YouSaid · the spoken record

John Cutler

lines on the record: 141
first: 2023-01-15
most recent: 2023-01-15
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

“I still am using Twitter a fair amount, I think, but LinkedIn could be good. John Cuttlefish on Twitter and then just John Cutler at LinkedIn. Yeah, I think what I would love to hear from people is just Know send recommendations of people we should hear more from. I think that would be really helpful. Even in the role that I have, I want to start a guest speaker series to bring people in to talk to our team. And so I think that that would be something that I can work on.”
2023-01-15 · Lenny's Podcast · What differentiates the highest-performing product teams | John Cutler (Amplitude, The Beautiful Mess) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's a challenge every day. I just think they operate better when they are fed. The kid as a product is like if you feed the product Then they were just everything's better. And when you don't, everything falls apart. So just have snacks with you. That's basically the advice that I have to people.”
2023-01-15 · Lenny's Podcast · What differentiates the highest-performing product teams | John Cutler (Amplitude, The Beautiful Mess) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Let's do it. So it is a behavioral question. I do think that's like the right way. And if you dig enough, you can really get the depth of the story. But I do think it's fun to challenge people to see how flexible their thinking could be about that situation. I don't know if that's like, you know, right from an HR perspective, but I like it.”
2023-01-15 · Lenny's Podcast · What differentiates the highest-performing product teams | John Cutler (Amplitude, The Beautiful Mess) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And the other people are the accomplices in it, but then, like, if you challenge them, like, what was that story from the perspective of one of the people you worked with? I think it's really interesting.”
2023-01-15 · Lenny's Podcast · What differentiates the highest-performing product teams | John Cutler (Amplitude, The Beautiful Mess) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, so one that I like to do is I do like the behavioral questions, tell me about stuff. But then I'll ask them, imagine I'm interviewing a person you worked with. Now answer in there, tell me about the same situation. So, you know, you'll be like, oh, you know, Lenny, tell me about a time that you're faced with adversity and you did this and then you work to do the team to do it. And you would go through it and then you'd answer it. And then maybe in the process of doing that, you mentioned someone you work with. And I'd be like, now imagine that you're married. And so I think it can show some really interesting self awareness, because often people answer that question, like, they are the hero of the story.”
2023-01-15 · Lenny's Podcast · What differentiates the highest-performing product teams | John Cutler (Amplitude, The Beautiful Mess) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh man, you know, like again, have a kid. Nothing, there's this thing called, there's a show called Sunny Bunnies. It's these fluffy bunnies. That's really good. And then there's this animated series called Buba, and he's this funny guy. I like Buba and Sunny Bites.”
2023-01-15 · Lenny's Podcast · What differentiates the highest-performing product teams | John Cutler (Amplitude, The Beautiful Mess) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I will just listen to some. I'll like binge things. But I do really like, I've actually been going through old episodes of Maggie Crowley's podcast that she did when she was at Drift. Lots of good guests, and I really like Maggie's perspective. And like, I like the guests that she had on there. So sometimes I'll go back to like an old podcast. He does these really great memes and stuff, but Jason Knight actually has a fun podcast and I listen to and some of those things. So I think that realistically, I'm not like a huge podcast listener. I'd like to go back to like a podcast that hasn't been out for a while, like Maggie's and just sort of catch up on all the guests because I thought that was really cool.”
2023-01-15 · Lenny's Podcast · What differentiates the highest-performing product teams | John Cutler (Amplitude, The Beautiful Mess) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm in a void, you know. I got a four year old. I don't really spend a lot of time. I'm the sort of like, I'm such a lightweight. It's like I'll do knowledge project because Shane sent me. You know what I mean? Like I like.”
2023-01-15 · Lenny's Podcast · What differentiates the highest-performing product teams | John Cutler (Amplitude, The Beautiful Mess) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Take a slice across that journey and develop it. And he gives us pretty basic, straightforward method to do it. But I tell you, I'll go into companies like a year after they had Jeff in and like learned this, and they're still like buzzing about, hey, user story mapping. And it's just he's a super humble guy and he would never outstate the value of this. He'd be like, yeah, it's just a journey map with a couple like sticky notes on it. But I always, when someone's new at product management, I'm like, hey, this is a deceptively simple book. Like you'll learn this very basic idea, but it will teach you a lot about product when I do that. So those are like three that come to mind.”
