The essence of product management | Christian Idiodi (SVPG)

1. 0:00 – 3:56

   Christian’s background

   1. CIChristian Idiodi0:00

      I, I try to explain to people that the real essence of this job is that you wake up on behalf of someone else. To solve a problem for them. And you have to do it well enough that they give you something back in return. That's kind of the, the real essence of it, and that's the, I always call like a certificate of appreciation. You know? And it can be in the form of revenue, engagement, loyalty, you know, co-... Reference. All of those things. In fact, that's the real essence of this job, eh, you know. If it's not fun, you're probably not doing it right. So if it's not hard, you're probably also not doing it right. (laughs)

   2. LRLenny Rachitsky0:34

      (instrumental music) Today my guest is Christian Idiodi. Christian is a partner at Silicon Valley Product Group alongside Marty Cagan, who, when he introduced us, called Christian "the most interesting man in the world." After meeting him, I tend to agree. After a long career in product, Christian now spends his time working closely with companies big and small, implementing and improving their discipline of product management. In our conversation, we discussed why the product management field is so often disliked, and what you can do to avoid becoming a product manager people don't want on their team. We spent a lot of time on coaching, how to get better at coaching your reports, how to get better coaching from your manager, and some really clever tactics for building trust with leaders within your company. Also, Christian shares his one favorite go-to method out of all of the discovery methods out there for figuring out what to build. Also, we spent some time on the great work that he's doing in Africa to help product builders and founders build great companies. That and so much more. Christian is awesome. With that, I bring you Christian Idiodi after a short word from our sponsors. You fell in love with building products for a reason. But sometimes the day-to-day reality is a little different than you imagined. Instead of dreaming up big ideas, talking to customers, and crafting a strategy, you're drowning in spreadsheets and roadmap updates and you're spending your days basically putting out fires. A better way is possible. Introducing Jira Product Discovery, the new prioritization and road mapping tool built for product teams by Atlassian. With Jira Product Discovery, you can gather all your product ideas and insights in one place and prioritize confidently, finally replacing those endless spreadsheets. Create and share custom product roadmaps with any stakeholder in seconds. And it's all built on Jira, where your engineering team's already working, so true collaboration is finally possible. Great products are built by great teams, not just engineers. Sales, support, leadership, even Greg from finance. Anyone that you want can contribute ideas, feedback and insights in Jira Product Discovery for free. No catch. And it's only $10 a month for you. Say goodbye to your spreadsheets and the never-ending alignment efforts. The old way of doing product management is over. Rediscover what's possible with Jira Product Discovery. Try it for free at atlassian.com/lenny. That's atlassian.com/lenny. This episode is brought to you by Vanta, helping you streamline your security compliance to accelerate your growth. Thousands of fast-growing companies like Gusto, Calm, Quora, and Modern Treasury trust Vanta to help build, scale, manage, and demonstrate their security and compliance programs, and get ready for audits in weeks, not months. By offering the most in-demand security and privacy frameworks such as SOC2, ISO 27001, GDPR, HIPAA, and many more, Vanta helps companies obtain the reports they need to accelerate growth, build efficient compliance processes, mitigate risks to their businesses, and build trust with external stakeholders. Over 5,000 fast-growing companies use Vanta to automate up to 90% of the work involved with SOC2 and these other frameworks. For a limited time, Lenny's Podcast listeners get $1,000 off Vanta. Go to vanta.com/lenny. That's V-A-N-T-A dot com slash Lenny to learn more and to claim your discounts. Get started today.

2. 3:56 – 7:58

   The negative perception of product managers

   1. LRLenny Rachitsky3:57

      (instrumental music) Christian, thank you so much for being here, and welcome to the podcast.

   2. CIChristian Idiodi4:03

      Thank you for having me, Lenny. It's a joy to be here.

   3. LRLenny Rachitsky4:06

      It's a joy to have you here. So Marty Cagan introduced us, a colleague of yours at Silicon Valley Product Group, and the way he described you is, uh, he considers you the most interesting man in the world. Did you know that that's how he thinks about you?

   4. CIChristian Idiodi4:18

      I didn't. I mean, I consider him one of the most interesting people in the world too.

   5. LRLenny Rachitsky4:21

      You guys are so kind to each other. I wanted to start with this trend I've been noticing in product management and the perception of product management. It feels like... I don't know if this is new or if it's always been around, but it feels like there's this trend of people just not liking product managers. There's a trend of founders feeling like they should wait a long time to hire their first product manager. There's a lot of teams that wish they didn't have a product manager on their team. They're like, "We could just... We don't have this person telling us what to do." I'm curious just why you think there's often this dislike of product managers. And then for PMs listening, do you have any advice for just how to not become a product manager people don't like and don't want on their team?

   6. CIChristian Idiodi4:59

      I think most people don't like product managers often because they haven't experienced good product managers. The core of product management is competency-based, meaning there is someone in an organization that represents the customer the best, that has a deep knowledge of the customers and your users, that has a deep knowledge of your data, your industry, your business, and the product itself. And because of this competence, you kind of trust them to make decisions because if, if you have a problem that says, say, "We want more customers," it makes a lot of sense to go to the person that is an expert in customers to say, "Help me solve this problem." What you see happening in many organizations is that there is kind of this misplaced influence and mistrust because of the poor competency, meaning I feel I know more about the business or I know more about the customer or the data, and so why should I not tell you-... what to do. And I think, uh, people fail to understand that this role is ... it's a team sport. They are part of a team of people working together to discover a solution or a building and in a way that works for a company. And so, I think when I think through the companies I've worked with where I kind of see this discipline really eroded is where there's just not a competent level of product management. Uh, the wa- the way I ask, uh, describe it to a CEO, I'll ask him, uh, you know, "Tell me who you trust in your company to make a decision on what markets we go to, what things we do." And they always have some senior leader, some VP, some person, and I say, "Why?" "Oh, you know, Bob has been here a long time. He knows everybody. Everybody loves him and trusts him. He understands our business." And you know, I often say to him, I say, "Well, Bob is a product manager." And it's often interesting to executives when I try to explain that way and say, "That's the competent level that we're talking about here. Imagine if you had Bobs on every team. Imagine how much you can accomplish." So one, I don't really think it's a ... You know, I often say, it's not a hate, hate for product management. It's a hate for the understanding of what they have experienced in product management, which are people that are not able to deliver results that help them meet the, the outcomes they want. So if I were advising product managers, I often say, "Look, when we see sales or executive driven product management, when we see these alternatives to product management, it's not a cultural knock or a leadership knock. It's really on the individual and the discipline has to elevate itself to a place that it earns the right to make a decision on what we do."

   7. LRLenny Rachitsky7:45

      I have exactly the same perspective. When people say they don't like product managers, I ... Exactly what I tell them is, "You just haven't worked with a great product manager." Like, a great PM makes everything easier for you. If you wanna be a PM, people would

3. 7:58 – 11:30

   How to become a PM people want to work with

   1. LRLenny Rachitsky7:58

      hate to lose on their team to like ... I would never want to lose Christian on my team as a PM. Is there something they could do maybe or change to become that person?

   2. CIChristian Idiodi8:06

      Well, I was just joking with someone earlier. I said, "I've, I've only seen great product managers come out of two places. One, either a series of massive failure in their career or experiences that have been bad, or from learning from great product leaders." Uh, the reality of this kind of role, it's, it's kinda like if you ... And people have all kinds of ways. Maybe you're like on a spot like a quarterback on a team. You need to practice product management to be good at product management. You're not gonna get mastery by avoiding some of these elements. And we've kind of clearly defined what you need to represent to a company for them to trust you. So, there is this period of humility that I challenge all product managers to have, this spirit of learning, recognizing what you do not know. And what you do not have is the trust of an organization or even in yourself that you know the customer, the business, or the data better than anybody else. What you need to know, do, is quickly try to accelerate that. You're going to find the loudest, most influential person in your organization, the person that, you know, everybody knows, knows everything, is in every meeting and stuff, and you're gonna ask them to teach you. You're going to challenge them and, and if they don't have the time to teach you, you're going to volunteer to help them. You know, "I'm gonna intern for you," you're gonna get permission from your manager and say, "Look, I wanna spend time with Lenny. He's the head of sales, he's the head of operations and stuff. I just wanna learn from him." Now, what you're doing is you're extending that person's trust to yourself. You're also building a relationship with that person. But more importantly, you're learning what is driving that person's influence, which is their competence in the business or the customer, right? After you've done that, you have to keep doing discovery. Because what's going to be different now is that person knows they've taught you everything that they know, but everybody now sees you learning every single day. So at some point, people will recognize that you might have more insights and more data than anybody else. And they'll only know this because they've seen you learn from the best and they've seen you, um, continuing to learn. So I, I always practically advise product managers in this kind of scenario, build relationships with people. You earn their trust by asking them to do two things. One, you're either going to teach me or I'm going to help you, right? And you're going to build relationships there, gain experience with them. You've got to immerse yourself in a deeper understanding of the business and the data.

