打造高绩效团队 | Melissa Tan(Webflow、Dropbox、Canva)
Building high-performing teams | Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva)
Value of First Principles Thinking
Melissa Tan: My aha moment of the value of first principles thinking was when I was at Dropbox. We would hire a ton of really smart people that had never done sales and had them do sales. There are a lot of disadvantages to that, but I do think it led to a ton of innovation. That’s how we got our very innovative go-to market motions because a lot of those people then moved into different functions at the company. They had all this context on who the user was. They had talked to so many different users at that point. If you take people that are just super smart, they’ve never done it before, one advantage of that is they can innovate because I think they come in with, I don’t know anything. Let me just figure this out.
About This Episode
Lenny: Welcome to Lenny’s podcast, where I interview world-class product leaders and growth experts to learn from their hard one experiences building and growing today’s most successful products. Today my guest is Melissa Tan. Melissa was the longtime head of growth for Dropbox’s B2B business. She’s also their first growth product manager. Then she went on to do full-time advising for companies like Canva, Grammarly, Miro, and Ro, helping them with their growth strategy and helping them build their growth teams.
For the past two and a half years, she’s been leading growth at Webflow. But hot off the presses as Melissa shares at the top of this podcast, she’s going back to full-time advising life. So if you’re looking for help with go-to market plans, growth strategy, building your growth team, aligning your sales, marketing and growth efforts, she’s about to become available, so definitely reach out. In our conversation, we get deep into what it takes to build a high performing team and also how to build a high performing growth team, specifically.
Melissa shares advice for becoming a leader that people will follow from company to company, how to best develop your people to become the best versions of themselves. She talks about the most common ingredients of a high performing team and what she’s learned from working with companies like Canva, Grammarly, Miro, Ro, Webflow and Dropbox. We also get into how to interview product managers and she shares her actual interview process, plus who your first growth hire should probably be, the most common mistakes people make when they first start to invest in growth and a real talk story of what Dropbox did right and what they did wrong in their shift to B2B. There are so many golden nuggets of lessons in this episode and I’m excited to bring it to you. With that, I bring you Melissa Tan after a short word from our sponsors.
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Melissa, welcome to the podcast.
Melissa Tan: Thanks, Lenny. It’s great to be here.
Melissa’s Next Move
Lenny: I’m excited to have you on. I hear there’s a big development in your career that is going to be out by the time this podcast comes out where you’re embarking on a new adventure. I’d love to hear more about it and for folks to understand what you’re doing next.
Melissa Tan: Over the last couple years I’ve been at Webflow building out the growth team there. I’m actually transitioning right now and I’m out right now and I’m going to go back into advising, which is something I was doing a lot of before Webflow working, having been fortunate enough to work with great companies like Canva, Grammarly, Miro, et cetera. And so that’s one of my biggest passions is working with earlier stage companies once they found product market fit and helping them scale growth. And I’ll be going back into advising.
Dropbox Growth Lessons and Reflections
Lenny: Amazing. That’s a huge news because I, there’s like a small number of people like Melissa that is available at certain times to work with and this is going to be this window and I just want people to understand what kinds of areas do you think you’re going to focus on for folks that may need help and may want to reach out?
Melissa Tan: I’ve worked with companies across many different stages, so even in the early stage as companies are thinking about their go-to market strategy. Previously at Dropbox, I worked across sales. I also helped start their initial product growth and self-serve team for Dropbox business. I’ve also overseen pricing and packaging at Webflow. So a lot of companies initially as they’re thinking about their go-to market strategy, should they be product led? Should they lean more into sales motion? What should the pricing and packaging look like? I’ve worked with earlier stage companies and then also post product market fit as companies are building out growth and they want to make sure to optimize the funnel across activation, monetization, engagement retention. I’ve also advised and helped growth teams, so kind of across stages focus on growth and go-to market.
When to Bring in Sales
Lenny: I guess while we’re on it, what’s the best way to reach out as people are listening to this and they’re like, “Oh my God, I want to get some help on this stuff.”
Melissa Tan: Definitely LinkedIn is a good place. I check my LinkedIn, so feel free to reach out there.
Building High-Performing Teams
Lenny: Great. So usually we got that covered at the end, but I think that was going to be helpful in case people were like, “Oh, I see what you can help us with.” So building on that, I want to focus our conversation on two specific topics that I know that you’re specially strong at. One is building high performance teams broadly, and then two is building high performance growth teams specifically. How does that sound as a focus of our conversation?
Melissa Tan: Yeah, let’s do it. Two topics I’m very passionate about. Let’s do it.
Deep Care and Direct Feedback
Lenny: So before we get into it too deeply, I want to first talk about Dropbox. So you’re at Dropbox for four-ish years, something like that, doing a lot of their growth work and it was in the middle of a lot of their growth spurts and things like that. And when I think Dropbox and growth, there’s kind of this dichotomy I think about. On the one hand, there’s just these incredible growth loops that work, this referral program, this crazy word of mouth. There’s just this explosive growth story of a product.
And then on the other hand, there’s this B2B side that from an outsider just feels like that’s something that didn’t work for a long time. And then Box came around and did that really well, and I think Dropbox has done better since then, but it feels like this combination of really successful growth and then maybe less successful. So I’m curious, just looking back from your experience and from what you’ve heard, what do you think Dropbox did and what do you think they did wrong? And then just what are some learnings from that experience and watching Dropbox go through that?
Melissa Tan: Yeah, it’s a great question. And having been at Dropbox for close to five years, I did a lot of reflection while I was there. So I was there from 2013 to 2017, around 200 people. I think about a billion dollar valuation to essentially … I think when I left we were 1,500 people and we’re valued at 10 billion at the IPO. I think the things that Dropbox got right, one of them was definitely hiring. So when I think about 2013, Dropbox was actually known in the tech circles as a place that was very selective, very difficult to get into. You could have an amazing resume, and Dropbox was really selective about the type of people they brought in. So I think they looked for two main things. They looked for first principles thinkers, so not necessarily your experience, but how do you approach problems, how do you know the right questions to ask? And then create your own framework around that.
Dropbox also hired for people that were just really humble, collaborative and team oriented. And the combination of those two things, people that were just first principle thinkers also just really collaborative to tons of innovation. And so when you think about freemium product led growth, even we created a high velocity sales motion there, there was just so much innovation because you had these folks that just knew how to solve problems and worked really well cross-functionally across product growth, sales, et cetera.
And also, broadly speaking, the company just infused the topic of hiring and recruiting into the culture. It was something that as I was there, everyone knew we were all going to be spending a ton of time interviewing. We all were trained on how to sell Dropbox and how to sell the roles we were recruiting for too so that we could close top talent. So I think that’s something we definitely got and I learned a ton about. The other thing was the importance of execution.
So a lot of times at Dropbox we would try something and it didn’t work the first time around and it was easy to be maybe say that just doesn’t work for us, like growth. We actually had tried to do some growth experiments back in 2013 and they didn’t find much traction, but what we found is the devil, I like to say the devils and the details and the devils and how you execute. And so coming back to how do we execute just a little bit differently and some of the learnings there where I think the first time we started growth, we could have been more user-centric and been a lot more hypothesis driven. We were following a lot of best practices that just didn’t really apply to Dropbox.
And so the way that you execute ends up really mattering. That was the second learning. The third is just focus. I think you alluded to this, I think the blessing and the curse of early success is that you can get pulled in so many different directions and Dropbox had a consumer business, a B2B business, and I think we could have clarified what is our point of view on what the overall motion should look like, how do we blend and think about the journey from consumer to B2B really early on, and I think a learning was that we just started our sales motion and our enterprise a little bit later than we should have and a lot of competition caught up to us.
And then finally, I think the fourth one that I really believe in is how do you engage the whole company in thinking about go-to-market growth and revenue. Back in 2013, in tech growth was kind of like this dirty word and revenue was a dirty word, and so we were like, “Oh, a good product should sell itself. And it wasn’t until our self-serve business started to slow down that we started our team because we realized there’s a ton of opportunity in just optimizing the experience.
And because we started a bit later, it always felt like growth was a layer on top of product. I think the best way to execute is just to have that be front and center from the start. What is our go-to market strategy? How are we thinking about monetization and having that infused into how you think about product development? And that’s something both JZ who leads product at Webflow and myself been really intentional as we’ve thought of the collaboration across product and growth. So that was definitely a learning. So I guess the four things there are just the importance of hiring, execution. Think about your go-to market early on and then how do you engage the whole company on thinking about go-to market and growth.
Developing Talent Internally
Lenny: You said Dropbox essentially there was a late investment in sales and there’s a sense maybe product led growth’s going to take us really far. And I imagine look at Jira and Atlassian, they’re just all product led and that’s amazing. I guess what’s your current framework for when it makes sense to start leaning into sales and hiring a sales team for say a product led product that is working?
Advice on Finding Mentors
Melissa Tan: It really comes down to the product because initially I think most companies are leaning heavier into sales or heavier into product-led. You’re usually not doing both at the same time. And so a trend I’ve seen is starting product-led first and the signal is that is a good motion for you is if the product is really intuitive to onboard onto. There’s a low learning curve so you don’t need a human to onboard the user. Also, if there’s a viral component to it, that is really what can take.
Dropbox is massively viral. When I think also about Miro or Figma, those also are very viral products. Those have a kind of the DNA of product led. And initially I think when you have scale, you’re getting a lot of signal on what is resonating with the user. Initially, you also don’t have … It takes a while to build out the features for enterprise. And so as you’re building out the product-led motion, you have probably larger companies in your self-serve base and they are often knocking on your door.
This happened at Dropbox being like, “I need you to build SSO for me. I need you to build all these enterprise grade features. It’s not secure enough.” And so you are also collecting the list of things you need to build on the enterprise side. And so I think it’s typically looking like you might start product-led, then go enterprise. And then the other direction I’ve seen is some companies initially are just more conducive to an enterprise in sales motion. Potentially, you need to build custom things for these users. It’s also not a bottom-up motion. Maybe the way you sell the product starts with the legal team or the finance team or some important stakeholder, but then a lot of companies now are trying to make that shift to make the product more accessible and go product led.
And so then you’re thinking about, okay, how do I make this product simpler to onboard onto? How do I think about reaching the end user at scale? And so I think it’s basically first figuring out where do you start and then starting to invest in the area. And I guess maybe lastly, knowing how the whole picture fits together. There’s a lot of companies that do consumer and B2B and I think the earlier you can figure out how they go together and what the paths and journeys look like, it just ends up being more seamless to the user and, yeah.
Lenny: Awesome. Okay, so let me start to transition into talking about building awesome teams and high performing teams. And something that I know about you that I’ve heard from other people is that you have this reputation for being a person that people follow from company to company, which is the ultimate sign of, I don’t know, retention and NPS and product market fit as a leader and a manager. So I’m just curious, what is it that you think you do that gets people to follow you from company to company?
Assessing Managers in Interviews
Melissa Tan: I’ve been really fortunate. I’ve worked with a few folks from my early Dropbox team that I’ve known for 10 years now, like a couple of times. In some case, three times. And I always feel so privileged that I get the opportunity to work with them again and they have that trust and confidence in me. I think what it is, and it took me time to develop this, is I have a very people focused approach to how I lead and manage. I really think the core of it is deeply caring about people, building that trust, investing in their career development, helping them figure out where they want to go in their career. I think for me it’s very personal. I have been really fortunate to have great mentors and managers that helped me in those respects. And so it really started from just paying it forward and wanting to do the same thing for other people that were on my team. I think it just comes down to deeply caring and everything, all your actions follow through from there. So that’s how I would describe that.
Building Natural Mentor Relationships
Lenny: Some people may be hearing that and feel like there’s this choice you have to make as a leader deeply care about the person or drive impact, focus on getting the work done. Do you find that those can coexist or is it this kind of two ends of a spectrum and maybe the question’s just like how do you do both? How do you help people yes, achieve and drive impact while also feeling like you really care about them?
Melissa Tan: I don’t think that they’re mutually exclusive of each other because I think the other thing that I really emphasize on my team is being very results oriented. So as a growth leader, for better or for worse, everything you do is very measurable. And so I actually think this is why a lot of folks on my team, something that they actually appreciate is knowing what success looks like and knowing how they’ll be measured. And I actually create a very results-oriented culture on the team where it’s clear what our goals are, we break it down into the individual levers, it’s clear how success is measured for each individual.
And so I don’t think they are mutually exclusive. And then my role as a leader is also supporting their career growth, helping them meet those goals and giving them feedback along the way. So even though they might sound like two different things, I actually think they can coexist and for me, I actually really lean into both.
Elements of High-Performing Teams
Lenny: What’s an example of caring deeply about someone and being that kind of leader? People may be listening and are like, “Oh yeah, I care a lot about my reports.” But what are some examples of what that means to you that maybe would surprise people?
Melissa Tan: I think an example from someone that they joined my team and I just early on thought that they weren’t maybe moving quickly enough and they needed some more direction. And so really early into them joining the company, that was about two or three weeks in, I actually pulled them aside and I said, “Hey, we need to move a lot faster. This is where we need to get to by X. We’re a growth team. We need to prove wins out early. This is how I think we should do it. Let’s try to create a roadmap, a list of problems to solve, et cetera, hypotheses.” And they don’t have to be right, but just getting something out there, starting to line the whole team on what those are and then defining how we’re going to measure success and know we’re in the right path. We just need to get there as quickly as we can.
And so I gave them that feedback and afterwards, ever since then they have been just on a tear and they actually have mentioned that in later conversations a year into working together that they were so grateful that I had that conversation with them and that I took the time to tell them those things. I think sometimes as a manager it can maybe, you want to avoid the uncomfortable conversations, but I actually think the more direct you can be but also saying this is my intention. My intention is to set you up for success. That goes really far and I think that’s a great example of how do you deeply care about somebody and give them direct feedback and you’re giving them direct feedback because you deeply care and you also believe that they can do things differently. I think the only reason you would give that feedback is because they can do things differently and you just want to help support them.
Fostering a Sense of Ownership
Lenny: In that conversation. What is it that you did that made them feel like you really cared about them? Because when I hear you describe it’s like you’re just telling them, you’re giving them feedback just like, “Hey, you need to do a lot better at this. We need to actually hit our goals.” What was it that made them feel like, “Oh, she really wants me to succeed?”
Melissa Tan: I think in that conversation what’s important is also saying, “I believe you can do all these things and I’m doing this to support you.” Or, “I’m sharing this feedback because I believe in you.” Also saying that I’m here as support, as you are building that out, let me know what I can do to support you. We can jam on it together if it’s helpful. Basically, I guess boil it down to one, restating your intention and why you are having that conversation to sharing that you are there to support them and offering your own help as well.
Those I think are the things that go along well. And I think the third thing is as you give someone feedback, it should never sound like finger pointing or criticizing. It’s really just, “Hey, this is what I observed, this is the impact that it had and here is a different way.” And so keeping the feedback really about the work itself and the specific things that you think can be improved.