2023-01-15 · Lenny's Podcast · What differentiates the highest-performing product teams | John Cutler (Amplitude, The Beautiful Mess) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's a great book when you're trying to think about how I model performance. And then it's also an amazing book because you can just literally put the stuff into motion about improving your development practices and things you're doing. And then I think probably the last one. Man, I just love this book, this Jeff Patton book about user story mapping. I love what Jeff Patton did. Like, he took this extremely simple idea, which is that you can lay out a customer journey and then organize.”
2023-01-15 · Lenny's Podcast · What differentiates the highest-performing product teams | John Cutler (Amplitude, The Beautiful Mess) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The factors contributing to performance. And it's built on many, it's six, I don't know, it's been out for a while now, 10 years. They did the DORA report, which was like their yearly report where they did big surveys like 10, 20, 30, 40,000 people responding to it. Nicole Forschung is an amazing scientist. And so they structured their thing correctly. They would have a hypothesis about what is equal to performance and how all these individual practices contribute to it. And then they've updated it over time. And I think that Google bought DOR. I don't know exactly how all the parts came to place, but that book is amazing just sort of teaching you how to think about the idea of performance because they'll include things like the Western topology, which is like, is your company operating like a bureaucracy or these certain culture elements to it, but then also like the practices and things that you're doing?”
2023-01-15 · Lenny's Podcast · What differentiates the highest-performing product teams | John Cutler (Amplitude, The Beautiful Mess) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Instead of thinking about measurement and metrics is just about adopting the exact metrics that everyone has and doing that. The second one I think would probably be accelerate. So Nicole Forskring, Gene Kim, Jez Humble, like that's just one of the best books in the world about”
2023-01-15 · Lenny's Podcast · What differentiates the highest-performing product teams | John Cutler (Amplitude, The Beautiful Mess) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And again, I'm laughing with you because I know you have these posts. Like, here's exactly the metrics that you should track. I really respect those posts. That's why that's the power that you have. That's all really good. But what Hubbard reminds you is why the hell are you measuring things to begin with? You know, it's to reduce uncertainty for critical decisions or to achieve certain objectives that you have. The reason why it's important to read that book is like, A, you figure out someone who's, again, actionable has thought this through. So it gives you kind of a framework to thinking about it. But B, he really challenges this idea of like when making decisions in conditions of uncertainty, you only need to reduce the uncertainty to an acceptable amount to be able to make the next decision that you need to make. And we never have, like, people are like product is like science. It's really like an art. It's like a game that's being played out. You never have complete information to do it. So I think that's a good book to remind people about what, like, to be more creative in thinking about measurement.”
2023-01-15 · Lenny's Podcast · What differentiates the highest-performing product teams | John Cutler (Amplitude, The Beautiful Mess) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This one's pretty easy because they are fairly similar lately. So I really like the book How to Measure Anything, Finding Intangibles or Finding the Value of Intangibles in Business. So that's by Douglas Hubbard. And the reason why I like that is, again, like at Amplitude, the number of people would come in like, what are all our competitors measuring? We want to know exactly which metric to measure.”
2023-01-15 · Lenny's Podcast · What differentiates the highest-performing product teams | John Cutler (Amplitude, The Beautiful Mess) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I can do it. You just need to find it. Just send me a message and say, do you have the actionable advice for it? I probably use more. I just maybe didn't have the time to organize it.”
