YouSaid · the spoken record

Christian Idiodi

lines on the record: 106
first: 2023-12-21
most recent: 2023-12-21
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Says, what do you mean? I said, Well, you know, is it first of all safe for me to do this with the team? So I go back to the team and I say, look, I'm going to try to see what the C was trying to say again. He's giving me permission for you to speak freely and candidly. I want your honest opinion as to what was more effective and why.”
2023-12-21 · Lenny's Podcast · The essence of product management | Christian Idiodi (SVPG) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The number one reason most people don't give good coaching is because they've never experienced good coaching themselves. Most people can only give to other people what has been given to them, what experiences they've seen, I was in an executive meeting with a CEO and he gets up in the meeting and he just starts screaming and cussing at everybody, just like growing up. And I said, whoa, whoa. I said, you know, can we talk outside? You know, they take him outside. I was like, first of all, I don't even think I can walk with you anymore given this environment you're creating, but I need to understand why you are talking to your team like that. And he says to me, he says, Christian, well, you know, my boss used to scream at me like this. And look at me. I'm now a CEO. I got it. I understand it. They are grown-ups. They can understand it too. And I said, well, tell me what you're trying to communicate. And he explains it to me and stuff. And I said, is it okay if I show you an alternative way of communicating that?”
2023-12-21 · Lenny's Podcast · The essence of product management | Christian Idiodi (SVPG) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's something that is everyday. That's That's like the day Managers like him, and if I think about high performing teams in the world, and you can pick spots, it's one of those artists. They have coaches and managers like this and everyday thing. And the idea is that, you know, when I explain this to people, I say, you know, like doing product management is a product manager's job, but getting better at product management is the manager's job. It's the coach's job. And people tend to misunderstand how that dynamic works. You see, if you're playing a game, you're in the game. The coaches are on the sideline watching you play the game and getting you better at playing the game. You know, your job may be to kick or pass the ball and get, you know, you need a competence level, but somebody's job is every day looking for ways for you to be better at your job.”
2023-12-21 · Lenny's Podcast · The essence of product management | Christian Idiodi (SVPG) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This topic is probably near and dear to my heart because I mean, there are many ways that I think Our corporate structures have failed. Creating high performance and stability in people, and I think one of them is actually in role of leadership. And by leadership, the key component I often point to is coaching. This idea of what truly is the job of a leader. And I tell people, yeah, it's context and culture at the highest level, like why we, where are we going, how do we organize ourselves to get there, what's important, just kinds of things, and the environment in which we do it. But there's a people element because you recognize that you want an outcome and you need people working together to that outcome. So I now have to staff those people. I now have to, you know, hire and train them and equip them. And then I appoint them to what those things are. But many of those things are one-off, like meaning I create a vision, I create a strategy. There are some things, you know, I hire a person.”
2023-12-21 · Lenny's Podcast · The essence of product management | Christian Idiodi (SVPG) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I said there's nothing better in learning how to solve a problem than trying to solve the problem. You will get all the answers, the research, the failure, the mistakes, you know, all the evidence. You know the difference between what people say versus what they do. You validate and test. I mean, because at the end of the day, what is statistically relevant? Like, you know, solving the problem is the clearest indication that we've solved the problem and that we know how to solve the problem then. And so, yeah, very powerful technically.”
2023-12-21 · Lenny's Podcast · The essence of product management | Christian Idiodi (SVPG) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You do things at blue scale and they do things that do scale, right? And that's, and it's so powerful when you discover how to do things that don't scale. When you actually know, right? Because it's the power of technology is just the beauty of what it can do at scale.”
2023-12-21 · Lenny's Podcast · The essence of product management | Christian Idiodi (SVPG) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Why? Because you got McDonald's probably until today using this product to open up every new store. Une Starbucks went to a global contract. We say, well, Developing the customers that have the problem. At the same time, I was discovering and delivering a solution to that problem.”
