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

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

(laughs)

(laughs) Yes. Right? But it took me a while and reading a lot of books to come to a definition of love, and love is the choice to extend yourself for the spiritual growth of oneself or another, right? It's a very big and lofty and whatever, but it's... You're literally extending yourself for somebody else or yourself, self-love, right? And that's love. And when you're extending yourself, you're not nice. It's not always nice or like. It sometimes is, you know, having hard conversations. It's knowing that, oh, you know, there's a human, they know I care about them, so when the feedback is coming, like, raw, they know that it's in their best interest because they've... I've shown enough times that I genuinely care about the person behind the role.

(instrumental music) Today my guest is Ebi Atawodi. Ebi is Director of Product Management at YouTube, overseeing the creator experience. Previously she was Director of Product Management at Netflix and Head of Product for Uber Wallet, Checkout, Pay, and Financial Products at Uber. Ebi shares the most tactical advice I've ever heard on how to develop a vision for your product, along with a bunch of very concrete ways to communicate your vision to your teammates and to executives. We also dig into the craft of product management and how to get better at it, along with what Ebi's learned about creating a strong product culture on your team and across the company. Ebi is such a wonderful human and clearly an amazing product leader, and I'm excited for you to get to learn from her. With that, I bring you Ebi Atawodi after a short word from our sponsors. This episode is brought to you by Sidebar. Are you looking to land your next big career move or start your own thing? One of the most effective ways to create a big leap in your career, and something that worked really well for me a few years ago, is to create a personal board of directors, a trusted peer group where you can discuss challenges you're having, get career advice, and just kind of gut check how you're thinking about your work, your career, and your life. This has been a big trajectory changer for me, but it's hard to build this trusted group. With Sidebar, senior leaders are matched with highly vetted, private, supportive peer groups to lean on for unbiased opinions, diverse perspectives, and raw feedback. Everyone has their own zone of genius, so together we're better prepared to navigate professional pitfalls, leading to more responsibility, faster promotions, and bigger impact. Guided by world-class programming and facilitation, Sidebar enables you to get focused, tactical feedback at every step of your journey. If you're a listener of this podcast, you're likely already driven and committed to growth. A Sidebar personal board of directors is the missing piece to catalyze that journey. Why spend a decade finding your people when you can meet them at Sidebar today? Jump the growing wait list of thousands of leaders from top tech companies by visiting sidebar.com/lenny to learn more. That's sidebar.com/lenny. You fell in love with building products for a reason, but sometimes the day-to-day reality is a little different than you imagined. Instead of dreaming up big ideas, talking to customers, and crafting a strategy, you're drowning in spreadsheets and roadmap updates, and you're spending your days basically putting out fires. A better way is possible. Introducing Jira Product Discovery, the new prioritization and roadmapping tool built for product teams by Atlassian. With Jira Product Discovery, you can gather all your product ideas and insights in one place and prioritize confidently, finally replacing those endless spreadsheets. Create and share custom product roadmaps with any stakeholder in seconds, and it's all built on Jira, where your engineering team is already working, so true collaboration is finally possible. Great products are built by great teams, not just engineers. Sales, support, leadership, even Greg from finance. Anyone that you want can contribute ideas, feedback, and insights in Jira Product Discovery for free, no catch. And it's only $10 a month for you. Say goodbye to your spreadsheets and the never-ending alignment efforts. The old way of doing product management is over. Rediscover what's possible with Jira Product Discovery. Try it for free at atlassian.com/lenny. That's atlassian.com/lenny. Ebi, thank you so much for being here. Welcome to the podcast.