A Team-First Culture
Lenny: I know you’re also a big fan of developing talent internally versus hiring experts from the outside and it’s always this decision I think as a leader and as a company. How much do you invest in developing people knowing they can leave anytime, knowing that that’s going to take all this time and work? What have you found from and just learned about the advantages maybe of spending time in developing people and helping them progress and just why is that something you find really important?
Melissa Tan: I’ll start with the why behind developing people. For me personally, it comes from like I’m personally passionate about it just because I feel that a lot of folks invested in me personally when I started out in the working world, I actually struggled quite a lot. I think making the transition from school where it’s really clear what success looks like, you’re just studying, getting good grades. To work where things are much more ambiguous was a really big transition for me and I really benefited from so many mentors that invested in me that I kept in touch with over the years that have also just helped me with my careers.
Two that really stand out are from Dropbox, Oliver Jay who goes by OJ and GC Lionetti. So it really has come from a very personal place for me. Secondly, I think it’s just makes a lot of sense as you’re scaling a company that as you are growing, it just is a smoother transition that the folks on your team can grow with you. People will build institutional knowledge and people talk a lot about founder intuition and that intuition that founders just have. I actually think that extends to early employees too, that have built a ton of context on the user on how to get things done at the company. So the more that you develop talent within the company, the smoother transition is versus bringing someone from the outside where there’s just a lot of different factors and there’s risk there. And so it really comes from a personal place, but also it makes a lot of sense from just like de-risking the situation as you’re scaling.
How to Avoid Overcommitting
Lenny: In my personal career I had the biggest inflection point and the most progress I made as a product manager was one manager who just did exactly what you’re describing, where you invested really deeply in helping me become a better PM and it was not easy. It was just very critical of all the things I wasn’t doing perfectly. And I always think about people don’t sometimes have someone like that in their career. They don’t have a manager like Melissa. Do you have any advice for people that are looking for someone like that or they’re just like, “Man, I have no one around me that’s really helping me develop?” What do you suggest they do?
Melissa Tan: As you are looking for a job, I actually do think you should look to work with people that have that reputation and that you can see that interest that they enjoy mentoring people. They have a track record of developing people. Maybe they have brought other people they’ve worked with at the company from other companies. Those are good signals that that’s something that that person cares about. And even in the interview process, kind of interviewing your manager too and understanding what is their management philosophy, how do they think about your career path in that role? Those are things I would look for.
The second thing too is as you’re interviewing, looking for a manager who especially your success will be tied to their success, this is actually what happened. I mean it’s not like you need to be super strategic about that, but when I reflect back at times when I got closest to people was when I was one of the most critical people on their team and they really needed me to be successful and so they also just would spend a ton more time with me.
So really looking for those opportunities and being really selective in the types of roles you’re taking. I also think there have been times for me personally where I’ve built relationships with someone that wasn’t my direct manager that worked at the same company. And this actually has happened a lot at other companies I’ve worked with where someone knows that it’s a passion of mine to mentor people. And so they proactively reach out to me, ask me for advice, ask me, “Hey, can we set up a monthly recurring sync?”
And so I also think you can look for other people at the company that you work with. And then finally the other thing is looking for external advisors. I actually, in my advising end up mentoring a lot of the people that I work with too. It just organically ends up happening. And so I would say summarize that as just look for the people that you think have this passion, build that relationship with them. And ideally I think you actually build the strongest when you are working together. You just learn so much about each other, but if you don’t have that set up, I think there’s other ways to just proactively look for mentorship and guidance.
Specific Ways to Develop Talent
Lenny: Any tips on the questions? Maybe to ask a manager to help them get to this, if any come to mind and also when you’re looking for someone to help you, anything specific you think that people should look for that maybe they may not be thinking about?
Melissa Tan: On the questions to ask when you’re interviewing for a role, I would actually ask things like I’d love to get a sense for how you think about … I mean I think you can flat out ask, I’d like to get a sense of how you think about managing folks on your team, how you think about developing talent on your team and seeing what their responses to that. I would also ask how are you thinking about the career path for this role? And if the person has not thought about it at all or doesn’t ask you, “Well, what is important to you?” I think those are some signals that it’s maybe not where this person tends to spend their time thinking. And then I would also ask other people on the panel that are not going to be your manager but that work with this person, especially if you happen to talk to people that they manage, how is this person as a manager? And that ends up being also very insightful.
The questions I would ask if you’re looking for someone external, I always find that that relationship is best the more organic it could be. I think Cheryl Sandberg had wrote this in her book Lean She basically writes about how some people will go, “Will you be my mentor?” And I’ve got that question too, and it’s just a lot of pressure to get asked that question really early in and you don’t really know the person. And so the more it can be organic where you talk to somebody, you have actual advice that you want, some people will just reach out to me that I haven’t worked with in a long time and like, “Hey, I’m thinking about a career decision or I’m in this tricky situation at work, can we talk?” And I just give them advice and they will reach out to me for advice occasionally.
It doesn’t have to be a recurring thing that you have to just nurture that relationship. I think that is a way to do it. Or if you are working with somebody and you want to set up some type of monthly thing, I think you asked for that as well. The only thing is I would just be respectful of the time. So if you don’t have anything to talk about that month or anything like that, I’m just always willing to help people. It doesn’t mean we have to be frequently in touch. And so I think it’s also less about being frequently in touch and it’s just going and reaching out when you actually have a problem. People that want to help others are just going to, if they have the time, they’ll say yes.
Radical Candor and Management Philosophy
Lenny: Tim Ferriss talks about that too. He is like, “Never ask someone to be your mentor.” As you said, that’s a scary proposition. You’re committing to something, it’s pressure versus just like, “Hey, can we just meet and can I just get some advice? And then maybe after you do that, can we meet next month also?” And just help it grow organically.
Hiring PMs: Valued Traits
Melissa Tan: Yeah, definitely.
Hiring PMs: The Interview Process
Lenny: I want to talk about how you develop talent and what you’ve learned there. But before that, I wanted to zoom out maybe first and talk about ingredients of high performance teams. So before I ask that question, can you just list the companies you work with, some of the companies you’ve worked with?
Common Pitfalls for Growth Teams
Melissa Tan: I guess I’ve mentioned Dropbox. So Dropbox was my first high growth tech startup. And then after Dropbox I did a lot of advising. So I got to work with Typeform in Barcelona and then someone at Typeform introduced me to Canva. So I met Canva when they were still about 200 people in their early growth journey. Have worked with Grammarly, Miro and then I joined Webflow. And so have been fortunate to be part of a ton of, I guess what I would think are high performing teams.
Flight Formations and the DACI Framework
Lenny: 100%. That’s an incredible roster. So here’s the question. What are some of the most common ingredients you’ve seen across these teams, which from an outsider’s perspective seem quite high performing?
Flight Formations and DACI (Continued)
Melissa Tan: I think it first starts with the team having a really clear goals. They need to know what success looks like. And often I think that’s for growth teams in particular, it’s always really clear, “Hey, we need to hit certain metrics. We have certain goals for the quarter and for the year.” And then also having a mission. So the mission’s all about the why, right? So an example at Webflow is we have our growth team gold on ultimately the North Star is ARR, Annual Recurring Revenue. And then you break it down into the levers that drive ARR, the leading indicator, so that could be activation rates, the number of customers you bring in, et cetera. And so each team has really clear goals. And then we have our mission. The why. Our mission, the why we do it is we want to build these delightful experiences for our users. We want to support them on their journey on the product.
And the reason why the what is monetization is that’s just a good signal that people find your product valuable, especially if they’re consistently paying you and they’re retaining. And then the other thing that I think is important is culture. So how are you going to do these things? When thinking about culture, obviously it depends on the function and the culture you want to set there. For me personally, the type of culture I try to set for the team is one around being really results oriented.
So something that someone on my team was saying the other day is you always make it really clear that we’re going to be measured on impact and that’s like how we are ultimately measured as a team. And so really creating that results oriented team. Also, a team that’s very team first and collaborative. I think when you have very clear goals, when it’s very results-oriented, you could potentially be in a situation where people feel they’re competing against each other and you just don’t want that. You actually want folks on the team to help each other out to share learnings.
I think that’s what ends up being like a situation where one plus one equals three. You’re not locally optimizing but you’re thinking broader about the team and thinking beyond yourself. The third thing is really this ownership mentality. Something I directly saw at Dropbox is when we were a smaller company, everyone just felt a lot more ownership in accountability because there’s just nobody else. You’re wearing five different hats. You have to do it.
As you scale, it’s really easy to suddenly feel like that ownership is diluted. And so something I always try to keep in the team, it’s a feeling that we’re owners and that really proactive mindset of how am I going to solve this problem? I’m blocked by this team, what am I going to do about it? And just being people that have strong sense of agency. And then lastly having fun. I think that especially in high pressured environments, easy to get stressed and all that stuff. And at the end of the day, this is very personal me, but the more fun you can have, the better everything is. And so just making sure you’re infusing fun along the way and you’re not taking things too seriously.
Should Growth Teams Own Revenue Metrics?
Lenny: So I was taking notes as you were talking and there’s kind of these four items just to summarize. One is creating a culture of impact and performance. Two is being team first and making about the team versus the person. Three is creating a sense of ownership and making people feel like they’re owners and then having fun, which I love. A question I have there is say within the ownership bucket of creating a sense of ownership, what do you actually do to create that sense amongst the team?
Melissa Tan: I think it first starts with defining the scope that everyone is going to own and drive. So as you are setting up the team, it’s important that each person on the team has scope that they can run independently and that they are excited to own and drive. So one example here is as I was leaving Dropbox, the finance team looked at our metrics and saw that each growth PM was bringing over a million in AR per year just from all the experiments.
Building a Growth Team from Scratch
Lenny: Holy moly.
Melissa Tan: Yeah. And so that’s quite a lot of impact. And being a finance team, they said logically we should just double the team. If each person brings in more than a million, if we want to double the AR, let’s just double the team. And so I actually pushed back significantly though. I thought to myself, “If we double the team, what is everyone on the team going to own and drive? Is it like we split up different parts of the website, different parts of the product 1:00 PM owns just like the checkout flow.
I didn’t think that was going to be interesting enough for the team and going to help us recruit people that were excited to solve such small parts of the growth problem. And so really thinking about how do you carve out scope and if you are a growth team, maybe thinking about splitting up by problems to solve that are really meaty by areas of the funnel like activation, monetization, et cetera. So first starting out with carving out good scope. And then the second thing is just infusing a culture of thinking like an owner. This infusing of the culture, I think it comes out in a few ways. One is, and this is really common in growth. Growth is so cross-functional that you often will end up feeling like you’re blocked by other teams.
Let’s say we want to run an experiment on this part of the product, maybe it’s a core PM that kind of owns that service area that doesn’t want to drive that thing or let’s say or blocked by a bottleneck on designer engineering. It’s something where I think if you’re thinking an owner, you are not feeling easily disempowered because you can’t do something and instead you’re thinking, “What is everything I can do and did I exhaust all the options?”
And then finally it’s leading by example. I try to also show to my team that I’m always thinking like an owner and then I’m always trying to do everything I can. And finally as a leader, thinking like an owner also means taking responsibility for your team. And so if things don’t go right in my team, I’m the first one to say that ultimately I’m responsible and it’s a failure or oversight on my side. And so that is what I think an ownership mentality is. It’s just really thinking about the scope, creating that culture and then as a leader it’s just seeing yourself as ultimately being accountable.
First Growth Hire Profile
Lenny: Awesome. And this connects to something else I wanted to pull the thread on, which is the team first bucket. I think about Meta, not to throw them under the bus or anything, but I feel like everyone I know at Meta their performance review is very tied to their impact. It’s very impact driven and that leads to people needing to drive impact themselves. I drove this impact and they look at how much did you contribute to that impact versus other people on your team. And it creates some challenges I think for people. How do you create that feeling of team first, even though your performance as you talked about is so tied to here’s your success metric, here’s what success means for you, for the team, how do you make it feel team first versus like, I need to do this myself?
Melissa Tan: There’s definitely a delicate balance here. It comes down to the way that I think the manager leads the team and sets the tone. And so for me, I always make it clear that even though results are important, it’s a team sport. And so I often find that I am encouraging the team to work together. So again, as a leader, you have context in everything happening. So sometimes I know 1:00 PM is working on something or even a PM outside our team is working on something and I try to actually fill in context if I think someone on my team could contribute. And I encourage that action even though it doesn’t maybe feed into impact on the thing they’re driving. So it really comes down to the culture that you set and what you encourage the team to do. I also think the more that you can see that you actually benefit from helping each other out, the better it is.
And finally, I think again, leading by example, because I actually am very team first, I’m often actually helping other teams and doing things that might not ultimately benefit or be part of my scope. A good example here is I was actually driving pricing and packaging at Webflow for a very long time just because no one at the company was driving it and it was a huge opportunity area and I actually was doing it for enterprise pricing too. And so even though I am overseeing self-serve, I was actually supporting enterprise pricing and packaging. And so I also showed to my team, “Hey, I’m also doing all these things to help the company.” And I think that is what helps set that tone and that culture.
Specialized Skills vs. General Traits
Lenny: How do you then avoid doing too much work? I think there’s also this challenge of people being too good at too many things and then they end up doing so many things and then they burn out. Do you have any rules of thumb or lessons there?
Melissa Tan: I think for me it’s been a learning journey too. I’ve actually gotten feedback on that very thing for my team that Melissa sometimes taking on too much or trying to do too much. And so I think it’s a delicate balance. If we’re talking about that person individually, you have to know what your limits are and you also can do things in spurts, but it’s important to know ultimately what you can take on. Also I find that putting a specific timeline like, “Hey, I’m going to do this thing for a quarter, but after that we really need to find somebody else to do it.” Or hand it off is really helpful. It’s definitely a delicate balance. I do think it’s a great question because I think that’s a common thing people early in their careers struggle with, which is they could lose focus because they’re trying to help everybody.
That was actually a problem I had when I first joined Dropbox is I was the only sales ops person, so I was just helping every sales leader with their metrics and very focused. And so it is a little bit of trial and error. I think the most important thing is to not be so overly focused on just what you’re doing and try to help others, but then knowing that there are certain things that just can’t drop. And if you start to see things that are starting to drop that you’re ultimately responsible for, that’s a signal that you’re taking on too much.
When to Bring in Advisors
Lenny:
Let’s come back to the developing talent bucket. I would kind of went on a tangent, but I want to come back to that. So we talked about why you’re excited about developing talent, the benefits you’ve experienced. I’m curious what you actually do to help people become better product managers, leaders of all kinds. What actually have you seen works?
Melissa Tan: In terms of developing talent, I think of this as stages of the life cycle of your relationship, right? So I think at first actually starts is a very meta as a growth person starts with when you hire somebody, really making sure you’re finding somebody that is a good fit for the role. It’s a good mutual fit. I also tend to look for folks that have a growth mindset.
