YouSaid · the spoken record

Melissa Tan

lines on the record: 88
first: 2023-06-18
most recent: 2023-06-18
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

“Folks can find me on LinkedIn, also on Twitter, Melissa Mtan. And then how can listeners be helpful to me? I mean, I love jamming on things growth, thinking about leadership and managing. So if any of this resonates, you know, reach out. I'd love to have a discussion. And yeah.”
2023-06-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building high-performing teams | Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So one is, you know, one thing that I've often heard from folks is it's hard to learn Uplow. And so basically watching our university videos, which is where we teach Webflow while also building the designer. And we actually now enable to have the videos in the product. So you can do them side by side. And then the other one is there are Figma to Webflow plugin, which is you can take a Figma design and then convert it to Webflow, which is a great hack if you already have a design in Figma.”
2023-06-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building high-performing teams | Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This one here is what I also spoke about earlier, which is, I mean, thinking through your Dacey, it sounds so simple, but I do think a lot of times teams are thinking through how do they work with other teams, who is driving, who is the decision maker, and so having a Dacey I have found is really helpful.”
2023-06-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building high-performing teams | Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Feel like everyone's saying this, but ChatGPT, I feel like it has really changed everything. There's so many interesting ways to use it. My team at Webflow right now is also starting to think about incorporating AI into the product. And so, yeah, I just think that is, yeah, so many things you can do with it”
2023-06-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building high-performing teams | Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, so it's essentially that prep call before I ask them to do a presentation And going through the presentation together and working together on refining it.”
2023-06-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building high-performing teams | Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Me, it's not a question, but it's that stage of preparing before the presentation and getting a sense for what it's like to work with each other. I think that has been one of the best ways for me to get signal.”
2023-06-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building high-performing teams | Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This one isn't super recent, but winning time on HBO, it's about the LA Lakers during the 80s and the Showtime era. I'm originally from LA and grew up a Lakers fan, so it's a fun watch for me and a nice escape.”
2023-06-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building high-performing teams | Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The first one is Leaders Eat Last. I really like that leadership book. I signed Simon Sinek. I also two non career related books is the untethered soul. It really has taught me a lot about being present. And then also the four agreements, which is like a very short and easy read, but good principles to live by.”
2023-06-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building high-performing teams | Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that's it. I wanted to make sure I know I talked a lot about developing people. So thank all the people that have helped develop me in my career. And then especially thank all the folks that I've worked with and my team, especially the team at Webflow. And particularly wanted to make sure to thank Shing Lynn, Worry Davidson, and Enjoying who joined me from previous companies to Webflow.”
2023-06-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building high-performing teams | Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Limits you into what you are going to do. And so my aha moment was really at Dropbox seeing so many times people that had never done these things and then seeing so much innovation come as a result of that.”
2023-06-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building high-performing teams | Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But I do think it led to a ton of innovation. Like even I actually started on the sales team, I used to, this is a fun fact, I used to answer the 100 number at Dropbox. And if you go to Dropbox's website, you see a chat bubble. I used to also do that role. And so I think that what we got from that was just, that's how we got our very innovative go-to-market motions that also gave a ton of people because a lot of those people then moved into different functions at the company. They had all this context on who the user was. They had talked to so many different users at that point. And that's actually what helped me a lot when I moved into growth is I had all that context. And I learned from that going back to first principles thinking that if you take people that are just super smart, they've never done it before. One advantage of that is they can innovate because they also, I think they come in with like, I don't know anything. Let me just like figure this out versus someone that might think they know all the answers.”
2023-06-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building high-performing teams | Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My aha moment of the value of first principles thinking was when I was at Dropbox. And we had the most unconventional people on our initial sales team, Dropbox was known for this. We would hire a ton of like really smart people that had never done sales and had them do sales. There are a lot of disadvantages to that, I think. Like we were figuring a lot of things out. Like maybe we should have split, like had a few people that knew sales better and like a combo of both”
2023-06-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building high-performing teams | Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And it's maybe another way to describe it is critical thinking. It's like you're able to think very critically. And I think it's important to, at least for me, create a culture where that's okay, right? I think the moment you have a culture where people aren't asking questions, aren't constantly revisiting their work, that's when you're not maybe pushing yourself to do your best work.”
