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Product Therapy
Coaching Product Leadership with Shreyas Doshi | Building Trust, Managing Insecurity, and Leading with Courage
00:44:50
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- [00:00]
A
Welcome back to product Therapy. Today I am thrilled to be joined by Shiraz Joshi, one of the most insightful minds in product and product leadership. Shiras has lead teams at Stripe, Twitter, Google and Yahoo. He's earned a global following for his thoughtful writing on what makes good product work possible and also on what gets in the way. This episode, we go deep to explore the role of product leadership in shaping outcomes. I do always argue that when people even come on board so that great leader you've hired, they don't have the trust of the organization because the organization doesn't know them. Now, you cannot even provide clarity if people will not listen, if people will not show up. You know, you kind of lose people on like, yeah, but you don't know us, you don't know our business, you don't know the no ones. I want to kind of anchor quickly on trust, how you've seen it built effectively its role in leadership. What comes to mind?
- [00:58]
B
The individuals in these roles that we are talking about, they are incredibly talented, they're incredibly accomplished, intelligent, strong communicators, right? Like, by definition, if you go through this kind of wedding, like, assuming it's done right, these are very capable individuals. What I have found is that in such cases, there's still failure, there's still like, inability to build trust, et cetera, et cetera, right? Like, so we'll accept that in those cases, what these individuals need. So now we are talking about like coaching for CPOs, VP of products, SVPs, whatever, heads of product, et cetera. What these individuals really need is not so much guidance on here's what you should do, but more they need guidance on what not to do. A capable, experienced, intelligent individual actually has many ideas on what to do. And it's through those many ideas and through doing many of those things, by definition, that's how they erode the trust, right? Trust by saying certain things, right? So it's more about, let's figure out, you're already very smart, so not going to like, take you through like communication 101, right? Or even management 101. That's not likely going to be a good use of anybody's time. So what you need to understand really is like, what not to do. That is where a lot of people just falter in these kind of leadership roles. Take an example, and I'll take a personal example. So like Christian, took me a really long time to develop as a leader to a stage where I could finally say to myself that, like, I am a strong leader. In fact, like, so I've managed PMs and managed teams at every company that I've been a PM at. And in many cases, I joined the company as an ic. And then immediately, soon they said, like, we need you to manage a team, lead a team, lead a product. And early on I was like, resisting that. Basically just quick histories. I was asked to manage PMs, like being seven months into being a product manager. So this was at Yahoo. It wasn't a large team, but I was asked to manage PMs. And when I look back at that experience, I was like, I was not a good manager. So this is just like at a manager level. And then now I was like, you know, more senior as a leader. But I just like, never felt like I was doing a great job as a leader. So for me, it was a long journey to get there. Now, at some points in the journey, there were many things I did that sounded like perfectly logical and rational to me, but were mistakes that eroded trust. Right? So I'll give you an example. There was a company I joined as a sort of senior product leader within the organization at the time, and I had a lot of domain expertise in that space already. As I went in, I just started talking about everything that is wrong and with an intent, with a passion for, like, fixing it right, passion for, like, inspiring people, et cetera, whatever it is, right? Like, fine, I had some, like, you know, valid intent, but my execution of that intent was horrendous. And I only realized it, like, after two years after I had left that job. So it's not even I realized my folly three months after or six months after. I only realized it when I became much wiser as a leader, that that was a clear mistake, right? That what I thought was a way for them to feel that we have a leader who is an expert in this domain, we have a leader who, like, understands this domain, et cetera, et cetera. But my execution of that ended up basically sounding like, I know better than you. We are going to discount all your efforts over the last three, four, five years in building the system to wherever it is right now. Granted, at product level, it wasn't very good, right? So I can feel right about it. But, like, what's the point? I eroded trust very quickly early on. And then, like, in some cases, I could never rebuild that trust. With a couple of individuals and a few other individuals, I could rebuild that trust, but now it's an uphill battle. So that's an example of, like, the kind of thing that you have to understand. What are Some things that have worked for you that you should not do. And then again, in these roles, have good enough