2023-12-21 · Lenny's Podcast · The essence of product management | Christian Idiodi (SVPG) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Improve this. I always tell this to people I never wrote the requirements, documents, I never wrote a story. I never, so the designer is thinking, how can we improve the end-to-end experience? Okay, we need a recruiter experience, a job seeker experience, we need a funnel. Oh, we need to build a scheduling tool so that they can scale the interview. Oh, what about notification? Maybe text message. Oh, we can send them a map so that they can know how to get to the, I mean, all of these things, because they were involved from the very beginning in defining the problem, they were immersed in the solution to the problem. It takes us about eight and a half, almost nine months to build this. When we lodge this product in its first 90 days, it books $32 million.”
2023-12-21 · Lenny's Podcast · The essence of product management | Christian Idiodi (SVPG) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To what attract people when we come back from that, you know, we're saying that is not our customer. Never again, we are never doing airports. That's a pain. Around this time, it was the holiday season. So we reached out to the person at Missy's. We told him about I walk with McDonald's to say, oh, we'll try this. I started working with them. You can imagine through this, the engineer is thinking, how can I use technology”
2023-12-21 · Lenny's Podcast · The essence of product management | Christian Idiodi (SVPG) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“With their staffing group, and they tell us the people that work at an international airport have to match the demographics of the travelers. We say, say what? Yeah, we have 13% Chinese-speaking travelers. We need 13% Chinese-speaking employees. We say, sorry. You know, we've got 5% Korean-speaking. I mean, my team is in LA, we're in Chinatown, we are speaking about trying to recruit people to come and walk at an airport. If we expect like 10 people to show up, only one person shows up. We start calling job seekers up. Like, what's going on? They say, do you know what it means to walk at an airport? First, I wake up at 5 o'clock. I drive to the employee parking lot. I get into a bus. Then I go through security. There was not like TSA pre-check back then, you know, then if I want to break, I go through security again and then you pay me minimum wage. You know, it took us close to three months to staff this. We had to negotiate with the union to raise the price to like $15 an hour.”
2023-12-21 · Lenny's Podcast · The essence of product management | Christian Idiodi (SVPG) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I get an email the next Monday morning from the contact at Starbucks. He copied Howard Schultz, then CEO of Starbucks, the email read, this guy's just saved our butts. I sent it to my CEO, but then I said, you know what? I only know that I can help on McDonald's and the Starbucks. But that doesn't mean I have a product, you know, but I now have enough of problem definition. I reached out to the head of marketing, the head of sales. I said, tell us who has this problem you've come across because we need to work with more people to try to uncover a solution that is scalable, maintainable, reliable, or works for our business. You know, weirdly enough, the next opportunity we had was the Los Angeles International Airport. They opened up a new terminal, you know, and they said, we need like 200 people to manage all the stalls in the new terminal. And we're like 200 people. We just hired close to 800. We got this. We go to LA for the briefing.”
2023-12-21 · Lenny's Podcast · The essence of product management | Christian Idiodi (SVPG) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I take my designer, my engineer, we go to San Francisco. We're out there recruiting because this way it was based. I mean, we have to get a whole hotel, hire people. We are walking all the channels we knew, walked in here. Remember, we don't have any software, not technology. The design and we're doing this manually, Excel spreadsheets, phones, emails in that way in one week. Starbucks hires 784 people.”
2023-12-21 · Lenny's Podcast · The essence of product management | Christian Idiodi (SVPG) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't know I have a product. I just know I was able to help one person at McDonald's. But I feel like I have enough leading. So I called up my friend at Starbucks and I said, hey man, remember the problem we talked about? He's like, yeah. It's like, I would love to help you solve it. He said, okay, what do you have in mind? I said, well, I think we need to send you about 3,000 people to interview. He said, 3,000 people. I totally only need 800. I said, you know, in this industry, most people don't show up for interviews, right? He said, oh, my goodness, you know our industry well. I like this. I'm going to dig this up. I think we'll give you this contract.”
