Driving alignment and urgency within teams, work-life balance, and the changing PM landscape | Nikita Miller (The Knot, Trello)

25:07And that's something that I think everyone in industry probably needs a refresher on. Like why that's valuable and how it works. And some of that is also shared by the PM. Because if you haven't articulated clearly or well enough what we're trying to do, then it is hard to kind of break that apart. So yeah, those are the two things that are on my mind a lot. Is there anything else along the lines of what you've learned about building successful teams? I really love this role in the responsibility approach. Outcomes and output also comes up a lot. And I think that in many of the companies that I've either worked with or advised, coached over the past few years, there was all about outcomes.

25:50Like everyone was outcomes, outcomes, outcomes, which is right. You want to make sure you're doing the right thing with the right goal. And that's fine. And some folks, you know, myself included at certain points like swung way too far on the outcome strain and forgot that output is an indicator of that. So if you have a team that's doing all of the ideation and figuring out, you know, how to make decisions quickly and getting the right documentation and and setting up the right product briefs and design briefs and experiment briefs all the things that we know go into to successful product development.

26:27That's great. But if you're also not shipping a lot of things to market quickly enough, then it just doesn't matter that much. So that conversation is one that I think we often have to revisit on teams, on all the teams I've ever been on. That yes, that comes are important, but also the indicator is around execution of velocity. So if that's not in line, then a lot of the other things don't matter that much. And so when you say outcome, you're saying here's the goal they're achieving or the impact they're having, or is it just the idea like we know what outcome will be, but they're not actually shipping anything.

27:00Like what did when you say output and outcome, what do you referring to specifically? The outcomes are understanding what the goals are and what we might do to get there, right? So okay, ours is one way to talk about that. Great. But embedded in that is and how are we going to get there? And the fact is like the more tries you have at it, the like there you are to get it right. So we're not doubly monitoring like how fast does it take us to ship things to market? I see. So kind of like if I can rephrase it, it's yes. A lot of teams like know what they're talking about, what they should be doing.

27:36They have a strategy, they have a goal, but what you're finding is there's just not a lot of action a lot of times and there's like a huge opportunity just to like get a team to actually ship more often and move faster. Yeah, there's not a lot of like understanding of our role in urgency. Like right, it's urgent and software in particular probably can't forget that because someone else is likely doing something similar or better and faster. Makes me think of, thank Frank Slootman, his name, the Snowflakes Yo here at this book, I'll call it up. He talks about how to build thriving software companies and business in general.

28:12One of his three most important recommendations is always have urgency to never let off the gas of urgency that things always need to feel urgent. I'll check that out. Did I think product managers like I consider product to be the ones that really need to drive urgency? Say more about that. What have you found helps in creating that sense of urgency and continuing to increase output? Mostly reminding people often. Right. And I don't think that this the question of like, well, show me, listen, everything you ship, that's never going to work. Well, that doesn't make people feel good about the work that they're doing, but but you know, let's talk about our experimentation backlog.

28:57Like what do we have in there? How quickly are we getting those things out? Those are the kind of conversations that I think help. I think that having a good pulse on competition helps as just a friendly reminder. You know, that there are others out there doing this and thinking about things very similarly, possibly to what we're thinking about it. So how do we differentiate ourselves? And a lot of that is about like, how quickly are we getting many ideas to market? Small tangent. The, um, the competition side is interesting to me because I've been, I've worked a few companies where I've worked with founders who are like, we don't have competition.

29:38Right. We're the only ones doing this and then fast forward a few years and you're like, sure, all the companies that were your competition that you didn't recognize then that are our shipping great product now. So this may be a tough question, but I think there's always like a sense of we can move faster. Like it's rare that like now we're moving fast as we can. Do you have any kind of heuristic or I don't know kind of got feeling of like knowing and sensing like, where does this team is doing fine versus this team isn't moving as fast as they can? How much time do we spend on what I'd consider optimizations versus like bigger bets?