2023-06-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building high-performing teams | Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Definitely a word I use a lot. First principle is thinking I think of it as you are not using a set framework. And set formula, but you're creating your own based on the context that you're getting. And so when I think about first principles thinking, often it is knowing what questions to ask so that you can start forming a mental model. And then it is actually starting to form that mental model and then knowing to evolve it and knowing when it's not working and really coming from a place of curiosity, of like, is this really working? This is something that I'm known for in my team as well, which is I ask tons of questions, but it doesn't come from a place of wanting to show that I'm asking good questions or anything like that. It comes from a place of trying to solve the problem and making sure that we're always solving the problem at hand, making sure we're doing the right things if there's new information. Do we actually still want to do it this way? And so I think first principles thinking is often about like asking questions and then creating your own framework. That's how I would dive fine.”
2023-06-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building high-performing teams | Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You're not finding value. I think every advisor wants to make sure they're adding value. So I definitely think it's like, you know, to summarize, being really explicit on what advice you're looking for and making sure you're on the same page of what you want, and then also set up a try before you buy if you want to do like a quarter long engagement first and knowing you can always part ways if it's not a fit even before that period of time.”
2023-06-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building high-performing teams | Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would add an advisor if there is probably like a knowledge gap on the team, is I would say and the advisors come in so many different forms too and everyone does it slightly differently, right? You know, for some folks it's a monthly call. For other times, like I, especially when I'm full-time advising, I'll have like weekly calls. I'll even join some team meetings. I'll look at mocks. And so everyone does it slightly differently. And so I think it depends on what you're looking for. I would definitely say that even getting to know the individual and making sure you're on the same page on what you're looking for and what the goals are. And then what I've done in the past two is initially set up like a shorter engagement, like a quarter long engagement, and then decide if you want to go longer. And I also think it's fine to, you know, let's say you have an advisor agreement, you're not getting value to basically part ways if it's not.”
2023-06-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building high-performing teams | Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Actually, I think the expertise is more important later. And then similarly on product growth, I actually think product growth is not higher till much later. A lot of early stage companies don't even have a product manager till later. And so I find that like a growth product person isn't till much down the road later down the road.”
2023-06-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building high-performing teams | Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I actually think it's less about expertise in skill set, if that makes sense, and more their ability to, again, I think of it like a portfolio manager. So this is more on the growth marketing side and bringing in acquisition. They are managing like a portfolio and they're trying to figure out what works. I actually think you need to find someone that's analytical for this role, but that also understands things like who is the user. They're like really creative in finding the user. And so it's actually looking for attributes, but not expertise. I actually think the more expertise someone has, the more it actually can lead to false precision and thinking they know what they're going to do. And especially like, I don't think you actually need paid marketing expertise till much later when you're starting to think about incrementality or you have different, you know, you're managing all these campaigns.”
2023-06-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building high-performing teams | Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Have done it before, and so maybe have figured out certain channels. So I think you either go for someone that has done acquisition before, maybe they're a little bit earlier in their career, so they have this great growth mindset, but make sure they're a first principles thinker. The other option is like find just a really smart person early in their career, have them take a reforged class, have them soak up everything. And then the other option of hiring someone more experienced, I think it really depends on if you want that person to take on a lot more and be almost part of like your founding team? And do you want to find someone that is going to join your leadership team? The other option, I guess, is you could also just bring on an advisor. And that advisor is someone that's not full time. It can even guide if you hire someone that's a bit earlier, guide that person. And that is like a really good combination. And so it really depends on the context who's also on the current team and who you want to bring into. Like, are you looking for?”
