Lenny Distilled

Product lessons from Waymo

Featuring: Shweta Shrivastava (Senior Director of Product Management, Waymo)

4 quotes · 4 insights

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Don't trust your first answer - dig deeper

Are you proactively trying to challenge your own assumptions is extremely important, right? As a big enough product manager as well as a seasoned product leader, if you're not doing enough of that, then I think you might not be listening. If there's no conflict, if there's no contention, then something is missing.
Shweta ShrivastavaSenior Director of Product Management, Waymo 00:00

Writing forces clarity before building

Amazon has this great process where the PMs have to write a press release for the finished product even before they start building the product. That's the first thing that they have to do is to write that press release like the product is about to launch today. What are you telling the users about that product? Really forces them to think about the value proposition more thoroughly.
Shweta ShrivastavaSenior Director of Product Management, Waymo 26:05

Impact solves all PM career problems

The way to get promoted is to not want it too badly. It is about you have to focus on the impact. Are you working on the right things that will have the right outcome for the business? Because if you are and if you are giving it to your 100%, that will be visible.
Shweta ShrivastavaSenior Director of Product Management, Waymo 33:28

Focus on what you control, not what you wish would happen

The way to get promoted is to not want it too badly. It is about you have to focus on the impact. Are you working on the right things that will have the right outcome for the business? Because if you are and if you are giving it to your 100%, that will be visible.
Shweta ShrivastavaSenior Director of Product Management, Waymo 33:28

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