2023-01-15 · Lenny's Podcast · What differentiates the highest-performing product teams | John Cutler (Amplitude, The Beautiful Mess) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And you know what? You might wipe them out later, but like, you don't even know what you don't know yet. You would see these companies that are really qualified companies and it would be like a couple months of back and forth of them trying to get like document every question they have and every metric they need and everything that you had and I would watch them and like I understood why they were doing that but I really just wanted to kind of shake them which I you know again I wouldn't have done this because then I would have been talking about the companies I was talking about every day I just wanted to shake them and just be like just sit me down with the developers at your company for three hours and let's like hello world a couple events here like this is like you don't know you know like you could be getting value this whole time and again i don't think that people at amplitude would disagree but i think that that's like i wasn't going to talk about that all day because that would be sort of like belittling customers that who do want this like big implementation thing so yeah not pretty kind of inside baseball for analytics but that's one thing”
2023-01-15 · Lenny's Podcast · What differentiates the highest-performing product teams | John Cutler (Amplitude, The Beautiful Mess) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think the one thing that I would change, like, I don't think that many people in the company would disagree with me, but one, anti-pattern I see a lot on the part of implementing analytics is that people go in and undertake this huge implementation. They want to implement all their events. They kind of want to get, they want to treat it like this. Again, I don't think it's too controversial internally, but I think I might have been much more adamant to people that's just like, use our free plan and get 20 events going.”
2023-01-15 · Lenny's Podcast · What differentiates the highest-performing product teams | John Cutler (Amplitude, The Beautiful Mess) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, that's good. So one thing is I didn't really need to filter myself very much when I was at amplitude, which is kind of the beauty of the gig. Wrote this blog post probably six years ago called You know How to Know You're Working in a Feature Factory. And I've always discussed been my jam, you know, the outcome and impact focus thing. So it's not like I've really had to hide anything. And one thing I could say is the power of qualitative data, but even Spencer says that too. He's talking about like early on in amplitude, you can rely a lot on a lot on qualitative data. So that wouldn't be all that controversial. That's a funny thing. There's not that much. I pretty much say what I say. Partially under the guise that I'm talking to so many teams, so therefore it's never about amplitude. Absolutely not.”
2023-01-15 · Lenny's Podcast · What differentiates the highest-performing product teams | John Cutler (Amplitude, The Beautiful Mess) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, I'm sort of obsessed. I like the ChatGBT thing because I like having things like having a developer inspired by Hemingway debate a developer inspired by Tolstoy Discussing Git, like how to resolve a Git issue. So that's what I've been obsessed by lately is like when you know how ChatGPT works, you can actually make it do really funny things. And back to the worldview things, it's actually really effective if you, this is a very actionable tip. Like if you feel you're heavily grounded in, let's say the, I don't know, maybe you're like a hardcore objectivist or you believe in individualism, you can just type into ChatGPT and say, take this situation and interpret it by five different worldviews, and it'll be like, you'll get the humanist view and you'll get the communitarian view and you'll get the like, you know, collectivist view. He'll do that. So anyway, it's a fun tool for that. It's really cool.”
2023-01-15 · Lenny's Podcast · What differentiates the highest-performing product teams | John Cutler (Amplitude, The Beautiful Mess) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But I can, what I'm really excited about is that part of my job will be involved in doing a lot of writing and a lot of teaching is hopefully like work it out with the company so that I can share things that are not too specific about the company, but much more like they've got like five different businesses at Toast. They've got all these people. So it's going to be like a education every day. So I'm hoping to maybe get that inspiring my work in different ways.”
2023-01-15 · Lenny's Podcast · What differentiates the highest-performing product teams | John Cutler (Amplitude, The Beautiful Mess) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One thing with a full time job where most of my work is internal, obviously I need to respect my team. Again, I go back to that funny thing with Spencer. He's like, you're writing about Amplitude. I'm like, you know, dude, I'm not writing about Amplitude. It's like every company has that problem. Yeah, but if I'm working alongside people, I obviously can't be like, no, I can't say, oh, your manager sucks. Like Craig's going to read that to do that particular thing.”
