PITA 058
TOPIC 1: How do you think about - "I honestly never saw a behavioral change that was executed and brought results within a quarter. Yet, putting quarterly goals on a product team will push them to have an even higher pressure on focusing on short-term wins and a lower inclination on dedicating a lot of time on discovering different solutions." Quote by Francesca Cortesi
What’s the motivation?
Bad manifestation: when you need to report quarterly profits, and drive short-term goals
Better: breaking down quick wins into achievable chunks
Behavioural goals for internal - is all about building habits
Behavioural changes for customers are different - they take longer. Setting goals this way may imply an assumption of HOW to change the behaviour, not solving the customer problem, leading to a focus on output instead of outcome and locking a team into a feature factory approach.
Changing companies to work from quarters to 4-month chunks worked a treat for us
Topic 2: What is the most difficult/painful/challenging type of presentations as a product person and why and how did you make it work?
Where the CEO asked us to jump straight to the last slide
When you’re trying to align people across multiple silos
When you have bad news to share
Time-poor stakeholder who doesn’t care about the narrative / Sceptical senior stakeholder
Someone with a lot of influence but low interest
Ex-Amazon people. No slides! Prep for a discussion, not a presentation.
Anytime I didn’t understand the preferred format of the people I need to communicate to/get decisions from
Not knowing who the audience was
Topic 3: Thoughts on founder mode?
As both a founder and a product person in a separate hyper-growth company… it comes across that Chesky has a hate for senior managers. This may come from hiring the wrong senior managers.
Startups need to move fast, no time for lots of discussion. So it may work for them. Or have worked for them at a point.
Different stages of companies need different types of leaders.
It’s an excuse for bad hiring
Bad communication and bad vision setting by the founders themselves
I hate it… but if you’re an artist enamoured with your own vision, it’s what it takes.
As things scale, founder mode is just poor management
It’s dangerous
Topic 4: Has anyone led a team of volunteers - if so, how do you make that work? Does it change the dynamic?
Put their benefit in the centre
People not meeting standards
People not understanding or aligning with the mission
People volunteer sustainably out of intrinsic motivations. If their interest does not align, terminate the relationship.
Use open source model - lead can accept or reject changes/proposals. Delegate leadership for tasks or meetups to individuals to manage as they see fit