   3. LRLenny Rachitsky10:38

      Wow. There's a lot there. Let me try to ... 'Cause this is awesome. This is exactly I think what people wanna hear, is how do you become better and how do you become more trusted and respected. So things you're recommending to PMs that want to become better, less disliked, more successful. One is... I just took some notes as you were talking. One is, there's a sense of becoming more full stack in the company. Like, understand the business, not just like, "Here's your one product and here's your one goal." And then this idea of just be always learning, which is both you are learning things and also people see that you're learning and see that you really care about a lot of the parts of the business that maybe y- you wouldn't naturally be inclined to understand, and that also helps you build relationships. And also just this really important point of if you know more than anyone else, people will innately trust you and respect you and want you on the team, 'cause you happen to have a lot of answers.

   4. CIChristian Idiodi11:25

      Yes.

   5. LRLenny Rachitsky11:26

      Awesome. Kind of on a similar thread, something that Silicon Valley

4. 11:30 – 14:46

   The definition of a product manager

   1. LRLenny Rachitsky11:30

      Product Group has is a really good definition of what a product manager's job is, and I thought it'd be cool just to spend a little time here. There's kind of these four attributes you guys like to share. Can you just talk about that as a little foundational...

   2. CIChristian Idiodi11:39

      Yeah. I kind of mentioned before, a product manager is in a team sport. So, they work as part of a team to uncover a solution worth building. And, eh, every time you solve a problem-... there's inherent risk involved. There's the risk of, uh, will people buy this, or will they choose it, or will they choose to use it? Which is all a value type of risk. Uh, there's the risk of can they use it, which is a usability type of risk. The risk that, uh, we can build it or have the skills to build it or the time to build it, that's a feasibility risk. And the risk of it working for our business, which is a viability risk. I kind of call out the product managers competency, is really to try to drive the, the first and the last one, which is value and viability, right? A solution worth building, something people will buy, choose, or use, and one that works for a business, which is at the core of what product teams do. Solve a problem in a way customers will love and in a way that works for a business. It's, it's why the product manager gets all the wrap-up. If everything goes great, a great team effort. If everything goes wrong, they blame the product manager. I- i- it's because people hold them accountable to results, you know? It's kind of nobody wants to work on something nobody wanted in the first place, and your job is to ensure that we are working on something people want in the first place. And, and it is such an amazing role. I, I try to explain to people, uh, that the real essence of this job is that you wake up on behalf of someone else to solve a problem for them. And, and what an amazing job. There's just no greater... uh, you know, I cannot think of a better discipline with such inherent permission to solve problems on behalf of someone. And you have to do it well enough that they give you something back in return, you know? That's kind of the, the real essence of it and that's the... I always call, like, a certificate of appreciation, you know? And it could be in the form of revenue, engagement, loyalty, you know, co-... reference, all of those things. And that's the real essence of this job, uh, you know? If it's not fun, you're probably not doing it right. If it's not hard, you're probably also not doing it right. (laughs)

   3. LRLenny Rachitsky13:51

      Wow, I love that (laughs) frame of reference of you're d- giving s- something to customers and your success is measured by do they give something back in return (laughs) , which is basically do they pay for your product. Such a beautiful way to think about that. Oh man. Okay, so just to summarize these four elements, there's value, usability, viability, feasibility-

   4. CIChristian Idiodi14:09

      Yes.

   5. LRLenny Rachitsky14:09

      ... to understand if the product they're building hits all these attributes.

   6. CIChristian Idiodi14:15

      That's right. It, it, it is, it is... y- you're trying to uncover a solution and you know you've solved the problem when you get those two things, something customers love, they give you something back, and our business can support it in some ways. And I'm calling out, like, these are the different risk in that kind of taxonomy, how we call the things you have to tackle. And it's a team sport, and so there are these four risk of should we build it, you know, w- will people use it, will people buy it, uh, uh, will our customers support

5. 14:46 – 16:59

   Where new PMs fail

   1. CIChristian Idiodi14:46

      it, or our business support it? And you're trying to answer those questions with a designer and a product engineer.

   2. LRLenny Rachitsky14:52

      Of these four, so value, usability, viability, feasibility, where do you think most new PMs fail most or should spend more time?

   3. CIChristian Idiodi15:00

      Oh my goodness. Value. Value is probably... it is the most important and the most overlooked, and i- the big driver for that is often because of the operating model of teams, right? Teams are often given roadmaps of projects and features to go build and deliver. If that's the case, you actually really don't need a product manager because they are going to assume value. If the boss told me to build this, I cannot say, "Should we build this? Is this the right thing to build? Is there a better option?" You know? "Is this what people who buy you just as you, it's valuable." (laughs) And so y- you know, often when people ask me like, "Why does the product manager seem to kind of play like a core leadership role on a team, like almost like the quarterback?" And actually it's not that they are most special in solving the problem than the designer or the engineer, but they're answering a question that determines if we should be working on this in the first place. So value is often the hardest thing to solve and most to be overlooked. We often see bad patterns where companies will say, "Yes, we ran a test and, you know, w- with 300 users and they all scored it, uh, 84% or 90%." Uh, they love it in that way. I say, "Well, look, just because somebody can use your product doesn't mean that they will buy it. Just because they can use it doesn't mean they will choose it. Just (laughs) because they can use it doesn't mean that they will actually use it." You know? And, and what people say is often different from what they do, and our job is to actually solve the problem, which is what core value is, in a meaningful way and s- often overlooked because, you know, we check the box on a roadmap item. So the most important because that's the... to, to the point of the certificate of appreciation, (laughs) what you get in return, that's the ultimate outcome, really value.

   4. LRLenny Rachitsky16:55

      You once gave a talk along these lines around discovery and it was this talk of like

6. 16:59 – 24:05

   Reference customers: what they are and why they are so important

   1. LRLenny Rachitsky16:59

      here's all of the things you can do to help understand what to build to make something valuable. There's like a billion frameworks for every step of the discovery process, uh, press releases, story mapping, opportunity solution trees, fake door tests, all these things, and you're like if we had to pick one thing, if there's one process or approach that you recommend most, your answer was e- essentially finding a sum number of reference customers to work with and helping them and working with them to design the product. Do you still see that as the one if you had to pick one approach to figure out what to build? And if so, could you just talk about how to... how you recommend going about that?