2023-12-21 · Lenny's Podcast · The essence of product management | Christian Idiodi (SVPG) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We go the next day, and at the end of the day, he hires about 45 to 50 people. Comes to us, he shakes our hand. It's like, whoa, the quality was excellent. All my recruiters were engaged. The day was smooth. I look at how successful we are. It's like, I want to use you for every new McDonald's I open in the area.”
2023-12-21 · Lenny's Podcast · The essence of product management | Christian Idiodi (SVPG) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We want me to set in this mind like 200 people. Like, I mean, we need to go bigger. So we're stumbling the office. We call them the McDonald's guy. Can we try again next Monday? And he's like, do I only pay for the people I hire? We're like, sure. It's like, oh, go ahead and kill yourself on this. I mean, it's a pain. We've been trying all kinds of things for years. Now, we start doubling down on efforts. We start calling back all the people that didn't show up for interviews. Like, what's going on? Did you get lost? Don't you want to job? I mean, what's wrong with you? We start figuring out what else worked well for us the last time. You know, what wasted our money? How about what was the cost to acquire a person? And, you know, we spend a week doubling our efforts on those channels. We probably have about 120, 130 people on the list. The Sunday beforehand, we start calling them up, you know, like, please show up. Don't embarrass us. Don't you want a job? Do you need that address? Shall I call you reminder? Set to your alarm. I mean, we're trying all the techniques to try to get more people there.”
2023-12-21 · Lenny's Podcast · The essence of product management | Christian Idiodi (SVPG) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Nine o'clock, we expect like three people to show up for interviews. Nobody shows up. You know, 10 o'clock, another three, like one person shows up. I mean, we go to the end of the day, less than 20 people show up. This model only has like four or five people. We're like, we suck at this. This is terrible. We go to the manager, like, let's go and apologize for wasting your day and stuff. He starts to laugh. We're like, what's going on? He said, look, I forgot to tell you. Folks in this industry don't even show up to interviews. This is like, we at McDonald's, we pay minimum wage. People will leave us for 25 more cents an hour. They will leave us for a job that is one block closer to their house or like less than a mile closer to their home. Now, the engineer is with us and he's thinking about it, like, this is really interesting. Half of the people showed up. He hired like one in five. If you really want to solve this problem, like playing lots of averages.”
2023-12-21 · Lenny's Podcast · The essence of product management | Christian Idiodi (SVPG) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And if you like them, you will hire them. So that seems fairly easy. It's like, how do I pay for this? You know, we took a swag. Like, maybe you pay us for everybody. That you hire. Oh, I don't see much risk to that. This is great. Like, oh, okay. I mean, we have no sense of what to do. We are literally googling how do people find a job at McDonald's? You know, like we go to colleges, we are sticking up flyers, we are putting ads in the newspaper back then, we are looking at different techniques to try to get people into a funnel and interest by posting on cringes list or things like that. You know, at the end of the week, we get about 40 people that are interested to come to the interview. That feels good for our first try. You know, we call the manager up and we say, look, on Monday, we will send you 40 people to interview, you know. This is great. You know, Monday, I think my designer, my engineer, we are on site with the manager.”
2023-12-21 · Lenny's Podcast · The essence of product management | Christian Idiodi (SVPG) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We're like, whoa, we didn't think about this new construction, a new store opening. They need to hire a lot of people quickly. So I said, thank you very much. I give him my business card. He gave me his. We jumped back in the car. We just kept driving. We went to the mall. We started talking to people there. We talked to a manager at Macy's. And she said, oh, look, we hired 20,000 people in the holiday season. Macy's? Yeah, it's like nights, weekend, sheeping, stuff like this. We started hiring in the summer because of how painful it is. Now all we're doing here is just validating that this is a real problem. You know, like other people will have the problem. So we go back to the office. We'll bring some like, how will someone even go about solving this problem? We're thinking this was like, we're not really sure, but like that McDonald's guy was very desperate.”
