Lenny’s Podcast98 min
Nikhyl Singhal · Jun 11, 2023
Key learnings- Think about your career as a product: work backward from the end state you want, and plan several steps ahead rather than…
- Pursue a diverse set of experiences across pre-product-market-fit, scaling, inside-the-building and outside-the-building…
- Early in your career, pick a lane of expertise (domain, crafting, market, organizational, growth) and build a story of what you…
Lenny’s Podcast85 min
Ian McAllister · Nov 20, 2022
Key learnings- New PMs should focus first on communicating, prioritizing, and executing, since other skills grow in importance with seniority.
- Answer first and then explain; when asked a 'when' question, give a date, and grade yourself after feedback to improve…
- Prioritization is a core PM skill across themes, projects, sequencing, scope, and personal time, and it strongly multiplies…
Lenny’s Podcast78 min
Vikrama Dhiman · May 12, 2024
Key learnings- Early in your career, prioritize shipping concrete outputs and being useful to your team; strategic influence comes as you earn…
- Keep producing hands-on artifacts like PRDs, strategy docs, and briefs even as you grow senior, since quality artifacts signal…
- Work on your operating model: raise difficult issues without being difficult to work with, surface topics without centering…
Lenny’s Podcast115 min
Nikhyl Singhal · Apr 19, 2026
Key learnings- Expect the information-moving part of product work to be automated; judgment about what to build and whether changes are good…
- Build with AI tools to solve your own daily problems; you don't need to be an engineer, you need to know what good looks like.
- Aim to obsolete yourself: automate the parts of your job you dislike, as the best engineers do.
Lenny’s Podcast95 min
Jeffrey Pfeffer · Jun 13, 2024
Key learnings- Political skill is linked to higher pay, promotions, job satisfaction and lower stress, so treating influence as a learnable…
- Get out of your own way: stop pre-emptory apologizing, stop doubting you deserve your role, and avoid leaking disrespect or…
- Prioritize competence and respect over being liked; you were hired to get a job done, so doing the needed work matters more than…
Lenny’s Podcast99 min
Ethan Evans 2.0 · Jan 14, 2024
Key learnings- Do your current job well first; you can't grow your career while your manager wishes you were different about your performance.
- Ask your manager directly how you can help them, then do what they ask even when the work is unglamorous.
- Once trust exists, tell your manager your specific career goal and ask what they need that would also advance you; managers help…
Lenny’s Podcast97 min
Julie Zhuo · Jun 7, 2022
Key learnings- Growth often comes from being in uncomfortable, unfamiliar situations; Julie notes that feeling like an imposter tends to…
- Seek environments that are scaling, since growing companies create more opportunities to volunteer for new responsibilities and…
- Share your struggles openly with peers, mentors, and reports; vulnerability builds deeper connections and lets others help you…
Lenny’s Podcast88 min
Jules Walter · Jan 5, 2023
Key learnings- Build skills one at a time, dedicating a few months to each with weekly practice tied to a concrete outcome rather than just…
- Create a forcing-function outcome when learning something new, then work backwards to the questions you need answered and seek…
- Practice interviewing with dozens of mock interviews, ideally with people skilled at interviewing, since interviewers rarely give…
Lenny’s Podcast144 min
Phyl Terry · Sep 12, 2024
Key learnings- Join or form a small Job Search Council of six to eight peers who meet regularly, since shared accountability turns job-search…
- Write a short 'Mnookin two-pager' listing what you want and don't want, then refine it with peers before taking it to the market.
- Run a listening tour with reverse exit interviews, broader network, and recruiters, asking 'If you were in my shoes, how would…
Lenny’s Podcast105 min
Ada Chen Rekhi · Apr 16, 2023
Key learnings- Run a curiosity loop by asking a specific, unbiased question with a rationale request, sent lightweight to 5-10 people who are…
- Avoid generic advice by making it contextual: weigh each recommendation against your own situation, skills, and experience rather…
- Use a personal values exercise to rank what matters to you, then test big decisions against that internal scorecard instead of…
Lenny’s Podcast74 min
Paul Millerd · Nov 19, 2023
Key learnings- Notice whether you're consciously choosing your default path or simply inheriting it, including implicit contracts like working…
- Take a three-hour block during a workday, go for an aimless walk or revisit a childhood activity, and notice what emerges and…
- Ask yourself why you work beyond money, and examine the cultural scripts behind your answer about being a good person.
Lenny’s Podcast120 min
Christian Idiodi · Dec 21, 2023
Key learnings- Earn trust as a PM by becoming the most knowledgeable person on customers, data and the business, and by asking experts to teach…
- Frame PM success as earning a 'certificate of appreciation' from customers: revenue, engagement, loyalty, or referrals.