   2. CIChristian Idiodi17:35

      The holy grail of product work is really a reference customer. This is somebody that has used your solution or your product, loves it enough to tell people aboutYou know, I kind of describe the work of the product team is to solve problems in a way that customers love and a way that works for our business. The ultimate definition for me today of the love that somebody has for our product is they are willing to put their reputation on the line by telling people about it. And for me, if, if we think about you do a lot of interviews with founders and entrepreneurs and, you know, you're going to have people that, you know, they find a market with an idea and they jump in. But if you think at the core of some of these, uh, founder-inspired businesses where the founder will say, "Well, I had a problem, you know, and it was their problem and they focused on solving the problem and then they got their friends on it." And so it's almost like this idea that if... They were their own first reference customer. (laughs) They, they, they were so close to the problem, immersed in the environment of the problem, solved it in a compelling wa- way enough where we are like, "There are more people like me." And, you know, it's like if I said to you like, "Lenny, let's go to a steakhouse. You know, find me a new steakhouse around you." You might go online and Google and you see a, a steakhouse with one review. You know, how you feel about that? You go, "Uh, I don't know." What kind of... You know, maybe other people don't wanna try it to see. You see two reviews, you're like, "Maybe it's the chef and their spouse or something." You know, the question isn't how many positive reviews would you have to see to jump and say, "Let's go try this one"? There are some things inherent in kind of... If you look at Geoffrey Moore's adoption curve and those kinds of models in here, most people don't want to be the first to try things. But you're likely to try things if other people that look like you have accepted it or define it as good. Right? And so the whole essence for me of this technique is to create those first people, those reference customers. Y- you know, if you, if you think about how companies make the shift to becoming like sales led or, or operations led, almost all companies start product led. The product is first. You know, you kind of build something and then it's like, "Yeah. It's good. Let's hire salespeople and marketing people and operations people to do it." What's really happening is that the product team created the first customers. Right? And now a group of people have to capture the value that was created. So what's happening here is that it is constantly the job of product teams, the, the reason they lose influence is because sales people are having to sell a product. You see? So they are like forcing back, "I need this and I need this." But if you came to me and said, you know, "I wanna buy steak," and I say, "Let me show you 20 people that look like you that recommend this steakhouse," my job as a salesperson is very easy. You know, I'm just like, "Hey, you should eat here. Everybody (laughs) that is like you that loves steak, they all eat here." So product teams fail at, at this contract to an organization when they don't create powerful reference customers. So it's by far my favorite technique. And, and the way this technique works is, uh, you want to discover and deliver and, and, and develop who has the problem, the customer. I want to discover who has the problem, at the same time discover and deliver a solution to this problem. The idea here is that if you really wanna solve a problem, you know, get out of your building. Go spend time with someone that has the problem and don't leave until you solve the problem. You know, people talk about why we had a... Such a record time to the COVID vaccine. Sure, technology has improved, our research has improved. But if you think about it, we had the highest number of volunteers for vaccination in the history of any vaccine in the history of time. Why? Did we have to look for someone with COVID? Like, no. They were literally all around us, like we were all... Like, the research was immersed in the environment of the problem. They could s-... A- and so this is often what I call... It's almost like a, a pressure-cooked discovery in some ways. If you truly, truly want to solve a problem, get out of your building. Take... Get out of the assumptions, get out of the opinions, immerse yourself, find someone who has the problem, stick with them until you discover a solution for this problem. And you're gonna do that. You know, the, the, the part of why I love this technique, uh, the, the two biggest reasons I think, the first is if I cannot find a certain number of people that have this problem, my goodness, it might not be a problem worth solving. I have never had a product failure using this technique. If, if I were to credit I, you know... Goodness, I, I think at last count I'm up to like 205 products I have worked on or participated in creating o- y- you know, in my career. And I, I try to build a new product every year from scratch. It's kind of a crazy thing about me. My friends know what I want for my birthday is a problem worth solving. And I like to go from idea to revenue, you know, in a certain br-... And I, and I test all of these techniques in this way and everybody knows my favorite technique is if we find a problem worth solving, we need to uncover a solution. For B2B, I want six to eight references. For B2C, I want, you know, maybe 15 to 25 references as an indication that we've achieved product market fit.

   3. LRLenny Rachitsky23:15

      Just to be clear, you said you still work... Like, you build products yourself and you practice this? Uh, uh, and you've built... Okay. What's like every certain product that you've built? I didn't know this.

   4. CIChristian Idiodi23:24

      So I, I, I, I do a lot of work in Africa now. Uh, WorkNigeria is like a job board that helps people we do, uh, kind of a job or H- uh, HR replace- placement and advisory, uh, too as well. I'm actually working on another app, uh, around the NDA and protecting, uh, uh, high-asset individuals in some ways. So, you know, kind of every year I find a problem like that worth solving and I, you know, practice doing the work, uh, of discovery with a team of people.

   5. LRLenny Rachitsky23:54

      That's amazing. I see this unraveling of the most interesting man in the world is happening little bit by bit.

   6. CIChristian Idiodi23:58

      (laughs) .

   7. LRLenny Rachitsky23:58

      We learn more and more about you. (laughs) Okay, amazing. So just to kinda summarize some of these points, which are really

7. 24:05 – 26:44

   A quick summary of how to build a product that people want and love

   1. LRLenny Rachitsky24:05

      great, and I've never heard it described this way before. So basically, a really effective way to understand how to build something people actually want and solve real problems is this idea of pick reference customers, and I really like this word reference, which is not just they're gonna help you build a thing, but they're also become a reference to future customers, 'cause they end up loving it, 'cause you built it for them and they love it. Your advice is find six to eight in B2B space, 15 to 25 in B2C, and the reason there's a number here is if you find just one or two, you never know, they might be just the one or two that have this really weird problem no one else has. And I think that's usually the, the flaw in this approach, is like you end up building it for a small number of people and nobody else really wants it. And sounds like in your experience this is a good kind of number where like probably a lot of more people will have this problem.

   2. CIChristian Idiodi24:52

      Yeah. The- the there've been studies to validate some of these numbers, uh, I think early IBM, uh, kind of struggled selling those super computers and, you know, if you're buying a, you know, million-dollar computer someone says, "Hey do you want to buy me..." You're like, "I don't know. I mean do I really... Is there anybody else that has bought it? Should I be the first?" And there was this common question of like, "What would it take for you to buy it?" And someone says, "Hey if I see five or six people that look like me already have this, then I feel confident making the argument to my company, we should jump on it." And it's like, so how do I create the first five to six? And you can see a lot of the validation on B2C in some of the things you might see in the App Store or on like Yelp or those places. My idea here is if you found a steakhouse with 25 five star reviews, you're likely to adopt this. So in every app I've ever put on the App Store, on the day I launched the app in the App Store, there are 25 five star reviews. I will never launch an app and be like, "Let's hope Lenny loves it. Let's see who the first person to download." On the very first day of launching the app, there are 25... And that's when... So I, I will know I am not ready until I have achieved 25 people that have told me, worked with me and said, "I am now ready to put my reputation on the line." Sometimes I may need to work with 30 people or 50 people because, you know, the output is 25 reference customers, you know. Because if, if Lenny's like, "Ah, I don't love it enough or I don't feel comfortable." You know, I'm not gonna customize for Lenny, I'm gonna find my single target market, talk to more people. If I get 25, I have achieved product market fit.

   3. LRLenny Rachitsky26:29

      So interesting. It basically kicks in this word of mouth flywheel that everyone's always looking for is, how do I get people to talk about... Build it for them, solve their problems, tell them it exists.

   4. CIChristian Idiodi26:39

      Yeah.

   5. LRLenny Rachitsky26:39

      So you mentioned a bit about how you understand if it's actually, let's call it product market

8. 26:44 – 29:54

   How to determine product-market fit

   1. LRLenny Rachitsky26:44

      fit, if you have product market fit with these people that you ask them if they're gonna leave you a five star review, for example. I guess what do you consider this is good? I got one more person that's really happy with this. What tells you it's got product market fit with a person?

   2. CIChristian Idiodi26:55

      If I were thinking about how I will do this, so I mean, pick the, uh, uh, a problem to solve. First of all, I have to know who I'm solving the problem for and in some indication and I want to validate that this, you know, this is actually a problem you do have. And I'm looking for a certain type of person, you know, I, uh, you, you know these early adopters in our world are broken up to technologies and early evangelists, you know. Uh, you know, technologies could be, you know, y-... "I love the, the new iPhone 16 is coming out and I, it's gonna have five cameras and I write an article in some tech review board. Super fast, super slick, all good design." That's... You just love new technology. You, you always jump on new technology. And early evangelist could be someone that says, "Oh, man. I look great with the iPhone 15. It has three cameras. I will look phenomenal with the iPhone 16, so I'm gonna go stand in line at the Apple Store for three hours or overnight because I just can't wait to get my hands on the Apple 16." They may feel a little irrational but those are the kind of people you're looking for. People that believe they have a problem, so what? It's like, you will try any steakhouse, in my example. You're just like, "I love steak. I don't care if there are reviews or not, like I will try it." And what I'm trying to do here is I'm saying, okay, Lenny loves steak, he wants to try a steakhouse and I'm going to say, "Lenny, I'm trying to build the best steakhouse here. If I create a menu that you absolutely love, are you willing to tell people about it?" That could be, you know, video testimonial, write a review, stuff like that. And, you know, it's okay then if you don't love the first iteration of it (laughs) and stuff like that. I will, I want to hear your feedback, I want you to work with me, um, in ensuring that I build the best steakhouse here, right? And that's kind of the idea. So I'm gonna, you know, work with 25 people that, that look like you and I'm gonna keep tweaking in this sense iterating on the product and the menu until Lenny's like, "My goodness, this is the best steakhouse in the world." You know, it's like-

   3. LRLenny Rachitsky28:49

      Yeah.

