The art of influence: The single most important skill left that AI can’t replace | Jessica Fain

频道: Lenny's Podcast
视频: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RP4vJeIb7WU
原文语言: en
统计: 共 142 轮 · Jessica 70 · Lenny 70 · >> 2

[0:00] Jessica

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

作为产品经理，我们最好的技能之一就是好奇心和同理心，以及试图理解用户的能力。但当我们与高管对话的时候，我们就忘记了这些技能和才能。

[0:11] Jessica

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

如果领导层没有买入你的想法，那是你的问题。

[0:14] Jessica

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

人们对高管如何做决策的理解完全错了。他们脑子里在想什么？我把高管的日程表比作一个频闪灯。你早上8点醒来，已经有一大堆紧急的事情在处理。他们没有时间、没有精力、没有能力去关注你的问题。

[0:34] Jessica

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

他们的目标是什么？他们在努力做什么？他们如何衡量自己的表现？把你要推销的东西与他们的成功联系起来。

[0:39] Jessica

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

我们可以用更有趣的方式来提问。比如告诉我董事会在推动你做什么。高管也想成功，他们也想把工作做好。

[0:50] Jessica

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

有时候你有最好的想法，但他们就是不接受。

[0:52] Lenny

One of the biggest things you can do to build trust is kill things. Dep Prioritize things. If you're thinking about how do you be more senior, how do you show up in a way that is in a leadership mindset, you get paid to be a domain expert, your executive is looking for you to be the deepest person in the room. Bringing your expertise to bear is absolutely crucial. You have to act like a CPO. Today my guest is Jessica Feain who's been a product leader at Box and Slack and Brightitewheel and now at Webflow and she has gotten very very uniquely good at the art and science of influence and in particular influencing executives. Influence might be the single highest leveraged skill for product leaders outside of AI. We actually get into how AI is changing the skill of influence. I've never heard a podcast conversation get deep into the art and science of influence, how to actually change people's minds and the mistakes that people make when they're trying to influence leaders. We get very tactical and very specific. There's a bunch of stuff in this conversation that I've never heard before or thought about. I am very excited for you to learn from Jessica. Before we get into it, don't forget to check out lennisproduct.com for an incredible set of deals available exclusively to Lenny's newsletter subscribers. Now, let's get into it. after a short word from our wonderful sponsors. This episode is brought to you by Omni. Many product teams today are in the process of debating how to ship AI analytics. The hard part is obvious. Having an LLM guest add SQL in production is a huge mess and just a bad idea. Omni takes a different approach. They have a semantic layer built in so that when you embed their analytics, the AI actually knows your business definitions, not just your raw tables. You can test queries, validate the reasoning, and lock down permissions before anything hits production. If you want AI analytics in your product without building the whole stack from scratch, check out omni.co/lenny for a free 3we trial. Companies like Perplexity, DBT, and Buzzfeed use Omni to ship analytics their customers can trust. That's omni.co/lenny. This episode is brought to you by Lovable. Not only are they the fastest growing company in history, I use it regularly and I could not recommend it more highly. If you've ever had an idea for an app, but didn't know where to start, Lovable is for you. Lovable lets you build working apps and websites by simply chatting with AI. Then you can customize it, add automations, and deploy it to a live domain. It's perfect for marketers spinning up tools, product managers prototyping new ideas, and founders launching their next business. Unlike no code tools, Lovable isn't about static pages. It builds full apps with real functionality, and it's fast. What used to take weeks, months, or years, you can now do over a weekend. So, if you've been sitting on an idea, now is the time to bring it to life. Get started for free at lovable.dev. That's lovable.dev.

建立信任的最重要的事情之一是杀死一些东西。降低一些事情的优先级。如果你在思考如何变得更资深、如何以领导心态出现，你的报酬就是成为领域专家，你的高管希望你是房间里最深层次理解的人。充分发挥你的专业知识是绝对关键的。你必须表现得像一个首席产品官。今天我的嘉宾是Jessica Fain，她曾在Box、Slack、Brightwheel，现在在Webflow担任产品领导者。她在影响力的艺术与科学方面，特别是影响高管方面，变得非常擅长。影响力可能是产品领导者除了AI之外最高杠杆的技能。我们讨论了AI如何改变影响力的技能。这是深入讨论影响力艺术与科学的播客对话。我们变得非常战术性和具体。这次对话中有很多我从未听说过的东西。我非常期待你从Jessica那里学到东西。在我们开始之前，请查看lennysproduct.com，那里有专为Lenny通讯订阅者独家提供的交易。现在，让我们开始。

[3:57] Lenny

Jessica, thank you so much for being here. Welcome to the podcast.

Jessica，非常感谢你来这里。欢迎来到播客。

[4:00] Jessica

Thanks for having me. It's my pleasure. Let's set this conversation up. We're going to be talking about the skill and the art of influence and in particular uh influencing executives and leaders, people above you that you want to convince to do things you want them to do. Help us understand why this is worth people's time. Why is this worth the next hour of someone listening to this? Why is this skill so important to people's careers? I think as product builders, there's almost not a skill that's more important. Influence and building a momentum behind great ideas is the way that great products actually get built. And if you don't have that influence, if you don't have the buyin and the backing of your key stakeholders, of your executives, you can't build great products.

感谢邀请。我很荣幸。让我们为这次对话做铺垫。我们要谈论影响力的技能和艺术，特别是影响高管和领导者，那些你想说服他们做你想让他们做的事情的人。帮助我们理解为什么这值得人们花时间。为什么这值得接下来一个小时某个听这个的人的时间？为什么这个技能对人们的职业生涯如此重要？我认为作为产品构建者，几乎没有比这更重要的技能。影响力和在伟大想法背后建立动力是伟大产品真正被构建的方式。如果你没有那种影响力，如果你没有关键利益相关者、高管的支持，你就无法构建伟大产品。

[4:49] Lenny

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

我个人经历过，有一段时间我想，我不需要在这个技能上下功夫。我就是要做出令人惊叹的工作。这自然会显现出来。每个人都会认可它。你就会遇到这堵墙，哦天哪，所有这些其他人都被晋升了。也许你能谈谈这个，因为感觉这是人们陷入的一个大陷阱。

[5:09] Jessica

I think why I wanted to talk to you about this is, you know, when I was an ICPM, I was putting forth ideas. I was trying to reflect what I was hearing from my customers. I was trying to get sort of buyin and excitement about the work that I thought was really going to move us forward. And at the time that I'm thinking about, I was a PM at Slack. And some of my ideas got people really excited, you know, got me funding and backing and just really a sense that we could accomplish something great. And some of my ideas and the things that I really really believed in died on the vine. They went nowhere. And I was so confused and frustrated honestly because I felt like, hey, I really get this user base. I really understand what's going to move the ball forward. And I don't understand how these decisions are actually being made behind the scenes. And uh I was uh eight months pregnant, eight and a half months pregnant. April Underwood, who had just been named CPO of Slack, um she had just come back from maternity leave. We had a two-day overlap. And I sort of got up my courage and I said to her, "April, I've admired you for a long time. I love the way you work. I I really love the way you think. Um, and I really want to understand it better. If you'd ever consider having a chief of staff, I'd love for you to consider me. And when I came back from that maternity leave, I came into a stint as April's chief of staff and was later chief of staff to Tamario Hoshua. Um, who succeeded succeeded April,

我想和你谈论这个的原因是，当我是IC PM时，我在提出想法。我试图反映我从客户那里听到的内容。我试图获得对我认为真正会推动我们前进的工作的支持和兴奋。那时我在Slack担任PM。我的一些想法让人们真的很兴奋，给了我资金和支持，以及我们能完成伟大事情的感觉。而我真正相信的一些想法没有进展。我很困惑和沮丧，因为我觉得，嘿，我真的理解这个用户基础。我真的理解什么会推动球向前发展。我不明白这些决定实际上是如何在幕后做出的。我怀孕八个月。April Underwood刚刚被命名为Slack的CPO。她刚从产假回来。我们有两天的重叠。我鼓起勇气，我对她说，April，我一直很敬佩你。我喜欢你的工作方式。我真的喜欢你的思维方式。我真的想更好地理解它。如果你曾经考虑过拥有一个参谋长，我很想让你考虑我。当我从产假回来时，我成为了April的参谋长，后来成为了Tamario Hershfield的参谋长。

[6:38] Lenny

who's been on the podcast,

他曾在播客上。

[6:39] Jessica

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

他曾在播客上，对吧？现在是Atlassian的CPO和AI主管。Tamar，如果我搞错你的职位，别生气。通过那个过程我学到的是，人们对高管如何做决策的理解完全错了。他们的脑子里、日程表里、激励结构里发生了什么。与其真正理解那个高管或利益相关者来自哪里，他们围绕自己。他们围绕自己的欲望、自己的动机、自己的世界片段，最终在他们的职业生涯和他们正在构建的产品类型中都没有那么成功。

[7:21] Lenny

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

当你谈论人们不理解产品领导者实际上如何做决策时，一个例子是什么？他们如何决定要做什么，听什么？

[7:29] Jessica

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

我认为最大的例子是人们不理解高管日程。很多时候在谷歌日历上，它被阻止了。你看不到他们在做什么。但我把高管的日程表比作像一个频闪灯在闪烁。你早上8点醒来，你已经有一大堆紧急的事情在进行。你从与财务关于预算的会议，到另一个高管的面试，到一个人员问题，到一个法律问题，到一个产品评论。来参加那个产品评论或试图做推销的领导人认为我已经为这次会议准备了两周、三周，也许从我们上次谈话以来的六周。但进入那个会议的高管自从那以后就没有想过你。他们可能今天还没有上过厕所，对吧？你必须理解他们没有时间、精力、能力来关注你的问题。而且你必须帮助他们进入那种心态。所以，这就像高管也是人。他们以我见过的最疯狂的方式跑来跑去，进行上下文切换。在他们的盘子里出现的一切都是紧急的。所以，我认为最重要的策略之一就是在会议的开头花30秒。我们为什么在这里？上次我们谈话时发生了什么？为什么这对你很重要？为什么这很有意义？真正记住他们不仅仅在想你。他们在为全局最大值优化，而不是为你在优化的本地优化。

[9:06] Lenny

Essentially, this is how to help someone in this world that is running around from meeting to meeting without context on most things, maybe hasn't had time to go to the bathroom. How do we help them see what you want them to see and maybe buy into your vision and suggestions? Yeah, I think that um you know, one of the ways that I phrase this is how do you get the best out of your exec? How do you help them be their best selves? We often think about how we show up in a meeting or the doc that we wrote or the prototype that we've got ready, but we don't think about how they can be at their best. How do we give them the right kind of information in the way that they communicate? You know, we as product leaders have to be communication chameleons. We have to be speaking their language like love languages, right? But appropriate for work. Um, and you have to think about do they really uh turn a spark with a design, with a customer story, with a dashboard, with an experiment, and how do you understand how their best brain, how their best expertise gets turned on to give you the best of themselves. But part of that is literally just setting up the meeting effectively so that they can have the context, the wherewithal, the sort of breath at the beginning of the meeting to to dive into it.

本质上，这是关于如何帮助某人，他在这个世界上从一个会议跑到另一个会议，对大多数事情都没有上下文。我们如何帮助他看到你想让他看到的东西，也许买入你的愿景和建议？是的，我表达这个的方式之一是你如何从你的高管那里获得最好的？你如何帮助他们成为最好的自己？我们经常考虑我们如何在会议中出现或我们写的文件或我们准备好的原型，但我们不考虑他们如何能够最好。我们如何以他们沟通的方式给他们正确的信息？作为产品领导者，我们必须是沟通变色龙。我们必须说他们的语言，就像爱的语言一样。但适合工作。你必须考虑他们是否真的用设计、客户故事、仪表板、实验来引发火花，你如何理解他们最好的大脑如何被打开以给你最好的他们自己。部分是字面上的只是有效地设置会议，以便他们可以有上下文和能力来深入研究它。

[10:23] Lenny

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

另一件我总是告诉我管理的人的事情是，如果领导层没有买入你的想法，那是你的问题。就像你不能只是说，啊，他们就是看不到它。那不是我的问题。他们同意做别的事情。我总是告诉他们，就像那样你不能影响他们和说服他们你是对的。

[10:40] Jessica

Yeah. And I Annie Pearl who was my first PM manager back at Box. Uh she's

是的。而且Annie Pearl是我在Box的第一个PM经理。嗯，她的

[10:45] Lenny

also former podcast guest.

