Lenny Distilled

How to build trust and grow as a product leader

October 23, 2022

Featuring: Fareed Mosavat (Chief Development Officer, Reforge)

8 quotes · 8 insights

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Learn your boss's mental models, not just their decisions

"Stack levels" refers to organizational hierarchy levels, while "left and right" means adjacent teams or functions at your same level.

I call this going two stack levels up, two stack levels down in terms of your curiosity and what you understand, and also, knowing what's to the left and what's to the right.
Fareed MosavatChief Development Officer, Reforge 00:28:22

Learn by doing: frameworks help but practice decides

You can't do homework. You can't do exercises. You can't do fake stuff. You have to work on real products at real companies with real customers, with real data to get better at product management.
Fareed MosavatChief Development Officer, Reforge 00:00:00

Own problems beyond your scope to create momentum

It is not just your job to get what you can get done with the resources in front of you. It's your job to marshal resources both inside your org and across your organization.
Fareed MosavatChief Development Officer, Reforge 00:38:57

Excellence means knowing when good enough is perfect

What's the least amount of work I could do to make this thing as good as possible? versus How do I do as much work as possible to make sure it's great?
Fareed MosavatChief Development Officer, Reforge 00:38:24

Trust is built through deep knowledge and consistent delivery, not tenure

When Fareed says "it's impact," he's referring to the product work and communication skills discussed earlier in their conversation about career growth.

I think it's impact on the organization, changing the way people think about problems, helping generalize what works and what doesn't work, bringing learnings to the table.
Fareed MosavatChief Development Officer, Reforge 27:18

Practice beats preparation

At the core is you have to actually execute and deliver great products, and you have to do it over, and over, and over again.
Fareed MosavatChief Development Officer, Reforge 00:00:00

The best PMs have T-shaped skills - deep in one, broad in many

You need to have some breadth, right, but it's like same problem, different industry. It's one way to think about depth that's focused. Different problem, same industry is another way to think about it.
Fareed MosavatChief Development Officer, Reforge 01:01:51

Functional expertise beats people management

You have to shift from doer to editor is the way I think about it. You have to shift from, 'My job is to do the work,' to, 'My job is to make the work better.'
Fareed MosavatChief Development Officer, Reforge 00:37:24

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