   4. CIChristian Idiodi28:49

      ... I'm just gonna write about it. You know, and I'm gonna get, when I get 25 people that have all eaten at the steakhouse, they love it enough because this is where you really get the shift in value. Because if I say, "Lenny go write me a review, a five star review." He'll be like, "I don't know if I feel comfortable about." You say, "Why not?" You see, I'm really going to get deeper feedback because people will say or do anything just to avoid hurting our feelings, uh, for us to get out of their face. So they'll be like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll give you a five star review." But when I say do it, you're like, "Ah, well, you know, I have this hesitation." Why? That's really where great discovery comes but it's hard to do in a silo, you know. You, you have to be immersed with the person that has the problem. So product market fit is when you've kind of iterated in this discovery, you have discovered and delivered something so meaningful that these customers that are your target customers are willing to put their reputation on the line and be a reference. That's my indication.

   5. LRLenny Rachitsky29:49

      I imagine though, Christian, so charismatic, comes to me and says, "Hey Lenny. Would

9. 29:54 – 34:11

   The benefits of this approach

   1. LRLenny Rachitsky29:54

      you leave me a five star review for this product? I'm working on this, I'm trying to figure out if people want it." I would be like, "Yeah, of course. I'll leave you a five star review."What do you do to kind of avoid that? Just like, "I just want to be nice, like, I don't care, I'll leave a five-star review."

   2. CIChristian Idiodi30:06

      Well, it's part of why I need 25 in B2C, you know?

   3. LRLenny Rachitsky30:09

      Mm-hmm.

   4. CIChristian Idiodi30:09

      And don't get me wrong, uh, if I can convince 25 people in there, I may have a marketing product-

   5. LRLenny Rachitsky30:14

      (laughs)

   6. CIChristian Idiodi30:14

      ... and a charismatic marketing product. If that's all I needed to do, was a good message and, and charisma to get people on it. The, the good benefits of this is that you can tackle risk very early, because, uh, you can e- involve many other parts of your organization, marketing, sales, uh, uh, you know, legal, finance, you know? People often ask me, like, "How do I come up with the marketing spiel or the description of the..." I'm like, "I don't make that up." You know? If I ask Lenny, "What do you feel about this product?" And he says, "Well, it's cool and it's, uh, you know, very sleek and very nice." The marketing department will say, "Ah, we don't like those terms. You know, those are too... We want to call it, uh, comprehensive," and, you know. And when you go out to sell your product, people are gonna be disappointed because the expectations are created by what's on the box. I only market exactly what customers tell me.

   7. LRLenny Rachitsky31:08

      Mm-hmm.

   8. CIChristian Idiodi31:08

      I have never been surprised about what customers will say when I release a product, because in this technique, I already get their feedback and so I'm gonna put exactly what Lenny said on the box, "Hey, this product, cool and slick and easy to use." You know, I've almost launched a product that says, uh, super fast but difficult to read, (laughs) because the technology team said there was no way to change the font on something and it was just gonna be difficult to read. And you know what everybody did when they got the product? "Oh my goodness, it is super fast. Oh right. It is also difficult to read." They, they... It matched their expectations in some ways. So what I do here is, I learn how to sell the product with this technique, I learn how to market the product because I have real people that at the time, we are not making assumptions, "What's the best way to market this?" Was, "How was your lunch Lenny? How would you find this? Does this language resonate with you? Does this properly describe the menu?" See? So that's kind of what you're doing when you use a technique like this. It, it, it feels heavy to people, but that's kind of part of the practice of it. You, you know, if you do this a whole lot, you get really comfortable at involving your... working with your customers to solve it. Uh, but for me, the fact that I have, you will not have a product failure because you have a natural pivot out. Meaning if I can't find 25 people that love steak, why in the world am I building a steak house? You know? (laughs) So if you don't find enough people that love this problem and are willing to help you, just be like, "This is not a problem worth solving." But more importantly, you, you really start to get... it's the fastest path to product market fit, the clearest definition for me because I know when my product is ready, you know, I, I... when I've dotted those Is and crossed those Ts in that way.

   9. LRLenny Rachitsky32:49

      I think your point there of recruiting is itself a huge signal is really important. Like, can you find people that have this problem and care enough about this problem that they're gonna talk to you and spend time exploring this thing that doesn't exist yet? I think that's super interesting. And then I think another key part of this is, it's one solution that solves many people's problems, that it can't be like a bunch of different things for a bunch of different people, right?

   10. CIChristian Idiodi33:10

       That's right. That's right. If, if two... if one person says, "I don't want this," wants this, another person wants this, you don't do it. That's how you know you do the minimum, right?

   11. LRLenny Rachitsky33:18

       (laughs)

   12. CIChristian Idiodi33:18

       All 25 have to want the same thing. If one person's out, you just don't do it at all. And the reason that's powerful is because if I come to you and I say, "Hey, it's missing this feature," I say, "Well, yeah, 25 people that look like you that are very happy without it." (laughs) You see? That's how... if you think about what you do in a review, you see the five stars and you instantly like, "Oh, that's good enough." But if you have a question, what do you do? You kind of double click on the review, (laughs) to read. And that's how people get convinced. There's this social influence of like, "Well, you know, I mean, Lenny is cool. He likes the steak house, I should like it, you know? He's fine with this not being there, so I should be fine with it." So your references are super powerful in... more than any company, in influencing consumers on what they should choose or not choose.

   13. LRLenny Rachitsky34:06

       Basically, Stripe builds new products exactly this way. They find new customers that have a problem

10. 34:11 – 40:06

    Real examples of using reference customers

    1. LRLenny Rachitsky34:11

       and they work with a very small number of customers to build a product for them, and that's how a lot of their new product... I think Rippling works like this too. So I think this is a really good lesson for everyone listening, if they're trying to build something new. Is there an example that comes to mind that would be in... I don't know, interesting to talk through, of something you built that you worked through this process?

    2. CIChristian Idiodi34:30

       Oh boy. I, I, I tell the example of, um, uh, kind of solving a problem, uh, when I was at a staffing company, uh, Snagajob, they do hourly jobs and help people find kind of their first job or an hourly job. And I actually get a call here, uh, from the head of global staffing at Starbucks. Now, he called for me, you can see the benefit of this technique because, you know, I'm the person he calls when he has problems. I've used this technique with my previous company. He didn't even know I was at a new company, you know? And he calls me up and he says, "You know, Christian, I have a problem," you know? I say, "Well, don't we all have problems?" You know? He said, "Well, you know, we just bought a bakery in the San Francisco Bay area, and as we're doing the paperwork to kind of take over this company or this acquisition, we realized that close to 800 of the employees may be undocumented workers, you know?" And yeah, I said, "Wow, that does sound like a problem." He's like, "Yeah, imagine if this breaks out in the news and all of that. But more importantly, we still need to get all your paperwork. So all these people are gonna quit, (laughs) and we'll have a, a, a new bakery without employees." And I... You know, my first question to him as a product guy is like, "Wow, would you give me a million dollars to solve this problem?" You know? And he's like, "No." "Seriously?" I was like, "300,000?" I'm throwing out numbers. He's like, "Maybe." I said, "Wow, you, you have my attention." I kind of go to my CEO, I tell him to call... I, I grab a designer and an engineer and I just say, "Hey look, I would love to work on a little project with you all if you have some time." I kind of debriefed them on the call-Now, the first thing I have to do is to try to define the problem, identify problem. What really is the problem going on here? We're breaking it down. We're talking through this. Uh, we say, "Well, at the end of the day, Starbucks needs to hire, like, 800 people quickly because, you know, I mean, we can't fix getting everybody's paperwork but they are gonna lose these people and they need to hire those quickly." And I say, "Well, who else has this problem?" You know, we're trying to travel and get some... Like, what are we talking about? Let's go out. Everybody jumps in my car and we start driving around. And this is where we're doing our product work from. You know, we are talking in the car just out of the building. Uh, we see a new construction site for a new McDonald's kind of coming soon. And we know- we are curious. We're like, "Well, let's go find out." We, we start talking, uh, to people on sites. Fortunately, the operations director is on site. And we ask him, we say, "Tell us about opening up a new McDonald's." He says, "Well, do you know we need like 120 people on opening day?" We're like, "Whoa, for McDonald's? I mean, really? 120 people?" He's like, "Yeah, do you know that most of the people in this industry don't show up to work on the very first day? And, and every day we're in construction, we're losing money, so the second the bathrooms or restrooms are done, we want to open up." We're like, "Wow, we, we didn't think about this." New construction, a, a new store opening, they need to hire a lot of people quickly. So I said, uh, "Thank you very much." I gave him my business card, he gave me his. We jump back in the car, we just kept driving. We went to the mall, we started talking to people there. We talked to a manager at Macy's and she said, "Oh, look, we hired 20,000 people in the holiday season." We're like, "Macy's?" "Yeah, it's like nights, weekends, shipping, stuff like this. We start hiring in the summer because of how painful it is." Now, all we're doing here is just validating that this is a real problem, you know? Like, other people have the problem. You know, so we go back to the office, we're brainstorming like, "How will someone even go about solving this problem?" We're thinking to each ourselves like, "We're not really sure, but like, that McDonald's guy was very desperate." I said, "I have his business card." You know, we start throwing some ideas, so I call up the McDonald's person and I say, "Look, uh, we just met with all of us." He was like, "Yeah, uh, I... We would love to help you solve the problem." He said, "Well, what do you have in mind?" You know, "Well," he said, "we've been talking. What if we just sent you some people to interview, you know? And if you like them, you will hire them." He's like, uh, he's like, "That seems fairly easy." He's like, "How do I pay for this?" You know? And we took a swag like, "Maybe you pay us for everybody that you hire." He was like, "Oh, I don't see much risk to that. This is great." We're like, "Oh, okay." I mean, we have no sense of what to do. We are literally Googling, "How do people find a job at McDonald's?" You know, like, (laughs) we, we go to colleges, we are sticking up flyers, we are putting ads in the newspaper back then. We are looking at different, uh, techniques to try to get people into a funnel and interest by, like, posting on Craigslist or things like that. You know, at the end of the week, we get about 40 people that are interested to come to the interview. We're like, "We feel like feels good for our first try." You know, we call the manager up and we say, "Look, on Monday, we will send you 40 people to interview, you know?" He said, "Oh, this is great." You know, Monday, I take my designer, my engineer, we are on site with the, the manager. At nine o'clock, we expect like three people to show up for interviews. Nobody shows up. You know, at ten o'clock, another three, like, one person shows up. I mean, we got to the end of the day, less than 20 people show up. This man only has like four or five people. We're like, "We suck at this. This is terrible." You know? We go to the manager like, "Let's go and apologize for wasting your day and stuff." He starts to laugh. We're like, "What's going on?" He said, "Look, I forgot to tell you. Folks in this industry don't even show up to interviews. This is like, we are McDonald's, we pay minimum wage. People will leave us for 25 more cents an hour. They will leave us for a job that is one block closer to their house or like less than a mile closer to their home." Now, we're... You know, the, the engineer is with us and he's thinking about this like, "This is really interesting. About half of the people showed up." He hired like one in five. If you really want to solve this problem, like playing laws of averages,