也是前播客嘉宾。

[10:47] Jessica

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

也是前播客嘉宾，Calendly和Glassdoor的前CPO，现在在Microsoft。Annie就是最好的。她总是对我说，这不是我的错，但这是我的问题。我认为这就是产品领导者必须拥有的优势，特别是如果他们试图以高管的身份出现的话。作为产品经理，我们最好的技能之一就是好奇心和同理心，以及试图理解用户的能力。但当我们与高管或利益相关者交谈时，我们忘记了那些技能和才能。我们开始考虑我们的想法、获得那个批准、进入下一次会议的激励。我们不考虑对他们思考的东西、他们的激励、他们的一天如何的好奇心和同理心。如果我们能采取一些构建伟大产品的技能，并将高管视为我们的关键用户，那么我们可以进行更加有成效的对话。你知道，我认为你能做的最灾难的事情之一就是进入一个会议只是为了寻求对你计划的批准。相反，如果你进去的是我如何学习，我如何加强这个计划，我如何使用这个人带到桌子上的领域专业知识、背景、经验，并将其注入到我的产品工作中。高管会更喜欢你，因为他们会感觉到你实际上与他们一起建立了产品，但你最终也会得到一个更好的产品。我经常听人们对我说，哦，他们就是看不到，对吧？他们看不到我看到的东西。他们不在我的会议中。他们不知道这有多难。好的。如果你不尊重那个人，如果你不相信他们知道你不知道的东西，你需要离职。你需要去别的地方工作。但如果你尊重他们，如果你认为他们有东西可以提供给你，他们到达他们所在的位置是因为他们学到了东西，他们发展了一个你试图获得的技能，太棒了。接受反馈，接受洞察，提出问题，不要只是把它当作一个橡皮图章，因为那是一个失败状态。我想深入研究这些东西，但首先我想到的是一些人可能会对这个话题感到厌倦，因为它可能感觉油腻，就像我不想试着成为这样一个操纵他人的人，你知道，与政治和影响力打交道，就像我只是想做出很棒的工作。为什么我必须这样做？

[13:24] Jessica

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

是的。我认为当人们把这个定义为政治时，他们完全错过了要点。政治是为了自己的利益操纵人的结果。影响力是关于增加你的好想法存活的几率。人们实际上让自我和他们自己的叙述妨碍同理心。所以这不是政治活动。这是学习。如果我们把利益相关者对话当作发现采访，作为加强我们想法的一种方式，那么我们最终会进入一个更好得多的地方。而如果我们以一种真诚和低自我的方式这样做，我会举一个例子。Noah Weiss接替了Tamario Hershfield，Slack的CPO，也是前播客嘉宾。哇，我们在这里进行的运行。

[14:19] Lenny

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

我从Noah那里学到了很多。我们坐下来为Slack编写产品原则。Ethan Eisman，我们的设计主管，领导了那个倡议。但这很大程度上是关于编纂使Slack伟大的早期想法，特别是从产品原则和工艺的角度。Noah很早就在Slack，他拿出一个小笔记本，他放在他的包里，他说，你知道，我实际上有一部分这个笔记本，我一直在记录我从Stuart多年来学到的东西。现在，他没有保留那个笔记本，因为他对自己说，哦，有一天我们要写产品原则，我会想要这些引号在手边。不，这是为了他自己的想法的真正学习和成长，以及他作为产品领导者的地位。它使他能够反思Stuart的想法和原则给他，但也成长他自己的产品意识直觉。作为一个组织，它随后允许我们扩展那些原则。这确实是一个真正重要的部分。我们与许多早期Slack的人一起工作，那些真正发展了该文化的人，但这是那些真正试图成长和学习的人。他们没有试图从事政治活动。他们试图构建伟大的产品。这就是我们必须采取的方法。

[15:45] Lenny

Okay. So, what if you're not working for Stewart, which most people, you know, Stuart also former podcast guest? I feel like uh just the alumni of Slack. Holy moly. Just like this is a just the fact that

好的。所以，如果你没有为Stewart工作，大多数人都知道，Stewart也是前播客嘉宾吗？我觉得，只是这样Slack的校友。天哪。就是这样的事实。

[15:57] Jessica

what a just the fact that I have so many of these people on the podcast. What a sign of an incredible team. Okay, so yeah. So most people do not work for a steward that has incredible product sense, really cares about craft and uh you know most people are like I he's so or she is so wrong about what we're doing. This is such a mistake. They don't listen. They don't know what they're talking about. How do you deal with that? One assumption I have of of how folks may misunderstand this skill is that they have to be a yes man. They have to take everything that the um the leader said and do exactly that. That is absolutely wrong. You get paid to have an opinion. You get paid to be a domain expert. And in a lot of ways, your executive is looking for you to be the deepest person in the room, especially if they're good at their job, right? they're looking for you to be the expert. And so bringing your expertise to bear is absolutely crucial. Um, you know, Elon Frank who was who was my boss at Slack as well is now CPO of Checker, he always had a customer anecdote in his back pocket. Like I can hear him in my head saying, "I was just on site last week with so- and so and they said blah blah blah." Right? He always brought his expertise to bear and many of the executives at Slack were not from a strong enterprise background. so he could bring that to the forefront. I think that has to be married again with that curiosity and empathy. If you hear something that you don't agree with, this is something that on a guy my team does super super well right now. You know, he'll hear something that flies in the face of of what he's the data he's seeing, the insights he's gotten, his experience in his domain expertise, and he'll say, "That's so interesting. What led you to believe that?" That kind of question is actually curious about this person said something that I think is dumb, but there must be something behind it. And so if I actually care what's behind it, and what you end up doing in that in that question is co-creating with the person who offered the opinion in the first place, you're able to say to them, I'm interested in what led you to that belief, your experience. Did you have a meeting last week? Are you getting pressure from the board right now in a certain way? What is leading you to that belief? I think one thing that really trips people up is execs are so good at seeming certain. They say things in an authoritative way with confidence with shity because so much of their work is having to make those ultra fast decisions with little information. But if this is someone who is also a learner, who is also has a growth mindset, then if you are able to help them unpack why they believe something and then respond with your own domain expertise, you are able to get to a better solution together.

我在播客上有这么多这样的人。这样的一个令人难以置信的团队的迹象。好的，所以是的。所以大多数人不为一个拥有令人难以置信的产品感觉的steward工作，真的关心工艺。你知道，大多数人都喜欢我，他在我们正在做的事情上是如此错误。这是这样一个错误。他们不听。他们不知道他们在说什么。你如何处理这个？我有一个关于人们如何误解这个技能的假设，那就是他们必须是一个yes man。他们必须准确地做领导说的一切。那是绝对错误的。你的报酬是有意见的。你的报酬是成为领域专家。而在许多方面，你的高管正在寻找你成为房间里最深的人，特别是如果他们擅长他们的工作。他们在寻找你是专家。所以把你的专业知识付诸行动是绝对关键的。Elon Frank，他曾经是Slack的我的老板，现在是Checker的CPO，他总是在他的后兜里有一个客户轶事。我能在我的脑子里听到他说，我上周刚刚在现场与一些人一起，他们说某某某。他总是把他的专业知识付诸行动，而Slack的许多高管都不是来自强大的企业背景。所以他可以把这个带到最前面。我认为这必须再次与那种好奇心和同理心结合。如果你听到你不同意的东西，这是我现在的团队做得超级好的东西。你知道，他会听到一些与他看到的数据、他得到的洞察、他在他的领域专业知识中的经验相矛盾的东西，他会说，那很有趣。是什么让你相信这样的事情？那种问题实际上是对这个人说了一些我认为很愚蠢的话感到好奇，但一定有什么东西在后面。所以如果我真的关心它后面是什么，而你最终在那个问题中做的是与首先提供意见的人共同创造，你可以对他们说，我对是什么让你有那个信念感兴趣。你上周有会议吗？董事会现在在某个方式上给你施压吗？是什么让你有那个信念？我认为一件真正让人们困惑的事情是高管在似乎肯定方面是如此之好。他们以权威的方式说事情，带着信心。因为他们工作的大部分是必须以很少的信息做出那些超快速的决定。但如果这是一个也是学习者的人，谁也有成长心态，那么如果你能够帮助他们解开为什么他们相信一些东西，然后用你自己的领域专业知识回应，你就能够一起得到一个更好的解决方案。

[18:50] Lenny

I love these very tactical phrases and tips for how to deal with someone, say a leader, say you're, let's just say this is like, you know, they're a director of product, VP of product, CEO that you're trying to convince to agree to a plan. So, one phrase, the phrase you're suggesting here is, uh, that's so interesting. What led you to believe that? Um, anything else along these lines? Say you're pitching your product or an idea to say a VP of product and they're just like, what what else would what else what else works?

我喜欢这些非常战术性的短语和提示。一个短语，你建议的短语是，那很有趣。是什么让你相信这样的事情？嗯，还有别的吗？比如你向VP of product推销你的产品或想法，而他们只是喜欢，什么什么什么，还有什么别的有效？

[19:17] Jessica

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

你越早能理解信念体系和对他们重要的东西，你就越能获得优势。在这个过程的非常早期，对他们来说什么是最重要的？当我是参谋长时，我一个手指能数出有多少人在去我们的CPO或其他执行团队的产品评论之前问我建议。使用他们周围的人，他们的EA，他们的参谋长，以前成功推销想法的人，说，什么有效？你认为他们担心什么？有什么风险？而且在我们拥有的AI工具的时代，这比以往任何时候都容易得多。你可以问Slackbot，Rachel最近发布了什么？你认为对她来说最重要的是什么？我在我们的产品领导团队上的一个同事培训了一个GPT上的大量来自过去的文字记录的产品评论。我们希望我们的PM通过那个来运行他们的PRDs或他们的推销，说，Rachel要推回什么？这些想法的弱点在哪里？你也可以训练东西在你自己的弱点在哪里？给我那方面的反馈。Cloud对此很棒。所以我认为第一步实际上只是说对他们来说什么重要。他们想听什么？并固定在那上面。第二部分是进去学习，而不是说服。你越早这样做，效果越好。所以我们在Webflow有一个叫办公时间的东西。尽早你正在进行这些对话以对战略方向进行对齐，也许甚至在你有一张纸之前。我们在Stuart的Slack中实现了一些，因为我们意识到我们带着完成的设计来找他，而他就像什么，是的，我，这与我是如何在我的脑子里有这个的完全不同。所以Ali Rail早期Slack员工实现了一些叫做嘿Stuart你怎么想的东西。我们只是会和他坐在一起半小时，说你怎么想这个话题，你的信念体系是什么，你过去的经验是什么？我们从一个用户采访开始。我们实际上想要下载你的专业知识。而且我认为当你以这种方式参与高管时，这真的很有价值。就像我看到人们做得很糟糕的事情之一一样，他们不要求时间。这有点与我们之前谈论的关于他们的日程有多忙的观点相反，但他们害怕要求更多的时间来获得那种洞察。但有时如果你不这样做，你就会错过要点。

[21:57] Lenny

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

我们在这个播客上听到的很多是作为产品领导者，你想要有一个观点。你想要进入一个讨论，说这是我们的选项。这是我认为正确的解决方案。而且在同一时间，正如你所描述的，你想要来过去，我想学习。我不在这里说服你。我在这里只是帮助理解你的世界观。你如何考虑那两种，关于我有东西我相信是对的，但我在这里学习和获得你的反馈？

[22:30] Jessica

Okay. So my advice on this may be a little paradoxical because um I think people make mistakes in both directions on the polls here. On the one hand I think there's an error people make of trying to show too much work trying to tow too much upfront proof point. We talked to 16 participants from these 15 geos and this is the statistically significant and the exec is like I'm so bored I'm going to die. I remember I did this in a review once and literally the person I was most trying to convince glazed over got on their phone and I totally blew the meeting because I was trying to prove that I had done my homework. Put it in the appendix. Right? They don't need to know every single detail. the baseline expectation is that you did your job and that you this that this is built on a solid foundation of your domain expertise. On the flip side, I think there's some balance of showing your work that helps elucidate why your solution is best. So, one of the mistakes I see people giving is is doing is giving only one option. I think that people if you say I mean this is also like classic pricing and packaging strategy uh give three options and the goldilocks in the middle is the perfect one. Right? But I think that what that actually allows you to do is say hey we considered we are not dumb. We did not miss something. You think we missed something but no no we actually considered this. So we had a recent product review with my manager Rachel Woolen. uh she was a recent guest on how I AI and we uh brought a doc a sort of reasonable approach to what we thought was the sort of problem and strategic space we were going after. It didn't go well. it really didn't match her expectations and the feedback she gave us which was really really the right feedback was I don't understand how you're thinking about the permutations of possible here because we had only given one option set and so what we did following that review is we said hey we really want to sort this out we want to get moving we want to show um that we can really get building on this on this product and alignment is the next stepping stone for that can you meet in two days and we turned around a new doc in two days that actually showed all of the options we had considered but hadn't brought to that first review. And once we elucidated all the things we considered and why we thought they would or wouldn't serve the outcomes we were driving and the technical complexity behind them, she was like, "Oh yeah, okay. I see why the solution that you're proposing makes the most sense for what we're trying to accomplish." But in the first version, in the first meeting, we hadn't kind of shown that and we hadn't workshopped it through her. And so sometimes, you know, really tactically, you you want to have that available to you. It's not necessary to put all 15 options you considered, but at least be ready to show them. Have them in an appendix, have them in a draft Figma file, whatever it is. Um, we uh we we used to have this rule after a design review with Stuart. We'd go through the design review and he'd say, "No, do it exactly like this. I want, you know, the button here and the interaction to be this." And frankly, he always had better ideas than than we did, but we would come back and we called it Stuart plus two more. So, we did exactly what he asked for and then two other versions that we felt good about. And then it gave us a a forum for conversation to debate the merits of each type of approach. Awesome. Okay. So, there's a bunch of advice here. One is the default is don't go in with here's our whole process that landed on this suggestion. Uh but have that ready because they may ask for that if they don't buy into it. Another is present options. And then there's a here's my point of view. Here's why I think this is the right one. And then if they dig in, you have be ready for more options. Have you have you ever looked into the Mento pyramid way of presenting stuff?