judgment that they can figure out what to do, but it's that what not to do is the core thing. And so what I find generally is that it always helps to take things a little slower than your instinct is because you want to come in as a leader and you want to leave your imprint and you want to make a bunch of, like, changes in a month, you know, in your first 30 days, you want to make all these changes. Now, I'm not saying it's never a good idea. What I'm saying is that there is usually a better way. One last thing I'll share, perhaps on my own leadership growth, I found that people can tell very easily if you're not truly listening to them. Even if they can't put it in words, they feel like something was off, right? Like, they don't feel that rapport. They don't feel that connection. They don't feel that sense that I can trust this individual. Because instinctually, most people can tell when the other party is not listening with concentration and with, like, fully present. Right. So the reason I flagged this is because I think, like most product leaders severely underestimate the value. I almost call it an art, not even a skill of this art of listening. And this is relevant for, like, the question you asked because, well, what are you doing? Usually when you get hired as a senior leader, in the first couple of weeks, you're meeting everyone on the team, you're, like, doing one on ones or group meetings, small group meetings, whatever it is that you're doing, you're getting to know people. And if in that meeting, if in that conversation, if the one thing you can do is, like, actually be fully there, be present, like, listen with your full body, number one, you'll get a lot more content out of it. You will get a much greater understanding of the context of your team and your product and your company. So there's that practical benefit number two. The other benefit is you've now at least started the relationship with the right tone, because the individual will walk away if you are there, if you actually listen, they will walk away with a sense of appreciation. Now, they will still want to see actions, and they'll still want to see you deliver, et cetera, et cetera. But in that first contact, they'll still walk away with an appreciation and some degree of, like, you know, baseline confidence that, oh, I'm excited to see what happens with this leader.
- [07:21]
A
That's right. You're depositing into your trust bank or relationship bank and listening in such a powerful tool, you sharing that story. Shirazi kind of brings up some very important thing that I struggle with for very many leaders, which is maybe you're a great operator, you're great in your craft, you get promoted into a management or a leadership role. And unfortunately it's become such a corporate expectation that once you become a leader, you can no longer say things like, I don't know, I'm not sure I need help, I made a mistake, or I'm sorry, these things all of a sudden disappear. Things that were very normal a day before where you were just an individual contributor. And I see this pattern where there's a quick recognition that you're promoted to do the job, not to learn the job. We don't equip people for promotion. And many leaders start off their career with this level of insecurity and imposter syndrome. You kind of find in that environment, you know, if I say, all right, Surez, go do an interview, you're like, I can't tell people I don't really know how to do a good one. So they go Google some framework and they try it out and nobody dies. And they're like, this went well. So it's my new framework, you know, and you see these constant poor cycles feed themselves, you know, and you're kind of calling out how you learn from your mistakes and imagine if there was a safe place to do that prior in accelerating your career. I have seen this lead to micromanagement, probably a very good indication of I'm going to default to what I know best, how to do the job than getting people better at the job. I've seen it even in some delegation management or escapism or lack of agency. Maybe talk a little about these aspects, but particularly people that are looking for advice as first time leaders around their insecurities, the imposter syndrome, old patterns and behaviors and maybe some of the things you've observed here.
- [09:08]
B
There's a lot of insincerity and just overall emphasis on the optics in pretty much every company. It doesn't matter how great of a culture it is, right? Like, and particularly once you exceed a certain size, in fact, your success as the CEO or like the founder is how long you can delay it. You can never delay it forever. Does it set in at 10 employees? Does it set in at 50 employees? Does it set in at 150 employees or 500 or 2,000 or 5,000? Right. You look at companies like Google. It's like easy for people to make fun of Google today. But what people don't understand is Google was able to postpone some of these challenges that companies face as they get more people for like up until it was in thousands of employees, which almost like very few companies have been successful in doing that. And so to their credit they did a spectacular job of that from a culture perspective and leadership perspective, right? Like this is early Google. So again it's hard for some people to even remember. Maybe some listeners