30:16Right. Like and how long does that does it take for that to happen? Right. Because you know, you've talked to the folks or been in the companies where where you talk about something that by most measures is pretty simple. Like, you know, someone goes heads down for a week or two and gets it done and you talk about it and then, you know, two quarters later, someone mentions it again and you're like, oh, okay, so what are all the things we did in between that time to now? Why that thing seemingly simple thing didn't get done? And I think that's hard to say the product manager because everything we do is all about prioritization and I'm sure there are a bunch of other things that were prioritized.

30:53But they're like these little things that come up periodically or bug fixes. Like, something is broken. You know, how long does it take us to recognize it and actually fix it? Do you have a heuristic and speaking of big bets versus optimizations? I've just how much time slash resources to put into each bucket? Unfortunately, the answer is it depends. Right. If you're working on a business that is 30 years old and has many acquisitions or is very different from a startup, right? Or a growth stage company, I think it just varies. Yeah. That's often what I find. One last question along these lines, that was a reminder, you're chatting.

31:32When you're finding that a team is not delivering as much output as you would think, what have you found works in helping them recognize that and not get defensive and not, you know, have all these excuses for what is happening? Just like help them see what you see. I'll tell you what I do. I don't know that I think books might get defensive sometimes. Yeah, I think. But I'll tell you what I try. For me, the biggest thing is just, you know, if folks are working on a sprint, it's very simply like, what did you deliver this sprint? That's it. Just asking questions. Just ask a bunch of questions.

32:06What did you deliver? And the more questions, okay, fine, but what did you deliver to production? Great. And how long have you been working on that? Like, how long? What was the cycle time? So these questions that are really just, I think, seeking to understand because I understand complexity, right? And so that exists everywhere, but maybe helping folks see that as they're reviewing their own work or their teams work, it was a long way. Yeah, and it comes back to your approach of just focusing the output and not like what they're planning to do, what they've actually done. This episode is brought to you by Atrefs.

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33:15And you can learn what keywords your website ranks for and see how you stack up against your competitors. Visit hrefs .com slash AWT and start improving your website's visibility. That's hrefs .com slash AWT. Shifting a little bit, you've been a PM for a long time since 2010, I believe. Yeah. And a lot of people kind of move out of PM, and so it's really cool to talk to someone that's been in the field for a while. What have you seen in terms of how product may be has changed, the role of product management, the role of product leadership, and also maybe other functions like designer engineering.

33:50Yeah. I think the biggest change for product, kind of macro, is how I'm mainstream. It is that I still find fascinating. The, the getting degrees in product management and going to business school to transition into product management and like the whole discipline and there's a whole business, honestly, around the business of product management, which I find really fascinating and didn't exist. And I think for better or worse, it comes with a lot of good and in some ways I think might have removed some of the corkiness and creativity that probably is required product, but that's probably a different podcast.

34:29So that's one, just macro. In terms of the roles, I think that what we're talking before about roles and responsibilities and and defying those for product managers, I think product managers are increasingly, I think, a bit more technical or expected to be. I think there was a moment where they're technical and then it was, no, no, we're all generalists. And now I think we're going back to PMs need to be more technical. I think designers, the expectation is that there'll be more business oriented, right, design as a means, honestly, to an end. I think that's trending and probably for the better.

35:09I think the best designers I've ever worked with are also like exceptionally savvy business people. And I think engineers are increasingly becoming more product focus, more user focus. So you know, product engineers or something Trello, I think did really well. This idea that great ideas can come from anywhere in the org and any function, I think is really magical. So as you're seeing PMs becoming more technical, I think designers becoming more business oriented, engineers are becoming a lot more product user focus. To me, that's amazing because it means that we're getting closer to what I'd consider like really deep collaboration.

35:45And it's not to say that we're not experts, like there are expertise within that that we expect to focus, but that care for other disciplines, I think is where a lot of magic happens. That's really interesting. When you say PMs getting more technical, when you're hiring, interviewing, what are you looking for, like PMs need to learn to code, how technical you find the... I don't think so. Necessarily, I think a lot more PMs are, a lot more PMs are taking boot camps or coding classes, which I think is all to the good. I don't know that it's a requirement, but there is more of that and I think it's very helpful.