2023-12-21 · Lenny's Podcast · The essence of product management | Christian Idiodi (SVPG) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“These people, and they need to hire those quickly. I say, Well, who else has this problem? You know, we're trying to throw out guests. I'm like, what are we talking about? Let's go out. Everybody jumps in my car and we start driving around. And this is where we're doing our product work from. You know, we're talking in the car just out of the building. We see a new construction site for a new McDonald's kind of coming soon. And we are curious. We're like, well, let's go find out. We start talking to people on sites. Fortunately, the operations director is on site. And we ask him. We say, tell us about opening up a new McDonald's. He says, well, do you know we need like 120 people on opening day? We're like, whoa, for McDonald's? I mean, really 120 people? He's like, yeah, do you know that most of the people in this industry don't show up to work on the very first day? And every day when construction, we're losing money. So the second, the bathrooms, restrooms are done. We want to work.”
2023-12-21 · Lenny's Podcast · The essence of product management | Christian Idiodi (SVPG) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, imagine if this breaks out in the news and all of that. But more importantly, we still need to get all your paperwork. So all these people are going to quit. And we will have a new bakery without employees. And my first question to him as a product guy is like, wow, would you give me a million dollars to solve this problem? And it's like, no, seriously. I was like 300,000. I'm showing out numbers. He's like, maybe. I said, wow, you have my attention. I cannot go to my CEO. I tell him the call, I grab a designer and an engineer. I just say, hey, look, I love to work on a little project with you all if you have some time. I kind of debrief them on the call. Now, the first thing I have to do is to try to define the problem, identify problems. What really is the problem going on? Yeah, we're breaking it down. We're talking through this. We say, well, at the end of the day, Starbucks needs to hire like 800 people quickly. Because, you know, I mean, we can't fix getting everybody's paperwork, but they're going to lose.”
2023-12-21 · Lenny's Podcast · The essence of product management | Christian Idiodi (SVPG) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh boy, I tell the example of kind of solving a problem when I was at the staffing company, Snag a job. They do hourly jobs and help people find kind of their first job or an hourly job. And I actually get a call here from the head of global staffing at Starbucks. Now, he golfed me. You can see the benefit of this technique because I'm the person he calls when he has problems. I've used this technique at a previous company. He didn't even know I was at a new company. And he calls me up and he says, you know, Krishna, I have a problem. I say, well, don't we all have problems? You know, I said, well, you know, we just bought a bakery in the San Francisco Bay Area. And as we're doing the paperwork to kind of take over this company or this acquisition, we realized that close to 800 of the employees may be undocumented workers. And I said, wow, that does sound like a problem.”
2023-12-21 · Lenny's Podcast · The essence of product management | Christian Idiodi (SVPG) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's right. That's right. If one person says, I don't want this, wants this, another person wants this, you don't do it. That's how you know you do the minimum. All 25 have to want the same thing. If one person, you just don't do it at all. And the reason that's powerful is because if I come to you and I say, hey, it's missing this feature. I say, well, yeah, 25 people that look like you that are very happy without it. You see, that's how if you think about what you do in a review, you see the five stars and you instantly, oh, that's good enough. But if you have a question, what do you do? You kind of double click on the review to read. And that's how people get convinced. There's this social influence of like, well, you know, I mean, in school, he likes the steakhouse. I should like, you know, he's fine with this not being there. So I should be fine with it. So your references are super powerful in more than any company, in influencing consumers on what they should choose and not choose.”
2023-12-21 · Lenny's Podcast · The essence of product management | Christian Idiodi (SVPG) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For me, the fact that you will not have a product failure because you have a natural pivot out, meaning if I can't find 25 people that love steak, why in the world am I building a steakhouse? So if you don't find enough people that love this problem and are willing to help you, you're just like, this is not a problem, won't solve it. But more importantly, you really start to get it's the fastest part to product market fit, the clearest definition for me because I know where my product is ready. You know, when I've dotted those eyes and crossed those T's in that way.”