2023-06-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building high-performing teams | Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It really depends on the current makeup of the team. How much do the founders themselves or the current team, how much of an interest do they have in growth? If they have an interest in growth and it's more about finding someone to execute, I think it's finding someone that's a bit earlier in their career potential, that is just a strong first principles thinker. I think there's like hit or miss on like I'm a former consultant, so I used to always say find a former consultant. I do think there can be hit or miss and there is some value in folks that like actually understand acquisition and”
2023-06-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building high-performing teams | Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Our activation, you want to make sure as you're pouring leads into the top of funnel, you're activating users. And here, I don't think you actually need to do A-B testing. Your volume isn't probably going to be strong enough. I think even just finding like five individuals at part of your target audience, just doing user testing, set up a Zoom, watch them onboard onto the product and have them talk out loud, you'll find a lot. And you can also just take best practices of like onboarding checklists, et cetera. So activation. And then I've said this a lot, but pricing and packaging, really thinking about pricing, but I don't think that needs to be a dedicated person.”
2023-06-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building high-performing teams | Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They don't need to be an expert, but they need to ideally understand maybe one or two channels well and that they're the channels that you have hypothesis you will find traction in. And I see this person a little bit like a portfolio manager, right? Because you're trying to figure out usually companies don't have like many channels that are split evenly. It's they find one or two that really work and make up like it's 80-20 rule. It makes up 80% of where the signups are coming from. And this portfolio manager is testing different things out. They even, you know, you could leverage agencies. There are a lot of agencies out there for SEO, for paid marketing, et cetera. But they are smart enough to define, is this working? How do I do it at scale? You also want to make sure it's quality signups that are actually monetizable. And so that is a role typically if you're hiring an acquisition of that first growth person. And then the other two areas to focus early on, but I don't think you need a dedicated person.”
2023-06-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building high-performing teams | Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I get this question a lot as well. I'd say initially when a company's starting out, the goal is getting to product market fit and figuring out who their ideal customer profile is, like their ICP. And at this point, I think everyone at the company should be thinking about growth. They're finding their first few design partners that they will co-create the product with. They're figuring out who is their product resonating with, who is maybe also the decision maker in purchasing the product. And they're figuring out, do we want kind of a bottom-up product-led motion? Are we going to lean more heavily into sales? Are we going to do both? After you reach product market fit and you're starting to get your first few customers, the first growth person I see more often than not isn't someone driving acquisition. You need to find your first a thousand or thousands of customers and you need to do it at scale. And so if that is the focus of the company, typically what I would recommend is somebody that”
2023-06-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building high-performing teams | Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not being owned by products, our team at Dropbox moved a ton. Actually, we started marketing. We actually then report into the revenue org with sales, and then we finally moved into product because we realized so much of our revenue was that product growth motion happening in the product that we felt it was important that that product team own revenue.”
2023-06-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building high-performing teams | Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Really depends on the company and what product growth is driving. I've always, in the companies I was at, and actually even the companies I advise, the product growth team owns revenue. So it's not always the case. I've actually seen revenue owned by marketing. So marketing makes sense if it's like more top of funnel growth. I've also seen it. This is an interesting one by finance, actually. This is usually early in the company. So early at Canva, it was owned by finance. And that's because finance had a view on everything happening in the business and would actually be maybe advising other teams on, hey, our conversion rates could improve. We need to do X or we're not driving signups and customers efficiently. But over time, it doesn't really sit in finance that has evolved and now sits under the person that is driving product growth and product. So I have seen it more often than.”
2023-06-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building high-performing teams | Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Planning where we're each identifying projects that were driving. There's some projects that we might also work on together. And so it's that essentially that meeting cadence that you're going to have, the operating rhythms, that's essentially how I think about a flying formation.”
2023-06-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building high-performing teams | Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Has the most context or is ultimately responsible. And so I think the flying formation has this Dacey. I often also put operating rhythms in it, so it's clear like what is happening at what point. And so we created a flying formation when we were first starting the growth team at Webflow and we were trying to figure out how does product growth work with product? How does product growth work with growth marketing? What are the different cadences that each team has? And so very tactically we put a doc together to say, okay product growth is accountable for all the metrics downstream of signups. Growth marketing is accountable for signups. They're also driving or have goals around CAC, their customer acquisition costs. And these are the different metrics everyone owns. We have a weekly meeting where we look at the metrics together. We also will do updates around the room to talk about initiatives and identify areas we want to work with. And then we also think through core.”