11. 40:06 – 48:40

    Doing things that don’t scale

    1. CIChristian Idiodi40:06

       we probably need to send this man like close to 200 people. (laughs) Like, I mean, we need to go bigger. So yeah, we're storming the office. You know, we call the m- the McDonald's guy again. It's like, "Can we try again next Monday?" And he's like, "Do I only pay for the people I hire?" We're like, "Sure." He's like, "Oh, go ahead and kill yourself with this. I mean, it's a pain. We've been trying all kinds of things for years." Now, we start doubling down on efforts. We start calling back all the people that didn't show up for interviews, like, "What's going on? You know, did you get lost? Don't you want the job? I mean, what's wrong with you?" We start figuring out what funnels worked well for us the last time. You know, what was, uh, what wasted our money. How about what was the cost to acquire a person? And you know, we spend the week doubling our efforts on those channels. We probably have about 120, 130 people on the list. The, the Sunday beforehand, we start calling them up, you know, like, "Please show up. Don't embarrass us. Don't you want the job? Come on. Do you need an address? Should I call you a reminder set to your alarm?" I mean, we're trying all the techniques to try to get more people there. We go the next day and at the end of the day, he hires about 45 to 50 people. He comes to us, he shakes our hand, he's like, "Whoa, the quality was excellent. All my recruiters were engaged. The day was smooth. And look at how successful we are." He's like, "I want to use you for every new McDonald's I open in the area." Now, I don't know I have a product. I just know I was able to help one person at McDonald's. But I feel like I have enough learning. So I called up my friend at, uh, Starbucks and I said, "Hey man, uh, uh, remember the problem we talked about?" He's like, "Yeah." I was like, "I would love to help you solve it." He said, "Oh, okay. What do you have in mind?" I said, "Well, I think we need to send you about 3,000 people to interview." He said, "3,000 people? I thought we only need 800." I said, "You know, in this industry, most people don't show up for interviews, right?" He said, "Oh my goodness. You know our industry well. I like this. I'm gonna take this up, I think we'll give you this contract." I take my designer, my engineer, we go to San Francisco.... we are out there recruiting because this where it was based. I mean, we have to get a whole hotel, hire people, we are working all the channels we knew, walked in, yeah, remember, we don't have any software, no technology. The design engineer, we're doing this manually, Excel spreadsheets, phones, emails, in that way. In one week, Starbucks hire 784 people. I get an email the next Monday morning from the contact at Starbucks. He copied Howard Schultz, then-CEO of Starbucks. The email read, "These guys just saved our butts." (laughs) I sent it to my CEO, but then I said, "You know what? I only know now I can help a McDonald's and a Starbucks, but that doesn't mean I have a product, you know? But I now have enough of problem definition." I reached out to the head of marketing, the head of sales. I said, "Tell us who has this problem you've come across, because we need to work with more people to try to empower a solution that is scalable, maintainable, reliable or works for our business." You know, weirdly enough, the next, uh, uh, opportunity we had was the Los Angeles International Airport. They were opening up a new terminal, you know, and they said, "We need like 200 people to manage all the stalls in the new terminal." And we're like, "200 people? We just hired close to 800. We got this." You know? We, we go to LA for the briefing with their staffing group and they tell us that the people that work at an international airport have to match the demographics of the travelers. We say, "Say what?" "Yeah, we have 13% Chinese-speaking travelers. We need 13% Chinese-speaking employees." We say, "Sorry?" You know? We've got 5% Korean-speaking... I mean, my team is in LA, we're in Chinatown, we are speaking our culture trying to recruit people to come and work in an airport. If we expect like 10 people to show up, only one person shows up. We start calling job seekers up like, "What's going on?" They say, "Do you know what it means to work at an airport? First, I wake up at five o'clock, I drive to the employee parking lot, I get into a bus, then I go through security." There was no like TSA PreCheck back then, you know? Then I, if I want a break, I go through security again and then you pay me minimum wage. You know? It took us close to three months to staff this. We had to negotiate with the union to raise the price to like $15 an hour to go attract people. When we come back from that, you know what we're saying? "That is not our customer. Never again. We are never doing airports. That's a pain." You know, as around this time it was the holiday season, so we reached out to the person at Macy's, we told them about our work with McDonald's, they say, "Oh, we'll try this out." We started working with them. You can imagine through this, the engineer is thinking, "How can I use technology to improve this?" I always tell this to people, like, I never wrote the requirements document, I never wrote a story, I never... So the designer is thinking, "How can we improve the end-to-end experience? Okay, we need a, a, a recruiter experience, a job seeker experience, we had a funnel. Oh, we need to build a scheduling tool so that they can scale the interview. Oh, what about notification? Maybe text message. Oh, we can send them a map so that they can know how to get to the..." I mean, all of these things because they were involved from the very beginning in defining the problem, they were immersed in the solution to the problem. It takes us about eight and a half, almost nine months to build this. When we launched this product, in its first 90 days, it booked $32 million-

    2. LRLenny Rachitsky45:19

       (laughs)

    3. CIChristian Idiodi45:21

       ... in sales. Why? Because, you know, you got McDonald's probably till today using this product to open up every new store. Even Starbucks went in a global contract. We say, "Well, we've only done discover in the US, so I only know where it works in this market," you know? And we started finding if you look at, uh, if you look at NASCAR, some of these big sporting events, they have to bring a lot of people together very quickly-

    4. LRLenny Rachitsky45:41

       Yeah.

    5. CIChristian Idiodi45:42

       ... uh, for a short amount of time, you know? And this is the same kind of product they use to do that high volume hiring in a short amount of time. If you think about it, I was discovering who had the problem and developing the customers that have the problem. At the same time, I was discovering and delivering a solution to that problem.

    6. LRLenny Rachitsky46:01

       That's insane. You said you made 30-something million dollars-

    7. CIChristian Idiodi46:04

       Right.

    8. LRLenny Rachitsky46:04

       ... the first year of launching this thing?

    9. CIChristian Idiodi46:06

       Yeah.