2023-12-21 · Lenny's Podcast · The essence of product management | Christian Idiodi (SVPG) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I've only lunch to put up that says super fast but difficult to read because the technology team said there was no way to change the font on something and it was just going to be difficult to read. And you know what? Everybody did when they got the product. Oh my goodness. All right. It is also difficult to read. It matched their expectations in some way. So what I do here is I learn how to sell the product with this technique. I learn how to market the product because I have real people that at the time we're not making assumptions. What's the best way to market this? I would like to learn. How would you find this? Does this language resonate with you? Does this properly describe the menu? So that's kind of what you're doing when you use a technique like this. It feels heavy to people, but that's kind of part of the practice of it. You know, if you do this a whole lot, you get really comfortable and involving you're working with your customers to solve it.”
2023-12-21 · Lenny's Podcast · The essence of product management | Christian Idiodi (SVPG) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, if I ask Lenny, what do you feel about this product? And he says, Well, it's cool and it's, you know, very sleek and very nice. The marketing department says, ah, we don't like those terms. You know, those are two, we want to call it a comprehensive and, you know, and when you go out to sell your product, people are going to be disappointed because the expectations are created by what's on the box. I only market exactly what customers I have never been surprised about what customers will say when I release the product. Because in this technique, I already get their feedback. And so I'm going to put exactly what Lenny said on the box. Hey, this product's cool and sleek and easy to use.”
2023-12-21 · Lenny's Podcast · The essence of product management | Christian Idiodi (SVPG) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's part of why I need 25 in B2C, you know, and don't get me wrong if I can convince 25 people in there, I may have a marketing product and a charismatic marketing product. If that's all I needed to do was a good message and charisma to get people on it. The good better thing of this is that you can tackle risk very early because you can involve many other parts of your organization, markets themselves.”
2023-12-21 · Lenny's Podcast · The essence of product management | Christian Idiodi (SVPG) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That these customers that target customers are willing to put their reputation on the line and pay a reference. That's my indication.”
2023-12-21 · Lenny's Podcast · The essence of product management | Christian Idiodi (SVPG) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Until then, he's like, My goodness, this is the best steak house in the world. You know, it's like, I'm just gonna write about it, you know, and I'm gonna get when I get 25 people that have all, it's not the steakhouse, they love it enough because this is where you really get the shifting value. Because if I say, let it, go rent me a review, a five-star review, like, I don't know if I feel comfortable about why not. You see, I'm really going to get deeper feedback because people will say or do anything just to avoid hurting our feelings or for us to get out of your face. So it'd be like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll give you a five-star review. But when I say do it, you're like, well, you know, I have this hesitation. Why? That's really where great discovery comes. But it's had to do in a silo. You know, you have to be immersed with the person that has the problem. So put up market fit is when you kind of iterated in this discovery, you've discovered and delivered something so meaningful.”
2023-12-21 · Lenny's Podcast · The essence of product management | Christian Idiodi (SVPG) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Get my hands on the Apple 16. They may feel a little irrational, but those are the kind of people you're looking for. People that believe they have a problem. So it's like you would try any steakhouse, in my example. You're just like, I love steak. I don't care if there are reviews or not. Like, I'll try it. And what I'm trying to do here is I'm saying, okay, Lenny lost steak. He wants to try steak house. And I'm good to see Lenny. I'm trying to build the best steakhouse here. create a menu that you absolutely love are you willing to tell people about it that could be you know video testimonial writes a review stuff like that and you know it's okay lenny if you don't love the first iteration of it and stuff like that i will i want to hear your feedback i want you to walk with me um in ensuring that i build the best steak house here right and that's kind of the idea so i'm going to you know walk with 25 people that that look like you and i'm gonna keep tweaking in this sense iterating on the product and the menu”
2023-12-21 · Lenny's Podcast · The essence of product management | Christian Idiodi (SVPG) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If I was thinking about how I will do this, so I mean, pick a problem to solve, first of all, I have to know who I'm solving the problem for in some indication. And I want to validate that this is actually a problem you do have. And I'm looking for a certain type of person. These early adopters in our world are broken up to technologies and L evangelists, technologies could be, you know, I love the new iPhone 16 is coming out and it's going to have five cameras and I write an article and subtech review board super fast, super slick, all the design. You just love new technology. You always jump on new technology. And El Evangelists could be someone that says, oh my, I look great with the iPhone 15. It has three cameras. I will look phenomenal with the iPhone 16. So I'm going to go stand in line at the Apple store for three hours or overnight because I just can't wait to.”