好的。所以我对此的建议可能有点矛盾，因为我认为人们在两个方向上都犯了错误。一方面，我认为人们犯的错误是试图显示太多工作。我们与16名参与者交谈，这在统计上是显著的，高管就像我要死了一样无聊。我记得我在一次评论中这样做过，这个人我最试图说服的人呆滞了，拿起他们的电话，我完全炸毁了会议。把它放在附录中。他们不需要知道每一个细节。基线预期是你做了你的工作。另一方面，我认为有一些平衡的展示工作的东西，有助于说明为什么你的解决方案是最好的。我看到人们只给出一个选项的错误。我认为给三个选项，中间的goldilocks是完美的。但我认为这实际上允许你做的是说嘿，我们考虑过，我们不愚蠢。所以我们最近与我的经理Rachel Woolen进行了产品评论。她给我们的反馈是我不理解你是如何思考这里可能的排列的。所以我们在那次评论之后所做的是我们说嘿，我们真的想解决这个问题，我们在两天内转过身来一个新的文件，实际上展示了我们所有考虑过的选项。而且一旦我们阐明了我们考虑过的所有东西，以及我们为什么认为他们会或不会为我们驾驶的结果服务，她就像，哦，是的，好的。我看到为什么你提议的解决方案对我们想要完成的事情最有意义。但在第一个版本中，我们还没有展示过那样。而且有时候，你想要有那个对你可用。没有必要放入你考虑过的所有15个选项，但至少准备好展示它们。把它放在一个附录中，把它放在一个草稿Figma文件中。我们过去有这个规则与Stuart进行设计评论。他会说，不，完全按照这样做。坦白说，他总是有比我们更好的想法，但我们会回来，我们称之为Stuart plus two more。所以，我们完全按照他要求的做，然后还有两个其他版本。然后它给了我们一个论坛来讨论每种方法的优点。太棒了。好的。所以，这里有很多建议。一个是默认不要进去，这是我们的整个过程，落到了这个建议。嗯，但有那个准备。另一个是呈现选项。然后有一个这是我的观点。然后如果他们深入，你有准备更多选项。你曾经看过Minto pyramid的演讲方式吗？

[26:31] Jessica

No, I don't know what that is.

不，我不知道那是什么。

[26:32] Lenny

Okay. So, this is there's this uh lady Barbara Mento. she uh she's like from the 50s I think she was the first female uh consultant at McKenzie or something like that and she kind of figured out the best way to present information to execs is is uh backwards essentially it's instead of here's our process here's all the things we did here's our set of conclusions and then here's our recommendation it's flip it start with here's our recommendation and then here's the things we explored and then here's the evidence behind that feels like that's kind of what you're describing Yeah, I think that's a really good way of doing it. I think my only gloss on that would be that people are really different, right? Like execs are people too. And so one of the things that I think is really important is understanding what is the literal format, storytelling, pre-work that is going to work for that person. You know, some people hate a PowerPoint and it's just going to crush their soul if you start doing that. Um, some people only want to see the data and not the user, you know, the the qualitative research. Um, and so I do think it is about really understanding their communication style. And execs, if you're listening to this, it's really [ __ ] helpful if you tell people because you actually know what you like and don't like. And so just tell people, I prefer a doc. I want no upfront explanation. I want 10 minutes of quiet reading time and then we can come back together. That's a particularly effective um means for for very busy people and short meetings um and especially in remote work where presentations just don't work very well. Some execs are willing to do pre-ereads, some aren't. Um and I I think you just have to be willing to accept that they are also human and you're trying to give them the best shot at inculcating the information in the way that is meaningful to them. So, there's a bunch of uh tips here that I want to summarize for how to kind of set yourself up for success. One is what you just described, which is just think about how do they respond best? What kind of setup do they respond best to? Is it a presentation? Is it a here's what we recommend. Here's three options. Is it uh data? Something else? So, there's like just understand here's what this person likes. They they don't want a they want like five minutes fast conclusion. Why? Uh then there's your advice of ask people that know them what is top of mind for them right now because they may be like this is the big bet we're making right now if it's not align with that they're not going to care. So it's like either either ask them or ask people around them what's top of mind for them right now and then there's this idea of simulate almost simulate them feed all the previous meetings with them into say cloud project or something like that create a little GPT and run your idea by them and like what would you say

好的。所以，有一个女士Barbara Minto。她就像来自1950年代的人，我认为她是麦肯锡的第一位女性顾问。她想出了向高管呈现信息的最佳方式是向后。它不是这是我们的流程，这是我们的结论，然后这是我们的建议。它翻转它，从这是我们的建议开始，然后这是我们探索的东西，然后这是那背后的证据。感觉就像那样。是的，我认为那是一个真正好的方式来做它。我认为我唯一的光泽是人真的很不同。就像高管也是人。所以我认为真正重要的一件事是理解什么是字面上的格式、讲故事、预工作，那会对那个人有效。有些人讨厌PowerPoint。嗯，有些人只想看数据而不是定性的研究。所以我确实认为这是关于真的理解他们的沟通风格。而且高管，如果你在听这个，如果你告诉人们你真的知道你喜欢什么，不喜欢什么。所以只是告诉人们，我更喜欢一个文件。我想要10分钟的安静阅读时间，然后我们可以回到一起。那是一个特别有效的方式。有些高管愿意进行预读，有些不愿意。我认为你只是必须愿意接受他们也是人，你正在试图给他们最好的机会来吸收信息。所以，这里有一大堆提示。一个是你刚才描述的，这只是考虑他们如何最好地反应。什么样的设置他们最好反应？是一个演讲吗？是数据吗？所以，有一个像只是理解这个人喜欢什么。然后有你的建议，问知道对他们来说什么现在是最重要的。所以，这就像要么问他们，要么问他们周围的人，现在对他们来说什么是最重要的。然后有这个想法几乎模拟他们，用所有以前的会议喂他们，创建一个小GPT，并通过他们运行你的想法。

[29:22] Jessica

I will tell you I am not a big fan of the what's top of mind for you uh question this a hot take because I think that what often people do is they think through their top priorities their top experiences is, you know, if we were trying to do a research study uh to understand the day-to-day lives of our users, we probably wouldn't say, "What's top of mind for you?" We'd say, "Tell me how you spent your day." We'd say, "What's the most urgent priority for you right now that you're really scared about messing up? What um pressures are you facing?" And so, I think there's ways for us to ask much more interesting questions of our executives. Um, I recently did this with our CEO. I said, "Tell me what the board is pushing you on because everyone's got a boss and uh even a CEO who seems so powerful and competent and um and and sure is getting pressures, right? What are you seeing as the the the key inputs to your success?" The other thing people don't realize is excepts want to be successful, too. They want to be good at their jobs. And how can you help them? I mean, in the best case scenario, your incentives at a local team level or product organization level really closely align with their incentives that you're working on something that really matters to the company. If you're not, you really should be having that conversation because you'll be in misalignment from the start. But if you actually have alignment, point out that alignment. How is the metric that they're trying to move? The OKR they're responsible for the board pressure that they're under going to be improved by the thing that you are proposing and how do you get there together. So I think that one of the things people really miss out on here is what are the success criteria for an exec and how do you model your world to amplify that success so that both of you can be more successful.

我得说，我不太喜欢「你脑子里最重要的是什么」这个问题，这是个很有争议的观点。因为我认为很多人做的就是思考他们最重要的优先级、最关键的经历。比如说，如果我们想做一个研究来理解用户的日常生活，我们可能不会问「你脑子里最重要的是什么」。我们会说「告诉我你今天怎么过的」。我们会问「你现在最紧急的优先级是什么，最害怕搞砸的是什么事？你面临什么压力？」所以我认为有办法问高管更有趣的问题。我最近跟我们的CEO这样做了。我问「告诉我董事会在推你做什么」，因为每个人都有老板，即使CEO看起来那么强大、那么有能力，也确实在承受压力，对吧？你怎么看你成功的关键要素？」另一件人们没有意识到的是，高管们也想成功。他们想把工作做好。你怎样帮助他们呢？在最理想的情况下，你们在团队层级或产品组织层级的激励目标与他们的激励目标紧密一致，你在做对公司真正重要的事。如果不是这样，你真的应该进行那样的对话，因为从一开始你们就会目标不一致。但如果你们确实目标一致，就要明确指出这一点。他们想推动的指标、他们负责的OKR、他们承受的董事会压力，怎样通过你提议的东西来改善，怎样一起到达那里？所以我认为人们真正错过的一件事就是，高管的成功标准是什么，以及你怎样塑造自己的世界来放大那个成功，这样你们两个都能更成功。

[31:25] Lenny

Okay, that is such an important lesson before we I follow that thread just to clarify this question of what is top of mind. Your advice uh was ask people around them what is top of mind for them. Don't ask them directly this question. top of mind has become this sort of trope, right? It's uh it's execs write a weekly write up of what's top of mind and it sort of becomes this generic uninteresting sort of neutralized frame. And so I think the question what's top of mind for you has actually lost some of its firepower and instead we have to get at what is the emotion the um the sort of drive behind it and and what's the spicier question that'll get a more interesting answer. So then but going back to this incentives piece such a powerful lever for getting anyone basically to get anyone to agree to what you want which is what is what are they what are their goals? What are they trying to do? How are they measured? How's success for them? And then how's the thing you're pitching them aligning with that and will help them achieve that specific goal.

好的，这确实是很重要的课程。在我追踪那个线索之前，让我澄清一下「脑子里最重要的是什么」这个问题。你的建议是问他们周围的人他们脑子里最重要的是什么，不要直接问他们这个问题。「脑子里最重要的是什么」已经变成一个套路了，对吧？高管们会写每周一期「脑子里最重要的是什么」的总结，它变成了这种通用的、没意思的、被中和了的框架。所以我认为「你脑子里最重要的是什么」这个问题实际上已经失去了一些威力，我们反而需要得到的是感情、背后的驱动力，以及什么样更有趣的问题能得到更有意思的答案。回到激励这块内容，这是个强大的杠杆，能让任何人基本上同意你想要的东西，就是问他们的目标是什么？他们试图做什么？他们如何被衡量？对他们来说成功是什么样的？然后你提给他们的东西怎样与此一致，会怎样帮助他们实现那个具体目标。

[32:32] Jessica

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

对吧？在产品中，在一起构建产品时，你们的激励目标应该是让用户成功，进而让你的业务成功。那么他们真的是怎样相信这个的呢？这不仅仅是他们想要升职或他们不想被开除或他们想达到他们的KPI。这些都是非常真实的人性化的事。但在理想世界中，在产品工作里，这确实是基于为用户打造不可思议的产品，进而为你的业务带来伟大的成果。所以我认为这其中很大的一部分就是真的去理解他们的战略洞察，以及他们相信什么会最有效地推动业务向前。我做了Chief of Staff之后，接管了Slack的核心产品团队。我们做channels、emoji、搜索和messaging。我们的执行团队有一种真实的感受，就是我们在产品工艺上有点失去了我们的魔力。我们谈论了「给橱柜内部上漆」这样的事。我们真的很想为用户创造令人惊艳的体验。这就是Slack一开始之所以伟大的原因之一——它确实感起来像个把可用性提升到10倍的产品。我从我们的领导层听到有这样的感觉，我们还没有完全做到，我们已经失去了一些。这对我们是谁、我们怎样为用户服务是非常非常重要的。所以我们实施了一个叫「客户爱冲刺」的东西。我们说「好的，工程师们，停下你们正在做的。作为整个团队，我们要花两周时间来给橱柜内部上漆。」唯一的规则是工程师可以选择他们想做什么。我们从PM、设计和客户支持的角度支持他们。我们给了他们很多想法，但工程师可以选择他们要做什么。唯一的规则是你必须发布一些东西。你必须发布对用户有好处的东西。我们所做的，你知道，你可以把这叫bug bash。你可以说「好的，你们必须修复这些粗糙的边界、产品中的这些遗漏」，但我们把它当成了一件大事。我们让它变得非常刺激和有趣，我们举办了一场大的很有趣的评判竞赛，我们的高管参加了，我们真的把我们已经有点失去的那部分文化带回来了。这反映了我们的高管认为什么是我们的差异化所在，我们怎样在市场上展现、怎样为用户服务、怎样通过让人感到特别来扩大用户基础。我们能够说「哦，我们在这一周、这一轮冲刺中发布了65项改进。」那感觉真的真的与他们从公司角度想要达成的东西一致。

[35:18] Lenny

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

好的。所以总结一下到目前为止的战术，一个是把你的pitching与你试图说服的人的激励目标对齐。我不知道这句话的语法对不对，但他们试图做什么、对他们来说成功是什么样的？把你pitching给他们的东西与那个成功联系起来。

[35:37] Jessica

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

是的，我认为激励目标对齐在产品pitch中确实真的真的很重要。如果你在思考产品pitch，它怎样与公司目标联系起来？你试图改善转化率吗？你试图增长企业客户吗？你试图被品牌认知吗？你试图进入某个新的类别吗？当然，你必须在新pitch上对齐。我认为这个的反面是，你怎样利用那个激励结构来也影响常规roadmap？不仅仅是全新的产品想法或全新的pitch，而是你实际上把那个激励结构注入到你整个团队的思维过程中。这是对深层理解的需要——OKR是怎样变成现在这样的，定位陈述是怎样变成这样的，我怎样理解这个并深深地把它融入我团队的文化，这样我们就反映了我们的执行团队、我们的领导层说的什么是重要的。

[36:35] Lenny

so basically Everything should feel like it's a cohesive set of priorities based on some outcome you all agreed to in the mission.