- Recognize that value is the hardest and most overlooked risk; test whether customers will actually buy, choose, and use the…
Lenny’s Podcast113 min
Maggie Crowley · Nov 5, 2023
Key learnings- Great PMs simplify relentlessly: find the one thing to do and stick with it long enough to actually finish it.
- Read your documents out loud and cut anything complicated; if you can say it in conversation, write it that way.
- Follow up on results after launches by setting calendar reminders to check metrics weeks and months later, and share what you…
Lenny’s Podcast87 min
Fareed Mosavat · Oct 23, 2022
Key learnings- Get better at product management by doing real work at real companies with real customers; courses, mentorship and reading only…
- Run an execute-generalize-communicate loop: ship work, extract transferable lessons such as when friction helps activation, then…
- Build sponsorship by doing excellent work and communicating it, so leaders who can open bigger opportunities notice you.
Lenny’s Podcast86 min
Graham Weaver · Jan 16, 2025
Key learnings- Ask yourself what you would pursue if you knew you wouldn't fail, then work backward from that goal to find a path toward it.
- Write down your limiting beliefs and fears on paper; once externalized they lose power and become concrete to-do items you can…
- Build accountability through an executive coach, a like-minded friend, or a weekly written form tracking goals and next steps.
Lenny’s Podcast82 min
Elizabeth Stone · Feb 22, 2024
Key learnings- Economics framing, especially thinking through incentives and unintended consequences, is a useful lens for product and business…
- Hold a high personal bar: be responsive, follow through on commitments, and show up on time so colleagues are not left waiting on…
- Give high-standard feedback in private and specific terms, then help the person close the gap by working on the work with them…
Lenny’s Podcast135 min
Bangaly Kaba · May 26, 2024
Key learnings- Optimize for impact rather than compensation, since pay and scope follow from the impact you deliver.
- Score your environment (manager, resources, scope, team, compensation, culture) quarterly to see which factor is limiting your…
- Your manager is the most powerful environment variable; if it's a bad fit, first try to understand what they optimize for before…
Lenny’s Podcast98 min
Jason Shah · Sep 18, 2022
Key learnings- Reframe pushback as shifting direction toward shared goals: first identify what the other person actually cares about, then align…
- Use Amazon's working-backwards PR/FAQ: write the press release, customer quote, and leadership quote before building, forcing…
- Cut vague adjectives like 'great' and replace them with concrete numbers and specifics, since fewer, heavier words force sharper…
Substack podcastJan 3, 2026
Jan 3, 2026
Key learnings- Treat time management as an ongoing experiment rather than a fixed system, testing methods and keeping what actually works for…
- Advanced time management ideas go beyond to-do lists to focus on how you allocate attention across competing priorities.
- Protect blocks of deep, uninterrupted work time, since product work is often fragmented by meetings and reactive requests.
Lenny’s Podcast94 min
Jiaona Zhang · Jul 2, 2023
Key learnings- New PMs often jump to solutions; start by understanding user problems and whether a real opportunity exists before deciding what…
- A PM has little formal authority and must lead through influence, so editing and synthesizing opportunities matters more than…
- Check unit economics early; magical thinking that a business will work at scale is a common trap, as the Airbnb Plus experience…
Lenny’s Podcast90 min
Lauren Ipsen · Nov 3, 2022
Key learnings- Define the outcome and 90-day mandate for a senior product hire before starting the search, rather than hiring a head of product…
- Be wary of chasing big-name executives; ask who is best for this specific role at this stage, since senior leaders may be far…
- Decide whether the role is platform, core product, or specialist (growth, monetization, design) so you don't expect one leader to…
Lenny’s Podcast95 min
Shreyas Doshi · Oct 31, 2024
Key learnings- Run a pre-mortem before launches by imagining the project has already failed, then surfacing tigers, paper tigers and elephants…
- Classify tasks as leverage, neutral or overhead; spend extra effort only on leverage tasks, and do less polish on neutral and…
- Beat procrastination on high-leverage work by doing a couple days of low-stakes placebo tasks first, then working from a…
Lenny’s Podcast108 min
Claire Vo · Apr 7, 2024
Key learnings- Know what you want from your career and your next role, and ask for it clearly, framed around how the role solves a real problem…
- Time promotion conversations to the company's talent calendar and pitch concrete org-level gaps you can fill, such as an org…
- Lean into your zone of genius by auditing your calendar, grouping activities by energy, and deliberately protecting time for the…
Lenny’s Podcast99 min
Gergely · Nov 17, 2022
Key learnings- Build real depth in a specific field before writing about it, since credibility from hands-on experience is hard to fake and…
- Set controllable goals, such as publishing on a fixed cadence, rather than outcome goals like subscriber counts you cannot…
- Create external deadlines and accountability, such as promises to paying readers or a publisher, to overcome the procrastination…