Lenny's Podcast: Product | Growth | Career

April Dunford is the author of the best-selling book Obviously Awesome, a definitive guide to product positioning. She spent 25 years leading marketing, product, and sales teams and now runs her own consulting firm, helping companies of all shapes and sizes nail their positioning. April has worked hands-on with over 200 companies on positioning, including Google, IBM, Postman, and Epic Games.

In today’s episode, you’ll learn:

1. How does April define positioning?

2. How do you assess if your product’s positioning is weak? And strong?

3. What are some examples of great products with weak positioning?

4. What are the essential five steps to figuring out your product’s positioning?

5. What is the difference between positioning vs. messaging vs. branding?

6. What’s the difference between segmentation and persona?

7. When should you bring in a professional? 

8. Is it essential for a company to always figure out a differentiator and be different?

9. How does this concept help you nail sales for enterprise software?

Where to find April:

Website: https://aprildunford.com

Twitter: https://twitter.com/aprildunford 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aprildunford 

Book: Obviously Awesome: How to Nail Product Positioning so Customers Get It, Buy It, Love It 

April’s guest post: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/positioning

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Thank you to our sponsors for making this episode possible:

• Amplitude: https://amplitude.com/

• Flatfile: https://flatfile.com/Lenny

• Productboard: https://Productboard.com/

Shreyas Doshi is a treasure trove of knowledge and tactical insights on product, strategy, psychology, leadership, and life. Over the course of his career, he’s PM’d at Google, Twitter, Yahoo, and Stripe, where he joined as its fourth product manager, later becoming Stripe’s first PM manager and helping define and grow its product management function (from ~5 to more than 50 people). Since leaving Stripe, Shreyas has amassed a huge Twitter following in large part thanks to consistent sharing of high-quality insights on the art of product management.

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Find the full transcript here: https://www.lennyspodcast.com/shreyas-doshi-on-pre-mortems-the-lno-framework-the-three-levels-of-product-work-why-most-execution-problems-are-strategy-problems-and-roi-vs-opportunity-cost-thinking/#transcript

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In this episode, we’ll explore five big ideas from Shreyas Doshi:

1) How to predict and prevent problems with pre-mortems

* How did pre-mortem meetings impact the culture at Stripe?

* What are the best practices in running a pre-mortem meeting?

2) How to prioritize your time with the LNO framework

* What is the LNO framework? How did it change the way Shreyas went about his day?

* What is the two-step tactic you can apply to overcome procrastination on important tasks? 

3) The three levels of product work

* What are the three levels of product work? Which level should you optimize for?

* How might these product work levels cause conflict or influence your company culture?

4) Most execution problems are not really execution problems 

* What are the common types of problems hiding behind the execution label? 

* What are the two traits you need to identify a fake execution problem?

5) Why ROI thinking is detrimental to product planning

* What is the pitfall of ROI thinking?

* What is opportunity-cost thinking and how can you apply it?

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References:

* Coda template: https://coda.io/@shreyas/pre-mortems-how-a-stripe-product-manager-predicts-prevents-probl

* Pre-mortems: https://twitter.com/shreyas/status/1221257568510603264

* LNO framework: https://twitter.com/shreyas/status/1492345184171945984

* Three levels of product work: https://twitter.com/shreyas/status/1370248637842812936

* Execution problems: https://twitter.com/shreyas/status/1427116991274307588

* Opportunity-cost thinking: https://twitter.com/shreyas/status/1409726218438549514

* High agency: https://twitter.com/shreyas/status/1276956836856393728

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Where to find Shreyas:

* Twitter: https://twitter.com/shreyas

* LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shreyasdoshi/

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Our amazing sponsors:

* Coda: https://coda.io/lenny

* Productboard: https://www.productboard.com/

* Sprig: https://sprig.com/lenny

Julie Zhuo is the co-founder of Sundial, a company that helps builders make meaningful use of data to fulfill their mission. With over 400K followers across social media, she is one of the most influential leaders in product design, and product thinking broadly.

Julie started her career at Facebook as a product designer and eventually led teams of 100+ designers as the VP of Design. Her experience leading at Facebook motivated her to publish the Wall Street Journal best seller The Making of a Manager in 2019. On the side, Julie shared her thoughts on technology, design, and leadership in The Looking Glass, the blog that inspired Lenny’s Newsletter.

Find the full transcript here: https://www.podpage.com/lennys-podcast/julie-zhuo-on-accelerating-your-career-impostor-syndrome-writing-building-product-sense-using-intuition-vs-data-hiring-designers-and-moving-into-management/#transcript

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In this episode, you will learn about:

1) The making of a VP

* How did Julie find her way to product design? 

* How did she navigate through impostor syndrome given the growing responsibilities as Facebook rapidly scaled? 

* What are the challenges she faces as she transitions from VP to founder? 

2) The impact and habit of writing

* What goals was Julie able to achieve through writing?

* What did she do to build a habit of writing?

* Does she think tweeting is better than blogging?

3) How to develop product sense and make better design decisions

* What are the three tried-and-true steps to develop product sense?

* When do you choose intuition over data?

* What’s the secret to facilitating great product/design review meetings?

3) How to take your first steps into management

* What can you do to unblock your path to become a manager?

* What’s the must-know trick in competing for design talent?

Where to find Julie:

* LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/julie-zhuo/

* Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/joulee

* Sundial: sundial.so

* Book: The Making of a Manager, https://www.amazon.com/dp/B079WNPRL2/ref=dp_kinw_strp_1

* Substack: https://lg.substack.com/

* Medium: https://medium.com/the-year-of-the-looking-glass

Our amazing sponsors:

* Amplitude: https://amplitude.com/

* Productboard: https://www.productboard.com/

* Sprig: https://sprig.com/lenny

Welcome to the very first episode of Lenny’s Podcast!

Every week, Lenny Rachitsky will interview world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover concrete, actionable, and tactical advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own product.