2023-01-15 · Lenny's Podcast · What differentiates the highest-performing product teams | John Cutler (Amplitude, The Beautiful Mess) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's like 50, 70 talks that I've done like floating on YouTube. And then there's all the mural boards I made at Amplitude is different model. So I kind of feel like I could pull some of that together to make it more actionable for people, like give people almost like a meta. To cutler content so that they're not just dropped into me like writing something at 1 a.m. and being like, oh, just another one of those like, damn it, you didn't give me an alternative to NPS. This newsletter sucks. I mean, frankly, I would say the same thing too if I just stumbled into the newsletter to do it. So those are a couple things that I'm thinking about for the content. Definitely not going to stop doing those, you know, sharing those things and doing that. So yeah, excited about. Next year. Also, the question about writing”
2023-01-15 · Lenny's Podcast · What differentiates the highest-performing product teams | John Cutler (Amplitude, The Beautiful Mess) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Or they believe that, like, yeah, the world thinks different things, but I'm absolutely right. And then as you get up to the top, you become a little bit more aware that there's other valid views. And then at the top, you're sort of like, no, you don't dishonor yourself and throw away who you are, but you realize that this is a huge asset in the world, that there's diverse views that you can bring together to do really, really amazing things. So that's like an example of some writing I've even done recently where I'm kind of like, it's a complex topic, but I try to make it more actionable to do that. So that's one whole thing. The other thing, too, is like leveraging all the crap that I have. I think it's like 700, 800 posts, maybe nine. I had this whole blog beforehand that I did it and then I have these hundreds of images with these frameworks and then...”
2023-01-15 · Lenny's Podcast · What differentiates the highest-performing product teams | John Cutler (Amplitude, The Beautiful Mess) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's a simple model, but it goes deep how I want it to go deep. So the idea is that at first we know nothing about ourselves. And then the next level is that we become self-aware about believe the whole world is wired just like we're wired. And then you go up to the next level and you believe that the world thinks different things, but you still think your way is the best way to be able to do that. So an example is I remember talking to executive and they're like, people only stay because of their managers and because of their money. That's it. And I said, everyone? They said yes. Do you believe that? Yes, because everyone believes it. It's a physical law of light. And here I am like, oh my God, I joined a company because the mission of company or whatever. So they're kind of stuck down that like second level.”
2023-01-15 · Lenny's Podcast · What differentiates the highest-performing product teams | John Cutler (Amplitude, The Beautiful Mess) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I like one, I want to give people something actionable to be able to address what they're doing. It doesn't like remove the complexity in the particular situation. So I have like role models in that. This guy Simon Wardley does this kind of mapping, which I think is great. There's these other techniques that I want to try to lean into and maybe develop some of my own that sort of help people have something actionable. And embrace the mess, if that makes any sense. So, like, for example, I recently wrote about something called the pyramid of leadership self-awareness”
2023-01-15 · Lenny's Podcast · What differentiates the highest-performing product teams | John Cutler (Amplitude, The Beautiful Mess) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And you get it out there. I think what people have correctly picked up on is because I have a full time job, sometimes they'll be like Thursday night. And my kids finally asleep and it's like one in the morning. And I'm just like, I've got to write this post. And so sometimes it comes off as being like a little bit rough or even accentuating the fact that I don't give them an answer. You know, because it's like two o'clock in the morning now. And I kind of don't want to give them an answer. I want to go to sleep to do these things. So I think one of the things I'm going to hope to do is maybe be more deliberate about like trying to provide at least some maybe some mental models for dealing with the mess. I mean, there's things like that out there. There's this thing Kneffin, which is like a way to understand the systems and decision-making problems you have. You know, are you dealing with like a clear system, a complicated system, a complex system or a chaotic system? And I like things like that because that helps do two things.”
2023-01-15 · Lenny's Podcast · What differentiates the highest-performing product teams | John Cutler (Amplitude, The Beautiful Mess) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I'm obsessed with the writing, obviously. And I think a bit about it. I like that there's a certain buzz you get when you're creating and then you in the case of music it'd be like you record the demo”
2023-01-15 · Lenny's Podcast · What differentiates the highest-performing product teams | John Cutler (Amplitude, The Beautiful Mess) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In this environment, well, I need to sacrifice my beliefs to get ahead. And I told her about some companies that I know, like I told her about Carrie, who I just mentioned, like who's been working on building the diversity, even in a small company. I told her about different leaders and different companies that, hey, there's some companies where is a real team vibe? And there's some companies at that. And she was like, that's really good to know. So I think that that's one thing I want to like work on in the next year to make sure that people have role models and not that people talking like me, but like actual, you know, maybe I could be a role model to people in my new role, but like ideally there's like role model leaders who they can relate to. That would be great.”