2023-12-21 · Lenny's Podcast · The essence of product management | Christian Idiodi (SVPG) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You're likely to adopt this. So, in every app I have ever put on the App Store, on the day I launched the app in the App Store, there are 25 five-star reviews. Will never lunch an app and be like, let's hope Lenny loves it. Let's see who the first person to doubt on the very first day of launching the app, they are 25. And that's then, so I will know I am not ready until I have achieved 25 people that have told me, walked with me and said, I am now ready to put my reputation on the line. Sometimes I might need to walk with 30 people or 50 people because, you know, the output is 25 reference customers, you know, because if Lenny's like, I don't love it enough or I don't feel comfortable, you know, I'm not going to customize for Letty. I'm going to find my single target market, talk to more people. But if I get 25, I have achieved product market stat.”
2023-12-21 · Lenny's Podcast · The essence of product management | Christian Idiodi (SVPG) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There have been studies to validate some of these numbers. I think Ellie, IBM kind of struggled selling those super computers. And if you're buying a million dollar computer, someone says, hey, do you want to buy a million? You're like, I don't know. I mean, is there anybody else that has bought it? Should I be the first? And there was this common question of like, what would you think for you to buy it? And someone says, hey, if I see five or six people that look like me already have this, then I feel confident making the argument to my company, we should jump on it. And it's like, so how do I create the first five to six? And you can see a lot of the validation on B2C in some of the things you might see in the app store or like Yelp or those places. My idea here is if you found a steakhouse with 25 five-star reviews.”
2023-12-21 · Lenny's Podcast · The essence of product management | Christian Idiodi (SVPG) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I do a lot of work in Africa now, work in Nigeria as like a job board that helps people with kind of a job on HR replacement and advisory too as well. I'm actually working on another app around the NDA and protecting high assets individuals in some ways. So, you know, kind of every year I find a problem like that with solving and I Practice doing the work of discovery with a team of people.”
2023-12-21 · Lenny's Podcast · The essence of product management | Christian Idiodi (SVPG) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If I were to create last calendar, up to like 205 products I have worked on or participated in creating my career. And I tried to build a new product every year from scratch. It's kind of a crazy thing about me. My friends know what I want from my bed days, a problem, what's solving. And I like to go from IGA to revenue in a setup. And I test all of these techniques in this way. And everybody knows my favorite technique is if we find a”
2023-12-21 · Lenny's Podcast · The essence of product management | Christian Idiodi (SVPG) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What to solve a problem? Get out of your building. Get out of the assumptions. Get out of the opinions. Immerse yourself. Find someone who has the problem. Stick with them until you discover a solution for this problem. And you're going to do that. The part of why I love this technique, the two biggest reasons, I think the first is if I cannot find a certain number of people that have this problem. My goodness, it might not be a problem, but solve it. I have never had a put up failure using this technique.”
2023-12-21 · Lenny's Podcast · The essence of product management | Christian Idiodi (SVPG) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And deliver and develop who has the problem, the customer. I want to discover who has the problem. At the same time, discover and deliver a solution to this problem. The idea here is that if you really want to solve a problem, get out of your building. Go spend time with someone that has the problem and don't leave until you solve the problem. People talk about why we had such a record time to the COVID vaccine. Sure, technology has improved. Our research has improved. But if you think about it, we had the highest number of volunteers for vaccination in the history of any vaccine in the history of time. Why? Did we have to look for someone with COVID? Like, no, they were literally all around us. Like, we were all like the research was immersed in the environment of the problem. They could start. And so this is often what I call, it's almost like pressure cooked discovery in some ways. If you truly...”