    10. LRLenny Rachitsky46:06

        That's unreal. Uh, I love the, uh, how this is the epitome of doing things that don't scale. You going hiring McDonald's employees and then Starbucks employees- (laughs)

    11. CIChristian Idiodi46:15

        That's right.

    12. LRLenny Rachitsky46:16

        ... and airport employees. Wow. I don't know if you-

    13. CIChristian Idiodi46:18

        Yeah, you do things that don't scale and then you do things that do scale, right? And that's, and it's, it's so powerful when you discover how to do things that don't scale, when you actually know, right? Because it's the power of technology is just the beauty of what it can do at scale.

    14. LRLenny Rachitsky46:34

        And to that point, it's easier said, like, a lot of people talk about doing things that don't scale. Many people don't actually do anything like that. They're like, "Nah, let that, let someone else figure that out," or-

    15. CIChristian Idiodi46:43

        Yeah.

    16. LRLenny Rachitsky46:43

        ... let's just actually think about the future of this versus just doing it and solving and finding problems. And I love that also you didn't do any of these other, like, things we talked about. There's no fake door test, there's no opportunity solution trees, there's no user interview. Like, you know, you were talking to people. It wasn't like a user research interview, "Come sit down, I have questions."

    17. CIChristian Idiodi47:00

        I, I said this, there's nothing better in learning how to solve a problem than trying to solve the problem. You know, just you, you will get all the answers, the research, the failure, the mistakes, you know, all the evidence. You know the difference between what people say versus what they do. Um, you validate and test. I mean, because at the end of the day, you know, what is statistically relevant? (laughs) Like, you know, what is... Solving the problem is the clearest indication that we've solved the problem and that we know how to solve the problem then, uh-

    18. LRLenny Rachitsky47:28

        Yeah.

    19. CIChristian Idiodi47:28

        ... and so, yeah, very powerful technique.

    20. LRLenny Rachitsky47:31

        And I love that you didn't really know exactly where this was gonna lead. It was just kind of this exploratory, let's see if there's something here. And, and you just kept following this like, "Huh, there's a problem. Looks like we found a way to solve it. Let's just-"

    21. CIChristian Idiodi47:41

        Yeah.

    22. LRLenny Rachitsky47:41

        "... see where else this can take us."

    23. CIChristian Idiodi47:42

        Yes.

    24. LRLenny Rachitsky47:43

        Amazing. This time of year is prime for career reflection and setting goals for professional growth. I always like to spend this time reflecting on what I accomplished the previous year, what I hope to accomplish the next year, and whether this is the year I look for a new opportunity.That's where today's sponsor, Teal, comes in. Teal provides you with the tools to run an amazing job search with an AI-powered resume builder, job tracker, cover letter generator, and Chrome extension that integrates with over 40 job boards. Teal is the all-in-one platform you need to run a more streamlined and efficient job search and stand out in this competitive market. There's a reason nearly one million people have trusted Teal to run their job search. If you're thinking of making a change in the New Year, leverage Teal to grow your career on your own terms. Get started for free at tealhq.com/lenny. That's tealhq.com/lenny. I wanna shift to a different topic. You spend a lot of time helping product leaders

12. 48:40 – 55:53

    How to get better at coaching and build trust with leaders

    1. LRLenny Rachitsky48:40

       get better at coaching, get better at building relationships, get better at building trust with their teammates. Marty Cagan actually shared this quote with me. Let me find it. He said that, "You can build trust with executives and product leaders faster than anyone else he knows, and the people you coach adore him like some kind of rock star. He's literally on speed dial for several of the CEOs of the largest companies in the world." Okay, so let me just ask you, what- what's your secret to coaching, to being a great coach, and how can people listening become better coaches to their reports, maybe colleagues?

    2. CIChristian Idiodi49:12

       Uh, this topic is probably near and dear to my heart because, uh, I mean, there are many ways that I think our corporate structures have failed, uh, in creating high performance and stability in people. And I think one of them is actually internal of leadership. Um, and, and by leadership, the key component I often point to is coaching, uh, this idea of what truly is the job of a leader. And I tell people, yeah, it's, it's context and culture at the highest level, like where we, why we're here, where are we going? How do we organize ourselves to get there? What's important? Those kinds of things and the environment in which we do it. But there's a people element because you recognize that you want an outcome and you need people working together to that outcome, so I now have to staff those people and I have to, you know, hire and train them and equip them and then appoint them to what those things are. But many of those things are one-off, like meaning, you know, I create a vision, I create a strategy, I create... you know, they, you know, there are some things, you know, I h- I hire a person. There's something that is every day, and that's coaching. That's like the day job of managers, like I mean... and if I think about high performing teams in the world, uh, and you can pick sports as one of those, athletes, I mean, they have coaches and managers like this is an everyday thing. And the idea is that, you know, when I explain this to people, I say, you know, like doing product management is a product manager's job, but getting better at product management is the manager's job. It's the coach's job. And people tend to misunderstand how that dynamic works. You see, if you are playing a game, you are in the game. The coaches are on the sideline watching you play the game and getting you better at playing the game. You know, your job may be to kick or pass ball and get, you know... you need a competence level, but somebody's job is every day looking for ways for you to be better at your job. The number one reason most people don't give good coaching is because they've never experienced good coaching themselves. And most people can only give to other people what has been given to them. What experiences they've seen. What if... yeah, yeah, I was in a, in an executive meeting with a CEO and he gets up in the meeting and he just starts screaming and cussing at everybody, just like throwing up, and I said, "Whoa, whoa." I said, you know, "Can we talk outside?" You know, I take him outside. I was like, "First of all, I don't even think I can work with you anymore given this environment you're creating, but I need to understand why you are talking to your team like that." And he says to me, he says, "Christian, well, you know, uh, my boss used to scream at me like this. And look at me. I'm now a CEO. I got it. I understand it. The other grown-ups, they can understand it too." And I said, "Well, tell me what you're trying to communicate." And he explains it to me and stuff, and I said, "Is it okay if I show you an alternative way of communicating that?" He says, "What do you mean?" I said, "Well, you know, is it, first of all, safe for me to, to do this with the team?" So I go back to the team and I say, "Look, I'm gonna try to say what the CEO was trying to say again. He's given me permission for you to speak freely and candidly. I want your honest opinion as to what was more effective and why." And I took a stab at kind of representing what he was trying to say, and I asked the team and it's like, "Yeah, it's the same thing kind of message, but, you know, when he tells us this stuff, we just go do it. We get it, we go do it. But the way you described it right now to us, I can think of four other things I need to do. I even understand some other things that may be missing that we need to now go tackle." And, you know, the CEO is kind of like really taken aback and he's kind of... in some ways he has never seen an alternative. And he's never seen before an alternative be effective. Most people need to see something, then they need to do it before they can even teach it in some ways. The- the biggest examples... Now I'm teeing this up because I, I need to make a very strong argument for people understanding coaching and, and in some ways I probably did not know, you know, that I was probably good at coaching. I, I coached my kids in soccer, uh, um, uh, for- for like eight years and we always like won the championship, my boys team and... and I had like long waiting list of people and I thought I had a fundamental flaw in understanding it, you know? Because when my kids were all like four years old, you know when you have the kids run around the foot- soccer field just kicking the ball anyway, my team always had like plays, they all have strategy. I mean, so, you know,

    3. NANarrator53:49

       (laughs)

    4. CIChristian Idiodi53:49

       ... yeah, winning gets like 10 to 0, you know? Other kids... and I thought, you know, I'm like, ah, maybe I was born in another country, I didn't know you were just meant to let them play. And I was like really coaching kids and I was treating four-year-olds like adults, you know, we're watching video, watching tape, having real cr- you know

    5. NANarrator54:05

       (laughs)

    6. CIChristian Idiodi54:05

       I grew like be- but it's so- it was so funny when you see them execute-... on the field. Uh, but I've kind of always had this mentality about the truest form is like, companies cannot care for people. People care for people. And the representation of what is acceptable in an environment or what we do is by the leaders. Now there's some different dynamic to why that's not happening with how we promote people and, and the whole core, uh, structure around that. But fundamentally, trust is a keypad of doing this and I think, uh, e- e- when I tell this to people I say, "Look, most people don't know that you know something, until they test you." We do it a whole lot in our environment. You know, I ask you a question, I see how you answer and it's like, I might ask you, "What's one plus one?" You'd be like, "It's two." And now I know that you know one plus one is two. You know? I don't care when you learned it, (laughs) I just, I need you to know that it's two to do my work. So you know, so it happens in everyday environments and what people fail to do is to do the learning. So they get the question wrong and they lose trust. So people don't, w- you know and, and trust is based on competence and character. There are other values like communication and concern and care, but most corporate environments it's a competency thing. That's why you see so many companies accept, you know, uh, people with bad communication, bad care, bad... because they are very good at their job. So, y- y- you know, if, if you can demonstrate competence, you will earn some trust, at least the trust of competence from people. So I, I, I kind of explain to people a, a whole lot that the, the real core of their job at first is to learn. To seek to understand before