36:21Similarly, a lot more PMs are taking more classes or digging more into data analysis, also really valuable. So, yeah, I don't think it's a requirement. I am not like a technical PM. I don't have a tech background. I think I've been doing it long enough at this point to do okay, but I think it's a benefit. You said that the PM is becoming more of just like a thing with training classes and courses. I did a search once on LinkedIn for how many product managers there? Guess how many PMs there are in the world? That have the title PM in their LinkedIn profile. A lot. I'm guessing a lot. Two million.

37:00That's wild. That's wild. Yeah. There's 800 ,000 just in the US. Wow. That's a large group that's expected. That's huge. Yeah. Back in my I'm Ed Tech days, a friend of mine, her kids were in school and she came in one day or son was in grade school at the time in elementary school and he had a like this, you know, matched to careers, what you see and they had person at a computer, this image. And it was product manager. There was a option for product manager and that's when I knew I was like, okay, this is mainstream. We're about to become consultants. Yeah, he's used to joke. No one grows up and's like, I want to be a product manager when I grew up, but I think it's starting to.

37:42It's starting with a thing. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we're in the topic. I imagine people often ask you for advice on how to get into product management. Do you have any advice there for folks that are listening? They'll maybe want to get into that. There are many ways. Now, I think there are a lot of the typical programs that a lot of the big tech companies have. I think is one way. I think getting into startups as a product manager is a pretty awesome way to get into product because it's just a lot of problem solving. The problem with that is you don't have anyone to teach you the right way, but the product will teach you the right and wrong way if you're with a team that is moving quickly.

38:23So yeah, I still think that's working on smaller products and companies is a great way to get into product management. And part because you'll get to touch all of the functions that are kind of required parts of the product discipline. And I think it's hard to get that experience otherwise. The PM role we haven't talked about this. It's just like very hard and very stressful and mostly sucks in many ways. Yes. And we could talk about that if you want, but it was more of a segue to work -life balance, which I know you have some strong appeal. Yeah. So I don't know, you could take it in a good direction, but just like thoughts on work -life balance, slash how hard the PM role is.

39:01The PM role is really hard. I feel especially now that I'm managing a lot of teams, right? And PMs that a lot of love different levels. I do find that periodically, I remind them with like the core of my being that like, I know this is hard, right? Like it is hard. There are a lot of expectations. You're expected to be competent across many areas all the time. You're expected to have an answer and you're expected to like keep your calm and like not lose your shit. And that's really hard. It just is. It's stressful, right? So I think I spend quite a bit of time with my team, my PMs like helping them understand that I understand that.

39:43And so when we're problem solving, let's probably not solve for everything. That's like focus on one of many things that are expected. So yeah, it's really hard. On work -life balance, as I mentioned to you, of like think about this a lot. I am currently mom. And as you can imagine, like that's a lot to manage at any given time. And so recently when I think about work -life balance, I don't use the word balance. I use optimization, right? It's this question of like, what are you optimizing for right now? Whether it's today or this quarter or this year, with the understanding that I don't think you can have it all at the same time all the time.

40:24And so I'm like increasingly coming to peace with that. Where that's been interesting over the course of my career, it's Chinese with my husband about this yesterday, this thinking about it, was early in my career, I remember when we had big releases, like folks who just were non -stop for a couple of weeks, we would stay in the office late, we would come in early. If it was international, we just probably wouldn't sleep because we wanted to make sure we Q8 everything before we released it. Like, and that was an expected part of the product development life cycle. And there I just did it and it was very exciting and I quite enjoyed it.

41:02But even then, the flip side of it for me was I also, I was a runner back then. So if I was training for a half marathon or a marathon, then like, you know, the next week, I'd probably do my long run in the morning and not start work until 10 a .m. Like, that was my version of balance, right? And I think we're all lucky enough, many of us, excuse me, are lucky enough, especially in tech that a lot of companies kind of get that form of flexibility. So now fast forward 13 years, it's, it is very similar. It's like, I don't, I don't do all of the drop -offs and pickups for the kids. But, you know, there are some weeks where I'm like, this is the week, I'm going to do all of the drop -offs and pickups or this is the day.