2023-12-21 · Lenny's Podcast · The essence of product management | Christian Idiodi (SVPG) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And that a group of people have to capture the value that was created. So what's happening here is that it is constantly the job of product teams. The reason they lose influence is because salespeople are having to sell a product. You see? So they are like forcing back, I need this and I need this. But if you came to me and said, you know, I want to buy steak and I say, let me show you 20 people that look like you that recommend this steak. My job as a salesperson is very easy. You know, I'm just like, hey, you should eat here. Everybody that is like you know love steak, they all eat here. So product teams fail at this contract to an organization when they don't create powerful reference customers. So it's by far my favorite technique. And the way this technique works is you want to discover.”
2023-12-21 · Lenny's Podcast · The essence of product management | Christian Idiodi (SVPG) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so the whole essence for me of this technique is to create those fast people, those reference customers. You know, if you think about how companies make the shift to becoming like sales-led or operations led, almost all companies start product-led. The product is fast. You know, you kind of build something and it's like, yeah, it's going. Let's hire salespeople and marketing people and operational people to do it. What's really happened is that the product team created the first customers.”
2023-12-21 · Lenny's Podcast · The essence of product management | Christian Idiodi (SVPG) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Or something, the question is how many positive reviews would you have to see to jump and say, let's go try this one? There are some things inherent in kind of, if you look at Jeffrey Moore's adoption curve and those kinds of models in here, most people don't want to be the first to try things. But you're likely to try things if other people that look like you have accepted it or define it as good.”
2023-12-21 · Lenny's Podcast · The essence of product management | Christian Idiodi (SVPG) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And for me, if we think about you do a lot of interviews with founders and entrepreneurs and, you know, you're going to have people that they find a market with an idea and they jump in. But if you think at the core of some of these founder-inspired businesses where the founder will say, well, I had a problem, you know, and it was their problem. And they focus on solving the problem. And then they got their friends on it. And so it's almost like this idea that if they were their own first reference customer, they were so close to the problem, immersed in the environment of the problem, solved it in a compelling way enough where we were like there are more people like me. And, you know, it's like if I said to you like, let me let's go to a steakhouse, you know, find me a new steakhouse around you. You might go online and Google and you see a steakhouse with one review. You know, how do you feel about that? I don't know. What kind of, you know, maybe other people don't want to try this. You see two reviews. You're like, maybe it's the chef and their spouse.”
2023-12-21 · Lenny's Podcast · The essence of product management | Christian Idiodi (SVPG) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The Holy Grail of Product Work. Really, a reference customer This is somebody that has used your solution or your product. Loves it enough Tell people about it. I kind of described the walk of the put up team to solve problems in a way that customers love and a way that works for our business. The ultimate definition for me today of the love that somebody has for our product is they are willing to put their reputation on the line by telling people about it.”
2023-12-21 · Lenny's Podcast · The essence of product management | Christian Idiodi (SVPG) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And what people say is often different from what they do. And our job is to actually solve the problem, which is what core of value is in a meaningful way and often overlooked because, you know, we checked the box on our roadmap item. So the most important, because that's to the point of the certificate of appreciation, what you get in return, that's the ultimate outcome. Really value.”
2023-12-21 · Lenny's Podcast · The essence of product management | Christian Idiodi (SVPG) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, is this what people will buy? You just as you, it's valuable. And so, you know, often when people ask me, like, why does the product manager seem to kind of play like a core leadership role on a team, like almost like the quarterback? It's not that they are most special in solving the problem that the designer or the engineer, but they are answering a question that determines if we should be working on this in the first place. So value is often the hardest thing to solve and the most to be overlooked. We often see bad patterns where companies will say, yes, we write a test. And, you know, with 300 users and they all scored it 84% or 90%, they love it in that way. I said, well, just because somebody can use your product doesn't mean that they will buy it. Just because they can use it doesn't mean they will choose it. Just because they can use it doesn't mean that they will actually use it.”