were like school or elementary school. That's the time we are talking about, right? Like this is like between say 2002 to 2008, 2009, right? So I find that like that is just a fact of corporate life, right? Like this expectation of having the right optics, it results in insincerity which then manifests as saying I don't know is a punishable crime. And I'm not talking about LinkedIn theory where like somebody can write a viral post saying, you know what, like saying I don't know is such a wonderful thing, blah blah blah and everybody will like it. But I have actually asked many people, including students that I teach that like would it be acceptable for you to say in a product review meeting with your CEO at your company where you're presenting something and the CEO asks a very Edge Casey detailed question about some numbers related to an area of your product that also overlaps with something else. And if the CEO asks about that, if you said I don't know, what is that going to be like? Is that going to be your manager patting you on the back for doing it and saying great job. Is that going to be your manager having a conversation the next day saying like, you know, hey, I want to discuss how you present it to our CEO. And most people say most people, I mean like 90 plus percent say it's the latter. Like that your manager is going to give you feedback that like you're supposed to know these things. But like we've already established this is some Edge Casey detail. No, it doesn't matter. You're supposed to know the detail. That is the expectation we've set. Now it is logically the case that it would be impossible for any single human being to, to know every single detail about a non trivially sized product. So if you're managing a large product area, it is again you just, you don't have to take it on faith. It is logically the case that it is impossible to know every single detail. Say you have 200 customers, CEO asks how is this customer using this feature? How are you supposed to know that? Right? Like logically you are not going to know that off the top of your head. And some people will say, but you know what the right answer is. Say I don't know, but I'll find out. And then find out, cool. Like, I like that answer, but you will still not be viewed positively. Whereas if you just rattled off part BS or if you smartly diverted that question in a way nobody could figure it out, like a politician, you did not answer the question that was asked, then you will be seen as smart and capable and being on top of all the details. So either if you bullshit or if you just redirect and misdirect, organizations are incentivizing you to do this. And this is merely one example, right? A high stakes example, certainly from a performance review standpoint. But these examples are everywhere at all levels, right? It's not just in meetings to with the CEO. So that is what is happening on the ground in nearly every company. Going back to the very first thing, all problems are product leadership problems. So now the situation would be different if the product leader involved has the judgment and the courage. And it requires both judgment and courage. The judgment to say, yes, there is no way you could have known the answer to this question. And then the courage to tell the CEO, it's cool, it's fine, you asked a valid question, we'll get you the answer. But I don't think you should be getting upset that you ask some like random question about like one customer out of 200 or 2,000 and how they're using this. Like you cannot expect the answer. This is not where we get leverage. We're not like just walking Google indexes, right? That's not the point. Judgment is the key thing here. That is how like this problem becomes a product leadership problem. The challenge is most product leaders either are lacking sufficient judgment or even in cases, again, these are capable people. So I trust that they in most cases have the judgment, but they don't have the courage. Again, this is not a criticism of the individual. I understand why it's hard to gather that courage, but that's where I'll make another observation. And this is something I do when I coach like CEOs and founders for dealing with whatever situation they're dealing with within their company is oftentimes it is not a lack of courage, it's that we don't have the right words. So in that sense, like if you found the right words, we can actually sometimes find the courage it is such an interesting phenomenon that I've seen repeat over and over again, not just in my career, but in careers of individuals I've coached. We are afraid because we don't have the right words. But when the right words emerge, somehow it's not that we're no longer afraid, but now the fear is much lower. This is where like, I think that influence piece which I highlighted early on, like influence is not just about the basic stuff that everybody talks about. You know, mirror their body language and like, you know, blah, blah, like all make them feel hurt. That's all like basic stuff, right? Like it's these nuanced things that actually make the difference between high degree of influence and you know, mediocre, moderate influence. These are the kinds of things that interest me on this topic. But again, like the question you asked, there's like probably a couple of hours worth of discussion.