41:43And that's felt much healthier for me than this expectation that I'm somehow going to balance it all and everything is going to be equally great or cared for all the time. I think what I'm hearing is essentially, which I really like and agree with is, like sometimes you're just going to have to go sprint and go hard and work really hard and go long hours. And then that doesn't need to last forever. And then when it's not, enjoy that extra time and kind of like build, rebuild and recharge and do the things you got to do. Yeah, that's, that's about right. Yeah, I find the same thing. I find that just like working hard is very correlated with success.

42:23And a lot of times, it's just a lot of long hours and sometimes you can't balance it for periods of time. Right. And it can also be, you know, at different points in your life. Right. So right now at this particular moment of my life, I'm probably not going to go hard at a super early stage startup. Right. Because I believe that you probably need to be in person and working really hard together for a long periods of time. And not everyone feels the sway. I know that. I've had these conversations with lots of friends and colleagues. But so personally, for me, that's probably not the decision I would make at this moment in my life.

43:01Yeah, I get that. Another area I wanted to touch on is remote work and distributed work. I believe most of your career, your remote or you work with remote teams and distributed teams. And that's such an on -trend thing now where a lot of teams are working hybrid, working remotely, working with distributed teams. What have you learned about being successful working with distributed remote teams? Yes, that's my entire career has been with remote or distributed teams. That's right. When I started early my career, I lived abroad for a while. I lived in Shanghai. I had a core team there, but also worked with a distributed team in Europe and Latin America, which meant all kinds of crazy hours and lots of sprints.

43:41We just talked about things that worked well. One, documentation, it's a thing. A synchronous communication, everyone just has to get used to it and better at it. So increasingly just being better communicators, whether it's on a video or written. I think that's just really important. And everyone building up that muscle is really important. For all of the roles I've been in, this notion of what does it mean to have really meaningful and valuable in -person time that can sustain you for the remote and distributed time is really important. I think a lot of what's happened now in COVID and even now, a lot of teams have never met their coworkers.

44:24They don't onboard in person, they don't have events or off -sites as frequently. And I think flexibility is really great, but I think that makes it really hard. And to me, what I've figured out, I think, is that it especially makes it hard to solve hard problems. Like solving a hard problem remotely with folks that you haven't spent in -person time with, that you haven't broken bread with, that you haven't disagreed with in person and built that trust. It's just really hard. In fact, it's much harder. So some of the things I've done, even here, the not worldwide, is periodically when there's a really gnarly problem, I like wave the flag and I say, hey, everyone, why don't we try and get together for two days and hash some of this stuff out.

45:10And then we can go back to our remote lives. And I think folks have been maybe unsurprisingly very open to that because they think they see not only the efficiency, but the carottery that can happen there as opposed to what was happening potentially on a hangout or a Zoom call. What does that event look like? Like, where do you do it? What's roughly an agenda? One, the agenda is pretty tight before we get there. Right, myself or someone else were responsible for making sure that that's a well articulated agenda that we all kind of agree on before we even get there. So I think that's one, I think 48 hours, two nights, right?

45:50And that's important to me because it is the tends to still just be hours in a conference room or a meeting room during the day. But you do need to build in the, and let's go have dinner since we're all in person anyway, or let's have an extended lunch and maybe an extended day. I think that's just really important. And even early in my career, when I was working more internationally, the company I worked for was pretty amazing because two or three times a year, the entire company globally came together for a week or two. And it made a huge difference. And many of the folks that I worked with there are still, you know, friends and mentors.

46:29Are you able to share what was the challenge you're trying to overcome in one of these times? Yeah, I can speak about it generally, which was just we had a change in strategy. And we need to land a couple of core decisions about what we might build. And there are lots of documents and lots of conversations and the back to the velocity of decision -making, like remotely, that can be really hard because with time zones, someone sends a doc, you comment on it, you get to the other day, but at the end of the week and so days and days have passed and we still haven't landed it. And people have really strong opinions.

47:03Obviously, that's something that big. So it's like, nope, okay, great. We have like, and not everyone could make it. Most people could, and the folks who could not were, were yes, on a screen. Was there anything specific in that offsite that helped you get to a resolution? In that particular one, it was one very cross -functional, and the unlock there was giving the data person the space to educate all of us. That was it. It was like, you have the floor to educate. Yeah, I find that's often the solution, as people just don't have all the same information that they're basing their decision on. So make sure everyone starts with the same foundation.