There’re people that are wanting to learn. They’re looking for feedback. They take feedback well. And then after that they join the company, and as a manager, my job is to help set them up for success. So how do I ramp them up as quickly as possible, connect them to the right people, the company? How do I also make sure it’s clear what success looks like in their first 90 days? And then how do I help them secure early wins essentially?
So I often will suggest, “Hey, you should do this presentation. It’s a great way to get visibility early in your journey here.” Here are some things where there’s low hanging fruit or even rotting fruit that you should take on into secure early wins. Then in your journey, I think it’s a lot about just giving feedback along the way, making sure you give visibility. One recent hack I have is having folks on the team create looms that they can share with different leaders at Webflow. It’s hard to sometimes get visibility and get live meeting calendars, but if you create a five or 10 minute-loom on something you did. That’s just a great way to get visibility.
And then finally, I think it’s that lifelong relationship actually. So I’m still in touch with a lot of people that I’ve managed and I’ve helped them. Whether it’s looking for their new job or they have career advice, I always make myself available. And so it’s actually that lifelong journey of just developing that person. And at some point it’s not even developing that person, but it’s having a friendship with somebody. And I feel like I’ve learned a ton from people that I have managed. And so it ends up being this really great thing where you initially started working together but you now know each other so well. And I think that’s even how I’ve developed as a manager is just getting feedback from my team.
How to Identify First Principles Thinking
Lenny: This all comes back to something you mentioned a couple of times earlier, just caring a lot about the person that you work with. Your approach also reminds me of this book, Radical Candor. I imagine you’re a fan and that’s kind of the way you think about it.
Melissa Tan: Yeah, definitely. Interestingly enough, Kim Scott was at Dropbox for a short period of time, so when I joined Dropbox, she was actually on my interview panel and we overlapped for three months and she actually workshopped that book with our team before she published it. And that always resonated with me. And I remember her saying you have to … I forget the exact words, but it’s essentially be direct but deeply care.
Innovation and the Outsider Advantage
Lenny: Yeah. Care deeply, but something directly challenged directly. Something like that.
Melissa Tan: Yeah, care deeply but challenge directly and that has always been something that is something I try to infuse and has really inspired me as leader.
Rapid Fire Q&A
Lenny: Awesome. We’re going to link to that book if folks don’t know about it. I love it. You talked about hiring PMs and how that is important in building high performing teams. So let’s spend a little time there, maybe just two questions all throughout and you can approach them however you want. One is just what do you look for when you’re hiring product managers? You’ve hired a lot of PMs. You’ve managed a lot of PMs over the years. What do you look for, especially things that maybe other people don’t focus on enough, and then just what is your interview process? What do you find is most helpful for interviewing process-wise?
Melissa Tan: In terms of what I look for, I think there’s this kind of known list of things that you probably want to look for, for a PM that I probably are not going to … I’m say anything groundbreaking here, but obviously communication skills, the ability to manage stakeholders and work well cross-functionally. The things that I lean especially heavy on in my interview process is this concept of first principles thinking or strong critical thinking. So usually there’s some live problem solving component to my interview process where I really lean more heavily into how would you approach X problem? And then I dig into the Y and try to understand why would they approach it this way, see what questions they’re asking and just see how they approach problem solving.
And then the other thing that I look for that I mentioned is that growth mindset. So really seeing how does this person take feedback. And so I’ll actually sometimes give feedback to candidates through the process. Something that I do that I learned a few years ago that was super helpful, so I always have a presentation component to the interview process that checks for prepared thinking communication. And I recommend a prep call between the two of us before that presentation. And I actually will give feedback on the presentation.
And what this gives me signal is what is it actually going to be like to work together? And then I see how they incorporate it into the final product and that is always really interesting and sometimes it’s the biggest signal to what it’s going to be like to work with this person.
Lenny: Okay, this is great. I want to spend a little time here. So what is the actual sequence that you recommend or you use for interviewing? There’s a presentation, there’s a rep call but also is kind of involved in that.
Melissa Tan: Usually hiring manager screen, and I actually do the live problem solving at this screen. I actually think it weeds out the most people. And there’s actually two things I do here. One is a live problem solving. How would you approach X? So let’s say I’m hiring for pricing at Webflow, I would ask, “How would you approach pricing?” I sometimes would say, “Hey, do you have your laptop? Can you pull up our pricing page? Curious to get your thoughts, what would you want to change?” That was a trick I learned at Dropbox where we would actually pull up the Dropbox website and be like, “Hey, what’d you want to test here? Why?” And you get a ton of signal on how they approach the problem, how they think.
I ask why a bunch. And then the next screen is talking to more folks at the team that test for different competencies. And depending on what you’re hiring for, we just have each person focused on a different competency. And it also depends on the roles. So some roles are more technical, some require working more closely with different stakeholders, so you want to make sure you can test those things. And then the final round is the presentation and then also maybe a conversation on other areas.
We want that kind of come through the interview process. We want to dig in further. The presentation is usually thinking through how you’d approach, your collecting all this information on the company or the problem throughout the interview process. And so it culminates in what do you think this should look like or maybe what would you want to do in your first 90 days? It depends on the role, but it’s usually some type of presentation about the problem you would be working on at the company.
Before that, we have that preparation call with me where often candidates will have questions like, “Oh, I need to know this data,” or “I’m curious about X.” And so it’s really just a call to help them. And then at this stage too, they’ll often have the actual draft of the presentation and so we’ll go through it together and I’ll actually be like, “Hey, I think you should lean in heavier here. How would you think about this?” I’ll even say for example, at Webflow I’ll be like, “We’re thinking about X, Y, Z thing just so you know. And maybe incorporating that into your presentation would be really helpful.
And so that’s where I get a lot of signal of what is it going to be like to work with this person on a presentation? And then I’ll see in the presentation whether they incorporate it or not or how they did. And sometimes I’ve seen candidates that didn’t incorporate any of it and I kind of am like, “Okay, this is probably not a fit.” And actually I think that other thing about that call is it helps just set the candidate up for success. It’s actually quite a lot of work to create a presentation. The more we can help them by giving them information, making sure they can be successful, it’s helpful. And I think guess lastly, it gives them a taste of what it’s like to work with me.
Lenny: I’ve never heard of that step before. That is really interesting. They actually give them feedback before they present. I imagine they’re like, “What the hell is going on here?” I thought I was trying to show them what I can do, not like they’re going to help me do a great job. That is really interesting. Maybe two very logistical questions there. How much time do you give them to work on this presentation? And then two, you said that you asked some questions related to the actual problem solving versus a theoretical problem. So those are the two questions, I guess.
Melissa Tan: Typically we will schedule it about a week in advance. They have a week. The tricky thing here is obviously it’s a big ask to ask someone to create a presentation. And so if it’s one week that’s long enough to create it, but it’s short enough that you don’t spend tons of time. The other thing is just making it clear, don’t exceed more than X number of slides. In Webflow’s case we’ve done, don’t exceed more than 30 slides. And that’s like quite a lot. We do not expect you to do 30 slides. And then the other thing I make sure to emphasize is it’s really about wanting to know how you’d approach it. So don’t worry about the slides, be able to talk to it and have what you need to talk to it because we’re actually just looking for the substance. And so that’s how much time we give them and it’s usually a 30-minute presentation with 15-minute Q&A.
The second part of your question was, so in terms of picking the topic, so there’s a few ways to think about it. I know some folks will be like, “Oh, we have candidates present on something they’ve worked with in the past.” I’ve tried that form and it’s really difficult because I found that candidates even sometimes spend tons of time sharing the context of that company. And then also it doesn’t really give a sense of, because as you’re interviewing from a role, you’re getting a ton of context on the actual company and the problem. And so it also is testing for how much did they pick up along the way. Also, would they like working on this area once they join? So there are some candidates that sometimes are concerned about the amount of time they would spend on it or say, “This is going to be a big lift.”
And definitely mindful of that. I think the main thing though is it is actually in the candidate’s best interest to kind of understand what they’re going to work on and start to understand,
For example, there are some candidates that have gone through the far through process and haven’t worked in the Webflow product very much. And I always think that’s an interesting flag because if you aren’t in the product a lot, you’re not going to get good context on whether you like it or not. And so I actually think it’s almost even in the best interest of the candidate to go much deeper.
Lenny: I could spend another hour talking about interview strategy, but I want to make sure we have time for the growth team stuff. So let’s transition to that. And my first question here is you’ve worked with a lot of different teams, a lot of different companies on helping them figure out their growth strategy, hiring their growth teams, just kind of figuring out growth. I’m curious what the most common pitfalls and mistakes you’ve seen across companies trying to figure out growth and build growth teams.
Melissa Tan: One of the most common pitfalls I’d say is not having, and I’ve alluded to this, not having a sense of the big picture from the start and not being strategic about what your go-to market strategy is going to be. Also, what is your pricing and packaging going to look like? So I wrote actually an article for the YC blog a few years ago with Abby [inaudible 00:50:48] who was on my team at Dropbox about this because I felt like even at Dropbox, I mean it’s a great thing. We were haphazardly finding amazing things. We had a freemium consumer product. Then we realized people wanted a Teams product, so we built a Teams product, but we never created that whole blueprint of what should it look like and what are the different connection points across consumer business? What should our model look like? I’ve also seen companies that maybe weren’t intentional enough about pricing from the start, and so thinking about what is the value metric?
And then they’ve already have massive scale and then they’re rethinking their pricing. That’s actually quite a big headache to actually think about, okay, how do we grandfather users? How do we bring the legacy customers onto our new pricing? And so thinking about your pricing from the start is important thing might go to market from the start is important. The other thing I have seen a lot is just like, again, this goes back to learning from Dropbox is the execution folks taking a class or reading a lot about growth and trying to do the same thing and not really actually starting from first let’s look at our data. Let’s talk to our customers. What do we think are the biggest hypotheses? And starting your experiments based on your own data and right-sizing the experiment.
I think sometimes teams are experimenting on things that are too small, that aren’t going to move the needle because they heard it was really successful company X, but that company X might be a Dropbox where every 0.5% improvement in conversion makes a difference, but if you’re early stage doesn’t matter and you need to actually think bigger. The other thing is the opposite problem, redoing a whole thing but not having a hypothesis, this was an early mistake I made at Dropbox where I redid the checkout page to something that I thought was better UX, but then I changed so many different components that even when it failed, it was unclear why it failed. So really distilling it to hypotheses.
And then the last thing I would say is figuring out what I call the flying formation of how the different growth teams will work with other companies. And again, I alluded to this, but growth shouldn’t feel like it’s a layer on top. And a lot of the things that are tricky early on is figuring out how you work with other teams. I think the best or the ideal way to work is to have growth infuse in the company. And so an example here is often the growth team is going to be potentially the closest to the user.
They’re going to get a lot of feedback. They’re going to hear directly from the user. As a growth team, I think one of the big values that we can have is actually giving that feedback back to other teams at the company. And so even as a growth team, can we help inform the product roadmap? Also on the reverse, thinking about as PMs, how can PMs be more growth oriented as well?
Lenny: I like this term flying formation. I’ve never heard of this before. What is that exactly again? Is that just how growth is integrated within the company?
Melissa Tan: Yeah, I guess flying formation essentially, I don’t know where it comes from. I guess maybe it’s a military term or something. Your finger.
Lenny: I can say that. Yeah, like the Blue Angels
Melissa Tan: Work together?
Lenny: Yeah.
Melissa Tan: Yeah. I think of flying formation as how do we work together across teams. You also can think of it as a DACI too, driver accountable, contribute informed. I think sometimes when you don’t know how you’re going to work together, you end up stepping over each other’s toes. You’re unclear. Who was the decision maker here? Who did we need to work with? At what point in the journey? And so the flying formation, what I think it is, is part of it is a DACI of what are the different roles?
Lenny: Can you define that actually? Because a lot of people probably won’t know that term.
Melissa Tan: A DACI is a framework to think about the different roles on the team on a project or an area. So D stands for Driver. This is the person driving the project. A is Accountable, this is the person that’s ultimately accountable and is often the final decision maker if there’s any open questions. C is Contributor, these are all the different teams that are going to contribute. And then I is informed. These are the people that need to be informed, but they’re not directly contributing. They’re not a decision maker and part of the project.
And so it’s a nice simple framework for when you are working across teams and it needs to be clear who is in what role. And the area that tends to be the most confusing can be the accountable and who the decision maker is. It can be easy to have lots of teams and then it’s unclear how do we get to a decision ultimately and who should make that decision. And that person should often be the person that has the most context or is ultimately responsible.
And so I think the flying formation has this DACI. I often also put operating rhythms in it, so it’s clear what is happening at what point. And so we created a flying formation when we were first starting the growth team at Webflow and we were trying to figure out how does product growth work with product, how does product growth work with growth marketing? What are the different cadences that each team has? And so very tactically we put a doc together to say, okay, product growth is accountable for all the metrics downstream of signups. Growth marketing is accountable for signups. They’re also driving or have goals around CAC, their customer acquisition costs, and these are the different metrics everyone owns.
We have a weekly meeting where we look at the metrics together. We also will do updates around the room to talk about initiatives and identify areas we want to work with. And then we also think through quarterly planning where we’re each identifying projects that we’re driving. There’s some projects that we might also work on together. And so it’s essentially that meeting cadence that you’re going to have the operating rhythms. That’s essentially how I think about a flying formation.
Lenny: I love it. That would make a great blog post. By the way, if you’re looking for something to write an example of your actual client formation Webflow, I think people would love that.
Melissa Tan: Yeah.
Lenny: One kind of tangent that I wanted to touch on is there’s this trend of product teams owning revenue. Elena talked about this on a recent podcast. You have a perspective on should product growth teams own revenue and have revenue numbers as their goals or not?
Melissa Tan: Yeah, really it depends on the company and what product growth is driving. I’ve always, in the companies I was at and actually even the companies I advise, the product growth team owns revenue, so it’s not always the case. I’ve actually seen revenue owned by marketing. So marketing makes sense if it’s more top of funnel growth. I’ve also seen it, this is an interesting one, by finance actually. This is usually early in the company.
So early at Canva, it was owned by finance and that’s because finance had a view on everything happening in the business and would actually be maybe advising other teams on, “Hey, our conversion rates could improve, we need to do X.” Or we’re not driving signups and customers efficiently, but over time it doesn’t really sit in finance. That has evolved and then now sits under the person that is driving product growth in product. So I have seen it more often than not being owned by product. Our team at Dropbox moved a ton actually. We started marketing. We actually then report into the revenue org with sales, and then we finally moved into product because we realized so much of our revenue was that product growth motion happening in the product that we felt it was important that that product team owned revenue.