- [15:05]
A
You know, I love two points that you made. You know, I called out judgment and courage, but you kind of alluded to the point that it's not a lack of courage in many cases is that we don't have the right words, which in turn give us the courage. And I was just coaching a team and I kind of going through this transformational change and I had everybody kind of writes with their non dominant hand at the end of it. Like, you know, doing the right thing means having the courage to do it wrong or poorly the first time. And this idea that you're kind of feeling like so, but serious, where do I get the right word in order to get the courage? And how do I practice those things and how do I improve my courage even when I have the judgment or the discernment that I should step in and. But I don't know how I don't think this. When I talk about all problems being leadership problems. I don't think they just enough modeling of good leadership for many leaders. I was just telling someone has an executive coaching session and the CEO in the middle of which is direct reports, just swearing at them, screaming at everybody. And I'm like, can we talk outside? And we go outside and I say, you know, first of all, I don't feel comfortable being here. But what was that about? He's like, what do you mean? I'm like, you are swearing at everybody, screaming at people. And he says to me, he's like, look, I've been CEO, yeah, for like the last four years. The former CEO, my boss, this is how he used to talk to us. He screams at us all the time. And look at Me, now I'm CEO, I got it. And I said to him, I said, okay, what were you trying to communicate? And I said, is it okay if I go back in and try a different way? He's like, sure. And I go back in and I say, hey, everybody, the CEO has given me permission to share kind of what he was trying to share. I want your honest feedback on what you learned from both styles or approaches. And I explained it and the Chief Marketing Officer was like, look, we are used to him talking to us this way, but you know, we get it, we get it done, you know. But the way you explained it, I could already see two or three things that I needed to do in order to prevent this from happening. So, you know, it kind of hit the point better. And the CEO says to me, it's like, oh, I didn't know there was a different way to do this. I sat with him in a session and I said, okay, two things, you know, one, I can understand it's never been modeled. And most leaders, people don't manage up. They don't tell them, you are giving me poor leadership or they don't coach them up. And secondly, most leaders also don't know how asking for help, saying to someone, I need to get better or I want to get better is also almost as crippling as saying, I don't know. It feels like it is looked down upon. What do you mean you don't know? What do you mean you don't have the answer? And there's this arrogance and ego in an underpinning leadership that I think is destroying it. It's almost the opposite of true leadership being servant leadership or the humility with it. How do you coach these very basic fundamental elements? And I know one of the things you talk about is frameworks and process. And I've also seen those things as substitute for leadership. You know, where somebody is going to lead by framework or lead by process rather than lead by example. Or from the back, maybe say a little about how you will help somebody be a better leader in this way.
- [18:04]
B
One thing that took me a long time to understand myself is you need a clear understanding of whatever your specific situation is. We product managers, we pride ourselves. And again, like if somebody wrote on Twitter or LinkedIn, like, you must understand the customer problem before you jump to solutions of the customer problem, everybody will be like, plus one, like, you know, love, celebrate, right?
- [18:34]
A
Super.
- [18:34]
B
Like we all like, yeah, of course you need to understand the customer problem before you jump to a solution. But let's look at Practice, right? In practice, most product failure, particularly in B2B, is not that they built the wrong product or the common claim that we couldn't get distribution or the friction for adoption was high. It's none of that. It's. You didn't understand the customer problem, right? Let's be honest. You did not understand the customer problem, so you were solving for the wrong problem. The problem that wasn't acute enough or like just important enough or couldn't get funded. Right? So therefore it's not that your solution was terrible or your marketing was terrible or anything else was terrible. You were destined to fail the day you decided to solve this problem in this manner, right? So like it was set on in the early days, not in year two, year three, right? So that's like a product example that like every product manager, every designer, everyone will agree, like we'll all be united in that. And yet we don't do that. For actual day to day problems we are facing with our team, with our communication, with our influence problems, with our, you know, whatever negotiations that we have to do with the actual work we are doing, with the goal setting we are doing, it is like largely absent this degree of thoughtfulness and intent around like, what am I even really trying to do here? And so when that happens, what happens is it is an incorrect problem diagnosis followed by defaulting to past patterns that seem to have worked in some ways for us. So what I just said describes large swath of leadership across nearly every company, certainly nearly every tech company that I'm more familiar with in the world. And as I'm sure as some people are when they listen to this, some people will have like an objection which is, and I'll tell you what the