2023-06-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building high-performing teams | Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A Dacey is a framework to think about the different roles on the team on a project, right, or an area. So D stands for Driver. This is the person driving the project. A is accountable. This is the person that's ultimately accountable and is often the final decision maker if there's any open questions. C is contributor. These are all the different teams that are going to contribute. And then I is informed. These are the people that need to be informed, but they're not directly contributing. They're not a decision maker and part of the project. And so it's a nice simple framework for when you are working across teams and it needs to be clear who is in what role. And the area that tends to be the most confusing can be the accountable and who the decision maker is. It can be easy to have lots of teams and then it's unclear how do we get to a decision ultimately and who should make that decision. And that person should often be the person that”
2023-06-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building high-performing teams | Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Work together, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I think a flying formation as like How do we work together across teams? You also can think of it as like a day C2, like driver accountable contributor informed. I think sometimes when you don't know how you're going to work together, you end up stepping over each other's toes, you're unclear who was the decision maker here, who did we need to work with, at what point in the journey. And so the flying formation, what I think it is, is part of it is a DAC of like what are the different roles.”
2023-06-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building high-performing teams | Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I guess flying formation essentially, I don't know where it comes from. I guess it's maybe like a military term or something.”
2023-06-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building high-performing teams | Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To work is to have growth infuse in the company. And so, an example here is often the growth team is going to be potentially the closest to the user. They're going to get a lot of feedback. They're going to hear directly from the user. As a growth team, I think one of the big values that we can have is actually giving that feedback back to other teams at the company. And so even as a growth team, can we help inform the product roadmap? Also on the reverse thinking about, you know, as PMs, how can PMs be more growth oriented as well?”
2023-06-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building high-performing teams | Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because they heard it was really successful at company X, but that company X might be a Dropbox where every 0.5% improvement in conversion makes a difference. But if your early stage doesn't matter and you need to actually think bigger, the other thing is the opposite problem. Redoing a whole thing but not having a hypothesis, this was an early mistake I made at Dropbox where I redid the checkout page to something that I thought was like better UX, but then I changed so many different components that it was like even when it failed it was unclear why it failed. So really distilling into hypotheses. And then the last thing I would say is figuring out what I call the flying formation of how the different growth teams will work with other companies. And again, I alluded to this, but growth shouldn't feel like it's a layer on top. And a lot of the things that are tricky early on is figuring out how you work with other teams. I think the best or the ideal way to”
2023-06-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building high-performing teams | Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, they've already have massive scale, and then they're rethinking their pricing. That's actually quite a big headache to actually think about, okay, how do, you know, do we grandfather users? How do we bring the legacy customers onto our new pricing? And so thinking about your pricing from the start is an important thing might go-to-market from the start is important. The other thing I have seen a lot is just like, again, this goes back to learning from Dropbox is the execution. Folks, you know, taking a class or reading a lot about growth and trying to do the same thing and not really actually starting from first, let's look at our data. Let's talk to our customers. What do we think are the biggest hypotheses? And starting your experiments based on your own data and right sizing the experiment, I think sometimes teams are experimenting on things that are too small that aren't going to move the needle.”
2023-06-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building high-performing teams | Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One of the most common pitfalls, I'd say, is not having, and I've alluded to this, not having a sense of the big picture from the start and not being strategic about what your go-to market strategy is going to be, also what is your pricing and packaging going to look like. So I wrote actually an article for the YC blog a few years ago with Abby Kuzmanoff, who was on my team at Dropbox about this because I felt like even at Dropbox we were, I mean, it's a great thing. We were haphazardly finding amazing things. We had a freemium consumer product. Then we realized people wanted a Teams product, so we built a Teams product, but we never created that whole blueprint of like, what should it look like and what are the different connection points across consumer business? What should our model look like? I've also seen companies that maybe weren't intentional enough about pricing from the start. And so thinking about what is the value metric. And then they have to”
2023-06-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building high-performing teams | Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so there are some candidates that sometimes are concerned about the amount of time they would spend on it or say like, I'm going to have to, this is going to be a big lift. And definitely mindful of that. I think the main thing, though, is it is actually in the candidate's best interest to kind of understand what they're going to work on and start to understand like, for example, there are some candidates that have gone through the process and haven't worked in the Webflow product very much. And I always think that's an interesting flag because if you aren't in the product a lot, you're not going to get good context on whether you like it or not. And so I actually think it's almost even in the best interest of the candidate to go much deeper.”