Lenny: A lot of the things you’re talking about are based in how growth starts at a company. I imagine one of the most common questions you get is, how do I start to invest in growth? How do I hire my first growth person? How do I build a team around them? It’s one of the most common questions I get. So let’s spend a little time here. What is your advice to founders that are just starting to think about building their initial growth team and how to approach that to look for initially and kind of think about that longer term?
Melissa Tan: I get this question a lot as well. I’d say initially when a company’s starting out, the goal is getting to product market fit and figuring out who their ideal customer profile is, like their ICP. And at this point, I think everyone at the company should be thinking about growth. They’re finding their first few design partners that they will co-create the product with. They’re figuring out who is their product resonating with, who is maybe also the decision maker in purchasing the product. And they’re figuring out, do we want kind of a bottom up product led motion? Are we going to lean more heavily into sales? Are we going to do both?
After you reach product market fit and you’re starting to get your first few customers, the first growth per person I see more often than not isn’t someone driving acquisition. You need to find your first a thousand or thousands of customers and you need to do it at scale. And so if that is the focus of the company, typically what I would recommend is somebody that they don’t need to be an expert, but ideally they understand maybe one or two channels well and that they’re the channels that you have hypothesis, you will find traction in.
And I see this person a little bit like a portfolio manager, right? Because you’re trying to figure out … Usually companies don’t have many channels that are split evenly. They find one or two that really work and make up like it’s 80/20 rule. It makes us up 80% of where the signups are coming from and this portfolio manager is testing different things out. Even you could leverage agencies. There are a lot of agencies out there for SEO, for paid marketing, et cetera, but they are smart enough to define, is this working? How do I do it at scale? You also want to make sure it’s quality signups that are actually monetizable.
And so that is a role typically if you’re hiring an acquisition of that first growth person. And then the other two areas to focus early on, but I don’t think you need a dedicated person for are activation. You want to make sure as you’re pouring leads into the top of funnel, you’re activating users. And here I don’t think you actually need to do AB testing. Your volume isn’t probably going to be strong enough. I think even just finding five individuals that are part of your target audience, just doing user testing, set up a Zoom, watch them onboard onto the product and have them talk out loud. You’ll fight a lot and you can also just take best practices of onboarding checklists, et cetera. So activation and then I’ve said this a lot, but pricing and packaging, really thinking about pricing, but I don’t think that needs to be a dedicated person.
Lenny: What kind of profile have you found to be most successful for this sort of person? Some people will look for like, I want to hire Melissa and let’s just go big. The best person I can find and have them own this versus someone that’s just new from school that’s going to figure it out and I guess they’re somewhere in the middle. What do you find that’s best for that first hire?
Melissa Tan: It really depends on the current makeup of the team. How much do the founders themselves or the current team, how much of an interest do they have in growth? If they have an interest in growth and it’s more about finding someone to execute, I think it’s finding someone that’s a bit earlier in their career potentially that is just a strong first principles thinker. I think there’s hit or miss on, I’m a former consultant, so I used to always say find a former consultant. I do think there can be hit or miss and there is some value in folks that actually understand acquisition and have done it before and so maybe have figured out certain channels.
So I think you either go for someone that’s done acquisition before, maybe they’re a little bit early in their career, so they have this great growth mindset, but make sure they’re a first principles thinker. The other option is find just a really smart person early in their career, have them take up Reforge class, have them soak up everything, and then the other option of hiring someone more experienced. I think it really depends on if you want that person to take on a lot more and be almost part of your founding team. And do you want to find someone that is going to join your leadership team?
The other option I guess is you could also just bring on an advisor and that advisor is someone that’s not full time. It can even guide if you hire someone that’s a bit earlier, guide that person and that is a really good combination. And so it really depends on the context, who’s also on the current team and who you want to bring into. Are you looking for an actual leader that’s going to scale with the company or are you not ready quite yet for that?
Lenny: What about in terms of their skillset? I imagine if you’re kind of feeling like paid growth is going to be your main acquisition channel, you probably want to find someone that’s really good at that versus it might be a virality, product led growth stuff, then you want to find maybe a product range of person. How much weight do you put into that skillset in that first hire?
Melissa Tan: I actually think it’s less about expertise in skillset, if that makes sense. And more there a ability to, again, I think of it like a portfolio manager. So this is more on the growth marketing side and bringing in acquisition. They are managing a portfolio and they’re trying to figure out what works. I actually think you need to find someone that’s analytical for this role, but that also understands things like who is the user? They’re really creative in finding the user. And so it’s actually looking for attributes but not expertise.
I actually think the more expertise someone has, the more it actually can lead to a false precision and then thinking they know what they’re going to do. And especially, I don’t think you actually need paid marketing expertise until much later when you’re starting to think about incrementality or you’re managing all these campaigns. I actually think the expertise is more important later. And then similarly on product growth, I actually think product growth is not higher till much later. A lot of early stage companies don’t even have a product manager until later. And so I find that a growth product person isn’t until much later down the road.
Lenny: Just a couple more questions. One is, you mentioned that it sometimes makes sense to bring on an advisor. I know sometimes companies have a bad time with advisors that just don’t provide much value and they’re giving equity. Other times it’s transformative. Some of the stories you’ve shared, when is it appropriate to hire an advisor and is there any, I guess advice for what to look for in a growth advisor at this early stage, especially?
Melissa Tan: I would add an advisor if there is probably a knowledge gap on the team is I would say. And their advisors come in so many different forms too, and everyone does it slightly differently. For some folks, it’s a monthly call for other times, especially when I’m full-time advising, I’ll have weekly calls. I’ll even join some team meetings. I’ll look at mocks. And so everyone does it slightly differently. And so I think it depends on what you’re looking for. I would definitely say that even getting to know the individual and making sure you’re on the same page on what you’re looking for and what the goals are. And then what I’ve done in the past too is initially set up a shorter engagement, like a quarter long engagement and then decide if you want to go longer.
And I also think it’s fine to, let’s say you have an advisor agreement, you’re not getting value to basically part ways. If it’s not, you’re not finding value. I think every advisor wants to make sure they’re adding value. So I definitely think to summarize, being really explicit on what advice you’re looking for and making sure you’re on the same page of what you want. And then also set up a try before you buy if you want to do a quarter long engagement first. And knowing you can always part ways if it’s not a fit even before that period of time.
Lenny: Last question before we get to a very exciting lightning round. You’ve brought up this concept of first principles thinking. I’m curious how you measure that and how you get a sense of, is this person strong at first principles thinking?
Melissa Tan: It’s definitely a word I use a lot. First principles thinking, I think of it as you are not using a set framework and set formula, but you’re creating your own based on the context that you’re getting. And so when I think about first principles thinking often it is knowing what questions to ask so that you can start forming a mental model. And then it is actually starting to form that mental model and then knowing to evolve it and knowing when it’s not working and really coming from a place of curiosity of is this really working? This is something that I’m known for on my team as well, which is I ask tons of questions, but it doesn’t come from a place of wanting to show that I’m asking good questions or anything that comes from a place of trying to solve the problem and making sure that we’re always solving the problem at hand, making sure we’re doing the right things.
If there’s new information, do we actually still want to do it this way? And so I think first principles thinking is often about asking questions and then creating your own framework. That’s how I would define it. And it’s maybe another way to describe it is critical thinking. It’s like you’re able to think very critically, and I think it’s important to, at least for me, create a culture where that’s okay. I think the moment you have a culture where people aren’t asking questions aren’t constantly revisiting their work, that’s when you’re not maybe pushing yourself to do your best work. And I think it also just creates a fun environment where we’re like, “Oh yeah, why are we doing this?” And really leading with your curiosity.
Lenny: Is there an example of a person or moment or question that comes to mind of this is an epitome of a first principles thinker moment or question or a way of approaching something?
Melissa Tan: My aha moment of the value of first principles thinking was when I was at Dropbox and we had the most unconventional people on our initial sales team. Dropbox was known for this. We would hire a ton of really smart people that had never done sales and had them do sales. There were a lot of disadvantages to that, I think. We were figuring a lot of things out. Maybe we should have split, had a few people that knew sales better and a combo of both. But I do think it led to a ton of innovation. Even I actually started on the sales team, this is a fun fact. I used to answer the 1-800 number at Dropbox, and if you go to Dropbox’s website, you see a chat level. I used to also do that role, and so I think that what we got from that was that’s how we got our very innovative go-to-market motions.
That also gave a ton of people, ‘cause a lot of those people then moved into different functions at the company. They had all this context on who the user was. They had talked to so many different users at that point, and that’s actually what helped me a lot when I moved into growth is I had all that context and I learned from that going back to first principles thinking that if you take people that are just super smart, they’ve never done it before, one advantage of that is they can innovate because I think they come in with, “I don’t know anything. Let me just figure this out.” Versus someone that think they know all the answers, limits you into what you are going to do. And so my aha moment was really at Dropbox seeing so many times people that had never done these things and then seeing so much innovation come as a result of that.
Lenny: That is an awesome story. Is there anything else you wanted to share or touch on before we get to or very exciting lightning round?
Melissa Tan: I think that’s it. I wanted to make sure, I know I talked a lot about developing people, so thank all the people that have helped develop me in my career and then especially thank all the folks that I’ve worked with and my team, especially the team at Webflow and particularly wanted to make sure to thank [Xing Lin 01:10:14], Rory Davidson and [Jo Wang01:10:16] who joined me from previous companies to Webflow.
Lenny: Shoutouts. Well, with that, Melissa, we have reached our very exciting lightning ground. I’ve got six questions for you. Are you ready?
Melissa Tan: Yes.
Lenny: What are two or three books that you’ve recommended most to other people?
Melissa Tan: The first one is Leaders Eat Last. I really like that leadership book by Simon Sinek. Also two non-career related books is The Untethered Soul. It really has taught me a lot about being present and then also the Four Agreements, which is a very short and easy read, but good principles to live by.
Lenny: What is a favorite recent movie or TV show?
Melissa Tan: This one isn’t super recent, but Winning Time on HBO. It’s about the LA Lakers during the ’80s and the Showtime era. I’m originally from LA and grew up a Lakers fan, so it’s a fun watch for me and a nice escape.
Lenny: You’ll love a new movie I just watched last night called Air, which is about how Nike got Michael Jordan signed. And it’s similar vibes to that show.
Melissa Tan: Yes, yes. I actually just watched that recently too.
Lenny: Okay. Great.
Melissa Tan: That’s a good one too. Yeah, I’ve watched all those basketball.
Lenny: Oh man. I also grew up in LA. Also a huge Laker fan from-
Melissa Tan: Oh, nice.
Lenny: From before. Next question, what’s a favorite interview question you like to ask?
Melissa Tan: For me, it’s not a question, but it’s that stage of preparing before the presentation and getting a sense for what it’s like to work with each other. I think that has been one of the best ways for me to get signal.
Lenny: Can you say more on that?
Melissa Tan: Yes. So it’s essentially that prep call before I ask them to do a presentation and going through the presentation together and working together on refining it.
Lenny: Awesome. We already talked about that, so we’ll move on. What is a favorite product you’ve recently discovered that you love?
Melissa Tan: I feel like everyone’s saying this, but ChatGPT. I feel like it has really changed everything. There’s so many interesting ways to use it. My team at Webflow right now is also starting to think about incorporating AI into the product, and so yeah, I just think that is … Yeah, so many things you can do with it.
Lenny: What is something relatively minor that you’ve changed in your product development process that has had a big impact on the way that your team executes?
Melissa Tan: This one here is what I also spoke about for earlier, which is, I mean, thinking through your DACI. It sounds so simple, but I do think a lot of times teams are thinking through how do they work with other teams? Who is driving? Who is the decision maker? And so having a DACI, I have found is really helpful.
Lenny: Final question, you’ve been at Webflow for a number of years. What is a favorite pro tip for using Webflow?
Melissa Tan: Yeah, I actually have two if that’s okay.
Lenny: That’s good. Even better [inaudible 01:13:01].
Melissa Tan: Yeah, yeah. So one is thing that I’ve often heard from folks is it’s hard to learn Webflow. And so basically watching our university videos, which is where we teach Webflow while also building the designer, and we actually now enable to have the videos in the product, so you can do them side by side. And then the other one is our Figma to Webflow plugin, which is you can take a Figma design and then convert it to Webflow, which is a great hack if you already have a design in Figma.
Lenny: Wow, I did not know that existed. That is a really smart idea and feature. Melissa, I could see why people follow you from company to company. I feel like the companies that are going to get to work with you in this new stage of your life are also very lucky. Thank you for being here. Two final questions. Where can folks find you online if they want to reach out? And how can listeners be useful to you?
Melissa Tan: Folks can find me on LinkedIn, also on Twitter, Melissamtan, and then how can listeners be helpful to me? I mean, I love jamming on things, growth, thinking about leadership and managing, so if any of this resonates, reach out. I’d love to have a discussion and yeah.
Lenny: Amazing. Melissa, again, thank you for being here.
Melissa Tan: Yes, thanks so much, Lenny. This was fun.
Lenny: Bye everyone. Thank you so much for listening. If you found this valuable, you can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Also, please consider giving us a rating or leaving a review as that really helps other listeners find the podcast. You can find all past episodes or learn more about the show at lennyspodcast.com. See you in the next episode.