所以基本上，一切都应该感起来像是一个连贯的优先级集合，基于你们都在使命中同意的某个成果。

[36:43] Jessica

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

是的。我认为这其中很大的一部分也是指标和数据，以及你实际上怎样衡量你自己团队的表现。你知道，我们经常谈论领先指标和滞后指标。或者在非营利组织世界中，这叫做「变化理论」。有很多步骤。你自己和你的个别团队可能不能直接移动企业收入或直接移动转化率。但你相信、公司也相信，给橱柜内部上漆、拥有杰出的客户体验，会是导致客户留存、客户转化、用户满意度的东西。那么你怎样确保你的指标和你提议的实际上要改变的东西很清楚地ladder up到那些，并且你的高管同意这个？

[37:32] Lenny

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

好的。然后第二个杠杆是，即使你试图影响他们，也要试图不仅仅是去进入一个对话。要带着开放的心态和学习的心态进去。你用了这个短语，非常有意思。什么让你相信那个？

[37:50] Jessica

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

对吧。我认为那里面有对高管的化解。你知道，再回到怎样从他们身上得到最好的表现。你想让他们感到舒适。你想让他们感觉他们可以对你诚实。我认为我经常看到人们错过的一件事就是他们不跟踪高管给他们的细微线索，那种意见的面包屑。你知道，在比较清晰的情景中，你的leader、你的高管会对你说「好的，我想要一份关于这件事的简报。按大体这样的方式写。我们一周后评审一下。」这是一个非常清晰的要求，但很多很多时候要求更细微。我想知道我在思考什么，你考虑过吗？我发现的是，人们不接这种诱饵，但最好的人会。所以我给你举个例子。就在上周，你知道，我们一直在做很多技能在Webflow上民主化的事，每个人都可以做设计、每个人都可以写代码、每个人都可以写PRD，我们怎样让人们能以他们的大脑和工具允许的速度快速行动。我们的CPO Rachel说，好吧，Kev，我们的设计主管，我们在某个时刻不得不考虑设计审查。在一小时内，Kev准备了一个loom，嘿，这是一个高风险设计变更、低风险设计变更、影响范围、发布过程的框架，以及我们怎样可能让组织中的任何人都能把设计发布到生产。这是一条线。她没有要求他做那个。他不需要在那个时间框架内跟进，但他意识到组织的激励目标是继续赋权给人们，让每个人都快速行动，也让每个人真的对他们正在构建的东西感到兴奋。他知道他可以插进来，真的真的快速地回应这个反馈。很多时候我看到人们不接受来自高管的邀请来真的参与反馈、他们给的细微反馈。你知道，从我的过去一个没有这么顺利的例子，我们在一个战略审查中，大概是季度战略审查，可能是第四次我听到Tamar问，我想看，我对看X上的top 10用例感兴趣。第四次发生时，她真的很沮丧。她说，我们之前讲过这么多次。为什么我们没有把这个记录下来？我认为那是因为人们没有领会那个信号，下面有什么真实的东西。有真的一件重要的反馈或一个问题他们没有拉动。也许你认为那不是一件重要的事去做。然后你需要更多信息为什么他们认为这很重要。因为如果你就这样放过了，你不回应反馈或不回应要求，那个人就对你失去了信心，认为你不会跟进那件他们认为重要的事。

[40:51] Lenny

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

听起来也像一个真的很好的方式来影响就是你掌握方向，「这里就是我认为我们可以往这里走的地方，这就是你的问题的答案。」

[41:00] Jessica

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

绝对。我是说，我认为如果你在思考怎样更senior、怎样以领导心态的方式展现自己，你必须表现得像个CPO，你必须带着那个视角来。你必须带着解决方案来。你必须跟踪他们问过的线索。你必须快速做这个。嗯，这里的一个误步就是，你知道，人们把这些互动当得太重要了，有时候确实是，但你在那个互动中失败的方式之一就是你等太久才参与反馈。如果你等一周才跟进你在会议中讨论的项目，那个高管已经移动了思路，你已经错过了你快速回应反馈的机会。如果你以及时的方式持续推进这个球，你会从他们身上得到更多的兴奋、热情、脑力。

[41:54] Lenny

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

显然有，你知道，每个人都那么忙，他们的盘子里已经有这么多工作，你不能只是跳到高管说的每件事上。也有这样的经典建议，有时候高管就说个什么东西，每个人都把它当得很严肃。哦，我必须做那个。有时候他们只是顺便说说。所以，可能全是，你知道，这是个平衡，像接住机会，不要对每件事都兴高采烈。

[42:13] Jessica

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

是的。在那个情景中一个很好的问题就是「你对这个感到有多强烈？」所以如果你听到他们真的很强烈地说某个东西，或「你认为这有多紧急」或「嘿，这是我们团队现在在做的。你认为那比这些优先级更重要吗？」如果他们说是，听着，做那个他们说更重要的东西。对吧？这不是关于跳到每个请求或接受每条反馈。这是关于在为什么他们相信那个、他们认为紧急程度是什么的背景下来context化，然后真的回应那个。所以，十有八九，他们会说「我想知道我们能不能做这样的研究。」人们会去说「哦天哪，我们必须现在就去跑那个研究。我们必须取消优先级到其他所有东西。」但如果你对他们说，嘿，那是个真的很cool的想法。我喜欢那个。你认为那比我们现在在做的这三个其他研究或三个其他项目更重要吗？他们会说「哦，不，不。那只是像一个随机的想法。放在backlog里。」我认为高管行动得那么快，他们不总是给你那个紧急程度的context，所以你必须问。这是我作为leader一直在努力做得更好的东西。这只是一个想法。嗯，这是一项mandate。这是我想看到的东西。但嗯，有时候很难，很难记得做那个，因为你的大脑在想法的旋转中。

[43:33] Lenny

This comes back to your point about uh getting into the mind of the person in the meeting, the leader. They're running around all day. I think you call it a strobe. You're just like bam, another meeting, next meeting, next meeting, next meeting without a lot of context and they just say things and sometimes it's import to them, sometimes not. Which comes back to one of your tips at the beginning of this chat is

这回到你关于进入会议中的人、leader的思想的观点。他们整天都在跑。我认为你称之为「strobe」。你就像「砰」，另一个会议、下个会议、下个会议、下个会议，没有很多context，他们只是说东西，有时候对他们很重要，有时候不是。这回到你在这个对话开始时的一个建议，

[43:52] Jessica

spend 30 to 60 seconds at the beginning just giving them a little context on what the heck. What would you recommend in that 30 60 seconds? What are some kind of key bullet points of what you want to communicate? Yeah, in the 30 seconds I would say we're here to discuss XYZ. Last time we met, we left it off here. The goals of today's meetings are ZYX. We're going here's how we're going to run this meeting and then stop talking because the moment you go off over 60 seconds, you've lost them. And and oh, I think the other really important thing I would add there is to say, was there anything else you were hoping to cover today?

花30到60秒在开始时只是给他们一点context关于到底是什么事。你在那30到60秒会推荐什么？你想交流的关键要点有哪些？是的，在那30秒中我会说「我们在这里讨论XYZ。上次我们见面时，我们在这里停下了。今天会议的目标是ZYX。我们在这里，这就是我们怎样运行这个会议」然后停止说话，因为当你超过60秒的时候，你已经失去了他们。而且哦，我认为我会在那里加的另一件真的很重要的东西就是说「今天你还希望覆盖别的什么吗？」

[44:27] Lenny

That was awesome. I love this advice. I am excited to tweet this out just to summarize these bullet points you just shared. Uh that is so cool. I love that. And to your point, if 60 seconds flies by, you may think you're talking for 60 seconds. It often ends up being 5 minutes. So the advice of keep it under 60 seconds. Just like try to actually do that.

那太棒了。我喜欢这个建议。我很兴奋把这个推出去，就为了总结你刚刚分享的这些要点。呃，那太cool了。我喜欢那个。而且按照你的观点，如果60秒飞快地过去，你可能认为你在说60秒。它经常最后变成5分钟。所以「把它保持在60秒以下」的建议就是，像真的尝试去做那个。

[44:46] Jessica

Try to actually do that. I think the other thing here is, you know, this often depends on what kind of meeting what what you're actually doing. You know, in our culture, we do a lot of sort of silent read of docs or watching a loom um in the meeting and then coming back for conversation. I think one of the things that I've seen be really effective in coming back for that conversation is often times a a leader will smatter your doc with a hundred comments and you're like, "Oh my gosh, what is actually important here?" So, what I often do is I have a section at the top to say themes for discussion. I bubble up some of the biggest and most controversial pieces that can only be discussed live. And anything they've said that they're just curious about, what's the time frame for this? What's the staffing need for why, I can answer offline, I can answer a follow-up. What I can't get again is the time for discussion with that group. And the safer that they feel in that discussion and the more that they think that you've understood what is the most sort of spicy or controversial, that's where you get to the good stuff and you really get their insight and input. So I, you know, put a section at the top and say topics for discussion that I'm reading through the comments. Rachel, was that right? Did I sort of get your thoughts right? Anything you would add to this? And then we can talk about uh the the the really good stuff that gets us to a better outcome. My podcast guests and I love talking about craft and taste and agency and product market fit. You know what we don't love talking about? Sock 2. That's where Vanta comes in. Vanta helps companies of all sizes get compliant fast and stay that way with industryleading AI automation and continuous monitoring. Whether you're a startup tackling your first sock 2 or ISO 2701 or an enterprise managing vendor risk, Vanta's trust management platform makes it quicker, easier, and more scalable. Vanta also helps you complete security questionnaires up to five times faster so that you can win bigger deals sooner. The result, according to a recent IDC study, Vanta customers slashed over $500,000 a year and are three times more productive. Establishing trust isn't optional. Vant makes it automatic. Get $1,000 off at bant.com/lenny. We've talked about aligning your incentives and goals with their goals. Uh going in with an open mind, setting context at the beginning of the meeting, understanding how they like to be presented to. What else can we learn to become better at influencing execs? And let me just do a quick tangent. As people are listening to this, they may again be like, "Oh my god, all this BS I have to do. I just want to do awesome work. Why am I spending all this time learning all this meta work of how to convince someone of a freaking thing? I just want to build awesome products, drive, you know, growth for the business and the product and this sucks." I think it's again important to remind people this is just the way things go. You need to influence people in power to agree with your approach. That's just the way it is. You can't just be like, "Nah, no one no one understands me. It sucks." So, it's not my fault.

真的尝试去做那个。我认为这里的另一件事是，你知道，这经常取决于什么样的会议、你实际上在做什么。你知道，在我们的文化中，我们做很多有点无声阅读文档或在会议中看loom然后回来进行对话的事。我认为我看到在回来进行那个对话时真的很有效的一件事就是，经常一个leader会在你的doc上点缀一百条评论，你就像「哦天哪，这里实际上什么是重要的？」所以我经常做的就是，在顶部有一个部分说「讨论主题」。我冒出来一些最大的和最controversial的部分，只能实时讨论。还有任何他们说他们就是好奇的东西，这个的时间框架是什么？员工需求是什么为什么，我可以offline回答，我可以回答一个后续。我不能再次得到的是与那个小组讨论的时间。他们在那个讨论中感到有多安全，他们越认为你理解了什么是最有趣的或最controversial的，那就是你到达好东西的地方，你真的得到他们的洞察和输入。所以我，你知道，在顶部放一个部分说「讨论主题」我在读评论。Rachel，那对吗？我有点理解了你的想法对吗？你对这个有什么要添加的吗？然后我们可以谈论那些真的能帮我们到达更好成果的好东西。我的播客嘉宾和我喜欢谈论craft、taste、agency和product-market fit。你知道什么我们不喜欢谈论吗？SOC 2。那就是Vanta来的地方。Vanta帮助各种规模的公司快速变得compliant并保持那样，有行业领先的AI自动化和持续监测。无论你是一个处理你的第一个SOC 2或ISO 27001的初创公司，还是一个管理供应商风险的企业，Vanta的信任管理平台使它更快、更容易、更可扩展。Vanta还帮你完成安全问卷快五倍，所以你能更快地赢得更大的交易。结果，根据最近一个IDC研究，Vanta客户每年削减了超过50万美元，生产率提高三倍。建立信任不是可选的。Vanta让它自动化。在Vanta.com/lenny获得1000美元的折扣。我们讲了关于把你的激励目标和目标与他们的目标对齐。进去时有开放的心态，在会议开始时设置context，理解他们喜欢怎样被呈现。我们还能学到什么来变得更好地影响高管？让我做一个快速的题外话。当人们听这个时，他们可能又像「哦我的天，所有这个BS我必须做。我只想做awesome的工作。为什么我花所有这个时间学习这些怎样说服某个人那东西的元工作？我只想构建awesome的产品，推动你知道业务和产品的增长，这太糟糕了。」我认为再次重要的是提醒人们这就是事情的进行方式。你需要影响权力中的人来同意你的方法。这就是它的样子。你不能只是像「呃，没有人、没有人理解我。这太糟糕了。」所以，这不是我的错。

[47:51] Lenny

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

我是说，这真的就是你的工作，对吧？他们，呃，我认为产品管理长期以来的工作方式就是你基本上为你的想法获得资金，以工程、设计、跨职能资源的形式，对吧？也就是说你应该把那个视为已经投给你的VC钱，你的CFO、你的CPO、你的CEO期望有回报。那么你怎样展现你在构建伟大产品尊重那个对你的投资的方式？你当然可以进入一个初创公司并成为唯一的决策者，那是一个非常非常有效的工作方式。但如果你与其他人一起工作，让他们对你在做的事感到兴奋、感兴趣、充满热情、被说服，会让一切更容易。这也是工作，对吧？你也必须，但我认为我认为我想让人们带走的东西就是这真的是好的构建方式。你知道，当人们被激励、当他们感到目的、当他们感觉这真的是我相信的东西时，他们工作更努力。他们更支持你。他们在你不在的房间里谈论你。所以，这真的就是你传递伟大成果的方式。

[49:14] Lenny

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

我认为那是这样一个重要的框架。好的。什么其他战术，什么其他技术在帮助leaders，呃，被影响有效？

[49:24] Jessica

Yeah. put get influenced. I love that. I love that. Um

是的。被影响。我喜欢那个。我喜欢那个。嗯

[49:29] Lenny

yeah, we should we should have like a stamp like influenced uh at the end.