13. 55:53 – 1:00:01

    The fastest way to build trust

    1. CIChristian Idiodi55:53

       they are understood, to know what you don't know. That humility and ego only lasts a small minute. The most powerful way I have found to get trust with many people is to have them accountable for an outcome of mine which is to them. So if I wanted to accelerate trust with Lenny, I will ask Lenny to teach me. Now, (laughs) y- y- you know, and, and I say this, I say this like an emotional intelligence black belt technique here, but, you know, many environments, uh, this, they... you know, if you get into an environment, it's very quickly for you to identify the power in that environment. You know, who's influential, who has the loudest voice and all. And there's something behind why they are powerful. Yes, it is title, but if you think about why someone is called a CEO is because there's some competence that made someone give them the title. You know? They are (laughs) great at growing businesses, they have good strata, whatever it is. So what you do i- i- to build trust is you want that person to trust you, okay? But the only way that person will know that they trust you is if they test you and unfortunately, many environments, they do that publicly. I'm in a meeting, I ask Lenny a question, he, he bumps a presentation like, "Oh, product managers are useless. That person doesn't know anything." So here's what I do when I want to build trust. You know, I, I, I... if, if Lenny's a new hire in my company, I take Lenny to the most, the loudest, most influential person in the company and I say, "Look, I just hired Lenny, super rockstar, did all of this. But, you know, he knows nothing about our business, nothing about how we work and stuff. I would love for you to teach him some things." Now he might be like, "I'm super busy, I'm involved." I say, "Look, Lenny should just hang with you for the, you know, I've cleared his calendar for the whole week. He's just going to sit in meetings you are, quiet, observe. Just by observing you, he will be your rockstar. No stress, nothing to give." Now, it's impossible for this leader to sit with you for a whole week without saying things like, "So Lenny, where are you from? What do you do? Tell me about yourself." What have I now done? I've forced a relationship between a very powerful, trustworthy, influential person and somebody else that doesn't have it. If you are walking around the company with this person, what is everybody going to say? "Oh my goodness. You're friends with that person. Sure, you, we want to know Lenny because, you know, we can never get him to agree on it, so if I know Lenny, I'll be close with him. Lenny is more accessible, he's new, but how did Lenny break in?" I'm extending somebody else's trust to you. Now, by also making that person share in the accountability (laughs) of training you or co- or teaching you, in some ways, I am now making them accountable for your growth. It's impossible, uh, two months from now for that person to say, "Oh, Lenny doesn't know anything." Why? Because it makes them a bad teacher. (laughs) So they are always going to defend. They'll be like, "Oh yeah, Lenny, let's have a conversation. Don't do it like this in this way." They will prep you because it makes them look bad if you're not competent. Now, this, this, this technique accelerates relationships and trust. It's the help me teach me type of technique. It also allows them to observe the dynamics within the company, but it accelerates relationships because it's po- impossible for you to be in a meeting with a leader all the time without the person saying something like, "Oh yeah, hey folks, let me introduce you to Lenny." Now that person is now the one introducing you to more connections within the company. Fastest way to build this. Now, feels like it's expensive but this is the job of a coach. You are designing a very specific playbook to help people achieve the outcomes we want and that's by getting them competent at their job and then their potential, where they need to go next.

    2. LRLenny Rachitsky59:45

       That are some Jedi ninja tricks right there. I love that. I have never heard this advice before. Makes so much sense and it's so easy to implement.

    3. CIChristian Idiodi59:54

       Yeah.

    4. LRLenny Rachitsky59:54

       Amazing. For someone that maybe doesn't have a Christian around as a coach or a manager that isn't

14. 1:00:01 – 1:02:51

    What to do in the absence of good coaching

    1. LRLenny Rachitsky1:00:01

       at this level, what advice do you give people that are looking for a coach or someone that could help them along these lines to learn to build trust and learn to, you know, just generally improve?

    2. CIChristian Idiodi1:00:09

       Boy, you know, I, I, I... like I say with everything, you don't get mastery by avoidance. And one of the things that...... good coaches do. That, you know, most co-... When I say corporations fail companies is they don't create space for practice. You know, uh, I see people complain to me about people all the time. "Oh, this person is not good..." You know, "They presented this, it was terrible." And I asked them, "What did they do at practice?" They said, "What do you mean?" I said, "When they were practicing this, (laughs) what d- what did they do?" They said, "Well, they didn't practice. I told them to prepare this..." I said, "Think about what happens at practice. Any practice of any sport, any game any ******. You, you can stop. You can make corrections, you can give feedback. What you do at practice, you do in the game." Product management is a one time, game time kind of role. Every day is one. So when do people practice? And so, uh, what, what I tell people, like, in the absence of, of getting good coaching, you need to find practice arenas. You know, it's kind of like if, if you don't... You know, you're learning a new sport of basketball, you kind of go to the gym and stuff. It's a practice arena. You can play and shoot around and then maybe some people have pickup games that you join and stuff like this in some ways. And I, I... So I always advise product managers, like, you need to join a lot of pickup games. Which are kind of, uh, you know, they have low, low barriers to entry, low evaluation reward, low risk type of thing. Look, go volunteer at a nonprofit-

    3. LRLenny Rachitsky1:01:33

       (laughs)

    4. CIChristian Idiodi1:01:34

       ... working with a team. Go volunteer in a community s- event or church or whatever you go to. Kind of go practice. But now, what am I trying to do with these things? Find places where people do collaborative problem solving, where they do product... That is what you're doing as a product team. It, it's more likely in a high performance environment, you'll find a good coach. You will find, like, somebody out there. But what you are also doing is you're observing other people play. Most people learn a lot of skills by, you know, you watch TV like, "Oh, I like that move." And then you go to the gym and you practice that move. You see what it is? Just like you're seeing, then you're doing it in some ways. So you need to see good product work so that you can do good product work, so that you can teach good product work. So i- if you don't have the benefit of having a good coach, uh, directly, you've got to find environments where you see good coaching happening. And a good indication of good coaching is actually good outcomes over and over again. Winning teams, you know, winning performances, great products. Great products come from great product teams. Uh, they probably had good leaders or a good leader in a bad culture.

    5. LRLenny Rachitsky1:02:43

       Yeah. So essentially, it's get, ge- get a bunch of reps in is, uh, a big part of this advice, just get reps in. And I think what you just said

15. 1:02:51 – 1:04:16

    How to get into product management

    1. LRLenny Rachitsky1:02:51

       is such an important part of it, is collaborative problem solving is the key thing to look for. I, I was gonna ask you how you recommend people get into product management. I imagine this is a very similar answer, it's just find opportunities to collaboratively problem solve, problem solve.

    2. CIChristian Idiodi1:03:04

       That's right. They... And I differentiate that because, you know, there are all those guys that are the, "I know how to, like, to change a light bulb." Or they can work individually or tinker and stuff. And, and I, I kind of differentiate that problem solving from the people that are very good at working with other people to solve a problem.

    3. LRLenny Rachitsky1:03:19

       Mm-hmm.

    4. CIChristian Idiodi1:03:20

       And there are so many of those pockets. You're getting reps in, you know, the... When you're talking to... Uh, when you're... You've heard those people that just tell you stories of them working on a problem and you can... I can see how they will help me. Okay? (laughs) They know how to use data, they know how to use insights, they're not afraid of talking to people. And how are you gonna get those reps? 'Cause you come into my company, I ask you a question like, "Ah, I really don't know. Where do I find..." But if you've done the problem solve with a team, sometimes you may not even know how to get the answer but you know who to go to to get the answer. That's a gift too. Mm-hmm.

    5. LRLenny Rachitsky1:03:52

       I love that so much of your advice comes back to being the person that knows the most or has learned the most or s- even looking like they're spending the time to learn the most, likes... Which makes so much sense, the people you want to entrust or the people that happen to have the answers and-

    6. CIChristian Idiodi1:04:05

       I try.

    7. LRLenny Rachitsky1:04:06

       ... and which perhaps will know.

    8. CIChristian Idiodi1:04:07

       Yeah.

    9. LRLenny Rachitsky1:04:07

       Yeah.