2023-01-15 · Lenny's Podcast · What differentiates the highest-performing product teams | John Cutler (Amplitude, The Beautiful Mess) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and not like meteor, not like, you know, any of these particular people where they can say, well, that leader, you know, speaking to someone recently, I wrote about this in my newsletter, and she was just sort of forlorn. She was like, I follow these people in this space. And I know what my beliefs are. And I know that that person has beliefs that I'm not sure vibing with like completely. But the message to me is the only way to get in head in tech is to have those beliefs. And John, is that right? Do you need to believe this? In this case, it was like this very individualistic, very meritocratic, you know, kind of get-ahead push-ahead type of vibe, which I respect that thought leader for putting out there, but this person didn't buy into it. Which would have all been okay except she said, Is there a place for me in this?”
2023-01-15 · Lenny's Podcast · What differentiates the highest-performing product teams | John Cutler (Amplitude, The Beautiful Mess) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Try to raise up some of this more diverse Like, I really want someone to be like who's working at some company X to be able to go and say, now that leader I can relate to, like they're dealing with certain challenges that we're having to deal with at our company. I'd love them to be able to have role models”
2023-01-15 · Lenny's Podcast · What differentiates the highest-performing product teams | John Cutler (Amplitude, The Beautiful Mess) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then there's people who, for some reason, go in and say, should we do it? What should we do here? Like if those things were not an issue, what should we do? So it's very easy to, I joked with crazy. It's like it's so easy to go down the path of being like, well, there's 10 people and should people. There's high agency people and low agency people. There's this person and that person. It's much more interesting to go and be like, yeah, maybe there might be a little bit of a personality component to it. But what skills does the should person bringing to bear on that particular situation? Maybe it's a level of systems thinking. Maybe it's a level of like looking at the environment and being able to decouple the current tactics from maybe the optimal tactics for doing it. So that's like one thing that I'm excited about to do that. And yeah, I've got like, yeah, there's a bunch of other things, you know, like the diverse perspectives, diverse mental models. Maybe working with someone like you to”
2023-01-15 · Lenny's Podcast · What differentiates the highest-performing product teams | John Cutler (Amplitude, The Beautiful Mess) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In some environments, there's this should can divide, which I really like, which is some people are just locked into the can. They're Uber pragmatic people says like, can we do this? Is it possible, given the debt, you know, whatever constraints that you have?”
2023-01-15 · Lenny's Podcast · What differentiates the highest-performing product teams | John Cutler (Amplitude, The Beautiful Mess) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I personally don't think I used to use words like a lot like product sense and product mindset and product things like that. I'm personally trying to do a better job this year about trying to unpack those things as legitimate skills and competencies. So if you think about product sense, what is it? It might be like the ability to model problems, systems thinking, decision making under conditions of uncertainty, facilitation tools that you have, like the ability to look at a competitive ecosystem and maybe see a thing. And yeah, maybe there's a little bit of sense to it. It's like, I want to help customers or whatever. But I think that I'm trying to make a concerted effort to unpack those things into things that could be taught. And that's going to certainly be part of my role at Toast, right? Like the last thing I want to do is to be like, you have a product mindset or you don't. A great example, I was even talking with Craig just the other day, and we were talking about how”
2023-01-15 · Lenny's Podcast · What differentiates the highest-performing product teams | John Cutler (Amplitude, The Beautiful Mess) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think that there's, well, okay, so one definitely slightly annoyed me recently. I'll just get into the stuff that annoys me is that.”
2023-01-15 · Lenny's Podcast · What differentiates the highest-performing product teams | John Cutler (Amplitude, The Beautiful Mess) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Have had an order of magnitude better. Now, maybe the share price hasn't necessarily reflected it, but like the happiness of the people there, like they're going to come out of this stronger Than the companies that were just like, it's going to go back to normal, and we're not going to, we're going to delay all these org design decisions until some future date. So I don't know if that tells you about high performing, but it's like the high-performing companies saw the threat of what existed and then took deliberate steps Coherent steps to frame what their response would be. So that's just an example of that.”
