Lenny Distilled

From managing people to managing AI: The leadership skills everyone needs now

September 21, 2025

Featuring: Julie Zhuo (Former VP of Design at Facebook/Meta, Author of The Making of a Manager, Co-founder of Sundial)

6 quotes · 6 insights

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Data diagnoses problems, design treats them

You want to diagnose with data and treat with design. Data is not a tool that's going to tell you what you should build.
Julie ZhuoFormer VP of Design at Facebook/Meta, Author of The Making of a Manager, Co-founder of Sundial 00:01:05

Strategy is solving specific problems, not setting ambitious goals

"This" refers to clearly defining goals and success criteria, which Zhuo just identified as the first key skill for working with AI agents.

The first is defining the goal and defining the outcome and being really, really crystal clear on what does success look like. If you ask a company to do this, we'll know that this is challenging for humans.
Julie ZhuoFormer VP of Design at Facebook/Meta, Author of The Making of a Manager, Co-founder of Sundial 00:12:16

High growth masks product problems

I don't actually think a lot of the fast growing companies are using data well at this point. These companies are totally getting by on just good instincts and good vibes, but what always happens is eventually things stop growing.
Julie ZhuoFormer VP of Design at Facebook/Meta, Author of The Making of a Manager, Co-founder of Sundial 00:01:05

AI will flatten organizations and blur roles

We need to dissolve the boundaries of these traditional roles and call ourselves builders. I'd love for us to get to the world where that's the title.
Julie ZhuoFormer VP of Design at Facebook/Meta, Author of The Making of a Manager, Co-founder of Sundial 00:00:04

Meta-skills matter more than specific knowledge

Emotional regulation is still really, really, really important. That's probably the thing that I think about the most in terms of what I want my kids to learn.
Julie ZhuoFormer VP of Design at Facebook/Meta, Author of The Making of a Manager, Co-founder of Sundial 01:31:20

Build trust before driving change

The best way... The first tip on getting feedback or delivering hard feedback is first go and actually establish that our relationship is one in which we value each other's contribution, we want to help each other grow, and therefore we're going to be the kind of people that want to give feedback to each other every week.
Julie ZhuoFormer VP of Design at Facebook/Meta, Author of The Making of a Manager, Co-founder of Sundial 01:01:18

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