是的，我们应该有像一个「被影响」的印章，呃，在最后。

[49:35] Jessica

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

所以我认为人们误解的一件事就是他们被约束的约束与他们的领导相比。你知道，高管不是，呃，他们没有与你感到的相同的预算、人数和时间框架的边界。他们可以在组织中移动人。他们可以要求更多资源。他们可以变得有创意。他们可以提升项目，杀死项目。嗯，所以你知道你必须以这样的心态对他们来「嘿，以今天的资源、这个数量的工程师或这样的工具或这样的投资，这就是我能得到的，但我在想10倍的情况，我在想加速的情况，如果那是你想要的，如果那与你的激励目标一致，这就是我需要的东西来成功」，所以我认为人们想「好吧，我有我的pizza团队，我有我的四个工程师，你要求的不是不可能。」好吧，如果它不可能，告诉他们为什么不是。回来并说，你知道，你要求的那个东西，我对那个超级兴奋。我需要8个更多的人。我需要你一周两次，一小时。我需要与我们的营销团队更紧密的对齐，我不确定怎样得到那个。你必须想象什么约束挡住你，他们实际上可以很多地帮助你。人们一直错过这个，不问他们需要什么来成功，特别是当来自高管的要求看起来不合理时。

[51:09] Lenny

This is such a good adi piece of advice of just if you get them excited enough, things can significantly change in terms of resourcing and prioritization. Like your job is to help them see that how massive an opportunity this is and go and not just give you what you want, but just like wow, okay, here's the way to unblock this thing. Uh here's how we can go. like, okay, this is going to be our new bet big bet. Let's let's go big here.

这是一个这样好的建议的部分，就是如果你让他们兴奋得够，事情可以在资源和优先级方面显著改变。像你的工作就是帮助他们看到这是有多massive的机会，然后去，不仅仅给你你想要的东西，但只是像「哇，好的，这就是我们怎样unblock这个东西的方式。呃，这就是我们怎样可以走。」像，好的，这将成为我们的新的大赌注。让我们在这里走大。

[51:31] Jessica

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

是的，绝对。这将成为我们的新的大赌注。而这回到与公司试图完成的东西对齐。和紧急性。所以某些东西如果你添加了一打更多的人或与go-to-market的完美对齐，是的，你可以更快地把他们送到市场，但那是公司目标最重要的东西吗？现在答案是以这样的方式加速这个实际上要做更多，还是它真的是别的什么更对齐？所以我认为它还是那么深深地根植于公司目标、高管试图完成的东西、用户真的需要成功的东西，这样你可以说「为了加速我们的目标，这就是我们可以、这就是我们可以做的」

[52:13] Lenny

like you know if you were in charge of a company you were you'd be so excited if someone came to you with a 10x next idea that's going to change the trajectory of your product like that's what everybody wants.

像，你知道，如果你负责一个公司，你会，你会那么兴奋如果有人带着一个要改变你的产品轨迹的10倍的想法来找你，像那就是每个人想要的。

[52:26] Jessica

Uh and so uh that is a really powerful way of approaching all these things. Obviously not every idea is going to be a big idea. Not every idea is a great idea. A lot of times these take time. Also maybe speak to that just like say you have a big idea and they're like nah. What what are some expectations to set for people that come up with a big idea that just isn't getting any traction? You know, it really depends on what kind of organization you're working in. You know, if you're working in a smaller organization, if that big idea is something that you can build on your own or you can build within versus if you need, you know, a large large scale investment. I think the real thing about um uh building toward a big idea towards something net new, the key is really outside and around the executive. So if the executive is the decision maker on whether we're going to invest here, they also want to understand from their peers, from other experts what why this actually matters. If you have something net new that you want to bring to market and customer success thinks it would really accelerate expansion rates or you know the the marketing team thinks that uh signups would be 10xed because of this. if you have that cross functional alignment. And this is where a lot of these lessons don't just apply if you're going into a a product executive meeting, but that if you're influencing your cross functional execs and your cross functional stakeholders to be advocates on your behalf. I I think that, you know, we now have more tools than ever to as as product folks build out the V1, right? prototype something, build your own app, build the messy version of it, get feedback, iterate, and be socializing that in a way that creates a ground swell of buyin. Um, to the point that, you know, the exact can't say no to the funding. Along those lines, it feels like to me the biggest reason that a leader doesn't buy into your pitch is you just have different information. They don't see what you see. They don't you don't see what they see, right? They have all this other stuff that they're looking at and trying to decide. Maybe speak to just like that skill of trying to clarify information on both sides.

呃，所以呃，那是一个真的强大的方式来处理所有这些事。显然不是每个想法都要成为一个大想法。不是每个想法都是一个伟大的想法。很多时候这些需要时间。也许也说到，就像说你有一个大想法，他们像「呃呃」。什么是一些期望来为来上来一个大想法但就是不获得任何牵引力的人设置？你知道，这真的取决于你在什么样的组织中工作。你知道，如果你在一个更小的组织中工作，如果那个大想法是你可以自己构建的东西或你可以在里面构建的东西，对比如果你需要，你知道，一个大规模投资。我认为真的关于建设走向一个大想法、走向什么净新的事的东西，关键真的在执行者外和执行者周围。所以如果执行者是关于我们是否投资这里的决策者，他们也想从他们的同行、从其他专家理解什么为什么这实际上重要。如果你有什么净新的你想带到市场上，客户成功认为它会真的加速扩展率，或你知道营销团队认为注册会因为这个被10倍，如果你有那个跨职能对齐。而这就是这些课程的很多不仅仅应用如果你要进入一个产品执行者会议，但如果你在影响你的跨职能执行者和你的跨职能利益相关者来做你代理的倡导者。我认为，你知道，我们现在比以往任何时候都有更多工具，作为产品人员建出V1，对吧？原型化某个东西，构建你自己的应用，构建它的混乱版本，获得反馈，迭代，并以创造根基广泛的买入的方式进行社交化。嗯，到那个点，你知道，执行者不能说不到资金。沿着这些线，对我来说感起来最大的原因一个leader不买到你的pitch就是你们有不同的信息。他们没看到你看到的。他们没，你没看到他们看到的，对吧？他们有所有这个他们在看和试图决定的其他东西。也许讲一下，就像那个技能，试图在两边clarify信息。

[54:42] Jessica

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

我在想一个April Underwood教我的工具。呃，她说她过去常常进入与Stuart的产品战略会议，真的试图提取他的一些想法，但她总是拿着白板标记。所以在他们之间的对话中有这个来回，「我试图灌输、我试图深深地理解你在市场上看到的东西、你在业务中感觉到的东西、你的本能，但我也要以一种是可翻译的、是可行动的、是一个你可能在你的头脑中没有的框架的方式来打包那个。」所以那就像一个很好的工具来结合那个leader的本能与你某种不synthesis他们的方法的能力，但真的呃，取那个方法、加速它来结合你对世界的了解和他们对世界的了解。

[55:40] Lenny

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

所以有点我听到的是有点把它放在你自己身上来帮助他们，有点把你的世界观与他们的世界观对齐。还有这个问题回来，就像「帮我理解什么我不，你有什么问题？呃哦那太有意思了。什么让你相信那个？」像这些是有点的问题，帮助你提取什么你不知道他们知道的。

[56:00] Jessica

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

是的。我认为关系也有真的不同的阶段。有一个当你新时的阶段。你可能没有那么多与那个人的facetime。你不真的那么好地认识他们。但我认为这是一个时间花在一起真的只是加速你对他们的信任、你自由说话的能力、问困难问题得到真实反馈的地方。所以嗯，特别是如果你在可以要求那个时间的位置，更casual的时间，less fraught，你不总是pitching一个想法，但你可以有真实的对话。那也是后来pitch的基础。我认为人们贬低了那个时间在一起花的前期，因为它为后来的pitch支付红利。

[56:48] Lenny

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

是的，我很高兴你去那里了。那正好是我实际上要去的地方，就是这个信任和构建和有、你知道、给那个人一个理由有点假设你知道你在做什么。嗯，显然很难构建信任。我认为这很重要的原因就是有时候你有最好的想法，他们只是不买它，因为他们只是不知道任何东西，他们不、他们不知道你一直在做什么。他们不知道你有多awesome，你有多聪明，你在你整个生活和职业中有多成功。呃，也许因为你新。什么是一些建议来试图与leader构建信任，这样这些东西就变得更容易？

[57:20] Jessica

I think in terms of building trust, it's really important to ground yourself in what they believe. If you are pitching an idea that is wildly different than something they believe, don't bother. You probably have nine other good ideas that are more aligned with the beliefs that they already h that they already hold. Follow those instead. So, there's something about just engaging uh from a baseline assumption. If they feel strongly about something, okay, maybe you can come back to them once or twice and say, "Are you sure you feel strongly about that? I really see this data." And if they say, "Yeah, I feel really strongly." you probably have to drop it. But in terms of building that long-term trust, I think the biggest things that do that are really hearing them out and actioning on the feedback that you've gotten in the past, having results. You know, it cannot be overstated that impact in the organization, building great products, shipping amazing things quickly, feeding that back to the leader to say, "Hey, we worked with you on this. We shipped it. It went well. Here's the results." that builds you momentum to be able to go back with the uh the more novel approach or the scarier one. I think the other thing I would say is um one of my favorite well actually one of the only business books I've ever liked is called Switch. Uh it's about change management and they talk a lot about shrinking the change um which is this brilliant idea. If something seems scary and overwhelming, how do you make it so much smaller so that it's an experiment? It's uh a oneweek uh proof of concept. It's something that feels really small that can get people over the hump of well I'm not going to invest in six months for this project if I don't know if it's going to work. So shrinking the change is a huge way to build momentum and trust. And I think this applies to the way that we develop all products especially if you're doing something that lasts longer than a month. What are your milestones? What are the chunks at which you're showing outcomes and fit? And this is easier than ever to do with the tools that we have at our disposal. How are we showing that we are taking a much more iterative approach so that you can build that momentum, build that buyin and get that trust to to do the bigger thing. That's an awesome very tactical piece of advice here to convince someone to do something is just reduce the risk essentially reduce the investment to help build trust in okay this is showing success because obviously it's much easier to bite off on something that's going to take two weeks or have very low risk and impact if it's not a good idea.