2023-06-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building high-performing teams | Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then also it doesn't really give a sense of because as you're interviewing from a role, you're getting a ton of context on the actual company and the problem. And so it also is testing for how much did they pick up along the way. Do they also, would they like working on this area once they join?”
2023-06-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building high-performing teams | Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then the other thing I make sure to emphasize is it's really about wanting to know how you'd approach it. So don't worry about the slides, be able to talk to it and have what you need to talk to it because we're actually just looking for the substance. And so that's how much time we give them. And it's usually a 30-minute presentation with 15-minute Q&A. The second part of your question was, yeah, so in terms of picking the topic. There's a few ways to think about it. I know some folks will be like, oh, we have candidates present on something they've worked with in the past. I've tried that form and it's really difficult because I found that candidates even sometimes spend tons of time sharing the context of that company.”
2023-06-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building high-performing teams | Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Typically, we will schedule it about a week in advance. They have a week. The tricky thing here is obviously it's a big ask to ask someone to create a presentation. And so if it's one week that's like long enough to create it, but it's short enough that you don't spend tons of time. The other thing is just making it clear, like, don't exceed more than X number of slides. In Webflow's case, we've done like don't exceed more than 30 slides. And that's quite a lot. We do not expect you to do 30 slides.”
2023-06-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building high-performing teams | Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Like probably not a fit. And it actually, I think that other thing about that call is it helps just set the candidate up for success, right? It's actually quite a lot of work to create a presentation. The more we can help them by giving them information, making sure they can be successful, it's helpful. And I think, I guess, lastly, it gives them a taste of what it's like to work with me.”
2023-06-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building high-performing teams | Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“On the role, but it's usually some type of presentation about the problem you would be working on at the company. Before that, we have that preparation call with me where often candidates will have questions like, oh, I need to know this data or I'm curious about X. And so it's really just a call to help them. And then at this stage too, they'll often have the actual draft of the presentation. And so we'll go through it together and I'll actually be like, hey, I think you should lean in heavier here. How would you think about this? I'll even say, for example, a WebFlow, I'll be like, we're thinking about X, Y, Z thing, just so you know. And maybe incorporating that into your presentation would be really helpful. And so that's where I get a lot of signal of what is it going to be like to work with this person on a presentation. And then I'll see in the presentation whether they incorporate it or not or how they did. And sometimes I've seen candidates that didn't incorporate any of it. And I kind of am like, okay, this is.”
2023-06-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building high-performing teams | Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Some require working more closely with different stakeholders, so you want to make sure you can test those things. And then the final round is the presentation and then also maybe a conversation on other areas. We want that like come through the interview process. We want to dig in further. The presentation is usually thinking through how you'd approach, you're collecting all this information on the company or the problem throughout the interview process. And so it culminates in what do you think they should look like or maybe what would you want to do in your first 90 days?”
2023-06-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building high-performing teams | Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Usually, you know, hiring manager screen, and I actually do the life problem solving at this screen. I actually think it weeds out the most people. And there's actually two things I do here. One is a live problem solving. How would you approach X? So let's say I'm hiring for pricing at Webflow, I would ask you approaching. I sometimes would say, hey, do you have your laptop? Can you pull up our pricing page? curious to get your thoughts. What would you want to change? That was a trick I learned at Dropbox where we would actually pull up the Dropbox website and be like, hey, what do you want to test here? Why? And you get a ton of signal on how they approach the problem, how they think. I ask why a bunch. And then the next screen is talking to more folks at the”
2023-06-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building high-performing teams | Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Candidates through the process, something that I do that I learned a few years ago that was super helpful is I so I always have a presentation component to the interview process that checks for prepared thinking, communication, and I recommend a prep call between the two of us before that presentation. And I actually will give feedback on the presentation. And what this gives me signal is what is it actually going to be like to work together? And then I see how they incorporate it into the final product. And that is always really interesting and sometimes is the biggest signal to what it's going to be like to work with this person.”