Reformatted by reformat_english_direct.py
打造高绩效团队 | Melissa Tan(Webflow、Dropbox、Canva)
文字记录
第一性原理思维的价值
Melissa Tan: 我对第一性原理思维价值产生顿悟的时刻,是在 Dropbox 的时候。我们会招聘大量从未做过销售的聪明人,让他们去做销售。这样做有很多劣势,但我确实认为它带来了大量的创新。正是这样我们才得到了那些非常创新的 go-to-market 策略,因为很多这些人后来转到了公司不同的职能部门。他们对用户是谁有着全面的了解,到那个时候他们已经跟无数不同的用户交谈过。如果你招的是那些极其聪明、但从未做过这件事的人,一个好处就是他们能够创新,因为我觉得他们会带着一种心态进来——我什么都不懂,让我从头搞清楚。
关于本期节目
Lenny: 欢迎收听 Lenny 的播客,在这里我采访世界级的产品领导者和增长专家,从他们建设和发展当今最成功产品的宝贵经验中学习。今天的嘉宾是 Melissa Tan。Melissa 曾长期担任 Dropbox B2B 业务的增长负责人,也是他们第一位增长产品经理。之后她全职为 Canva、Grammarly、Miro 和 Ro 等公司提供顾问服务,帮助它们制定增长策略、建设增长团队。
在过去两年半里,她一直在 Webflow 负责增长。但最新消息是——正如 Melissa 在这期播客开头所分享的——她即将回归全职顾问生涯。所以如果你需要帮助制定 go-to-market 计划、增长策略、建设增长团队,或者协调你的销售、营销和增长工作,她即将有空档,一定要联系她。在我们的对话中,我们将深入探讨打造高绩效团队需要什么,以及具体如何打造高绩效的增长团队。
Melissa 分享了关于如何成为一位让人才愿意追随你从一家公司到另一家公司的领导者的建议,如何最好地培养你的团队成员让他们成为最好的自己。她谈到了高绩效团队最常见的要素,以及她从与 Canva、Grammarly、Miro、Ro、Webflow 和 Dropbox 等公司合作中学到的东西。我们还聊到了如何面试产品经理,她分享了她实际的面试流程,你的第一个增长招聘应该招什么样的人,人们在开始投资增长时最常犯的错误,以及 Dropbox 在转向 B2B 过程中做对了什么、做错了什么的真实故事。这期节目里有太多宝贵的经验教训,我很高兴能带给大家。接下来,有请 Melissa Tan。
Melissa 的新动向
Lenny: Melissa,欢迎来到播客。
Melissa Tan: 谢谢,Lenny。很高兴来到这里。
Lenny: 很高兴你能来。我听说你的职业发展有一个重大变化,等这期播客上线的时候就会公开了——你即将开启一段新的冒险。我很想听听更多,也让大家了解你接下来要做什么。
Melissa Tan: 过去几年我一直在 Webflow 负责建设增长团队。我现在实际上正在过渡,已经离开了,准备回到顾问工作。这是我在 Webflow 之前就一直在做的事情——有幸与 Canva、Grammarly、Miro 等优秀的公司合作。与更早期的公司合作是我最大的热情所在——在它们找到产品市场匹配(product market fit)之后帮助它们规模化增长。我将重新回到顾问工作。
Lenny: 太棒了。这真是个大消息,因为像 Melissa 这样的人在特定时间能接受合作的机会很少,而这将是这样一个窗口期。我想让大家了解你认为自己会专注于哪些领域,以便那些可能需要帮助、想要联系的人知道。
Melissa Tan: 我与不同阶段的公司都有过合作,甚至在早期阶段,当公司在思考自己的 go-to-market 策略时。之前在 Dropbox,我横跨销售领域工作过,也帮助启动了他们 Dropbox Business 最初的产品增长和自助服务(self-serve)团队。我在 Webflow 还负责过定价和包装。所以很多公司在初期思考 go-to-market 策略时——应该是产品驱动(product led)?还是应该更偏重销售模式?定价和包装应该是什么样的?——我与这类早期公司合作过。也在产品市场匹配之后,当公司建设增长团队时,帮助它们确保在激活、变现、参与和留存方面优化整个漏斗。我还顾问和帮助过增长团队的建设,所以基本上是跨阶段地聚焦于增长和 go-to-market。
Lenny: 我想顺便问一下,听众中如果有人想,“天哪,我想在这方面获得一些帮助”,最好的联系途径是什么?
Melissa Tan: LinkedIn 肯定是个好渠道。我会查看 LinkedIn,所以欢迎在那里联系我。
Lenny: 好的。通常我们会把这些信息放在最后,但我觉得提前说会有帮助,万一有人在想,“哦,我看到你能帮我们什么了。” 那么,在此基础上,我想把我们的对话聚焦在你特别擅长的两个具体话题上。一是广义上如何打造高绩效团队,二是具体如何打造高绩效增长团队。以此作为我们对话的焦点,你觉得怎么样?
Melissa Tan: 好的,来吧。这两个话题我都非常热衷。来吧。
Dropbox 的增长经验与反思
Lenny: 在深入讨论之前,我想先聊聊 Dropbox。你在 Dropbox 大约待了四年左右,做了大量增长方面的工作,而且那段时间正好处于他们多次增长爆发期的中间。提到 Dropbox 和增长,我会想到一种反差。一方面,有一些令人难以置信的增长飞轮在运转——推荐计划、疯狂的口碑传播。这个产品有着爆发式的增长故事。
另一方面,还有 B2B 这条线,从外部来看,感觉它在很长一段时间里并不成功。后来 Box 出现并且把这块做得很好,我觉得 Dropbox 之后也有所改善,但总的感觉就是增长上既有非常成功的部分,也有不那么成功的部分。所以我很好奇,回顾你在那里的亲身经历以及你所了解的情况,你认为 Dropbox 做对了什么,又做错了什么?从观察 Dropbox 经历这一切的过程中,有哪些经验教训?
Melissa Tan: 这个问题很好。我在 Dropbox 待了将近五年,期间做了很多反思。我是 2013 到 2017 年在那里的,入职时大约 200 人,估值大概十亿美元,到我离开时差不多有 1500 人,IPO 时估值达到百亿。我认为 Dropbox 做对的一件事,毫无疑问是招聘。回想 2013 年,Dropbox 在科技圈以极其严格、极难进入著称。你可能有非常出色的简历,但 Dropbox 对他们引入的人才类型非常挑剔。我觉得他们主要看重两件事。他们寻找第一性原理思考者,所以不一定是看你的经验,而是你如何处理问题,如何知道该问对的问题,然后在此基础上构建自己的框架。
Dropbox 还倾向于招聘非常谦逊、善于协作、有团队精神的人。这两者的结合——既是第一性原理思考者又极具协作精神——带来了大量的创新。所以当你想到 freemium product led 增长,甚至我们在那里创建的高效销售模式,有如此多的创新,就是因为有这些懂得如何解决问题的人,并且能在产品、增长、销售等跨职能团队之间很好地协作。
而且从更广泛的角度来说,公司把招聘和招募融入了企业文化。我在那里的时候,每个人都知道我们要花大量时间面试。我们都被培训过如何推介 Dropbox,如何推介我们正在招聘的岗位,以便能够吸引顶尖人才。我觉得这是他们确实做得很好的一点,我也从中获益良多。另一件事是执行的重要性。
在 Dropbox,我们经常尝试一些东西,第一次没有效果,很容易就会说这不适合我们,比如增长。我们其实在 2013 年就尝试过做一些增长实验,但没有找到什么成效。但我们发现,魔鬼在细节里,魔鬼在执行方式中。所以回到如何稍微换一种方式执行,以及其中的一些教训——我觉得我们刚开始做增长的时候,本可以更加以用户为中心,更多以假设驱动。我们当时跟风了很多最佳实践,但那些并不真正适用于 Dropbox。
所以你的执行方式最终非常重要。这是第二个教训。第三个是专注。你前面也提到了,我认为早期成功的祝福和诅咒在于,你会被拉向太多不同的方向。Dropbox 有消费者业务,也有 B2B 业务,我觉得我们本应该更早地明确整体运作模式应该是什么样的,如何把从消费者到 B2B 的旅程融合起来、思考清楚。一个教训是,我们的销售体系和企业级业务启动得比应该的要晚,很多竞争对手追上了我们。
何时引入销售团队
最后,第四点是我非常相信的:如何让整个公司参与到关于上市策略(go-to-market)、增长和收入的思考中来。回到 2013 年,在科技圈,“增长”有点像个脏词,“收入”也是个脏词。我们觉得,“好的产品应该自己卖自己。” 直到我们的 self-serve 业务开始放缓,我们才组建了团队,因为我们意识到在优化体验方面有大量机会。
因为我们启动得比较晚,增长总是像产品之上的一个附加层。我认为最好的执行方式是从一开始就把这些放在核心位置。我们的上市策略是什么?我们如何思考商业化,并把这种思考融入产品开发的思维方式中?这一点,我和 Webflow 负责产品的 JZ 在思考产品与增长的协作时都非常刻意地践行了。所以这确实是一个教训。总结一下那四点就是:招聘的重要性、执行、尽早思考上市策略,以及如何让整个公司都参与到上市和增长的思考中。
Lenny: 你提到 Dropbox 在销售上的投入比较晚,有一种感觉可能是 product led growth 会把我们带得很远。我看 Jira 和 Atlassian,他们就是完全 product led 的,而且非常成功。我想问,对于一个正在运转的 product led 产品,你目前的框架是什么——什么时候应该开始偏向销售、开始组建销售团队?
Melissa Tan: 这归根结底取决于产品,因为一开始大多数公司要么更偏重销售,要么更偏重 product led。通常不会同时做两者。我看到的一个趋势是先从 product led 开始,而这个模式适合你的信号是:产品的上手体验非常直观,学习曲线低,不需要人工来引导用户。另外,如果产品有病毒式传播的成分,那也真的能跑起来。
Dropbox 的病毒式传播非常强。同样想到 Miro 或 Figma,那些也是非常具有病毒式传播属性的产品。它们天生就带有 product led 的基因。最初,当你达到一定规模时,你会从用户那里获得大量关于什么能引起共鸣的信号。一开始,你也没有……企业级功能的构建需要时间。所以当你在推进 product led 模式的同时,你的 self-serve 用户群中可能会有一些大公司,他们经常主动找上门来。
这在 Dropbox 就发生过,客户会说:“我需要你们给我做 SSO,我需要你们做所有这些企业级功能。安全不够。” 所以你也在持续收集企业端需要构建的功能清单。我觉得典型的路径可能是先从 product led 开始,然后再进入企业级市场。另一个方向我也见过,有些公司一开始就更适合企业级销售模式。可能你需要为这些用户做定制化的东西,也不是自下而上的路径。也许你销售产品的方式是从法务团队、财务团队或某个重要利益相关方开始的,但现在很多公司都在尝试转型,让产品更容易触达,转向 product led。
Melissa Tan: 所以你就要思考,好的,我怎样让这个产品的上手体验更简单?我怎样以规模化的方式触达终端用户?所以我认为核心就是先弄清楚你从哪里开始,然后在那个方向上持续投入。最后一点,大概就是要理解整个全局图景怎么拼在一起。有很多公司同时做消费端和 B2B,我觉得越早弄清楚这两者如何配合、用户路径和旅程是什么样的,最终给用户的体验就会越流畅。
打造高绩效团队
Lenny: 太好了。好,那我开始转向聊聊打造优秀团队和高绩效团队的话题。我从其他人那里了解到的关于你的一点是,你有这样一个口碑——人们愿意跟着你从一家公司跳到另一家公司。这对一个领导者和管理者来说,是留存率、NPS 和 product market fit 的终极信号。所以我很好奇,你觉得自己做了什么让人们愿意跟着你从公司到公司?
Melissa Tan: 我真的很幸运。我和几个早期 Dropbox 团队的同事已经认识十年了,合作了好几次,有些情况下甚至是三次。我总是觉得自己很有幸能有机会再次和他们共事,他们对我也有那样的信任和信心。我觉得关键在于——这一点我也是花了时间才培养出来的——我在领导和管理上采用的是一种非常以人为中心的方式。我真正认为核心就是深切地关心人、建立信任、投入他们的职业发展、帮助他们想清楚自己职业生涯想往哪里走。对我来说这非常个人化。我自己很幸运,遇到过很好的导师和经理,在那些方面帮助过我。所以这一切最初就是想把这份善意传递下去,想为我团队里的人做同样的事情。我觉得归根到底就是深切地关心,而你所有的行动都会从这里自然延伸出来。这就是我的回答。
Lenny: 有些人听到这些可能会觉得,作为领导者你面临一个选择:要么深切关心这个人,要么专注于推动成果、把事情做成。你觉得这两者可以共存吗?还是说这是光谱的两端?也许问题就是你怎么同时做到两者——你怎么既帮助人们达成目标、推动成果,同时又让他们感觉到你是真的关心他们?
Melissa Tan: 我不认为这两者互斥。因为我在团队上非常强调的另一件事就是以结果为导向。作为增长团队的负责人,不管好不好,你做的每一件事都是可量化的。所以实际上我觉得这也是我团队很多人很欣赏的一点——清楚地知道成功是什么样的,清楚地知道自己会怎么被衡量。我在团队中营造了一种非常以结果为导向的文化:目标明确,然后拆解到各个具体的杠杆,每个人怎么衡量成功也很清晰。
所以我不认为它们互斥。而我作为领导者的角色,同时也是支持他们的职业成长、帮助他们达成那些目标,并在过程中给予反馈。所以即使这两件事听起来不同,我实际上觉得它们可以共存,而对我来说,我确实两方面都很用力地去践行。
深切关心与直接反馈
Lenny: 能举个例子吗?什么叫深切关心一个人、做那种领导者?有些人可能在听的时候会觉得,“哦,我也很关心我的下属啊。” 但对你来说这种关心具体是什么样的?有没有什么例子可能会让人意外?
Melissa Tan: 有一个例子,有个人加入了团队,我一开始就发现他可能推进得不够快,需要更多方向感。所以在他们加入公司很早的时候,大概两三周的时候,我就把他拉到一边说:“我们需要加速很多。到 X 时间点我们需要达到这个目标。我们是增长团队,需要尽早证明成果。我觉得应该这样做——我们先试着制定一个路线图,列出要解决的问题清单、假设等等。” 这些不一定要是对的,但先拿出东西来,开始让整个团队对齐在这些事情上,然后定义好我们怎么衡量成功、怎么知道我们走在正确的路径上。我们需要尽快到达那个阶段。
我给了他这个反馈之后,从那以后他就一路高歌猛进。后来在一起工作一年之后的交谈中,他提到非常感激那次对话,感激我花时间告诉了他那些事情。我觉得有时候作为管理者,可能会想要回避那些不舒服的对话,但我实际上认为,你越直接越好,同时也要说明你的意图——我的意图是帮你成功。这真的很管用。我觉得这是一个很好的例子:你怎么既深切关心一个人,又给他直接反馈——你给他直接反馈恰恰是因为你深切关心他,而且你相信他能做出改变。我觉得你给出那个反馈的唯一理由就是你相信他能做得不同,而你只是想支持他。
Lenny: 在那次对话中,你做了什么让他觉得你是真的关心他?因为我听你描述的时候,感觉你就是在告诉他、给他反馈——“嘿,你在这方面需要做得好很多,我们需要达到目标。” 是什么让他觉得”她是真的希望我成功”?
Melissa Tan: 我觉得在那次对话中,很重要的一点是也要说”我相信你能做到这些事情,我做这些是为了支持你”,或者”我分享这个反馈是因为我相信你”。同时还要表达我在这里作为支持,在你推进的过程中告诉我能怎么帮你,如果有用的话我们可以一起讨论。归纳起来,我觉得就是:第一,重申你的意图、你为什么要进行这次对话;第二,表达你在这里支持他们,并且主动提供帮助。
我觉得这几件事配合在一起效果很好。第三点是,当你给别人反馈的时候,绝不应该听起来像是指责或批评。就是”嘿,这是我观察到的,这是它产生的影响,这里有一种不同的做法。” 把反馈始终聚焦在工作本身和你认为可以改进的具体事情上。
内部培养人才
Lenny: 我知道你也非常推崇内部培养人才,而不是从外部招聘专家。作为领导者和公司,这始终是一个决策——你投入多少去培养人,同时知道他们随时可能离开,知道那需要花费大量的时间和精力?你在培养人才、帮助他们成长方面发现了什么优势?为什么你觉得这件事那么重要?