我认为在建立信任方面，真正重要的是要基于他们相信什么。如果你推销的想法与他们信念相差太大，那就别费力了。你可能还有其他九个好想法与他们已经相信的东西更加一致。就选那些想法吧。所以，有些东西就是从一个基本假设开始。如果他们对某事感到强烈，好吧，也许你可以回到他们身边一两次说，"你确定你对这个感到强烈吗？我真的看到了这些数据。"如果他们说"是的，我感到真的很强烈"，你可能得放弃。但在建立长期信任方面，我认为最重要的是真正听他们说，并对你过去获得的反馈采取行动，还有结果。不能低估一点——组织中的影响力，建立伟大的产品，快速交付令人惊艳的东西，把这些结果反馈给领导说，"嘿，我们与你合作做了这个。我们交付了。它进展顺利。这是结果。"这为你赚取了动力去尝试更新颖或风险更大的方案。我想说的另一件事是，实际上，我读过的唯一一本我真正喜欢的商业书叫《Switch》。它是关于变革管理的，他们讨论了很多关于缩小变革的内容。这是个聪慧的想法。如果某件事看起来很吓人和让人不知所措，你怎么把它变得小得多，以至于它变成一个实验？是一周的概念验证。它是一个感觉很小的东西，可以让人们跨越"我不会为这个项目投入六个月，除非我知道它会成功"的障碍。所以缩小变革是建立动力和信任的巨大方式。我认为这适用于我们开发所有产品的方式，特别是如果你在做一个持续超过一个月的东西。你的里程碑是什么？你在哪些块中展示结果和契合度？而且有了我们拥有的工具，做这个比以往任何时候都更容易。我们如何表明我们正在采取更加迭代的方法，以便你能建立那个动力，赢得那个买单，并获得那个信任去做更大的事情。这很棒。非常实用的建议就是说，说服某人做某事本质上是降低风险——降低投资——来帮助建立信任，好的，这显示了成功，因为显然更容易同意一个将花费两周时间或如果不是好主意风险和影响很低的事情。

[59:55] Lenny

Yeah, I think that's absolutely right and I think what is the type of risk that they are most afraid of too, right? Is it wasting time? Is it time to market? Is it that they don't actually think this is going to work with customers? So, if you can start to and and you can and should ask this, what are the outcomes you're most afraid of, right? What would a failure state be um for you in in this experiment? You know, there's there's a concept of red teaming, which is originally a military tactic and and now being applied to businesses. How do you take an outsers's perspective to your idea and not just be so obsessed with your own thinking, with your own concept? Because so often we get wrapped around the axle. Especially I I I actually find this happens even more with prototyping. You build a prototype and you're like, "Oh, looks so beautiful. I would have never been able to build that before." That's actually like not a very good idea, but um but you get obsessed with it and you're unwilling to accept that it could fail. I think one of the biggest things you can do to build trust is kill things, deprioritize things. That is a very very senior way of thinking, right? And it shows that you have the same aligned incentives as the executive who's thinking about the good of the company outcome, the user outcome, and not just your own. That is such a good one because everyone's always just trying to acquire more resources, more investment, just like more features, and showing that, okay, this is a terrible idea. I know I spent like months on this, but no, we should kill this because it's not working,

是的，我认为你完全正确，我也认为他们最害怕的是什么样的风险，对吧？是浪费时间吗？是上市时间吗？是他们实际上不认为这对客户会起作用吗？所以，如果你能开始，而且你可以也应该问这个，你最害怕的结果是什么，对吧？什么会是这个实验的失败状态呢？你知道，有一个叫做红队的概念，最初是军事战术，现在被应用到商业中。你怎样从局外人的角度看待你的想法，而不只是被你自己的思考、你自己的概念缠住？因为很多时候我们陷入了僵局。特别是我发现这对原型制作甚至更多发生。你建立了一个原型，你说，"哦，看起来太漂亮了。我以前绝不能建造那样的东西。"这实际上不是个很好的想法，但是你对它着迷，不愿意接受它可能会失败的可能性。我认为建立信任最重要的事情之一是干掉东西，取消优先级的东西。这是一种非常非常高级的思维方式，对吧？它表明你与执行官有相同的一致利益，他在考虑公司的利益、用户的利益，而不仅仅是你自己的。这太好了，因为每个人总是想获得更多资源、更多投资，就像更多功能，而展示好的是，好吧，这是个可怕的主意。我知道我在这上面花了几个月，但不，我们应该干掉这个，因为它不起作用。

[1:01:26] Jessica

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

对吧？它不起作用。而且这是我将如何知道它不起作用的。这是我什么时候会带着决定回到你身边。对吧？所以，有时我们不知道结果，很多时候我们不知道结果，特别是对于AI原生产品。如果我们能说，我们将测试这个。这是我们将如何知道它在工作的方式。我们将在X日期回到你身边。我认为真正把人们螺旋式失控的一件事是对确定性的渴望。你知道，作为人类，我们很多人对确定性有巨大的渴望。现在比以往任何时候都更是这样，这是不可能的。所以，一个我学到的技巧，特别是在与工程师合作时，他们通常对确定性的渴望非常高，就是说，我现在不知道答案。我不知道这是否会成功。我将在X日期与你核实。那时我们将回来进行另一场谈话。所以至少对下一个检查点有了确定性。这可能是一个真正强大的工具，用于消除对特定计划或想法的恐惧和风险。

[1:02:28] Lenny

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

好的。在我们进入AI的影响和所有这些东西之前，当人们试图更好地掌握影响力技能时，或者只是在增强影响领导者能力方面有什么其他真正强大的战术，他们还会犯什么其他常见的错误吗？

[1:02:45] Jessica

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

人们错过的是执行官们从不仅他们的经验而且他们日常生活中听到的东西而带来的极其广阔的背景。他们比你更了解其他产品团队在做什么。他们理解E级员工会议的对话。他们参加过执行管理人员酒会，他们正在听取信息。你的工作之一是提取那个洞察力和信息，并将其应用到你的想法中，而他们想感受到你关心，你尊重这一点，你能将其应用到你自己的思考中。所以这一直回到那个好奇心和同理心。他们知道什么，你不知道，你实际上可以应用来加强你的思考或通知你想要为你的团队采取的方向？而且我认为人们通常不向他们的高管们问这些东西。他们不表现出对那个人带来的专业知识的好奇心。而且坦率地说，我认为很多时候他们根本不关心，这是主要的错误。他们应该真正把这考虑进去来加强他们自己的思考。

[1:03:59] Lenny

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

是的。这么多都是关于就像，带着这样的信念进来，这就像拥有相同的信息。我认为这一点关于就像相信他们知道他们在做什么是非常未被充分重视的。他们在这个角色中是有原因的。你不在那里是有原因的。这个公司表现得这么好是有原因的。所以，即使他们是错的，他们相信他们是对的。所以重要的是理解他们认为什么和知道什么，以及他们可以获得什么信息。

[1:04:27] Jessica

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

是的。我认为这个问题的另一部分是对任何思考他们如何推进职业生涯的人来说。那个人是如何进入他们所在角色的？他们拓宽了他们的背景。他们看到了，你知道，有很好的周边视野。这是一种在一个比你高得多的房间里展现自己的方式，保留你的领域专业知识，保留你最了解的东西，但拓宽你的视角，拓宽你的视点来从整个生态系统、整个组织、整个行业的背景下思考它，你通常没有机会说这个。而那时发生的是你被视为战略思想家。你被看作是真正关心公司成功而不仅仅是你自己成功的人。所以这确实是一个真正真正重要的增长工具，特别是你知道，我最初向April介绍担任我们的幕僚长职位时，我想要这个工作是因为我想知道如果我长大了我是否想成为CPO，这是真的，我仍然不知道，因为这是一个真正艰难的工作，我有远比以前更多的尊重，但我认为，如果你想成长为产品领导力角色。拓展你的观点，扩展你看待问题的方式，从全球视角思考它是一种展现你所说你想成为的战略领导者的方式。

[1:05:57] Lenny

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

我喜欢这个建议，只是为了让人们非常清楚，因为很容易就说，是的，好的，我就像拓展我的视野。基本上这里的建议是，呃，就像代表整个业务思考，而不仅仅是你的功能，不仅仅是你的小目标。这就像业务试图做什么？这是它如何融入的。这是首席执行官大致在思考什么。就像这对我来说的缩影是Jeff Weinstein，我认为是他的姓氏的发音，或者Stripe的Weinstein。他就像是产品上的PM，他只是不断在推特上分享和Stripe作为业务。他就像在思考Stripe作为公司，然后这是我做的这个东西帮助公司。

[1:06:40] Jessica

Absolutely. And Jeff and I work together at Box.

绝对。Jeff和我在Box一起工作过。

[1:06:42] Lenny

Oh, you did? Oh, that is so cool. Right. Okay. Would you agree he's like the epitome of this?

哦，你真的吗？哦，那太酷了。对。好的。你会同意他是这个的缩影吗？

[1:06:47] Jessica

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

哦，是的。我的意思是，他非常有魅力，能够真正把自己放在其他人的鞋子里。我的意思是，我认为这只是一种方式，你知道，我们刚刚为今年重做了我们的PM职业阶梯。我主导了那个努力。我们注意到的变得更资深的一个特征是你的产品公民身份以及你有多少在组织中嵌入回馈最佳实践，指导他人，拓展人们对工具、技术、讲故事和当然战略的视野。我认为这是人们增长的如此重要的一部分，但他们经常低估，但你可以在你自己的区域的每个级别上做到这一点，这是关于连接点回到什么对公司很重要。所以你知道，我很多次看到像好的，我们的KR是运送这个东西的文档，我就像为什么这很重要？喜欢有人在乎吗？你必须讲一个故事，即使那是真的，运输是汽车，有时那是情况，对吧，但即使那是真的，为什么你在做这个，商业的结果是什么，为什么CEO会对运输那个感到兴奋，它通常是因为一些商业结果或用户结果，你必须联系回他们的观点，然后我认为翻转是如果你在做一些不改变其中一个结果或对业务不紧迫的东西，你需要改变方向吗？你需要说，"嘿，实际上，我不认为这是现在最高杠杆的东西。"我们实际上可以做X来对我们更广泛的目标更有效。

[1:08:38] Lenny

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

那就是我要去的地方，就是那是最终的信任建立举动，是告诉领导者，好的，这是我们的目标。这是所有这些想法，但我们不认为这是正确的目标，这是为什么这不适合，这是为什么我们应该干掉这个产品。

[1:08:51] Jessica

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

对。完全正确。对。像CPO一样思考。把自己放在他们的鞋子里。我的意思是，你几周前采访了Stuart，他谈到CEO基本上是唯一真正能够跨越已经存在的东西干掉东西，你知道，或者真正做一些那些超超超困难决定的人。我认为这经常是我们的文化，但是是一个错误。如果我们每个人都把自己视为所有者和对业务的贡献者，以及领导者，我们也会提出那些机会来放大业务或拯救它。

[1:09:29] Lenny

Do the job you want versus the job you have.

做你想要的工作，而不是你现在有的工作。

[1:09:32] Jessica

Classic.

经典。

[1:09:33] Lenny

Yes.

是的。

[1:09:33] Lenny

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

好的，让我们谈论AI。我觉得你不能有一个，你这些天不能做任何东西而不以某种方式提及AI。AI如何改变影响的技能？过去几年在试图说服人们做你希望他们做的事情时发生了什么变化？

[1:09:51] Jessica

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

我认为我们正在进入产品管理的黄金时代，不是产品经理的，而是产品管理的，以及使这个职能成为我喜欢做的事情的核心技能。你知道，比以往任何时候都更，我们必须做的是提出真正有趣的想法，这些想法植根于用户同理心、好奇心、测试、迭代，但我们仍然会在一个获取这些想法的认可的组织中工作，影响人们不仅资助V1，而且资助更昂贵的V2、3、4和持续支持变得10倍重要。当执行基本上在复杂性中直线下降，每个人都可以是建造者时，PM和产品思想家，我认为这远远超过产品管理职能，可以受到那些带人一起经历的核心技能的影响。所以我认为产品经理长期以来一直在做最A类型、甘特图大师、商业上最好的笔记者的职业生涯，如果AI在分析数据或记笔记或进行实验方面比你更好，那么你的工作现在是什么呢？所以杠杆实际上从做那个工作转移，成为综合者，决定什么工作实际上存活，并鼓励其他人买单那个过程。而且我实际上认为这非常令人兴奋，因为PM和其他职能，工程师，设计师非常有权力把那个第一版带到现实中，获得那个动力，获得关于产品市场契合度或用户利益的信号，然后从那一点以更快的周期建立动力。所以它实际上就像一个非常令人兴奋的地方。但是影响的行为、利益相关方管理的行为、学习的行为是10倍技能。

[1:12:06] Lenny

Awesome. This is such a fun topic with the way I've been thinking about this is just like where are human brains going to continue to be necessary and useful in this new world.

太棒了。这是这样一个有趣的话题，我一直在思考这种方式的方式是，人类大脑将在这个新世界中继续变得必要和有用的地方。

[1:12:15] Jessica

I'm terrified.

我很害怕。

[1:12:17] Lenny

Maybe maybe nowhere.

也许没有地方。

[1:12:19] Jessica

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

也许没有。但是你描述它的方式，我完全同意，本质上就是决定做什么并让每个人都同意，对齐，关于那个。这是我们都在同一页。这是我们优先考虑的。然后它就像，酷，现在让我们建造它。而且那现在发生得这么快。

[1:12:36] Jessica

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

是的。而且你能注意到AI不能的东西是什么？你知道，AI还不擅长做人类学家，对吧？它基于现有知识的语料库。我认为最好的产品思想家，再次跨越我一直与之合作的职能，真的能够通过那个用户同理心获得新颖的见解，通过那个理解和对业务动态、变化行业的深刻理解，把那些一起带来优先考虑真正真正重要的想法。你知道，我们将拥有如此多的软件，我们甚至不知道该怎么办。但什么软件实际上有效？什么软件真的重要，什么软件被营销或销售，或者你知道，我们将不得不思考的不仅是软件存在，而是它能达到其最终状态，这将需要人们对那个想法的同意工作。

[1:13:32] Lenny

Yeah. Uh the way I think about this right now is just like where humans are still necessary and uh great product thinkers are still necessary is uh on the front end deciding what to prioritize and build on the back end determining if this is good and ready essentially judgment and taste and then there's distribution I think is such an underappreciated like new bottleneck because as you said there's so much [ __ ] out there just like how do we get anyone to pay attention to any of this stuff every day there's is like a new life-changing product. So, I feel like that's going to be a big problem.