2023-01-15 · Lenny's Podcast · What differentiates the highest-performing product teams | John Cutler (Amplitude, The Beautiful Mess) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Like legitimately, some companies work down the chronic issues, which allows them to face the acute stressors, and other companies are just mired in acute issues to do those things. So it's kind of, again, both things can be true. It's like, yeah, there's nothing perfect in product. However, it is true that some companies are healthier than others. An example of that is the companies that leaned in to responding to the pandemic instead of counting the days until it was over. Massive difference. I've seen this over and over probably with like 15 to 20 companies. The companies that were intentional in designing their response to the pandemic versus being like, just let managers deal with it, whatever. We're just going to sort it out.”
2023-01-15 · Lenny's Podcast · What differentiates the highest-performing product teams | John Cutler (Amplitude, The Beautiful Mess) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And there's people too who just assume it's just has to be that way I would say that one model that I use is the sort of the chronic and acute challenges of the companies. And especially in the last year, you meet a bunch of companies dealing with the same economic conditions. And I will tell you, no, not all companies are equally dysfunctional. And no, not all high-performing companies are equally beautiful in all roses.”
2023-01-15 · Lenny's Podcast · What differentiates the highest-performing product teams | John Cutler (Amplitude, The Beautiful Mess) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's all good. Yeah. Well, yeah. So I worked in a messed up company. It was all shit. You're not really honoring yourself for doing that. So I'd say that's my point about the fundamental attribution bias. Is it hard? Yes. Is it easier in those Silicon Valley companies? Well, maybe not. Maybe those are a shit show too. I've talked to plenty of them that are shit shows. But do you have an opportunity to kind of... So, like many things can be true, but that doesn't mean that you can't try, I think, to kind of almost like write your portfolio as you go, because if you wait two years, you're going to think it was just all a blur and messed up. Whereas the opportunities might be there in your day-to-day as you're working through.”
2023-01-15 · Lenny's Podcast · What differentiates the highest-performing product teams | John Cutler (Amplitude, The Beautiful Mess) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Even if someone's like, forget all that, you're just going to build a thing, like you've gone through the motions for doing it. And I think people underestimate that. Because the environments are kind of feel like stellophine, I guess is one word, or like stilted, you know. And so they just sort of throw up their hands. But I would say that work with what you've got because the last thing you want is to have a job opportunity two or three years from then. And all you can do is shrug your shoulders and say, I worked at a fucked up. I worked at a messed up company.”
2023-01-15 · Lenny's Podcast · What differentiates the highest-performing product teams | John Cutler (Amplitude, The Beautiful Mess) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You can at least say, you know what? Selected option is X. What would the one pager look like if X was one of five options? Write the one pager. Go and talk to that executive and say, look, I know you've told me to do this, but what would we observe if this was working versus not working? I'm here to help you with that. Great. You've got some metrics along with what you're doing. Just nudge it just one little thing. Hey, nothing's stopping you from writing down all the potential assumptions and risks that you have.”
2023-01-15 · Lenny's Podcast · What differentiates the highest-performing product teams | John Cutler (Amplitude, The Beautiful Mess) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Rate number one is you often underestimate what loops are available to you in that company They throw up their hands. I've tried to mentor people like this. I think we've done a decent job. But the first thing I'm like, just don't throw up your hands and say it's all like going to shit. Like, just at least document. So even if someone from on high says build X.”
2023-01-15 · Lenny's Podcast · What differentiates the highest-performing product teams | John Cutler (Amplitude, The Beautiful Mess) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And you wouldn't understand any of it, but you know it's a thing. And then it helped you guide the way you're doing. So I think that you should kind of balance out those things. But to your point, at the end of the day, you got to just put this stuff in motion somehow.”
2023-01-15 · Lenny's Podcast · What differentiates the highest-performing product teams | John Cutler (Amplitude, The Beautiful Mess) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Versus the founder who believes that they're going to figure everything out for themselves and it's just like no, it's actually a thing. Pricing is a thing. Or you know what? Meeting design is a thing. There's people obsess about it or service design is a thing or interaction design or strategy thing to do. So that's building on what you said. I think that there is a, especially if you're starting out, there is a definite value of almost seeing the 501 level courses or hearing that genius lecture. Like when you're in college as a freshman, I remember I dropped out, but like you would see the genius professor.”