Melissa Tan: 先说说为什么培养人这件事对我如此重要。对我个人来说,这源于一种发自内心的热情,因为当我刚进入职场时,很多人在我身上投入了大量心血。实际上我最初在职场中挣扎得挺厉害的。从学校到工作的转变对我来说非常困难——在学校里,成功的标准非常清晰,你只要好好学习、拿好成绩就行;但到了工作中,一切都模糊得多。我受益于许多导师对我的投入,这些年来我一直和他们保持联系,他们也持续在职业发展上帮助我。其中有两位特别突出,都来自 Dropbox——Oliver Jay(大家都叫他 OJ)和 GC Lionetti。所以这件事对我来说确实是非常私人的。
其次,我认为从公司扩张的角度来看也非常合理——随着公司的成长,如果团队成员能和你一起成长,过渡就会更加顺畅。人们会积累制度性知识。大家经常谈论创始人的直觉,那种创始人特有的判断力。我认为这种直觉其实也延伸到了早期员工身上,他们在用户需求和公司运作方式上积累了大量上下文。所以你在公司内部培养越多人才,过渡就越顺畅;相比之下从外部引入人员会面临很多不确定因素和风险。这件事确实有非常私人的一面,但从降低扩张风险的角度来看,也十分合理。
Lenny: 在我个人的职业生涯中,最大的转折点和作为产品经理进步最快的时期,就是因为遇到了一位管理者——他做的恰好就是你描述的事情,非常深入地投入帮助我成为一名更好的 PM。这并不容易,他对所有我没有做到完美的地方都非常严格。我常想,有些人的职业生涯中并不总是有这样一个人,他们没有像 Melissa 这样的管理者。对于那些正在寻找这样一位导师的人,或者觉得”我身边真的没有人能帮助我成长”的人,你有什么建议?
寻找导师的建议
Melissa Tan: 在你找工作的时候,我确实认为你应该去关注那些有这种口碑的人——你能看出来他们享受指导他人,在培养人才方面有良好的记录。也许他们从其他公司带过来曾经一起共事的人,这些都是好的信号,说明这个人重视这件事。甚至在面试过程中,你也可以反向面试你的管理者,了解他们的管理理念是什么,他们如何规划你在这个角色中的职业发展路径——这些都是我会关注的。
第二点,在面试时要寻找一位你的成功与他/她的成功紧密挂钩的管理者。这其实就是我的亲身经历——你倒不一定要在这方面刻意算计,但回想起来,我与一些人关系最紧密的时期,恰恰是我成为他们团队中最关键的成员的时候。他们非常需要我成功,因此也会在我身上花更多时间。所以要积极寻找这样的机会,对自己接受的角色类型保持挑剔。
我个人的经历中,也有一些时候是与同公司里非直属管理者建立了关系。这其实在我工作过的其他公司也经常发生——有人知道指导他人是我的热情所在,于是主动联系我、向我请教,问我”嘿,我们可以每月定期聊一次吗?“所以我认为你也可以在公司内部寻找其他可以合作的人。
最后一点,也可以寻找外部顾问。实际上,在我做顾问的过程中,最终也会指导很多与我合作的人,这一切自然而然就发生了。总结一下:去找到那些你认为有这份热情的人,与他们建立关系。最理想的情况是你们在一起工作时能建立最深厚的联系,你会互相了解很多;但如果没有这样的条件,我认为也有其他方式可以主动寻找指导和帮助。
Lenny: 关于提问有什么技巧吗?比如面试时可以问管理者哪些问题来帮助判断?以及当你在寻找能帮助你的人时,有没有什么特别的东西是大家应该关注但可能没想到的?
面试中如何考察管理者
Melissa Tan: 关于面试角色时可以问的问题,我建议直接问——比如”我很想了解你如何管理团队中的人,如何看待团队中人才的培养”,然后看他们怎么回答。你也可以问”你如何规划这个角色的职业发展路径?“如果对方完全没有想过这个问题,也没有反过来问你”那你认为什么对你来说是重要的?“——这些信号可能说明这不是他们平时会花时间思考的方向。此外,你还可以问面试小组中不是你未来管理者但与这个人共事的人,特别是如果你有机会和他直接管理的下属聊——“这个人作为管理者怎么样?“这往往非常有启发。
建立自然的导师关系
关于寻找外部导师,我一直觉得这种关系越自然越好。谢丽尔·桑德伯格(Cheryl Sandberg)在她的书《Lean In》中写过这个话题。她基本上写到,有些人会直接问”你愿意做我的导师吗?“我也收到过这样的问题——在还不怎么了解对方的阶段就被问到这个,压力是很大的。所以关系越自然越好——你跟一个人聊天,确实有一些你想请教的问题。有些人会联系我,虽然我们已经很久没共事了,说”嘿,我在考虑一个职业决定”或”我在工作中遇到了一个棘手的情况,我们能聊聊吗?“我就给他们建议,他们会偶尔来找我请教。
这不一定要是定期的事情,不需要刻意维系关系。这也是一种方式。或者如果你正在和某人合作,想建立某种每月一次的交流,你也可以提出来。唯一需要注意的是尊重对方的时间。如果某个月没什么想聊的,也不必勉强。我一直很乐意帮助别人,这不意味着我们必须频繁联系。所以关键不在于联系频率,而在于你真正遇到问题时主动寻求帮助。那些愿意帮助别人的人,只要有时间,就会说好的。
Lenny: Tim Ferriss 也谈到过这一点。他说”永远不要直接问别人做你的导师”。正如你所说,那样太吓人了——你在向对方承诺一件事情,是一种压力。更好的方式是”嘿,我们能见个面吗?我想请教一些问题”,然后再说”下个月我们还能再聊聊吗?“就这样让关系自然地发展。
Melissa Tan: 对,完全同意。
高绩效团队的要素
Lenny: 我想聊聊你如何培养人才以及你在这方面的心得。但在此之前,我想先退一步,谈谈高绩效团队的要素。在我问这个问题之前,你能先列举一下你合作过的公司,以及你曾经工作过的一些公司吗?
Melissa Tan: 我前面提到了 Dropbox。Dropbox 是我加入的第一家高速增长的科技创业公司。离开 Dropbox 之后,我做了很多顾问工作,也因此有机会和巴塞罗那的 Typeform 合作,后来 Typeform 的人又把我介绍给了 Canva。我认识 Canva 的时候,他们大概还只有 200 人,正处于早期增长阶段。之后我还和 Grammarly、Miro 合作过,然后加入了 Webflow。所以我有幸参与了很多我认为称得上高绩效的团队。
Lenny: 绝对是,这名单太强了。那我的问题来了——在你看来,这些团队有哪些最常见的共性要素?从外部观察者的角度,它们显然都是很高绩效的。
Melissa Tan: 我觉得首先是从团队有非常清晰的目标开始。他们需要知道成功是什么样的。尤其是增长团队,目标往往非常明确:“我们需要达到某些指标,我们这季度和今年有具体的目标。“然后还要有使命感。使命感回答的是”为什么”的问题。以 Webflow 为例,我们增长团队的终极北极星指标是 ARR,即年度经常性收入。然后你把它拆解为驱动 ARR 的杠杆和先行指标,比如激活率、获客数量等等。这样每个团队都有非常清晰的目标。同时我们有使命,即”为什么”。我们的使命,也就是我们做这件事的原因,是为用户打造令人愉悦的体验,在他们在产品中的旅程上给予支持。
选择”变现”作为”做什么”,原因在于这是一个很好的信号——说明用户觉得你的产品有价值,尤其是当他们持续付费、持续留存的时候。还有一个我觉得很重要的东西是文化,也就是”你怎么做这些事”。思考文化的时候,当然要看具体职能和你想在那里营造什么样的文化。就我个人而言,我努力在团队中建立的文化是一种真正以结果为导向的文化。
我团队里有人前段时间说,你总是讲得很清楚——我们会以影响力来衡量,这也是我们团队最终的评判标准。所以就是真正打造一支以结果为导向的团队。同时,团队要是”团队优先”且协作性强的。我觉得当你有非常清晰的目标、非常以结果为导向时,有可能会出现一种局面:大家觉得彼此在竞争——而这正是你不想要的。你真正需要的是团队成员互相帮助、互相分享心得。
我觉得这样才能实现一加一大于三的效果。你不是在局部优化,而是从更广的视角看待整个团队,超越个人的利益来思考。第三点是真正的主人翁心态。我在 Dropbox 亲眼看到了这一点——当我们还是一家小公司的时候,每个人都觉得自己有很强的责任感和主人翁意识,因为根本没有别人可以依赖,你一个人戴着五顶帽子,你必须自己干。
但随着公司规模扩大,很容易就会感觉那种主人翁意识被稀释了。所以我一直在团队里努力保持一种感觉——我们就是主人,带着一种非常主动的心态:我该怎么解决这个问题?我被另一个团队卡住了,我该怎么做?就是让每个人都拥有强烈的能动性。最后一点是要有乐趣。我觉得尤其是在高压环境下,人很容易焦虑、压力很大。说到底这很个人化,但你能享受越多乐趣,一切都会越好。所以要确保过程中不断注入乐趣,别把事情看得太严肃。
如何建立主人翁意识
Lenny: 我一边听一边在记笔记,你提到的可以归纳为四点:第一,建立以影响力和绩效为导向的文化;第二,团队优先,让事情围绕团队而非个人;第三,培养主人翁意识,让每个人都觉得自己是主人;第四就是要有乐趣,这一点我很喜欢。我的问题是,在”主人翁意识”这个方面,你具体做了什么来让团队建立这种感觉?
Melissa Tan: 我觉得首先要定义每个人要负责和推动的范围。在搭建团队的时候,重要的是团队里每个人都有一块自己可以独立运作的范围,而且是他们有兴趣去负责和推动的。举个例子——我离开 Dropbox 的时候,财务团队看了我们的指标,发现每个增长产品经理仅靠实验就能带来超过一百万美元的 ARR。
Lenny: 天哪。
Melissa Tan: 对。这个影响力相当大。财务团队按照逻辑说,我们应该直接把团队翻倍——如果每个人能带来超过一百万,那我们想翻倍 ARR,就直接把团队翻倍。但我其实对此强烈反对。我心想,如果我们把团队翻倍,每个人负责和推动的范围是什么?难道把网站的不同部分、产品的不同区域切分一下,比如某个 PM 只负责结账流程?
我觉得这样做对团队来说不够有吸引力,也不利于我们招募到那些对解决增长问题充满热情的人。所以真的要好好思考怎么划分范围。如果你是一个增长团队,也许可以按要解决的问题来拆分——确保每个问题都足够有分量——或者按漏斗的不同环节来拆分,比如激活、变现等等。首先要从划分出好的范围开始。第二点就是在团队中灌输一种像主人一样思考的文化。这种文化的灌输,我觉得体现在几个方面。其一——这在增长领域非常常见——增长的工作涉及多个职能,你经常会觉得自己被其他团队卡住。
比如我们想在产品的某个部分做一个实验,可能那个服务领域是一个核心产品经理负责的,他不愿意推进这件事;或者我们被设计资源或工程资源的瓶颈卡住了。在这种情况下,我觉得如果你像主人一样思考,你不会因为做不了某件事就轻易感到无力,而是会想:“我能做的一切是什么?我是不是已经穷尽了所有选项?”
最后就是以身作则。我也努力向团队展示我一直在像主人一样思考,一直在尽我所能做一切能做的事。最后,作为领导者,像主人一样思考也意味着为你的团队承担责任。所以如果我的团队出了问题,我总是第一个站出来说——最终我是有责任的,这是我的失误或疏忽。所以这就是我认为的主人翁心态:认真思考范围划分,营造那种文化,然后作为领导者,把自己视为最终承担责任的人。
团队优先的文化
Lenny: 太棒了。这正好引出我想深入探讨的另一个话题,就是”团队优先”这一块。我想到 Meta,不是要说他们什么坏话,但我认识的每一个在 Meta 工作的人,他们的绩效评估都和自己的影响力紧密挂钩,非常以影响力为导向。这导致每个人都需要自己去驱动影响力——“我驱动了这些影响力”——然后去看你相对于团队中其他人对这个影响力的贡献有多少。我觉得这给人们带来了不少挑战。你怎么去营造那种团队优先的感觉?因为正如你所说,每个人的绩效又确实和”这是你的成功指标”、“这对你和团队来说什么是成功”紧密相连。你如何让大家觉得是团队优先,而不是”我需要自己来完成这件事”?
Melissa Tan: 这里确实有一个微妙的平衡。关键在于管理者如何带领团队以及如何定调。对我来说,我总是明确表示,虽然结果很重要,但这是一项团队运动。所以我经常鼓励团队协作。作为领导者,你对所有正在发生的事情都有全局了解,所以有时候我知道某个 PM 正在做某件事,甚至是团队之外的某个 PM,如果我团队中有人可以为这件事做出贡献,我会主动把上下文传递给他们。我会鼓励这种行为,即使这件事可能不会对他们自己正在驱动的指标产生直接影响。所以这真的取决于你营造的文化以及你鼓励团队做什么。我也认为,你越能让大家看到互相帮助实际上对彼此都有好处,效果就越好。
而且最后一点,我觉得还是以身作则。因为我本人非常团队优先,我经常在帮助其他团队,做一些可能最终并不属于我的职责范围、也不一定会让我直接受益的事情。一个很好的例子是,我在 Webflow 很长一段时间里一直在推动定价和打包方案的工作,仅仅是因为公司里没有人在推动这件事,而这是一个巨大的机会领域。实际上我当时也在做企业级定价方面的工作,虽然我负责的是 self-serve,但我同时也在支持企业级的定价和打包方案。我也向团队展示了,“嘿,我也在做所有这些事情来帮助公司。“我觉得正是这些帮助奠定了那种基调和文化的形成。
如何避免承担过多工作
Lenny: 那你怎么避免做太多工作呢?我觉得还有一种挑战是,有些人太擅长太多事情了,结果他们做了太多事,然后就精疲力竭了。你在这方面有什么经验法则或教训吗?
Melissa Tan: 对我来说这也是一段学习之旅。我的团队确实就这一点给过我反馈,说 Melissa 有时会承担太多或试图做太多事情。所以我觉得这是一个微妙的平衡。如果谈论的是个人层面,你需要了解自己的极限,你也可以在短期内集中冲刺做一些事,但最终要清楚自己能承担多少。我也发现设定一个明确的时间线非常有帮助,比如”嘿,这件事我会做一个季度,但之后我们真的需要找到其他人来做。“或者把它交接出去。这确实是一个微妙的平衡。我觉得这是一个很好的问题,因为我认为这是职场早期的人经常遇到的问题——他们可能会因为试图帮助所有人而失去焦点。
这其实是我刚加入 Dropbox 时遇到的问题。当时我是唯一的 sales ops 人员,所以我要帮助每个销售负责人处理他们的指标,工作非常集中。所以这需要一点试错。我认为最重要的是不要过度局限于自己手头的事情,要去帮助他人,但同时要知道有些事情是不能掉链子的。如果你开始看到自己最终负责的事情出现了疏漏,那就是你承担了过多的信号。
培养人才的具体方法
Lenny: 我们回到”培养人才”这个话题吧。刚才有点跑题了,我想回到这一点。我们已经聊了你为什么对培养人才感到兴奋,以及你从中获得的收益。我很好奇你具体做了什么来帮助人们成为更优秀的产品经理和各类领导者?你实际上发现哪些方法是有效的?