是的。我现在对此的想法方式就像人类仍然必要的地方，优秀的产品思想家仍然是必要的，就是在前端决定优先考虑和建造什么，在后端确定这是否是好的和准备好的，本质上是判断和品味，然后分发我认为是如此被低估的新瓶颈，因为如你所说的那样有很多垃圾。我们怎样才能让任何人注意到其中任何一个每天都有新的改变生活的产品。所以，我感觉那将是一个大问题。

[1:14:06] Jessica

Oh, I want you to do a whole episode on distribution because I feel this so much. Right. If everyone thinks they can build the next Salesforce on their own, by the way, I don't believe that. Uh then, you know, you're going to have just a flood of available tools. And who gets the attention? It is still going to be who has the marketing dollars, who has the brand reputation, who is the existing customer base. distribution is everything and I I think the quintessential example we've seen here is with Gemini and Google's tools and and just their total um continued dominance in that market because of tools of distribution. Um and I think it's really fun to see. I think the other piece I would say is that's underrated there is trust building trust with your users but also with your internal teams. You know we're seeing even model companies hire at a huge rate right now. So you are still working with colleagues. Uh you are still working with millions of users and alongside distribution is trust and that is a a function of influence and empathy. Along these lines what I wonder is we talked about these other two kind of areas. Humans are still valuable and great product leaders are still valuable. Deciding what to build knowing if it's ready and awesome. Uh, I wonder how good AI will get at those things because we never thought AI would be amazing at coding and now it's 100% of code will be soon written by AI. And I've actually been building a bunch of stuff and I just find codeex and clock code are so good at actually giving you ideas for what to build. I'm just like, what should I do to make this better? And it's like, here's 10 ideas and then they're like, that is a really good idea. So, I think it'll get there. People underestimate how good it'll get at these things, I think. Yeah, I do think that as um as ideas proliferate and as there just becomes so many ideas and so much feedback, you know, we're going through a strategy doc rewrite. I think we have like 40 versions now because it's so easy to rev on a 15-page doc. Actually, when when these decisions are happening faster, building is happening faster. The flip side of that is mistakes compound faster as well. And strategy clarity becomes so much more important to anchor people on if you want to have an empowered EPDI organization or company. that that clarity of what you believe, what are the most important problems to invest time and energy into what uh where we want to invest compute and dollars. Um that is the mechanism for letting people go and run at as fast a velocity as they're capable of. Right? So if you have that corpus of shared beliefs that you update on a pretty fast clip because uh I think that's that's the mode we're in. that is actually what enables teams to build the right stuff as opposed to just the idea that cloud had.

哦，我想让你做一个整个关于分发的剧集，因为我感觉到这么多。对。如果每个人都认为他们可以自己建立下一个Salesforce，顺便说一句，我不相信那样。那你知道，你只是要有一个可用工具的洪水。谁得到关注？它仍然会是谁有营销预算，谁有品牌声誉，谁是现有的客户基础。分发就是一切，我认为我们在这里看到的典型例子是带有Gemini和Google工具，以及他们在那个市场中因分发工具而继续的完全主导地位。而且我认为看到这很有趣。我想说的是被低估的另一部分是建立信任——与你的用户建立信任，但也与你的内部团队建立信任。你知道我们现在看到甚至模型公司以巨大的速度招聘。所以你仍然与同事合作。你仍然与数百万用户合作，在分发旁边是信任，那是影响和同理心的一个职能。沿着这些线，我想知道的是我们谈论了这些其他两个领域。人类仍然有价值，伟大的产品领导者仍然有价值。决定建造什么，知道如果它准备好很棒。我想知道AI在那些事情方面会有多好，因为我们从来没有想到AI在编码方面会很了不起，现在它100%的代码很快就会被AI编写。而且我实际上一直在构建一堆东西，我只是发现Codeex和Clock Code对于实际给你关于建造什么的想法如此之好。我就像，我怎样才能让这个变得更好？而且它就像，这是10个想法，然后他们就像，那是一个真正好的想法。所以，我认为它会到达那里。人们低估它会变得多好。

[1:16:59] Lenny

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

我喜欢这一点，因为在Twitter上确实有很多讨论，实际上就在今天，在PM社区关于PRD已死，我认为它正好相反，这是非常清楚关于我们正在做什么以及战略是现在最重要的事情，因为一旦你拥有那个，那么酷解雇100个特工，我们将去构建和启动它。

[1:17:20] Jessica

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

完全。战略清晰度非常非常重要。我不在Twitter诗句中。我发现它很累，部分原因是我认为像PRD已死或软件已死这样的观点真的很愚蠢。我发现它有点令人厌烦。我说得一点辣，因为我仍然认为重要的是理解用户，理解商业和经济动态，理解战略以及我们试图完成的东西，然后真正思考什么是一起做那个的正确方式。

[1:17:56] Lenny

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

好的，也许再有一个问题沿着这些线，现在作为同事运行的特工。每个人都有所有这些云运行，代码框，现在所有这些特工平台，特工是工作力的一部分，越来越多的，是否有什么有价值的东西为人们开始思考和学习如何做的影响？

[1:18:18] Jessica

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

我喜欢那个问题。你知道，我们谈论这个很多，特别是当我们考虑身份安全合规性时，特工是加速工作的队友，以及它也提供的风险，因为特工下降的地方。我认为特工绝对是我们必须与影响力相关思考的东西，因为你知道，我们基本上现在都是工作的主任，对吧？如果我们有一个特工的军队或这100个加入我们团队的新同事，我们怎样才能入职新的初级团队成员，他们还不理解我们的产品理念？什么对我们很重要？而且我们怎样才能为我们自己编纂那个？我们怎样才能花时间说什么对我作为产品领导者很重要，我想灌输进来任何为我的团队开发的东西？我相信什么产品市场契合度？我看什么以确定成功的样子？我怎样设定指标？如果我们能做那个前期工作来实际分析我们自己，我们在哪里看到成功，我们在哪里看到下跌，然后继续用那个数据、那个历史、那个背景来训练我们的特工模型，他们会更好。但我也认为这个翻转是护栏。你需要被涉及的地方在哪里？你需要在哪里抓住幻觉或失误？你独特地有品味、判断、参考框架、某种无形的东西，你需要说，"不要在没有我的情况下做这个。"

[1:19:57] Lenny

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

这关于这个太有趣了，本质上，我们正在帮助特工学习我们一直在谈论的影响你的技能。这是关于我的目标的背景。这是我对客户的理解。这是我们的当前优先事项。就像帮我告诉我该怎么办，它就像影响你同意。

[1:20:17] Lenny

Absolutely. I think Wow, that's really the singularity, isn't it? Uh you should just feed this podcast to a bunch of agents and see if they can do this better than me. Um see see what their advice is. No, but I really think at this point we are in a place where it is a back and forth and where we should be using agents and AI as um a really smart colleague that never gets irritated by our questions. Poke holes in my ideas. Um tell me what you would do differently. Um help me plan this out. Uh base this on more uh corporate context than I could ever have gone through myself. Um and and poke holes. And I think that um that is a just like a really powerful way for amplifying our work.

完全同意。我觉得，哇，这真的就是奇点，不是吗？呃，你应该把这个播客喂给一堆 agents，看看他们能不能做得比我更好。呃，看看他们的建议是什么。不过，我真的认为现在这个阶段，我们处于一个相互反馈的位置，我们应该把 agents 和 AI 用作一个非常聪慧的同事，一个永远不会因为我们的问题而感到烦躁的同事。质疑我的想法。呃，告诉我你会怎么做不同。呃，帮我规划这个。呃，基于比我自己能接触到的更多的企业背景。呃，然后质疑这些。我觉得这就是，就像一个真的很强大的放大我们工作的方式。

[1:21:01] Jessica

Oh, it's like so interesting like one of your you know tips is come into an open mind and learn it's like exactly what an agent does. Tell me more. What else should I and then just like hopping on your ideas like okay cool we'll add that to the two like all the ideas you've shared agents are so good at. So that's yeah

哦，这太有趣了，就像你知道的，你的一些建议就是带着开放的心态来学习，这正是 agent 所做的。告诉我更多。我还应该做什么。然后就像在你的想法基础上继续，好的，我们把这个加到另一个想法里，就像所有你分享的想法，agents 都特别擅长。所以是的，这很棒。

[1:21:17] Lenny

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

我想，呃，有一件事我真的很好奇，你知道你在谈论人脑化学，我想知道的就是我们怎样才能保护我们的大脑不被信息过载。

[1:21:28] Jessica

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

想法变化的速度，呃，我们为这种生活节奏而进化，我们是为这种生活节奏而进化的。呃，我喜欢这本书，Pachinko，它讲述了一个韩国家族几代人的历史。在其中一代中，大约在 1600 年代、1700 年代，有两位妻子，她们每天都做早餐，然后去市场，买米、买鱼、买蔬菜，回家，煮米饭，煮鱼，上晚餐，收拾晚餐。那就是这一天。而在人类历史的绝大多数时间里，那基本上就是我们的一天。现在我们要求大脑做的精神负荷是惊人的。所以我认为我们必须使用 AI 和 agents 的方式之一，就是帮助我们的大脑发挥最大效率，就是清除干扰，指出最重要的事情。而我认为这就是人们真正需要做出一些艰难决定的地方。我们真正能专注多少，我们如何允许这种专注以对人类来说希望是好的方式发生？

[1:22:45] Lenny

What a time to be alive, Jessica. Holy Oh my god. Uh before we get to our very exciting lightning round, is there anything else that you wanted to share? Anything else you want to double down on?

活在这个时代真是太棒了，Jessica。天哪，哦我的天。呃，在我们进入非常令人兴奋的闪电轮之前，你还想分享什么吗？还有什么你想强调的吗？

[1:22:58] Jessica

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

有一件事我想说的是，我是一个以人为中心的人。我喜欢面对面的合作，我喜欢通过讨论想法和白板讨论来思考问题。我是二翼三。如果还有其他 Enneagram 粉丝，这是一个以人为中心的人、带来共同思考者的人和成就者的混合。呃，这是我的性格类型。我认为有时候我可以给出这样的建议，人们会说，"哦，Jess，你善于与人交往，或者你喜欢理解这些东西。"我认为在我的职业生涯中花了一段时间才学会的是，如何在影响力、关系和信任建设中真实地做自己。而我不认为这是一种性格类型或另一种。我认为你可以是害羞内向的，或者呃，超级以数据为导向和技术性的。我认为所有类型的性格都可以以自己真实的方式与周围的人沟通，建立信任，以感觉真实的方式建立影响力。你知道，我想起来我职业生涯早期开始做 PM 时，我得到了很多反馈，"哦，Jess，你怎样才能呃，表现得更像一个男人那样？更激进地表现，更呃呃决定性地表现。"我认为其中有一些很好的建议，但我认为花了我一段时间才能感到，嘿，我是谁，我怎样表现实际上是我的超级力量，我可以加倍努力。而我不需要像别人一样。我需要做的是考虑我想要完成什么，我想要如何成长，并以对我来说真实的方式做到这一点。

[1:24:39] Lenny

I could not agree more with that. I've uh shared very sim similar sentiment on the pod a few times. Just like you can accomplish the same things other people can through your own strengths. You don't have to do it the way they're doing it.

我完全同意这一点。我呃，在播客上分享过非常相似的观点好几次。就像你可以通过你自己的优势完成其他人可以做的同样的事情。你不必以他们的方式做它。

[1:24:52] Jessica

Exactly.

正是。

[1:24:52] Lenny

I so agree.

我完全同意。

[1:24:54] Lenny

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

一个漂亮的结束方式。有了这个，我们到达了我们非常令人兴奋的闪电轮。我给你五个问题。你准备好了吗？

[1:25:00] Jessica

I'm ready. I'm so excited.

我准备好了。我太兴奋了。

[1:25:02] Lenny

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

你最常推荐给其他人的两三本书是什么？

[1:25:06] Jessica

I think there's a genre of book I've really fallen in love with. Uh I mentioned Pachenko before. Um, I love historical fiction because it really gives me access into worlds that I don't know. You know, they uh I can't remember who talks about um windows and mirrors. Books are windows or mirrors for us. And uh historical fiction, especially about places where I'm less familiar with that history, is really a window into someone else's experience. Um, and there's a particular uh type of historical fiction that I just loved, which is multigenerational historical fiction. Uh, Pachinko does this with a family in Korea over generations and moving to Japan. Uh, there's a book called Homegoing, which is about the west coast of Africa and the impact of the slave trade um, and the ongoing uh, life in Africa from two uh, split parts of the family. Uh, history of burning is a is a book that tells a story of um Indian indentured servants that were brought to Uganda to build the um British railroad there. Um, and just parts of history that I was so much less familiar with and really treasure that sort of window into um a different world.

我认为有一个我真的爱上了的图书类型。呃，我之前提到过 Pachinko。呃，我喜欢历史小说，因为它真的给了我接触我不认识的世界的机会。你知道，他们呃，我想不起来谁谈论呃窗户和镜子。书对我们来说是窗户或镜子。而呃，历史小说，特别是关于我不太熟悉那段历史的地方的，真的是一个进入别人体验的窗户。呃，有一种我特别喜欢的历史小说，就是多代历史小说。呃，Pachinko 通过一个跨越几代的韩国家族这样做，并移居日本。呃，有一本书叫 Homegoing，它讲述了非洲西海岸和奴隶贸易的影响呃，以及从家族的两呃分家的生活在非洲的。呃，History of Burning 是一本讲述了呃印度契约仆人被带往乌干达建造呃英国铁路的故事的书。呃，以及只是我不太熟悉的历史的部分，我真的珍惜那种进入呃不同世界的窗户。

[1:26:21] Lenny

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

我认为《Overstory》是一个这样的例子。你听说过吗？

[1:26:24] Jessica

No, I haven't. I think I might be getting it wrong, but it's called overstory, which is around it's a concept of uh when you have a big tree like the overstory is the branches that kind of sit on top that kind of create a shade.