2023-12-21 · Lenny's Podcast · The essence of product management | Christian Idiodi (SVPG) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My goodness, value. Value is probably, it is the most important and the most overlooked. And the big driver for that is often because of the operating model of teams. Teams are often given roadmaps of projects and futures to go build and deliver. If that's the case, you actually really don't need a product manager. Because they are going to assume value if the boss told me to build this, I cannot say, should we build this?”
2023-12-21 · Lenny's Podcast · The essence of product management | Christian Idiodi (SVPG) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right, it is you're trying to uncover a solution and you know you've solved the problem when you get those two things something customers love they give you something back and our business can support it in some ways and I'm calling out like these are the different risks in that kind of taxonomy how we call the things you have to tackle and it's a team spot and so there are these four risks of should we build it you know people use it will people buy it will our customers support it or our business support it and you're trying to answer those questions with a designer and a product engineer”
2023-12-21 · Lenny's Podcast · The essence of product management | Christian Idiodi (SVPG) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And what an amazing job there's just no greater, you know, I cannot think of a better discipline with such inherent permission to solve problems on behalf of someone. And you have to do it well enough that they give you something back in return. That's kind of the real essence of it. And that's the, I always call like a certificate of appreciation. And it could be in the form of revenue, engagement, loyalty, reference, all of those things. That's the real essence of this job. If it's not fun, you're probably not doing it right. If it's not hard, you're probably also not doing it right.”
2023-12-21 · Lenny's Podcast · The essence of product management | Christian Idiodi (SVPG) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Product teams do solve a problem in a way customers will love and in a way that works for a business. It's why the product manager gets all the wrap-up. If everything goes great, a great team effort, if everything goes wrong, they blame the put up manager. It's because people hold them accountable to results. Nobody wants to work on something. Nobody went it in the first place. And your job is to ensure that we are working on something people want in the first place. And it is such an amazing role. I try to explain to people that the really essence of this job is that you wake up on behalf of someone else to solve a problem for them.”
2023-12-21 · Lenny's Podcast · The essence of product management | Christian Idiodi (SVPG) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I kind of mentioned before product manager is in a team spot. So they work as part of a team to uncover a solution, what building. And every time you solve a problem, there's inherent risk involved. There's the risk of, will people buy this or will they choose it? Or will they choose to use it? Which is all a value type of risk. There's the risk of can they use it, which is a usability type of risk, the risk that we can build in to have the skills to build it or the time to build this, that's a feasibility risk. And the risk of it working for our business, which is a viability risk. I kind of call out the product managers competency. It's really to try to drive the first and the last one, which is value and viability, right? A solution worth building, something people will buy, choose or use, and one that works for our business, which is at the core of what...”
2023-12-21 · Lenny's Podcast · The essence of product management | Christian Idiodi (SVPG) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Relationships with people, you end the trust by asking them to do two things. One, you're either going to teach me or I'm going to help you, right? And you're going to build relationships there, gain experience with them. You've got to immerse yourself in a deeper understanding of the business and the data.”
2023-12-21 · Lenny's Podcast · The essence of product management | Christian Idiodi (SVPG) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm going to intend for you. I'm going to get permission from your manager and say, look, I want to spend time with Lenny. He's the head of sales. He's the head of operations and stuff. I just want to learn from him. Now, what you're doing is you're extending that person's trust to yourself. You're also building a relationship with that person. But more importantly, you're learning what is driving that person's influence, which is their competence in the business or the customer. After you've done that, you have to keep doing discovery. Because what's going to be different now is that person knows they've taught you everything that they know, but everybody now sees you learning every single day. So at some point, people will recognize that you might have more insights and more data than anybody else. And they will only know this because they've seen you learn from the best and they've seen you continuing to learn. So I always practically advise product managers in this kind of scenario, build.”
2023-12-21 · Lenny's Podcast · The essence of product management | Christian Idiodi (SVPG) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source