Melissa Tan: 关于培养人才,我把它看作你们之间关系生命周期的不同阶段。首先——作为一个做增长的人来说,这一点非常元——其实从你招聘的时候就开始了,你要确保找到的是一个和角色真正匹配的人,是一个双向匹配。我也倾向于寻找具有成长型心态(growth mindset)的人,那些渴望学习、主动寻求反馈、能很好地接受反馈的人。
在他们加入公司之后,作为管理者,我的工作是帮助他们获得成功。比如如何让他们尽快上手,把他们和公司里合适的人联系起来。如何确保他们在前 90 天里清楚地知道成功是什么样的。然后如何帮助他们取得早期胜利。
我通常会建议,“嘿,你应该做这个演示。“这是在你加入初期获得能见度的好方法。这里有一些低垂的果实,甚至是已经烂掉的果实,你应该拿来做,以确保获得早期胜利。在后续的职业旅程中,我觉得很大程度上是持续给反馈,确保给到能见度。我最近的一个小技巧是让团队里的成员制作 loom 视频,分享给 Webflow 的不同领导者。有时候获得能见度、约到面对面的会议时间很难,但如果你做一个五到十分钟的 loom 视频来展示你做的事情,那就是一个获得能见度的好方法。
最后,我觉得这是一段终身关系。我仍然和我管理过的很多人保持联系,并帮助他们——无论是找新工作,还是需要职业建议,我总是让自己随时可以被找到。所以这其实是一段培养那个人的终身旅程。到了某个阶段,甚至不再是在培养那个人了,而是和某人建立了友谊。我觉得我从我管理过的人身上学到了很多。最终这就变成了一件非常美好的事情——你们最初一起工作,但现在彼此已经非常了解。我觉得这也是我作为管理者成长的方式,就是从我的团队那里获得反馈。
《Radical Candor》与管理理念
Lenny: 这些都回到了你之前好几次提到的那个理念——就是非常在乎和你一起工作的人。你的做法也让我想起了《Radical Candor》这本书。我猜你是这本书的粉丝,而且你的管理方式和书中的理念很相似。
Melissa Tan: 是的,绝对是。很有意思的是,Kim Scott 曾在 Dropbox 短暂工作过一段时间,所以当我加入 Dropbox 的时候,她其实在我的面试小组上,我们共事了三个月。在她出版那本书之前,她实际上和我们的团队一起做过工作坊。这本书的理念一直让我印象深刻。我记得她说过你必须……我记不清原话了,但本质上就是:直接坦率,同时发自内心地关心对方。
Lenny: 对,care deeply, challenge directly,大概是这种意思。
Melissa Tan: 没错,care deeply 但 challenge directly,这一点一直是我试图融入自己管理方式的,也一直作为领导者深深启发了我的理念。
Lenny: 太好了,如果听众不了解这本书的话,我们会在节目备注里附上链接,我很喜欢这本书。你之前谈到了招聘产品经理,以及这对于打造高绩效团队的重要性。那我们在这方面花点时间,基本上就两个问题,你可以按自己的方式来回答。第一个是,你在招聘产品经理时看重什么?你招聘过很多产品经理,多年来也管理过很多产品经理。你特别看重什么,尤其是那些别人可能不够关注的地方?第二个是,你的面试流程是什么样的?在面试流程方面你觉得什么最有帮助?
招聘产品经理:看重的品质
Melissa Tan: 关于我看重的品质,我觉得有一份大家都知道的产品经理应该具备的素质清单,我可能不会说什么突破性的东西——显然是沟通能力、管理利益相关者的能力、跨职能协作的能力。我在面试流程中特别看重的,是第一性原理思维(first principles thinking)或者说很强的批判性思维能力。所以我的面试流程通常会有一个现场解决问题的环节,我会更侧重于问”你会如何处理 X 问题?“然后我会不断追问为什么,试图理解他们为什么选择这种方式,观察他们提出了哪些问题,看他们整体上如何解决问题。
然后我特别看重的另一点就是我之前提到的成长型思维(growth mindset)。我会非常关注这个人如何接受反馈。实际上我有时会在面试过程中直接给候选人反馈。几年前我学到了一个非常有用的方法——我的面试流程中始终包含一个演示环节,用来考察结构化思考能力和沟通能力。我会建议在正式演示之前,我们两个人之间先做一次准备电话沟通。而且我会在那个电话里对演示内容给出反馈。
这样做给我传递的信号是:和这个人一起工作实际上会是什么感觉。然后我会观察他们如何把这些反馈融入到最终的交付成果中,这总是非常有意思的,有时候这也是判断和这个人共事会是什么样子的最强信号。
招聘产品经理:面试流程
Lenny: 好的,这个太好了。我想在这里多花点时间聊聊。你推荐或使用的面试流程具体是怎样的顺序?有演示环节,有准备电话,这两者之间怎么衔接?
Melissa Tan: 通常是招聘经理初筛,我其实会在初筛阶段就做现场解决问题。我觉得这一轮能筛掉最多的人。我在这里实际上做两件事。第一是现场解决问题——“你会如何处理 X?“比如如果我在 Webflow 招聘定价方向的人,我会问”你会如何思考定价?“我有时会说”嘿,你手边有笔记本电脑吗?能不能打开我们的定价页面?我想听听你的想法,你会想改什么?“这是我在 Dropbox 学到的一个技巧,我们会打开 Dropbox 的网站问”嘿,你想在这里测试什么?为什么?“你能从中获得大量关于他们如何处理问题、如何思考的信号。
我会追问很多为什么。然后下一轮是和团队里更多的人谈话,考察不同的能力。根据你在招聘什么岗位,我们会让每个人专注于不同的能力维度。这也取决于具体的角色。有些角色更偏技术,有些需要和不同的利益相关者更紧密地协作,所以你要确保能测试到这些方面。最后一轮是演示,另外可能还有一些在其他方面的深入交流。
我们希望通过面试流程收集到的各种信息,想进一步挖掘的。演示通常是关于如何思考某个问题——候选人在整个面试过程中收集了关于公司或问题的各种信息,所以最终汇聚成一个展示:你觉得应该怎么做,或者你入职后的前 90 天会想做什么?这取决于岗位,但通常是某种关于你将在公司负责的问题的演示。
在此之前,我们会有一次我和候选人之间的准备电话沟通。候选人通常会有一些问题,比如”我需要知道这个数据”,或者”我对 X 很好奇”。所以这真的是一次帮助他们准备的电话。而且到了这个阶段,他们通常已经有了演示的初稿,所以我们会一起过一遍,我其实会说”嘿,我觉得你应该在这部分多着墨一些。你会怎么想这个问题?“我甚至会直接说,比如在 Webflow 我会说”我们正在考虑 X、Y、Z 这些事情,供你参考。把这些融入你的演示中可能会有很大帮助。”
所以这就是我获得大量信号的地方——和这个人一起做一份演示会是什么感觉?然后我在正式演示时会看他们有没有采纳我的建议,以及他们是怎么采纳的。有时候我看到候选人完全没有采纳任何建议,我就会想”好吧,这可能不太合适。“另外我觉得这种准备电话的好处还在于,它能帮助候选人更好地发挥。做一份演示其实工作量很大。我们越能通过提供信息来帮助他们,确保他们能表现出色,就越有帮助。最后一点,我觉得这也让他们提前体验了和我一起工作是什么感觉。
Lenny: 我之前从来没听说过有这个步骤,这真的很有意思。居然在正式演示之前就给候选人反馈。我猜他们会想”这是怎么回事?“我以为我是来展示自己能力的,没想到对方会帮我做得更好。这真的很有意思。关于这方面我还有两个很实操的问题。第一,你给他们多长时间来准备这个演示?第二,你之前说你问的问题和实际的问题解决相关,而不是纯理论问题。大概就是这两个问题。
Melissa Tan: 通常我们会提前一周安排。他们有一周的时间。这里比较棘手的是,让人做一份演示本身就是不小的要求,所以一周的时间既够用,又不会让人花太多时间。另外要明确的是,幻灯片不要超过一定数量。以 Webflow 为例,我们设定的是不超过 30 页,这其实已经很多了,我们并不期望你真的做 30 页。还有一点我会特别强调,我们真正想了解的是你会如何着手处理这个问题。所以不要在幻灯片上纠结,关键是能讲清楚,准备好你需要的内容来阐述,因为我们实际上看的是实质内容。这就是我们给他们的时间,通常是 30 分钟的演示加上 15 分钟的问答。
关于你问题的第二部分,选题方面,有几种思路。我知道有些人会让候选人展示他们过去做过的东西。我试过这种方式,但效果不好,因为我发现候选人有时候会花大量时间去交代那家公司的背景。而且这种方式也无法很好地测试——因为你在为一个岗位面试的过程中,会获得大量关于公司本身和问题的上下文信息,所以这也是在测试他们在这个过程中吸收了多少信息。同时也能看出他们加入后是否真的愿意在这个方向上工作。有些候选人会担心花在上面时间太多,或者觉得”这是一个很大的工作量。“这方面我确实会注意。不过我觉得最主要的一点是,深入了解自己将要做什么,其实对候选人本身是最有利的。比如有些候选人走完了整个面试流程,但几乎没有怎么用过 Webflow 的产品。我一直觉得这是一个值得关注的信号,因为如果你不经常使用产品,就无法真正判断自己是否喜欢它。所以我其实认为,候选人更深入地去体验产品,几乎是对他们自己最有利的。
Lenny: 关于面试策略我还能再聊一个小时,但我想确保我们有时间聊增长团队的话题。所以我们转到这个话题吧。我的第一个问题是,你和很多不同的团队、不同的公司合作过,帮他们制定增长策略、招聘增长团队、理清增长方向。我很好奇,在你看到的公司尝试搞增长、建增长团队的过程中,最常见的坑和错误是什么?
增长团队最常见的陷阱
Melissa Tan: 我觉得最常见的陷阱之一就是——我之前也提到过——从一开始就没有一个全局观,没有在战略层面想清楚你的走向市场策略(go-to-market strategy)是什么。另外,你的定价和包装(pricing and packaging)应该是什么样的?我几年前其实和 Abby 在 YC 博客上合写了一篇文章,Abby 当时在 Dropbox 是我团队的人。写这篇文章是因为我觉得即使在 Dropbox,虽然这是一件好事——我们当时是以比较随意的方式发现了很棒的东西——我们有免费增值的消费级产品,后来发现用户需要团队版产品,于是做了团队版,但我们从来没有画过一张完整的蓝图:它应该是什么样的?消费级和企业级之间的不同连接点是什么?我们的模型应该是什么样的?我也见过一些公司从一开始对定价不够有意识,没有认真考虑价值指标(value metric)是什么。然后等到规模已经很大了再去重新思考定价,这其实是个很大的麻烦——怎么把老用户保留在旧方案里?怎么把存量客户迁移到新的定价体系上?所以从一开始就想好定价很重要,从一开始就想好走向市场策略也很重要。
另一个我经常看到的问题是,还是 Dropbox 的经验教训——执行层面的人上了一门课或者读了很多关于增长的内容,就想照搬同样的做法,而不是真正从”先看看我们的数据、和用户聊聊、我们认为最大的假设是什么”开始,基于自己的数据来设计实验,并且合理评估实验的规模。有时候团队在实验的东西太小了,不会产生实质性的影响,因为他们听说这在某家公司效果很好,但那家公司可能是 Dropbox——在 Dropbox,转化率每提升 0.5% 都有意义,但如果你是早期阶段,这就无所谓,你需要想得更大一些。另一种情况是相反的问题——推翻重来但没有假设。这是我在 Dropbox 早期犯的一个错误,我当时重新设计了结账页面,自认为 UX 更好,但我同时改了太多不同的组件,以至于当它失败的时候,完全不清楚为什么会失败。所以关键是要把实验提炼成明确的假设。
最后一点我想说的是,要理清我所说的”飞行编队”(flying formation)——不同的增长团队如何与其他团队协作。这一点我之前也提到过,增长不应该让人觉得是叠在上面的一层。早期很多棘手的问题其实就是搞清楚怎么和其他团队合作。我认为最好或者说最理想的方式是让增长融入整个公司。举个例子,增长团队往往是离用户最近的。他们会收到大量反馈,会直接听到用户的声音。作为增长团队,我觉得我们能提供的最大价值之一就是把这些反馈传回给公司其他团队。所以即使是增长团队,我们能不能帮助影响产品路线图?反过来也是一样,作为 PM,PM 如何也能更有增长意识?
飞行编队与 DACI 框架
Lenny: 我很喜欢”飞行编队”这个词,之前从来没听过。再问一下这具体是什么意思?就是增长如何融入公司内部吗?
Melissa Tan: 对,飞行编队本质上就是——我不知道这个词从哪来的,可能是军事术语之类的——就是团队之间如何协同工作。
Lenny: 就像蓝天使飞行表演队那样?
Melissa Tan: 一起配合的那种?
Lenny: 对。
Melissa Tan: 对。我把飞行编队理解为跨团队之间如何协作。你也可以把它理解为 DACI 框架——Driver(驱动者)、Accountable(负责人)、Contributor(贡献者)、Informed(知情者)。有时候当你不清楚彼此怎么协作时,就会互相踩脚。不明确谁是决策者、需要和谁合作、在流程的哪个节点介入。所以飞行编队,我认为它的一部分就是 DACI——明确不同的角色。
Lenny: 你能具体解释一下吗?因为很多人可能不知道这个术语。
Melissa Tan: DACI 是一个框架,用来梳理一个项目或领域中团队的不同角色。D 代表 Driver,就是推动项目的人。A 代表 Accountable,就是最终负责的人,通常在有未解决的问题时是最终决策者。C 代表 Contributor,就是所有会参与贡献的不同团队。I 代表 Informed,就是需要被告知进展的人,但他们不直接贡献、不是决策者,也不参与项目的具体执行。
飞行编队与 DACI 框架(续)
Melissa Tan: 所以这是一个很简洁的框架,用于跨团队协作时明确每个人承担什么角色。最容易混淆的地方通常是 Accountable(负责人)是谁、决策者是谁。团队多了之后,很容易出现不清楚最终如何做出决策、应该由谁来决策的情况。而那个人通常应该是对事情最有上下文、或者最终承担责任的人。
所以我觉得飞行编队里包含 DACI,我通常还会把运营节奏也放进去,这样大家清楚在什么时间点做什么事。我们最初在 Webflow 组建增长团队时就创建了一个飞行编队,当时要搞清楚产品增长如何与产品团队协作、产品增长如何与增长营销协作,各个团队各自的节奏是什么。非常具体地,我们整理了一份文档,写清楚:产品增长负责注册之后所有下游指标;增长营销负责注册量,同时他们也要驱动 CAC(客户获取成本)相关的目标——这些就是各自负责的不同指标。
我们有每周例会,一起看各项指标。也会轮流更新各自的进展,讨论当前推进的项目,找出想要合作的领域。然后我们还会做季度规划,各自提报自己主导的项目,其中有些项目可能需要一起做。本质上就是这些会议节奏,就是运营节奏。这就是我对飞行编队的理解。
Lenny: 太好了,这完全可以写成一篇博客文章。顺便说一句,如果你在考虑写点什么的话,把你实际的 Webflow 飞行编队案例写出来,我觉得大家会很喜欢的。
Melissa Tan: 是的。
产品增长团队是否应该拥有收入指标
Lenny: 我想聊一个有点偏离的话题。现在有一个趋势,就是产品团队开始对收入负责。Elena 最近在播客里也谈到了这个。你对产品增长团队是否应该拥有收入指标、把收入数字作为他们的目标有什么看法?