47:48Awesome. And it comes back to your push to get data integrated into every team, make that part of the Ford Quad triad. That chair is the chair. Anything else around remote work or distributed work that you found to be incredibly impactful or important? Well, the flexibility of it, I'm sure you've talked about with others. That is really important. I do think that the Trello in Alaska, and I think did this really well, is having standards around a couple things. The biggest one, I think, was overlapping work hours. So everyone had general flexibility, but there were some set of hours where everyone needed to be online at the same time for the most part every day.

48:30And that made a big difference. Onboarding happened in person. I think that in -person onboarding for new folks is really important, especially for everyone. For any new person to an organization, I think how we work culturally, having a contact that you can reach out to, all of that, I think is really crucial. I'm definitely of the so much of my early learning was in person. And I have no idea how we're going to replicate that in a non -office setting. It's just really hard. How long do you try to have that person in the office for onboarding? Is it like a week? Is it a few days? A week. Shifting a little bit, just a few more questions.

49:12Okay. You mentioned you worked in China. You also worked in the UK for a while, obviously in the US now. What have you found to be some of the biggest differences in maybe the product culture or just culture in general working in these different areas? The confusion around what product management is universal. That's like not specific to US, I think, and the fact that it's changing, that I think was the same. I don't know that I found that many differences in terms of how we approached goal setting, all very similar, the need for urgency. All those principles, I think, are the same no matter where you are.

49:54What I experienced when I started in Shanghai was the feeling that the product manager was expected to have all the answers. As you can imagine, it was really overwhelming. I remember because I was young and I didn't know that much about product management and I didn't finally did not have all the answers. I spent a lot of time helping the team help me get answers. That was a little bit of a culture shift in our team at the time. I actually think that's carried me through my entire career, which is trying to figure out how to share the product management load. We're equally responsible for what we're building.

50:39That was a good unintentional learning that I think has been really important for my career. I think that part of that learning that I've had obviously here and in London as well was the figuring out how to make room for creativity. In Shanghai and also in London at the time, this was a decade now. Many things have changed since then. There just didn't seem to be as much room for ideas to come from anywhere, which I think is also related to what I've seen before. Making space for people across functions to share ideas and then across geographies to share ideas, especially in companies where English might have been the primary language, but most of the employees were not native English speakers.

51:29There was a lot of time, I think, that I felt that I wanted to spend and I did on just creating space for people to comfortably share their ideas, honestly. That for me was really formative because I think it's really impacted how I've approached my entire career and I don't know that I would have had I not had those experiences. I was browsing through your LinkedIn post and you said something just like that, and LinkedIn have just had formative that experience with us for you. I know it's not something people can just like, I'm going to go to China and work for us, start it, but it sounds like you recommend working at companies of different cultures because it feels like it kind of like is a lens.

52:10I also think I'm my family, I'm Jamaican, I'm a Jamaican, I'm a Grant, and so all of our experiences inform like how we perform our jobs and how we think about problems and being able to expand that, yes, I would recommend it to every and anyone that gets the opportunity. I think it's really important as product managers because I think it's really hard to be a product manager if you cannot empathize with the people and problems that you're solving for and being out of your comfort zone, obviously, is one way to learn empathy. I love that. One final question is there before we get to a very exciting lighting room, not to not to not count those questions, are there just any frameworks or processes or methods that you've found to be very valuable in your career as a product leader that you would want to share?

53:07The question I ask myself and I ask everyone who's in my life probably either whether it's on my team or when folks friends talk to me, I always ask what are you optimizing for? That's the question. What are you optimizing for and it's the short medium -long term in product, but what are you optimizing for today? This quarter, this year, whatever time horizon. And I think that can be just a really illuminating way of thinking about, obviously, like just how are you spending your time? And I think it works for product as well. Every time you talk about okay, we are a goal setting. Ultimately, it is what are we optimizing for for some period of time?