objection is. Well, but you can't keep analyzing analysis paralysis. Like you can't keep like, you know, thinking about the problem. Someday you have to act and action is where it's at and mistakes is how we learn. It's all nonsense, right? Like, because people are not thinking at a practical level. So like when somebody has that objection, I ask them, so wait, are you saying that we should not sit to analyze the problem for six month period and just get stuck in that analysis paralysis? And they say yes, and I say yes, I agree to that. I also agree you should not be sitting just at your desk looking at the ceiling and trying to solve this problem, or not even solve, try to analyze the problem. But what I'm making is at a practical level, what is happening with leaders and teams is they're not pausing for two minutes. They are not pausing for 20 minutes. They're not pausing for two hours, they're not pausing for two days. Where that accurate diagnosis of the problem you're trying to solve, whatever this leadership, organizational, structural incentive process problem you have, you're not pausing for a duration of 2 minutes, 20 minutes, 2 hours, 2 days, and sometimes 2 weeks. Now, I will tell you that no matter how fast paced you are, you definitely have two minutes, you definitely have 20 minutes, and you definitely have two hours. And then we can debate two days. I would say in most cases, in order to save those two days, you're wasting months afterwards because you did not diagnose the problem properly. And in order to save the two weeks, you are now wasting two years. So that is also happening in practice. So it is not that, oh, we like to move fast and we like. It is not that. It is an excuse you are making. Why? Because it feels uncomfortable to think. See, we as human beings, we've evolved to try to conserve this, the compute. Now, we can use these terms these days, right? Because everybody's familiar with them. We've evolved to conserve our compute, right? Only for specific circumstances. And again, we've kind of like evolved through, you know, a calorie poor kind of environment. But, well, we like, in most parts of the world, like, you know, and especially anybody listening to this, you don't need to really conserve calories on thinking, right? In fact, anybody listening to this needs to expend more calories on actually understanding what is it that I'm even trying to do. So I know this sounds like, okay, come on, Shreyas, give me something advanced. But I will tell you that what I have found in practice over and over again, as we pause for the 2 minute, 20 minutes, 2 hours, 2 days, and for the right things, use your judgment, right? For some things, two minutes is enough. For other things, two days is required. Cool, right? Like, use your judgment. That is why you get paid the big bucks to use this judgment. You're not a robot that, oh, somebody has to tell you. A Shreyas or a Christian has to tell you everything. Because if that's the case, then what's your value? Why should you get paid the big bucks? Use your judgment. But as you pause to do that and as you get to accurately diagnose the problem now, you are suddenly extremely successful. You are always successful in whatever solution you come up with, right? Because, like, you know, I used to read this in kind of philosophy books in my twenties. I used to laugh and I'd be Like, this is stupid. But it's not that the book was stupid, it was, I was stupid. So now I understand that, like, you know, when they say things like the answer is in the question, the solution is in the problem. These kinds of things that you'd read in some philosophy books and you'd be like, ah, this is stupid. Now only in my mid-40s do I understand that. No, actually there's truth to it. And why do I understand it? Because now I've lived it for like 10 plus years. So it's like that personal experience. And so this is another thing is like, you know, half the people listening to this right now will be like, I don't believe it. In fact, some people will think this is theory, but this is like the opposite of theory. This is the real practice, right? This is the real practice of leadership, which is, why are you getting paid the big bucks? Why do you have such a huge responsibilities? It's so that you can exercise exceptional world class judgment. And to exercise exceptional world class judgment, it starts with an accurate diagnosis of the problem.
- [24:42]
A
Oh, I love that. You know, I coach a lot of leaders and I have to explain to them, you know, when you become a leader of people, your product is no longer the things you build. Your product are the people under your care. And if you are as deliberate or as thoughtful, when you're doing the analysis, the discovery, the experimentation, the testing, you're thinking deeply about the choices you make on the products you build. You're doing that on people. And many people ask me a lot about scaling. How about, how do we do this at scale, you know, even leadership at scale. And they try to replicate their success with a process or like, you know, Suresh, that was a fantastic way you did that. Write it down. And we're going to make everybody in the company do exactly what you did. And I'm trying to move people from like, no, the best thing you can do is to create thousands of people like Shiraj that are thinking and solving problems that way. Which is such when you start to unlock why some companies are very successful, they start to realize this important pattern. Like, if I want better product management, I don't focus on product management process. I have better product managers. I will get like, I want better engineering. I will, you know, not work on the tooling or code or stuff. If I work on the engineers, having better engineers will lead to this.
