Crafting a compelling product vision | Ebi Atawodi (YouTube, Netflix, Uber)

I call it top 10 things you should know. It's a living document. So in my org right now I've got quite a number of PMs and for each of those PMs in this living Google Doc, they literally put 10 things, like 10 problems you should know.

It baffles me the number of PMs who never go through their products and go through the onboarding flow. Because we're all in this state of using the product. But actually, that first step where I don't have the product, what does that look like?

If you have conviction and it's not clear, then you don't have conviction, quite frankly. If you're like, 'I think maybe we should, there are five things we should solve.' I'm like, 'Then you don't have conviction.'

The vision needs to be lofty, realistic, devoid of any tech or limitations of today, and grounded in a very clear and potent problem. User problem.

Regardless of what level you are in the company. So people say, 'Oh, I'm just a junior PM.' Whatever level, there is some micro macro vision that you need to have.

I think about three concentric circles. So the core of your vision is your team. And I want to make sure my team understands the vision because I'm basically saying, 'Get on this boat, we're sailing to the vision.'

What if I took away all your resources and you only had five, which is the one you're going to build? I do all these Draconian things that just force clarity.

Already start product management, doing product management before you're a product manager. Open up your favorite apps. What are the top 10 problems you see?

If I could put all the research into Bard or ChatGPT and it could spit out a PRD, then you haven't done your job.

If you don't intentionally evolve the culture, it will evolve without you. So culture is always going to evolve. That's just the way humans are.

I call it top 10 things you should know. It's a living document. So in my org right now I've got quite a number of PMs and for each of those PMs in this living Google Doc, they literally put 10 things, like 10 problems you should know.

Do you know your engineering manager's birthday? It's the day they showed up in the world. It's the most important day for them.

Product management is clarity and conviction. You bring clarity and you have conviction.