53:48And I think that always for me, whether personally or in product, it's very illuminating. I love that. I'm pretty sure I've asked that question a thousand times myself. One thing I find those people get annoyed with you, just like, okay, you're such a such a pimp, just like, I know, but it works. It does work. But it works. What are some instances where you deploy this question? Like, is it in a meeting where someone's asking you a question or just like, what are we optimizing for here? I mean, I asked this question all the time. I asked this question to my husband. Like, what are we opt to see?

54:17I'm sure it loves. He was a pre -empt too, so he gets it. Okay, okay, that's helpful. He gets it. I asked this to my five -year -old, honestly. Five -year -old. We talk about it a lot. Like, now we're going to quarterly planning all of us, and now we have information from Q1. So let's look at it and say, okay, given what we know now, what are we optimizing for? Because it might not be the same thing we did before with new information, or it may be. And that's usually just then helping us get better at figuring out, obviously, how we're doing trade -offs, right? Because the first point isn't clear, then the trade -offs aren't clear.

54:59Yeah. The other question is, what problem are we trying to solve here? I feel like I need to make mugs and put these on some mugs for product managers. Well, with that, we've reached our very exciting lightning round. I've got six questions for you. Are you ready? Oh, yes. I don't think I prepped this, but I'm ready. Yes. Okay. Well, it'll be the most fun, then. What are two or three books that you recommend most to other people? These are not product books. I recommend Anak Mathevaz. You will hear Thunder, a book of poetry that is excellent. I recommend almost anything by James Baldwin, the fire next time, I most recently read, and on back to software, high output management.

55:43What are some favorite movies or TV shows? They've recently watched, they really enjoyed. I am really into K -Dramas right now. It's like a Korean. Korean dramas right now. Crash landing on you is, you know, it's great. It's a love story. Wow, it's wonderful. Very out of the box, I love it. What's a favorite interview question that you like to ask? For product managers, we think about product in the context of artist, scientist, general, general manager. Where do you spike? Artist, scientist, general manager. Interesting. And is there one you ideally look for the answer or depends on the role you're hiring for?

56:23It totally depends on the composition of my team. Interesting. Cool. I like that. Different tried. What's a favorite product you recently discovered that you love? Ark by the browser company. I think they're a product that's clearly having a lot of fun. And you can feel it. And the product, when I first opened it, they have an unveiling experience, which isn't something you'd expect of a browser. And there was something really delightful about it. Yeah, imagine you've heard the interview with Josh. What a guy. What a cool product. I love it. We have a whole hour and a half on it. So check that out if anyone wants to learn more about Ark.

57:02What is something relatively minor you've changed in your product development process that has had a tremendous impact in your team's ability to execute? Helping product teams try as product design engineering and data understand their shared roles and responsibilities. Awesome. Call back to our previous discussion. And final question. What's a pro tip for someone trying to use the knot? Or one of the other properties? Good question. Two things. But one, the big one is probably checking out the knot worldwide marketplace. It is the most comprehensive two -sided marketplace to find your wedding vendors to create your wedding team.

57:42And you'll find that they're really cool, small businesses on there. Awesome. I'm going to go check that out. Nikita, thank you so much for being here. I'm going to go ask my wife, but she's optimizing for and read some stuff on the phone. Wish me luck. You said she's pregnant, right? She's optimizing for creating a human problem. Yeah, that seems right. Okay, I'm not going to ask. Two final questions. Working folks find you if they want to reach out and learn more about what you're and how can listeners be useful to you? And on Twitter and LinkedIn, easy enough to find me. I am very responsive, actually.

58:18At least I try to be when folks reach out on anything product related. And ask me questions. I think that's always helpful. If you have other ways of doing things, I'd love to hear about it. You mentioned also that you're doing some angel investing. Is there anything you're looking for specifically that you want people to ping you about? I am doing some angel investing, maybe a little bit less so recently, but I'm starting to ramp it up again. So there are any early stage seed or pre -seed companies out there. You can ping me. Amazing. Nikita, thank you again. So much for being here. All right.

58:50Thanks a lot, Lenny. Bye, everybody. Bye. 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 a leaving review, as that really helps other listeners find the podcast. You can find all past episodes or learn more about the show at Lenny's Podcast dot com. See you in the next episode.