- [26:02]
B
So this idea of like packaging, right? Like something works. Now, Christian, go and make this happen across the company. We want more teams to work like your Teams, right? So in the latter half of my product leadership career, every once in a while I would get this kind of suggestion from my manager or my leadership. We like this, can we get this done across the PM team or whatever. One thing I realized is that it's not that process or framework is kind of somehow inherently bad. It's not. Right? It's not that. So again, we have too much of this kind of binary thinking also fueled by social media, like, either I'm on this side or on that side. And it's like you realize there are so many options in between that you are ignoring, Right? I don't think process or framework is somehow an inherently bad thing. It's just that people misunderstand what is a good process or what is a good framework, right? So like, let's take a framework. Somehow it's been exacerbated by some like, companies expecting PMs these days in their interview process of, well, the answer was good, but they did not present a framework. So we're going to fail this person, which is like, ridiculous. You know, that's the state of the industry in some places. But what is a good framework? So, like, I actually spent quite a bit of time thinking about just that question. What is a good framework? As I was getting, you know, guidance from my leadership that, you know, we want this, this kind of strategic competence say. So at stripe, one specific guidance I got is like, you know, your team produces really compelling product strategies. We want to see that from more teams, we want to see that from more PMs. Can you go solve this problem? And I was like, cool, I find the product problem very interesting and I want to do it because I want, you know, the entire company to benefit, then I'm also like, wait, this is like a really hard thing I'm signing up for, right? So that's why I then had to think very hard about how am I going to enable this. And so that's when I understood that the value of a good. What is a good framework? What I understood is a good framework packages the intuition of someone who is world class at that given thing. Good frameworks are basically packaged intuition such that, look, can I just make everybody in the world have the same intuition as the product greats? You know, Marty being a common friend, right? Like, can I make everyone in the world have Marty's intuition? No, I cannot. However, if instead of starting with the objective of, let me present an amazing impressive framework, which is where like all the fault is, right? That's what people start with. Let Me create a framework that look impressive, that let me create a framework that looks comprehensive. Let me create a framework that gets me approval, right? Like it's that approach versus the approach of how does this intuition actually function? Can we decompose this intuition? If it sounds very fuzzy, it's kind of not. Because say you are world class at something. I would say start with that, right? Like say you are world class at giving amazing feedback at UX reviews. I've worked with some people who are just excellent at it. Okay, you're world class at it now you want to train others to be much better than they are. Look within, look inside. Try to evaluate how you're thinking, what you're thinking, why you are thinking, what you're thinking. Now, what I just said seems very simple. It is incredibly hard to do. But why are you getting paid the big bucks, right? Like if you're not willing to do the hard things, you're not going to get the answer on the same day. Whereas I can create an octagonal framework with eight colors with opposing vertices and call them some name and then create a backronym and say, this is my framework. Launch it on LinkedIn 5000 likes. The problem is it doesn't work. Versus if I actually do the work of reverse engineering this intuition of someone who's world class at it and then package it in a framework. Now what happens is it is practical and it's implementable. Now is following that framework going to make everyone in the world world class, like Marty at that thing? No, like it's not. But it is going to substantially raise their capability very quickly, which is what you want. So this is what I found in the latter half of my leadership career. As I started doing this, I found a tremendous success with it. And so I just wanted to call that out as a way to like on that point of scaling, right? Yes, frameworks can be useful, but you have to devise them the right way.
- [30:24]
A
That is the best definition I have had in my career, at least in the truest intent of what people actually really want. You know, the implementation kind of what you're describing, how many people do, it actually loses that, that pure definition of capturing the intuition of someone who is world class at it. People, you know, they just see it and they follow step one, step two, step three. And you, you never get to say, what were they thinking, what influence they are thinking, why were they thinking that? What drive? Because that's what you're trying to build in everyone. I say the answer may not be right, but why start at where everybody failed. Start at what has been proven to be successful and build the muscle from there. So it's probably the way you coach a kid in any sport in some ways. You know, it's not like you're mandating a framework, but what you're doing is you're packaging, doing tuition of world class players and using that to help people get better. So it's a really good call out, probably a very important point for people. Okay. Now I don't want to end today without talking about maybe shifting to product leadership in an age of AI. And you know, I've kind of heard you say, yeah, look, you know, real product leaders are going to AI will separate real leaders from like delivery leaders in some ways. What's fundamentally different in your mind about leadership and leading in the age of AI and this big generative AI shift in our world today?
