestimate how good it'll get at these things, I think.

    16. JFJessica Fain1:15:49

        Yeah. I do think that as, um, as ideas proliferate and as there just becomes so many ideas and so much feedback, you know. We're going through a strategy doc rewrite. I think we have like 40 versions now because it's so easy to rev on a 15-page doc. Actually, when, when these decisions are happening faster, building is happening faster, the flip side of that is mistakes compound faster as well, and strategy clarity becomes so much more important to anchor people on. If you wanna have an empowered EPDI organization or company, that, that clarity of what you believe, what are the most important problems to invest time and energy into, what, uh, where we wanna invest compute and dollars, um, that is the mechanism for letting people go and run at as fast a velocity as they're capable of, right? So if you have that corpus of shared beliefs that you update on a pretty fast clip, because, uh, I think that's, that's the mode we're in, that is actually what enables teams to build the right stuff as opposed to just the idea that Claude had.

    17. LRLenny Rachitsky1:16:59

        I love this point because there's a lot of talk on Twitter actually just today, uh, in the PM community about PRDs are dead, and I think it's exactly the opposite, which is being very clear about what we are doing and the strategy is now the most important thing because once you have that, then it's cool. Fire off 100 agents and we'll go build it and launch it.

    18. JFJessica Fain1:17:20

        Totally. Strategy clarity is, is so, so important. I am not in the Twitter verse. I find it exhausting, partially because I think takes like PRDs are dead or software is dead is like really dumb. Um, I find it a little insufferable, uh, [chuckles] if I'm being spicy, because I still think what matters is understanding users, understanding business and economic, uh, dynamics, understanding strategy and what we're trying to accomplish, and then really thinking through what is the right way to do that

28. 1:17:55 – 1:21:15

    Using AI to simulate exec feedback and improve pitches

    1. JFJessica Fain1:17:55

       together.

    2. LRLenny Rachitsky1:17:56

       Okay, maybe one more question, uh, along these lines, just agents now running as colleagues. Everyone's got all these clouds running, codexes, all kinds of agent platforms. Now that agents are a part of kind of the workforce and increasingly, uh, is there anything there around influence that is valuable for people to start thinking about to learn how to do?

    3. JFJessica Fain1:18:18

       I love that question. You know, uh, we talk about this a lot, especially when we think about identity, security, compliance, that agents are a teammate for accelerating work, um, and, and the risks that that also provides because of the, um, places where agents fall down. I, I think agents are absolutely something we have to think about w-with relation to, um, to influence because, um, we are basically all directors of work now, right? If we have an army of agents or these hundred new colleagues that joined our team, how would we onboard new junior team members who don't already understand our product philosophy, what's important to us, and how do we codify that for ourselves? How do we take the time to say, "What's important to me as a product leader that I want to inculcate into, um, a-anything that's developed for my team? What do I believe about, um, product market fit? What do I look for in terms of what success looks like? How do I set metrics?" And if we can do that upfront work to actually, like, analyze ourselves and where we've seen success, where we've seen downfalls, and then continue to train our agent models with that, um, that data, that history, that context, they will be better off. But I also think the flip side of this is guardrails. Where do you need to be involved? Where do you need to catch hallucinations or missteps? Where do you uniquely have taste, uh, judgment, frame of reference, something intangible where you need to say, "Don't do this without me"?

    4. LRLenny Rachitsky1:19:57

       What's so funny about this, essentially we're helping the agent learn the skills we've been talking about to influence you. Here's context on my goals. Here's what I understand about the customers. Here's our current priorities. Like, help me. Tell me what to do, and it's, like, influencing you to agree.

    5. JFJessica Fain1:20:17

       Absolutely. I think-- [laughs] Wow, that's really the singularity, isn't it?

    6. LRLenny Rachitsky1:20:21

       [laughs]

    7. JFJessica Fain1:20:22

       Uh, you should just feed this podcast to a bunch of agents and see if they can do this better than me, um, see, see what their advice is. No, but I really think at this point we are in a place where it is a back and forth, and where we should be using agents and AI as, um, a really smart colleague that never gets irritated by our questions. Poke holes in my ideas. Um, tell me what you would do differently. Um, help me plan this out. Uh, base this on m-more, uh, corporate context than I could ever have gone through myself, um, and, and poke holes. And I think that, um, that is a, just, like, a really powerful way for amplifying our work.

    8. LRLenny Rachitsky1:21:01

       Oh, it's, like, so interesting. Like, one of your, you know, tips is come into an open mind and learn. It's, like, exactly what an agent does. Tell me more. What else should I know? And then just, like, hopping on your ideas, like, "Okay, cool. We'll add that to the to-do."

    9. JFJessica Fain1:21:12

       Right.

    10. LRLenny Rachitsky1:21:12

        Like, all the ideas you've shared, agents are so good at.

29. 1:21:15 – 1:22:44

    Protecting our brains from overwhelm

    1. JFJessica Fain1:21:15

       Yeah.

    2. LRLenny Rachitsky1:21:15

       So that's, you know, my point.

    3. JFJessica Fain1:21:17

       I think that, um, one thing I'm really curious about, you know, you were talking about human brain chemistry, is just how we can protect our brains from overwhelm.

    4. LRLenny Rachitsky1:21:27

       Hmm. It's horrible.

    5. JFJessica Fain1:21:27

       The, the speed of ideas, change, um, uh, building is... W-we are dis-evolved for this pace of life. We were evolved, uh... I, I, I love this book, um, Pachinko, that tells the history of, um, a Korean family over several generations, and in one of the generations, sort of in the 1600s, 1700s, there are two wives that every day cook breakfast, then go to the market, buy rice, buy fish, buy vegetables, go home, cook the rice, cook the fish, serve dinner, clean up dinner. That's the day. And for the vast majority of human history, that was kind of our day. And the mental load that we are asking of our brains right now is staggering. And so I think one of the ways that we actually have to use AI is, and agents, is to help our brains be most effective, is to clear out distraction, to point out the most important things, to... A-and I, I think this is where people really need to make some tough decisions. How much can we really focus on, and how do we allow for that focus in the ways that are hopefully good for humanity?

