By Lenny Rachitsky · lennysnewsletter.com · @lennysan on X · YouTube · LinkedIn
This issue of Lenny Rachitsky's newsletter answers three reader questions about career and organizational challenges in product work. The first, drawing on growth leader Brian Balfour, explains how to break into a growth role by understanding what growth means to a company, forming a view of its growth loops, emphasizing foundational tools over tactics, and building a visible body of work. The second offers a practical playbook for getting small fixes prioritized in a bureaucratic company, including finding the decision-maker and making a clear, deadline-bound case. The third addresses ambiguous product ownership as companies scale, recommending communicate-then-proceed norms, ownership spreadsheets, and organizing teams around outcomes rather than features. The sponsored segment is excluded from this metadata.
01Key takeaways
- Before interviewing for a growth role, learn how the company defines growth and what its growth model looks like.
- Demonstrate skill with data, user psychology, and experimentation rather than listing tactical ideas you cannot yet validate.
- Build a portfolio of applied work; analyzing products you use can serve as a starting point.
- For slow approvals, identify the actual decision-maker and ask what evidence would change their mind.
- Make requests concrete and set a date for a decision to keep stalled asks moving.
- Use an ownership spreadsheet after each reorg and accept imperfect assignments rather than waiting for perfect ones.
02Key sections
- Breaking into growth roles
- Brian Balfour advises candidates to clarify how a company defines growth and to come in with a point of view on its growth loops. He argues that foundational skills in data, user psychology, and experimentation matter more than tactical idea lists.
- Building a portfolio over credentials
- Applied work shown through a portfolio, blog, or analysis of products one uses is presented as far more persuasive than credentials or resume badges.
- Getting small asks prioritized
- The author argues that some bureaucracy is inherent to large companies, then offers steps such as finding the decision-maker, asking what would convince them, and setting decision deadlines.
- Surfacing systemic bureaucracy
- When slow processes recur, the suggestion is to compile examples into a document with recommendations, prompting leaders to either fix the problem or explain the intended design.
- Navigating ambiguous ownership
- Ownership ambiguity is presented as permanent, with mitigations including communicate-then-proceed norms, a simple ownership spreadsheet, and outcome-based team design as used at Airbnb.
03From the post
“Hello and welcome to this week’s edition of my humble newsletter, where I attempt to answer your questions and offer candid advice about building product, driving growth, working with other humans, and anything else that’s stressing you out at the office 🤝 If you’re returning from the last edition (or the marketplace series), thank you! If you’re new to this newsletter, nice to have you! 💛 This week: 1. How to break into a growth role (with special guest Brian Balfour!) 🧗♀️ 2. How to use influence to get sh\t done in a large company 😏 3. How to work within an ambiguous org structure without stepping on toes 🦶 On to this week’s questions… [](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s!lpwS!,fauto,qauto:good,flprogressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F4417d797-40ad-4780-846f-9176566d9e05480x360.gif) Q: How does one break into a “growth” role? For this question, I went straight to a person who has gotten more people into “growth” than anyone else in the world (and is also a great human being): Brian Balfour. Brian founded and operates a company called Reforge, which trains hundreds of people each year on all aspects of growth, and generously offered to…”
04Frameworks mentioned
Summary and takeaways written by PM Atlas; quotes are short excerpts. © the original author.