没有，我没有。我认为我可能搞错了，但它叫 Overstory，它围绕你有一棵大树时的一个概念，Overstory 是在顶部坐着的分支，这些分支会创造出阴影。

[1:26:36] Lenny

Oh, that's beautiful.

哦，那很美。

[1:26:37] Jessica

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

那是我想到的书，它是关于一个家族在许多代中围绕一棵树的故事。

[1:26:42] Lenny

Oh, great. Now I have to pick that up.

哦，太好了。现在我必须把它拿起来。

[1:26:44] Jessica

Was popular. Okay. If it's the one I'm thinking about, I think you're going to love it.

是的，很受欢迎。好的。如果这是我想的那本书，我认为你会喜欢的。

[1:26:47] Lenny

Okay, great.

好的，太好了。

[1:26:48] Jessica

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

呃，你最近看过的最喜欢的电影或电视节目。你知道，再一次，这是另一个窗户。我一直在痴迷地看《The Pit》，这可能是一个很无聊的答案。我想知道到目前为止是否有其他人给过你这个答案，但我真的呃，它给了我这样的一个有利位置和观点进入紧急医疗保健工作者做的极其困难的工作以及他们在其下运作的压力和系统和破损，但也他们对他们工作所带来的极端的关心和爱。并给了我这么多钦佩。

[1:27:22] Lenny

It is trending on this podcast. So, uh, and I I'm watching.

它在这个播客上是有趣的话题。所以，呃，我呃，我在看。

[1:27:25] Jessica

It's really good.

这真的很好。

[1:27:26] Lenny

It is really good.

这真的很好。

[1:27:27] Jessica

Okay. Favorite recent product, favorite product you've recently discovered that you really love.

好的。最喜欢的最近的产品，你最近发现并真的喜欢的最喜欢的产品。

[1:27:31] Lenny

Okay. I I bought my husband a towel warmer. It was like 35 bucks on Amazon and it has led to so much joy in our household. Just getting out of the shower to a warm towel is so great. Um, it's a really fun addition to the to the family. So, highly recommend that. Um, it's a it's just a cheap and easy way to to brighten your day a little bit.

好的。我呃，给我丈夫买了一个毛巾加热器。这是亚马逊上大约 35 块钱的，它在我们的家庭中带来了很多喜悦。从淋浴中出来时身上是一条温暖的毛巾真的很棒。呃，它是对家庭的一个真的有趣的补充。所以，强烈推荐。呃，这是一个真的便宜简单的方式来提亮你的一天一点。

[1:27:57] Jessica

I want one. That sounds amazing. Does it sit on top of an existing towel rack or is it a separate thing that you

我要一个。那听起来太棒了。它是坐在现有的毛巾架顶部，还是它是一个你可以的单独的东西

[1:28:02] Lenny

It's a separate thing. It's sort of like a basket that you put the towel in. You could put it in for half an hour, an hour, set it on a timer. It's so cool.

这是一个单独的东西。这是一种像你放毛巾的篮子。你可以半小时放进去，一小时，在计时器上设置。这太酷了。

[1:28:10] Jessica

Okay. I love this idea. Never been mentioned before. But I think uh u more in the in the tech vein of products I've loved um I've been a loyal user of Casa which I believe you tweeted about as well as a Kasa user. Um Casa comes in and they they have this idea of what if everyone had a household assistant. Um and so they come in, they take stock of every paint color, every appliance, every light bulb. Um, and anytime something breaks or you need something repaired, you can just say, "I need new light bulbs for this room." And they'll immediately send you them from Amazon. I need a new dishwasher. Ours broke. And they'll send you three options that fit your space um and are good quality. Um, they also pick up your packages every Friday and your donations. So great. And they're just the nicest people. So, I'm really excited to see them see them thrive.

好的。我喜欢这个想法。以前从未被提及过。但我认为呃呃更多在产品的技术方面，我喜欢的呃，我一直是 Kasa 的忠实用户，我相信你也在推特上分享过 Kasa 的用户。呃，Kasa 进来，他们有这个想法，如果每个人都有一个家庭助理呢。呃，所以他们进来，他们核查每个油漆颜色，每个电器，每个灯泡。呃，任何时候有东西坏了或你需要什么修理，你可以说，"我需要这个房间的新灯泡。"他们会立即从亚马逊给你发送。我需要一个新的洗碗机。我们的坏了。他们会给你三个选项，适合你的空间呃，质量也很好。呃，他们也每星期五接你的包裹和捐赠。真的很棒。他们只是最好的人。所以，我真的很兴奋看到他们看到他们繁荣。

[1:29:02] Lenny

I love that pick. Uh, I was looking up their domain name, getcasa.com. And I think they're only in the Bay Area right now, and I think they're expanding into LA right now.

我喜欢这个选择。呃，我在查找他们的域名，getcasa.com。而且我认为他们现在只在旧金山湾区，我认为他们现在正在拓展到洛杉矶。

[1:29:09] Jessica

Expanding into LA. Yep.

扩展到洛杉矶。是的。

[1:29:11] Lenny

Sweet. That's a good pick. And their website is very bare. I don't even know how you sign up,

不错。这是个很好的选择。他们的网站很简洁。我甚至不知道怎么注册，

[1:29:16] Lenny

but uh yeah, I think I don't know. I guess you could figure it out, but uh I I love Costa. Uh yeah, they also do like a filter rotation thing. So like every six months they come and replace all your filters or air purifiers and whatever. You can set you can set like maintenance for your dishwasher, for your air filters, for your uh washer dryer, which has been super cool to see. Um they also you get handyman credits every month. So all the things that you put off do doing uh they can come in and and do it themselves and it's it's just wonderful.

但呃是的，我想我不知道。我想你可以算出来吧，但我真的很喜欢 Costa。呃是的，他们也做像是一个 filter rotation 的东西。所以比如每六个月他们会来替换你所有的 filters 或 air purifiers 之类的。你可以设置，你可以设置像是你洗碗机、air filters、washer dryer 的 maintenance，这一直很有趣看到。嗯他们还会，你每个月都会获得 handyman credits。所以所有那些你一直推延的事情，呃他们可以进来自己做，这简直太棒了。

[1:29:46] Lenny

Awesome. Okay, two more questions. Do you have a favorite life motto that you often come back to in work or in life?

太棒了。好的，再问两个问题。你有没有一句喜欢的人生格言是你在工作或生活中经常回归的？

[1:29:52] Jessica

Um I asked my husband about this one. I was like, "What's my life motto?" Um, and he had such a nice answer that I I thought I'd go with it. Uh, we have this saying with our kids, first the guests. Um, so if you have guests over, which we love to host people in our house, um, our rule with our three kids is guests always go first. And I think that um, it's really something that we think about in terms of being of service to others, being respectful to others, being welcoming, being kind. Um, and I think that that has dictated a lot of who I am as a person and and how we're trying to be as a family. When you are of service to others, when you are inclusive, um, when you can put them first ahead of yourself, I think it actually brings a lot of joy to you. Um, and it certainly makes the world a little bit better.

嗯我问了我丈夫这个问题。我说"我的人生格言是什么？"呃，他给了这么一个好的答案，我觉得我应该采用它。呃，我们跟孩子们有这样一个说法，首先招待客人。嗯，如果你有客人过来，我们很喜欢在家里招待人，嗯，我们对三个孩子的规则是客人总是优先的。我觉得呃，这确实是我们在为他人服务、尊重他人、欢迎、善良方面考虑的事情。呃，我认为那已经决定了我作为一个人是谁以及我们作为一个家庭试图成为什么。当你为他人服务时，当你包容时，呃，当你能把他们放在自己之前时，我想这实际上会给你带来很多快乐。呃，这肯定会让世界变得更美好一点。

[1:30:42] Lenny

Oh, one of the core values at Airbnb was be a host.

哦，Airbnb 的核心价值之一是 be a host（做一个招待者）。

[1:30:46] Jessica

Yeah.

是的。

[1:30:47] Lenny

Which is very appropriate for Airbnb, but such a broadly uh, useful lens,

这对 Airbnb 来说非常合适，但这样一个广泛的呃，有用的视角，

[1:30:52] Lenny

right? I've also recently heard uh if if you want a village, be a villager.

对吧？我最近也听到呃如果你想要一个 village，be a villager（做一个村民）。

[1:30:57] Jessica

Um and so this idea of just building community, reaching out, being there for other people, and really taking that first step, even if it's scary or overwhelming, um can really can really make a difference.

嗯，所以这个想法就是去建立社区、互相联系、为他人服务的想法，以及真正迈出第一步，即使它令人害怕或不知所措，呃这真的能产生很大的影响。

[1:31:09] Lenny

Final question, you have some cool posters behind you if people are watching on YouTube. Is there one that's like a favorite? Is there one that has a story per chance?

最后一个问题，你身后有一些很酷的海报，如果人们在 YouTube 上看的话。有一个是你最喜欢的吗？有一个恰好有故事的吗？

[1:31:18] Jessica

Ah, that's such a good question. So, uh, these are all my husband's posters. He is a musician. He loves guitar. Uh, so he picked them all, but I think that I have to say my favorite one is probably, uh, Jimmyi Hendris plays the Greek. Uh, so we live in Berkeley and uh, you can't, it's just slightly off camera, but it's just a great memory of sort of an incredible musician. Um, and the iconic place that that we're lucky enough to live in and sort of the great access to culture that we have here, but also just how important music is to our lives, how much

啊，这是个很好的问题。所以呃，这些都是我丈夫的海报。他是一个音乐家。他喜欢吉他。呃，所以他选了所有的，但我想说我最喜欢的一个可能是呃，Jimi Hendrix plays the Greek（吉米·亨德里克斯在希腊表演）。呃，所以我们住在伯克利，呃，你不能，它只是稍微超出镜头，但这只是一个令人难以置信的音乐家的伟大记忆。嗯，以及我们很幸运能够住在的那个标志性地方，以及我们在这里获得的文化的伟大接触，但也只是音乐对我们的生活有多重要，我们有多少

[1:31:54] Lenny

is such a cool venue. Just like if people don't know, it's just like this outdoor amphitheater with grass. You can get blankets.

是一个非常酷的场地。就像如果人们不知道，它只是像一个有草坪的户外圆形剧场。你可以带毯子。

[1:32:01] Jessica

Should everyone should go. It's such a fun spot. Right. right on UC Berkeley's campus. Um, and they've got great music and we're really lucky to live close by.

应该每个人都应该去。这是个很有趣的地方。对。就在 UC Berkeley 校园里。嗯，他们有很棒的音乐，我们很幸运能住得近。

[1:32:09] Lenny

Well, with that, Jessica, I thank you so much for being here. Two final questions. Where can folks find you online if they want to reach out at, maybe follow up on anything here? And how can listeners be useful to you?

好的，Jessica，非常感谢你来这里。最后两个问题。人们如果想联系你或者也许对这里的任何东西进行跟进，他们可以在哪里找到你？监听者怎样才能对你有所帮助？

[1:32:19] Jessica

I am not a very online person, which is, you know, funny for being on this podcast. So, I think the main place I am online is on LinkedIn. Um, and so you could definitely find me there. Um, in terms of being useful uh to me, I would love to hear what resonated for you, what's worked for you in the past, how you're seeing these things show up in your work, um, and how I can get better at, um, you know, uplifting the tech community. And as we go through this period of tremendous change, uh, how I can show up, uh, as a leader and as a a source of community for for this group of folks.

我不是一个很活跃于网络的人，这很有趣对吧因为我在这个播客上。所以，我认为我主要在网上的地方是 LinkedIn。嗯，所以你绝对可以在那里找到我。嗯，就对我有帮助而言，我很想听听什么引起了你的共鸣，什么在过去对你有效，你如何看到这些东西在你的工作中出现，呃，以及我如何能够改进，呃，你知道，提升 tech community。当我们经历这个巨大变化的时期时，呃，我如何能够展现自己，呃，作为一个领导者和作为这群人的社区源头。

[1:32:56] Lenny

What change are you speaking of? Nothing.

你指的是什么变化？没什么。

[1:32:59] Jessica

It's called AI. We're still talking about AI.

这叫 AI。我们仍在谈论 AI。

[1:33:04] Lenny

Oh, man. All right. Well, Jessica, thank you so much for being here.

天哪。好的。好吧，Jessica，非常感谢你来这里。

[1:33:07] Jessica

Yeah. Thanks.

是的。谢谢。

[1:33:08] >>

Bye, everyone.

再见，各位。

[1:33:10] >>

Thank you so much for listening. If you found this valuable, you can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Also, please consider giving us a rating or leaving a review as that really helps other listeners find the podcast. You can find all past episodes or learn more about the show at lennispodcast.com. See you in the next episode.

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