2023-01-15 · Lenny's Podcast · What differentiates the highest-performing product teams | John Cutler (Amplitude, The Beautiful Mess) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't fit everything in my head. I just like, for example, pricing. I know pricing is a thing. I know that there's some people amazing at pricing. I know that if someone told me like, well, you should just price it like this, my spidey sense would say you don't know what you're talking about. Because I know that there's more to it than just what you just said. You develop your spidey sense for things and you know that there's people, you have to like dip your toes in like understanding. That's the beauty of podcasts. Like your mind can get blown. And then it puts in the back of your brain. You're like, there are some people who know a lot about that.”
2023-01-15 · Lenny's Podcast · What differentiates the highest-performing product teams | John Cutler (Amplitude, The Beautiful Mess) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely. And I think one thing you would think of is think about the podcast you listen to and think about that content is almost like you don't know what you don't know often. So I think that the challenge is that like if you've been doing PM for a while, product management for a while, you don't really...”
2023-01-15 · Lenny's Podcast · What differentiates the highest-performing product teams | John Cutler (Amplitude, The Beautiful Mess) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And feel almost I meet some of these leaders and they feel beaten up by the advice industry. They feel beaten up that they can never be good enough. They cannot be like whatever company or they feel like their company's never good enough. Like they can't empower their team. They just can't follow anyone's advice. And so I think people are beating themselves up when I think that you shift for some people to focus to taking that knowledge and just getting that loop going for your teams or getting that loop going for your career, getting that loop going for your company is like probably like a pretty safe bet. So I would think that that's like one thing that comes to mind.”
2023-01-15 · Lenny's Podcast · What differentiates the highest-performing product teams | John Cutler (Amplitude, The Beautiful Mess) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It helps you figure out where you're kind of weak at the moment. So, for example, you need a strategy without that, nothing is possible, but you could have an amazing strategy and you don't deploy it with the right models, no one can prioritize in. We could do all that right, but you don't design any bets and can't ship anything. That's kind of a problem. We could do all that right and you don't know the impact of anything you ship. We could even do all that right and not circulate the learning back in your company. And then you're still not going to succeed in these things. So that's an example of what I mean by like the loop. And so one thing you could think about for your career that I think people should focus on and also in terms of sharing the content that they share. So we're sharing a lot of content around knowledge and job aids, like knowledge and job aids and maybe a little bit of motivation, like how did that person succeed and do that? But if you think about your career, just think about how many times can you get around that loop? And what are you putting, because I worry that people are loaded up with knowledge.”
2023-01-15 · Lenny's Podcast · What differentiates the highest-performing product teams | John Cutler (Amplitude, The Beautiful Mess) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That we would teach, and it's basically like you need a strategy, you need to develop qualitative models, you need to add measurement to those models, like North Star framework would be an example of a qualitative model. You need to add measurement to those models, figure out how you're doing it. You need to prioritize where to focus. You need to design bets. You need to measure the impact of those bets, and then you need to circulate what you learned back into the strategy, back into your models, back into how you prioritize, et cetera.”
2023-01-15 · Lenny's Podcast · What differentiates the highest-performing product teams | John Cutler (Amplitude, The Beautiful Mess) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But I think that you need to keep in mind that this is a skill and skill is knowledge times practice. Mediated by your environment, the habits you form, and the motivation that you have into particular things. And so I think that I learned about that a lot, like working with learning experience designers at Amplitude that like. We tend to think that this is just a function of the knowledge that we pick up and the number of podcasts that we listen to, but really it's about going through this loop. So at amplitude, we have this data-informed product lo”
2023-01-15 · Lenny's Podcast · What differentiates the highest-performing product teams | John Cutler (Amplitude, The Beautiful Mess) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Every day. Yeah, got my watch that I got a couple days. I'm on vacation. I'm between jobs now, so it's about like all health. Yeah, optimized.”
2023-01-15 · Lenny's Podcast · What differentiates the highest-performing product teams | John Cutler (Amplitude, The Beautiful Mess) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source