    10. CIChristian Idiodi1:04:07

        (laughs)

    11. LRLenny Rachitsky1:04:07

        It just makes sense. Something else you talk about is people getting promoted too early, leaders getting promoted too early, not doing well.

16. 1:04:16 – 1:11:11

    The pitfalls of early promotions

    1. LRLenny Rachitsky1:04:17

       They end up blaming others when really they were not actually ready for this new position. Can you talk about why you think that happens and then just how... Maybe as that person that might be in that position right now feeling like, "Oh, shit, maybe it's not my fault."

    2. CIChristian Idiodi1:04:31

       Uh, I don't know how to make an appeal to corporations on this one. It's probably the s-... It's the similar appeal in the light of coaching too as well, that, you know, most people are promoted to a point of incompetency or stuff but, but I kind of describe the dynamic this way. It's kind of like, you know, uh, Lenny's a fantastic engineer, you know. He's, he... If you think about it, he wins Engineer of the Year awards. If you go to the office, his picture is on the wall. Everybody knows him, he high fi-... He's feeling good. But it's, like, one year, two years, maybe eight years in, Lenny's feeling like, "Am I really growing in my career? Am I really challenged in my career?" He looks at the engineering career ladder. The next role, you know, from his senior engineer role is engineering manager, you know. The leadership team, HR, they look at the same thing, "That's true. We, we, we love Lenny, we don't wanna lose Lenny. We need to promote him." And the next step is Engineering Manager or Product Manager Manager, however I wanna use the role here. And so we do that, we promote Lenny. He feels good at the moment. "Yeah, congratulations on your promotion." He posts a nice post. We are like, "Yeah. We're gonna keep Lenny there for a n- long time now because he's promoted." No, Lenny has never been a manager in his whole life. He's never interviewed people, fired people, driven, even coached people or had done any of those things directly. You know, after a couple of months, Lenny starts to recognize an interesting pattern. Nobody's clapping for him at company meetings anymore. In short, they've taken down his picture from the wall because he's no longer an engineer. He's a manager, so he is now somebody else, he's now the Engineer of the Year. They're clapping for him in meetings. It's like, you know, he doesn't feel recognized or seen anymore. He's just the guy now behind the scenes in that kind of thing. Then, you know, a couple of weeks go by, then they have a big engineering problem. And you know what Lenny does? He jumps in and he solves the problem.Lenny did not recognize that his job has changed. His job is no longer to solve the problem directly, but to get a team of other people good at solving problems. This is because he is a great engineer, but not a good manager. This story or this dynamic I've told you is probably the most common origin story of what people see or deem as micromanagement. In many cases here, this individual knows how to do engineering. They don't know how to do engineering management. They don't see the shift in their dynamic being changed. We see bad patterns where it's, like, the second you become an eng- a manager or a leader, you cannot say things like, "I don't know. I'm not sure. I need help." A- are you saying that, who told us those things? But it's, like, such an expectation that our leaders must have the answers, must know the right things, must do the right things. And so what do we see people do? Rather than Lenny ask for help, he goes to Google and searches how to do an interview, how to write a review. Are you seeing? He reads different articles, like, "This one looks cool." And then he does it, and nobody dies, nothing breaks, so he thinks, "This is a good framework and a good pattern." And, you know, we have this dysfunctional culture of everybody doing different things, whatever works for anybody and, you know, we- and that- and that is the cycle that repeats itself. Now, a person that works for Lenny sees that he used this framework and thinks, "It must be a good framework. My boss did it." And you see how that cycle repeats itself because Lenny didn't actually get coached to be a manager. You know, if you ask- ask anybody that works with me, if you come to me and say, "Oh, I- I need to get promoted to be a director," you know what I say? I say, "Go and be a director. You don't need a title. Let me tell you what a director does, you know, and you're going to work with me over the next couple of months to do those things, because I am promoting you to do the job, not to learn the job." You see where it falls apart in promotions? We promote people and it's like, "You are now a VP, do VP things." And they're like, "Oh, I have never done VP things before, but I cannot tell people I've never done VP things because it makes me look incompetent. But I see the job description, I should do some VP things. What did my last VP do? Those things? Are those..." And you say, "But the best place to learn how to be a VP is when you're not a VP, because this is- that's where you practice being a VP. That's where you get feedback on V- Because then when you become a VP, you have done those things before." It's like, "Why is the first time you've done an interview when you're now a VP? Come in and do an interview with me. Observe me, do an interview, ask questions, see what works, get feedback." You know, that's why I love those group product manager roles or group... Because those are actually meant to be designed as ways for people to make a decision if they want to be a manager or they want to just stay in the discipline, but people use them as, "Why would you give somebody four direct reports if they have proven, i- if no evidence they can manage one?" (laughs) So what I do is I give you one. You might tell me, "I hate people." That's okay. We can talk about that. But it's like, let me give you four and you're just gonna practice the bad behavior of four. You know? So this is what often happens in company. We promote them into incompetence. It's not their fault because we are not coaching them. What we need to do is create a safe environment for people to practice leadership before they become leaders, before we promote them. We have to have good coaching programs for leaders to say, you know, if there's a succession plan, I want Lenny to be a new manager. I don't wait till it's time to promote him then I teach him management, because then apparently he cannot see things like, "I don't know." I have to teach him (laughs) leadership and management before he becomes a leader and a manager.

    3. LRLenny Rachitsky1:10:10

       I love this idea of just doing VP things. I just picture someone walking around and doing VP things.

    4. CIChristian Idiodi1:10:14

       I'm doing VP things all the time. I see it all the time. (laughs) Do one VP thing. (laughs)

    5. LRLenny Rachitsky1:10:18

       I'm doing VP things. Uh, I think another added benefit of doing these things before you're, say, a VP is that is the best way to get promoted to a VP, is-

    6. CIChristian Idiodi1:10:27

       Yes.

    7. LRLenny Rachitsky1:10:27

       ... you are already doing the job.

    8. CIChristian Idiodi1:10:29

       That's right. And nobody fights you on it. You see that? Like, you know, and you're not even surprised by it. And it's very safe, because when you're not in the job, you can make mistakes and nobody blames you. "He's not a VP. Look at him trying to do VP things." You see? But the second you're a VP, it is such a... We- there's so much leverage in the role that your mistake is serious because it impacts everybody. But when you're not, it's like some- you get coverage, you get protection, you know? Nobody's as mad at you. It's like, "Yeah, it was just, he was just trying to take a stab at it. Let's coach him on that." But that, what is the best time to know those things? It's before you're in it. Before you're in it.

    9. LRLenny Rachitsky1:11:06

       To give companies and leaders something to do with this advice, you talk about helping them train and practice

17. 1:11:11 – 1:13:30

    How to train someone for a promotion before giving the promotion

    1. LRLenny Rachitsky1:11:11

       before they do this. How do you do that? Does it bring on, like, I don't know, does it work with Silicon Valley product group to help train and coach?

    2. CIChristian Idiodi1:11:17

       There are many great product coaches out there. There are many leadership coaches out there. I- I think there's some recognition with... Yeah. People have to have the humility and the self-awareness to recognize there are the opportunities for them to get better as a leader. And like product management, you know, you need to, you need to see or experience good leadership, right? You need to, you know, you need the reps of good leadership and, yes, we're doing it every way. You probably talk to people about strategy and what do they do? They outsource it all the time. Tell somebody else to do it. And that cycle feeds itself because you never do it, you only know how to outsource it, you never learn how to do it. You see? (laughs) And so it's kind of many people outsource, "Oh, go get a mentor. Uh, go take a training class." You know? And they'll think that they are outsourcing coaching in that way. It's like, "Go- uh, go take a communication class." I'm like, "Okay." If they come back from the class and they punch you in the face and you're like, "Why did you punch me?" "The class taught me to punch you in the face. You paid money for me to learn how to punch you in the face." I say, "Go to the communication class with the employee, because they're going to need to practice the communication. So you learned what they are learning. Both of you now will practice it together so that they can get better at communication."A communication class doesn't get you better at communication. Communicating better is an indication that you're better at communication. You need to practice it. And I need to create a safe place for you to practice. I need to give you feedback that you're communicating better. These are all patterns in coaching that many leaders have, just don't have these tools and techniques to do it. So, I do teach a lot of leaders how to coach. I do a lot of people work with leaders. There's not a singular product problem. You know, people hear me say, "All problems are people problems." There's not a singular product problem that I have not seen coaching address.

Episode duration: 1:33:13