30. 1:22:44 – 1:33:32

    Lightning round and final thoughts

    1. LRLenny Rachitsky1:22:45

       What a time to be alive, Jessica.

    2. JFJessica Fain1:22:47

       [laughs]

    3. LRLenny Rachitsky1:22:47

       Holy... Oh, my God. Uh, before we get to our very exciting lightning round, is there anything else that you wanted to share? Anything else you want to double down on?

    4. JFJessica Fain1:22:58

       One thing I think that I'll say is I'm a people person. I love in-person collaboration, and I love talking ideas through in whiteboard sessions. I'm a two wing three, if there are any other Enneagram fans out there. It's a, it's a mix of, like, the people person, the sort of bringing to-- the communal thinker with the achiever. Um, that is my personality type. I think that, um, sometimes I can give this kind of advice and people say, "Oh, well, Jess, you're, you're good with people," or, like, "You kind of understand these things." I think that something that has taken me a while in my career is how to be authentic to myself in influence, in relationships, in trust building, and I don't think that it's one personality type or another. I think that you could be shy and introverted or, uh, super data-oriented and technical. I think all types of personalities can, in their own authentic way, communicate with the people around them to build trust, to build influence in the way that feels true to them. You know, I think when I, uh, when I was younger in my career, when I was starting out as a PM, I got a lot of feedback of, "Oh, Jess, how do you, you know, show up more like a man would? Show up more aggressively. Show up more, um, uh, decisively." And I think there were some good nuggets in there, but I think it took me a while to feel like, hey, who I am and how I show up is actually my superpower that I can double down on.And I don't need to be like someone else. What I need to do is think about what I wanna accomplish and how I wanna grow and do that in a way that is, is true to me.

    5. LRLenny Rachitsky1:24:39

       I could not agree more with that. I've, uh, shared very sim-similar sentiment on the pod a few times.

    6. JFJessica Fain1:24:45

       Yeah.

    7. LRLenny Rachitsky1:24:45

       Just, like, you can accomplish the same things other people can through your own strengths.

    8. JFJessica Fain1:24:50

       Yeah.

    9. LRLenny Rachitsky1:24:50

       You don't have to do it the way they're doing it.

    10. JFJessica Fain1:24:52

        Exactly.

    11. LRLenny Rachitsky1:24:52

        I so agree. A beautiful way to end that. And with that, we have reached our very exciting lightning round. I've got five questions for you. Are you ready?

    12. JFJessica Fain1:25:00

        I'm ready. I'm so excited.

    13. LRLenny Rachitsky1:25:02

        What are two or three books that you find yourself recommending most to other people?

    14. JFJessica Fain1:25:06

        I think there's a genre of book I've really fallen in love with. Uh, I mentioned Pachinko before. Um, I love historical fiction because it really gives me access into worlds that I don't know. You know, they, uh... I, I can't remember who talks about, um, windows and mirrors. Books are windows or mirrors for us. And, uh, historical fiction, especially about places where I'm less familiar with that history, is really a window into someone else's experience. Um, and there's a particular, uh, type of historical fiction that I've just loved, which is multi-generational historical fiction.

    15. LRLenny Rachitsky1:25:42

        Mm-hmm.

    16. JFJessica Fain1:25:43

        Uh, Pachinko does this i- with a family in Korea over generations and moving to Japan. Uh, there's a book called Homegoing, which is about the west coast of Africa and the impact of the slave trade, um, and the ongoing, uh, life in Africa from two, uh, split parts of the family. Uh, History of Burning is a, is a book that tells a story of, um, Indian indentured servants that were brought to Uganda to build the, um, British railroad there. Um, and just parts of history that I was so much less familiar with and really treasure that sort of window into, um, a different world.

    17. LRLenny Rachitsky1:26:21

        I think the book Overstory is an example that... Have you heard of that?

    18. JFJessica Fain1:26:24

        No, I haven't.

    19. LRLenny Rachitsky1:26:25

        I think. I might be getting it wrong, but it's called Overstory, which is around... It's the concept of, uh, when you have a big tree, like, the overstory is the branches that kind of sit on top that kind of create a shade.

    20. JFJessica Fain1:26:36

        Oh, that's really cool.

    21. LRLenny Rachitsky1:26:36

        And I think that's the book I'm thinking about, and it's the story of a family over many generations and around a tree.

    22. JFJessica Fain1:26:42

        Oh, great.

    23. LRLenny Rachitsky1:26:43

        Yeah.

    24. JFJessica Fain1:26:43

        Now I have to pick that up.

    25. LRLenny Rachitsky1:26:44

        It's, it's popular. Okay. If it's the one I'm thinking about, I think you're gonna love it.

    26. JFJessica Fain1:26:47

        Okay, great.

    27. LRLenny Rachitsky1:26:47

        Okay.

    28. JFJessica Fain1:26:47

        I'll go read it.

    29. LRLenny Rachitsky1:26:48

        Uh, favorite recent movie or TV show you've really enjoyed?

    30. JFJessica Fain1:26:51

        You know, again, this is another window. I have been obsessively watching The Pit, which is probably a, a lame answer. I wonder if anyone else has given you that so far. But I just really, um, it's given me such a vantage point and a view into the incredibly difficult work that emergency healthcare workers do and the stresses and the system and the brokenness that they operate under, but also the extreme care and love that they bring to their work, and it's just given me so much admiration.

Episode duration: 1:33:32