2023-06-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building high-performing teams | Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In terms of what I look for, I think there's kind of this kind of known list of things that you probably want to look for for a PM that I probably are not going to, I'm not going to say anything groundbreaking here, but obviously communication skills, the ability to manage stakeholders and work well cross-functionally, the things that I lean especially heavy on in my interview process is this concept of first principles thinking or strong critical thinking. So usually there are some live problem solving component to my interview process where I really lean more heavily into how would you approach X problem. And then I dig into the Y and try to understand why would they approach it this way, see what questions they're asking, and just see how they approach problem solving. And then the other thing that I look for that I mentioned is that growth mindset. So really seeing how does this person take feedback? And so I will actually sometimes give feedback to”
2023-06-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building high-performing teams | Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, care deeply but challenged directly. And that has always been something that is something I try to infuse and has really inspired me as a leader.”
2023-06-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building high-performing teams | Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, definitely. Interestingly enough, Kim Scott was at Dropbox for a short period of time. So when I joined Dropbox, she was actually on my interview panel and we overlap for three months. And she actually workshopped that book with our team before or before she published it. And that always resonated with me. And I remember her saying, you know, you have to.”
2023-06-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building high-performing teams | Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Developing that person, but it's like having a friendship with somebody. And I feel like I've learned a ton from people that I have managed. And so it ends up being this really great thing where you initially started working together, but you now know each other so well. And I think that's even how I've developed as a manager is just getting feedback from my team.”
2023-06-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building high-performing teams | Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In your journey here, here are some things where there's low hanging fruit or even rotting fruit that you should take on into secure early winds. Then in your journey, I think it's a lot about just giving feedback along the way, making sure you give visibility. One recent hack I have is having folks on the team create looms that they can share with different leaders at Webflow. You know, it's hard to sometimes get visibility and get live meeting calendars, but if you create like a five or ten minute loom on something you did, that's just a great way to get visibility. And then finally, I think it's that lifelong relationship actually. So I'm still in touch with a lot of people that I've managed and I've helped them, you know, whether it's they're looking for their new job or they have career advice. I always make myself available. And so it's actually that lifelong journey of just developing that person. And at some point, it's not, you know, it's not even.”
2023-06-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building high-performing teams | Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In terms of developing talent, I think of this as like stages of the life cycle of your relationship, right? So I think it first actually starts, it's very meta as a growth person, starts with when you hire somebody, really making sure you're finding somebody that is a good fit for the role. It's a good mutual fit. I also tend to look for folks that have a growth mindset. There are people that are wanting to learn, they're looking for feedback, they take feedback well. And then after that, they join the company. And as a manager, my job is to help set them up for success. So how do I ramp them up as quickly as possible, connect them to the right people, the company? How do I also make sure it's clear what success looks like in their first 90 days? And then how do I help them secure early wins, essentially? So I often will suggest, hey, you should do this presentation. It's a great way to get visibility early.”
2023-06-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building high-performing teams | Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And you also can do things in spurts, but it's important to know ultimately what you can take on. Also putting, I find that putting a specific timeline like, hey, I'm going to do this thing for a quarter, but after that, we really need to find somebody else to do it or hand it off is really helpful. It's definitely a delicate balance. I do think it's a great question because I think that's a common thing people early in their careers struggle with, which is they can lose focus because they're trying to help everybody. That was actually a problem I had when I first joined Dropbox is I was the only sales ops person, so I was just helping every sales leader with their metrics and very focused. And so it is a little.”
2023-06-18 · Lenny's Podcast · Building high-performing teams | Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source