- [31:47]
B
Yeah. So look, I just find it super fascinating that we are still at a place where a lot of people are just discounting and underestimating what is going on, including people in product. I think it's still the case that there's some post about AI and I'll read a comment which is like, well that's all good, but nothing can replace like real humans and human empathy and emotions, right? So like, I'm sure you've seen some version of that somewhere. And then again the people rally behind that opinion, right? So now it appears like elevated. And then so therefore again in this age of social media, it appears correct to us. It's like, okay, so many people are agreeing that like nothing can replace human emotion, nothing can replicate human emotion or empathy. I would say today, like, I'm not talking about future models today already every model that I've tried shows greater human empathy than the median director or VP level person at a tier one company in the Valley that is today. And how do I know this? Because I have chatted with these LLMs and I've asked them questions about interpersonal situations. I've asked them questions and this is with the intent of testing them. Right? Like, which is like, do you follow why this is the wrong response? The conventional response to your direct report, this is the wrong one. I just asked the question. I don't give it the answer. I just asked like, there's something wrong here. And I know that the median director to VP level person at a tier one company in Silicon Valley would not be able to figure it out. And ChatGPT will figure it out, or Claude or Gemini will figure it out, either upfront or after two or three nudges. And it's those two or three nudges that I also want to call out. Because then I say, okay, you know, it took me a little time. This is a very subtle question, Subtle issue, but it took me like two or three reprompts. But at no point did I ever give it the answer. All I said is, no, Claude, this answer is incorrect. Try again. That's all I said. And then it eventually reached, after two or three maximum prompts, it reached a roughly very high quality answer of why it's incorrect and what. What is correct. Then I said, what if I did this with the median VP director person? Like, how would that conversation go? And that's when I realized that, like, that conversation is impossible because the individual is not going to be open. They're going to argue. And of course we'll do it in a more. I won't say you are wrong, et cetera. Let's assume that I'm like, you know, like, very thoughtful about how I nudge them. But it will be. It'll take me like three, four hours. And even then there is very little success of the individual developing that insight that is driven by empathy. That's the state right now. It's pretty clear to me that basically a lot of these things that people say, oh, this is a uniquely human attribute or quality or skill, I just don't think that is true already today. So that's one observation I wanted to make. People are just underestimating, like, how good this thing is. Second is, people are also underestimating, like, how good this thing is going to be. Right? So it's like, there are a lot of people even in product who are like, well, like, it can't do math right or whatever. And okay, like, can we use our imagination? This is supposedly one of our core attributes as product people is being able to use our imagination. So what, like, progress is going to stop in two years? Or, like, can you figure out how powerful and how correct and good this thing is going to be three years from now, five years from now? And like, you don't need to be a domain expert to figure it out. This is again, the quality of imagination. And it's kind of like sometimes I usually don't use analogies, but sometimes I have to use an analogy to explain that it's no different than complaining in, I don't know, 1994 that these browsers suck and it takes me like 10 minutes to download an image and it gets stuck half the way. And then the Internet Connection drops, right? The dial up connection drops. You could say that the World Wide Web is just complete garbage in 1994 and maybe you even sound smart because you're being like the critic always sounds smarter, but what's the point, right? So that's like I guess another observation I make. Third, relevant to products. What I'll say is a couple of things. Number one, I think a lot of existing companies, the so called incumbents, one mistake they're making is they're just bolting AI on top of an existing product. And they are not yet and I understand why, classic innovators dilemma and user retraining tax at work. But like they're bolting AI on top of existing kind of UI and UX and it's just not working well as a user. I can see that. So that's like one sort of challenge I'll pose to, to product leaders and founders and CEOs that if you are indeed going to commit to this kind of, you know, oh yeah, we are AI first, then in some cases again use your judgment. But in some cases it's okay to be a little bolder. So that's like one thing I'll say. Second thing I'll say is specifically in terms of its impact to PM and how product gets built and all of those considerations. I think people are also underestimating the degree to which teams of the future are going to be smaller and still able to get like the amount of work done that they're getting done with 10x the size right now or even more. I can totally see a team in two, three, four, five years from now that has three people, right? Where right now that same team for the Same output is 30 people, right? Or even more. I mean that is very clear. That is not controversial generally from all the conversations I've had. But then I say okay, so what are the second order effects of that for product leaders? So well, like the fewer the people you have, the less the core coordination. So a lot of your time that you spend in coordination and in people issues and various other things and like general day to day just management of people like okay, so that has now reduced significantly. Now some people say okay, but maybe we'll just build like more features, there'll be more code, right? Because there'll be more capabilities and by all means, yeah, I kind of subscribe to that too. But now who's the entity that is going to decide what is good? Who's the entity that is going to decide what we are going to ship and why we are shipping that in a world where our capacity to ship is much greater. The people who are super intelligent in this area, no pun intended, basically tell me that at some point that entity will be AI. At some point when we get to some version of super intelligence that is at some point that entity might be AI. I don't know. I'm not educated enough on this to have confidence. In the meantime, who knows if it's like five years, 10 years, 20 years from now. People don't seem to agree, experts don't seem to agree. But like in the meantime it's gotta be a human, the person who's kind of like deciding what is good and why. And so my question to people, and as now you bring it to your personal self and your specific career is are you going to be that person or not? That's the job that's going to be the highest leverage job. So are you the one who's going to have that job or not? If that is something you are inclined to, to be and you don't have to be, but if that is something you're inclined to be, what are the skills you need to be able to do a better job than most people out there? And I feel like people are not thinking critically about this. And again, all of this is very logical, right? Like there's no, again, you don't have to take any of this on faith other than the timelines, which I'm not an expert in. The rest of it is all logicals. And the question is like, are you building those skills? And that's where I think people are still not, not building those skills. And you know, like, yes, using AI tools is good. And you know, using AI tools in your daily workflow is great. And like you should all do this. It's kind of like saying you should download and use a browser and go to websites in the year 1994, 95, 96, when if you were in tech, of course you should do that. Of course you should do that. But I don't think that's where most people are stopping. They are not thinking about skills beyond using AI, current AI tools for productivity related reasons. They're not thinking about what are the unique human skills that are still going to be important such that you are the one who is the person deciding what is good, what we are going to build in a world of like near infinite capacity. So those are some thoughts that I would leave people with.
- [40:06]
A
I want to talk about what those skills are because you know, you kind of talk about decision making One of the first CEOs I worked for, I was like 22 when I started my first company. And he used to make me read a ton of biographies and autobiography. And I used to wonder, he's like, what in the world do you always make me do that? And he was kind of saying, you know, at the end of all of it, real leadership is around decision making. And it's like what we get with the gift of history is we see the impact of people's decisions over time. And, I mean, he will role play with me, like, okay, how did Abraham Lincoln make the decision on which. And I'm like, reading a book, and I'm like, oh. And he's kind of showing me the aspects of decisions and choice and. And all of those things. I took it for granted at that age until I kind of got older in life and in my career to really understand what it takes to, you know, whether you call it product sense, taste or discernment, or judgment or making a choice on what is good for humans within these constraints right now, you know, those kind of variables. So say a little more about what are those critical skills that you think any leader, maybe we'll start, maybe even Pierre, or people in product should be building, assuming they want to make the choice of being good at deciding what AI does as being good for humans.
- [41:26]
B
Right now, it turns out it's the very same skills that were always important. And what is that? It is some version of judgment, product sense and strategic sense. And related to that, the discernment of what is actually good and why it is good and being able to explain that which is essentially what taste is. So, you know, when people these days talk a lot about taste and taste as being a defense for you in this AI world, and I generally agree, but what One thing that is missed still and underappreciated, is that actually a large part of taste is like being able to understand why something is good or not good and being able to communicate that to others. Because we've all worked with a product leader or executive who's extremely talented, has great taste, give a presentation to them proposing some flow or something. They don't like it and they share that, but there is no explanation for why or they struggle to explain why. And now we are just left confused, right? Like, and we are not left in any better state other than we know this is not good or this will not get approval from them, right? So, like, taste. And Steve Jobs has talked about it. If you listen closely, Steve Jobs has talked about this in the past that like, actually, like this communication piece is an important aspect of taste that people are not covering the general area of product judgment, product strategy, expertise, product sense, taste. They've always been important, right? They've always been important. And like if you look at product leaders who've had consistent success, not like, you know, always right place, right time, but consistently successful throughout their career, they had this skill set or they developed this skill set over time and that was partly responsible for that consistent success. I don't think it is fundamentally an entirely different thing that is going to be that differentiator. It's just that now these things are even more important in a world where there is very much higher capacity, 10 x 100 x thousand x maybe even greater than that capacity. It all goes back to the correctness of the decisions you're making.
- [43:35]
A
Oh boy, I love that. That's what a great way to wrap up the thoughts here. It's like in the world of AI, all the things we've been talking about that made good leadership actually even more important, not less. It's kind of you need better leadership and better management, not less leadership or less management. And I think we've spent a really thorough time talking about what that means. Thank you again for the gift of your time, the candor, the vulnerability. Just a tremendous conversation today around product leadership. Thank you for being here.
- [44:04]
B
Thanks Christian. It was great. I loved it.
- [44:06]
A
Want to learn more? Until next time, Please check out svpg.com Sign up for our newsletter that Marik Hagan puts out. Join us for one of our workshops near you and get access to all of the articles and content we put out. And thank you to everyone for joining us. Until next time, have a good day.
- [44:27]
C
A quick Disclaimer While this podcast is named Product Therapy, it is not hosted by licensed therapists or mental health professionals and it is in no way a substitute for professional mental health services. We recognize the importance of mental well being and encourage anyone facing personal difficulties to seek support from qualified professionals. See www.findahelpline.com.