Melissa Tan: 确实要看公司和产品增长团队在驱动什么。在我待过的公司以及我提供咨询的公司里,产品增长团队都是拥有收入指标的——不过这并不是绝对的。我确实见过收入归营销团队负责的情况。如果是偏漏斗顶部增长的话,营销来管是合理的。还有一种比较有意思的,就是收入归财务团队负责。这通常出现在公司早期。
比如 Canva 早期就是财务团队负责收入,因为财务对公司各方面的情况都有全局视角,会主动给其他团队提建议,比如”我们的转化率还可以提升,需要做某件事”,或者”我们获取注册和客户的效率不够高”。但随着公司发展,收入这个指标其实不适合长期放在财务团队。后来就逐步演变为由驱动产品增长的产品负责人来管了。所以我的观察是,收入归产品团队负责是更常见的情况。我们 Dropbox 的团队其实搬了好几次——最开始在营销下面,后来汇报给包含销售的收入组织,最后才搬进产品团队。因为我们意识到大量的收入来自产品内部的产品增长动作,所以我们觉得让产品团队拥有收入指标很重要。
如何从零开始建设增长团队
Lenny: 你谈到的很多东西都和增长在公司里如何起步有关。我想你收到的最常见问题之一应该就是:我怎么开始投入增长?怎么招第一个增长人员?怎么围绕这个人搭建团队?这也是我收到的最常见的问题之一。所以我们花点时间聊聊这个。对于那些刚开始考虑搭建增长团队的创始人,你有什么建议?应该怎么切入、初期找什么样的人、怎么规划长期发展?
Melissa Tan: 我也经常被问到这个问题。我觉得公司起步阶段,目标是达到 product market fit,搞清楚理想客户画像是谁,也就是 ICP(Ideal Customer Profile)。在这个阶段,公司里的每个人都应该思考增长。他们在寻找最初几个设计合作伙伴来共同打造产品,在搞清楚产品在哪些人群中产生共鸣、谁可能也是购买决策者。他们在确定:我们是做一个自下而上的 product led 模式?还是更侧重销售?还是两者都做?
达到 product market fit 之后,开始获得最初一批客户时,第一个增长人员通常不是负责驱动获客的人。你需要找到最初的一千或几千个客户,而且需要规模化地获取。如果这是公司的重点,我的建议是:这个人不需要是专家,但最好对一两个渠道有比较深入的理解,而且这些渠道恰好是你假设能找到增长机会的渠道。
我把这个人看作一个投资组合经理的角色。因为你需要摸索出……通常公司不会有很多均衡发力的渠道,而是找到一两个真正有效的,符合 80/20 法则——80% 的注册量来自这一两个渠道。而这个投资组合经理在测试不同的方向。你甚至可以利用外部代理商,SEO、付费营销等领域有很多代理商,但这个人要足够聪明,能判断这件事到底行不行、怎么规模化地做。你还要确保获取的是有质量的注册,是真正能变现的用户。
所以如果你的第一个增长人员是做获客的话,这大致就是那个角色的定位。然后另外两个需要早期关注的领域是激活和定价,但我不认为需要专门招人来负责。激活方面——你要确保往漏斗顶部注入潜在用户的同时,用户也在被激活。这里我觉得不需要做 AB 测试,你的量可能还不够大。我觉得哪怕只是找五个目标用户,做用户测试,开一个 Zoom,看着他们完成产品的 onboarding 流程,让他们边用边说出自己的想法,你就能学到很多东西。你也可以直接采用一些最佳实践,比如 onboarding checklist 之类的。所以一个是激活,另一个就是我反复提过的定价和包装——认真思考定价问题,但这不需要专人负责。
第一个增长人员的人才画像
Lenny: 你觉得这类人什么样的背景最成功?有些人会说,我想直接招一个像你这样的顶尖人才,让他们来全权负责;也有人会说招一个刚毕业的新人来摸索;当然也有折中方案。你觉得第一个增长招聘选什么样的人最好?
Melissa Tan: 这真的取决于团队现有的构成——创始人自己或者现有团队对增长有多大的兴趣。如果他们对增长有兴趣,更多是需要有人来执行,那我觉得可以找一个职业阶段相对较早的人,但一定要是很强的第一性原理思维者。当然,这方面也有风险——我自己是前咨询顾问出身,所以以前总说找一个前咨询顾问就行。但我承认这并不总是靠谱的。那些真正理解获客、实际做过获客的人确实有价值,他们可能已经在某些渠道上积累了不少经验。
所以我觉得你要么找一个以前做过获客的人,可能他们职业阶段还比较早,拥有很强的成长型思维(growth mindset),但一定要确保是第一性原理思维者。另一个选择是找一个很聪明的早期阶段人才,让他们去上 Reforge 的课程,让他们充分吸收所有知识。再一个选择就是招一个更有经验的人。我觉得这真的取决于你是否希望那个人承担更多、几乎成为创始团队的一部分。你是否想找一个能加入你领导团队的人?
还有一个选择是引入一位顾问,这位顾问不是全职的。如果你招了一个相对早期阶段的人,顾问甚至可以指导这个人,这是一个非常好的组合。所以这真的取决于具体情境——现有团队里有哪些人,以及你想把什么样的人引入团队。你是在找一个能随公司一起成长的真正领导者,还是说你还没准备好到那一步?
技能专长 vs 通用素质
Lenny: 那技能方面呢?我猜如果你觉得付费增长会是主要获客渠道,你可能想找一个在这方面特别强的人;而如果是病毒式传播、product led 增长这类,那你可能想找偏产品方向的人。你对第一个增长招聘中技能专长这个维度有多看重?
Melissa Tan: 我其实认为技能专长没有那么多重要,如果这说得通的话。更重要的是一种能力——同样,我把它想象成一个投资组合经理。这是增长营销这边、负责获客的角色。他们在管理一个组合,试图找出什么有效。我觉得你需要为这个角色找一个分析能力强的人,但同时也要理解”用户是谁”这类问题,在找到用户方面要有真正的创造力。所以实际上要看的是素质特质,而不是专业技能。
一个人专业技能越强,反而越容易陷入一种虚假的精确感,觉得自己知道该做什么。尤其是,我认为你其实不需要付费营销的专业技能,直到很后期——当你开始考虑增量性(incrementality)或者管理大量广告投放的时候。专业技能到后期才更重要。类似地,在产品增长方面,我认为产品增长角色也是到很晚才会设立。很多早期阶段的公司甚至到很晚才有产品经理。所以增长产品人员的出现通常要晚得多。
何时引入顾问
Lenny: 再问几个问题。一个是你提到有时候引入顾问是合理的。我知道有时候公司和顾问的合作体验不好——顾问没有提供太多价值,却拿了股权。但有时候确实是变革性的。你分享过一些这样的故事——什么时候适合请顾问?对于早期阶段的增长顾问,有没有什么建议,应该看重什么?
Melissa Tan: 如果团队存在知识缺口,我觉得就应该加一位顾问。而且顾问的形式非常多样,每个人的做法都不太一样。对有些人来说,是每月一次通话;其他时候,特别是我做全职顾问的时候,我会安排每周通话,甚至参加一些团队会议,查看设计稿。每个人的方式都不太一样。所以我觉得取决于你在寻找什么。我一定会建议,先了解这个人,确保双方在你要找什么、目标是什么这些问题上达成共识。我过去的做法是,先设定一个较短的周期,比如一个季度的合作,然后再决定是否继续。
我也认为,如果你有了顾问协议但没有获得价值,分开走是完全没问题的。如果你没有找到价值,就分开。我认为每个顾问都想确保自己在创造价值。总结一下:一定要对你需要的建议非常明确,确保双方对期望达成一致。然后设定一个”先试后买”的机制——可以先做一个季度的合作。要知道,即使在那段期限结束之前,如果不合适也随时可以分开。
如何识别第一性原理思维
Lenny: 进入非常精彩的快问快答之前的最后一个问题。你提到了第一性原理思维(first principles thinking)这个概念。我很好奇你如何衡量它,如何判断一个人是否擅长第一性原理思维?
Melissa Tan: 这确实是我经常用的一个词。第一性原理思维(first principles thinking),我认为就是——你不是使用一套既定框架和固定公式,而是根据你所获得的情境来创造自己的框架。所以当我思考第一性原理思维时,它往往是知道该问什么问题,这样你才能开始形成心智模型。然后是真正开始构建那个心智模型,知道如何演进它,知道什么时候它不再有效,并且这一切都源于一种好奇心——这真的有效吗?这是我在团队中以之闻名的一点,就是我会问大量的问题。但这不是出于想要展示自己在问好问题,而是出于解决问题的出发点,确保我们始终在解决当下的问题,确保我们在做正确的事情。
如果有了新信息,我们真的还想这样做吗?所以我认为第一性原理思维往往是关于提问,然后创造你自己的框架。这就是我对它的定义。也许另一种描述方式就是批判性思维——你能够非常批判性地思考。我觉得至少对我而言,创造一个允许这种思维方式的文化很重要。一旦你的文化中人们不再提问、不再不断审视自己的工作,那可能就意味着你没有在推动自己做到最好。而且我认为这也营造了一个有趣的环境——“哦对,我们为什么要做这个?“真正以好奇心来引领。
Lenny: 有没有一个让你印象深刻的人、时刻或问题,可以称得上是第一性原理思维者的典型瞬间——某个问题或处理事情的方式?
Melissa Tan: 我对第一性原理思维(first principles thinking)价值的顿悟时刻是在 Dropbox 的时候。我们最初的销售团队有最非传统的人员组合。Dropbox 以此闻名——我们会招大量很聪明但从未做过销售的人,让他们去做销售。这当然有很多劣势。我们在摸索很多东西。也许我们应该做一个搭配——几个懂销售的人加上一批新人,两者结合。但我确实认为这带来了大量创新。甚至我自己其实最初就是在销售团队,这是一个有趣的冷知识。我过去在 Dropbox 接听 800 免费电话,如果你去 Dropbox 的网站,会看到一个聊天入口——我也做过那个角色。我认为我们从这种做法中获得的,正是那些非常创新的走向市场策略。
创新与”外行人”的优势
这也让很多人受益,因为其中很多人后来转到了公司里不同的职能部门。他们对用户是谁有着充分的背景了解,到那个阶段他们已经和大量不同的用户交谈过。这实际上是我后来转入增长团队时帮助最大的东西——我掌握了所有那些背景信息。我从中学到的,回到第一性原理思维(first principles thinking)来说,就是如果你招的是非常聪明但从未做过这件事的人,一个优势是他们能够创新,因为我觉得他们会带着一种心态进来:“我什么都不懂,让我从头开始摸索。” 相比之下,那些自以为知道所有答案的人,反而限制了你可能做出的尝试。所以我真正的顿悟时刻就是在 Dropbox,反复看到那些从未做过这些事情的人,然后看到如此多的创新由此产生。
Lenny: 这个故事太棒了。在我们进入非常精彩的快问快答环节之前,你还有什么想分享或聊到的吗?
Melissa Tan: 我想就这些了。我想借此机会——我知道我谈了很多关于培养人才的话题,所以感谢我职业生涯中所有帮助过我、培养过我的人,特别感谢所有和我一起工作过的人以及我的团队,尤其是 Webflow 的团队。另外特别想感谢 Xing Lin、Rory Davidson 和 Jo Wang,他们从之前的公司跟我一起来到了 Webflow。
快问快答
Lenny: 感谢致谢。好了,接下来,Melissa,我们已经到了非常精彩的快问快答环节。我准备了六个问题。准备好了吗?
Melissa Tan: 准备好了。
Lenny: 你最常推荐给别人的两三本书是什么?
Melissa Tan: 第一本是《Leaders Eat Last》。我很喜欢 Simon Sinek 写的那本领导力书。另外两本非职业类的书:《The Untethered Soul》,它真的教会了我很多关于活在当下的道理;还有《The Four Agreements》,篇幅很短,读起来很轻松,但里面的人生原则很好。
Lenny: 最近最喜欢的电影或电视剧是什么?
Melissa Tan: 这部不算特别新,是 HBO 的《Winning Time》。讲的是 80 年代洛杉矶湖人队和 Showtime 时代的故事。我是洛杉矶人,从小就是湖人球迷,所以对我来说看起来很有趣,也是一种很好的放松。
Lenny: 你一定会喜欢我昨晚刚看的一部新电影叫《Air》,讲的是 Nike 怎么签下 Michael Jordan 的。跟那部剧的感觉很像。
Melissa Tan: 对对,我最近也刚看了。
Lenny: 很好。
Melissa Tan: 那部也很好看。是的,那些篮球题材的我都看了。
Lenny: 天哪,我也是在洛杉矶长大的,也是铁杆湖人球迷——
Melissa Tan: 哦,太好了。
Lenny: 从以前就是。下一个问题,你最喜欢问的面试问题是什么?
Melissa Tan: 对我来说不是一个问题,而是那个演讲准备阶段——可以借此感受一下和对方一起工作是什么体验。我觉得这直以来是我获取信号最好的方式之一。
Lenny: 能多说一点吗?
Melissa Tan: 可以。基本上就是在我让他们做演讲之前的那次准备电话,一起过一遍演讲内容,协作打磨和优化。
Lenny: 很棒。这个我们之前已经聊过了,所以继续下一个。你最近发现并喜欢的 favorite 产品是什么?
Melissa Tan: 我觉得大家都在说这个,但确实是 ChatGPT。它真的改变了一切。有很多有趣的使用方式。我在 Webflow 的团队现在也开始思考如何把 AI 融入产品中,所以是的,我就是觉得它……是的,你可以用它做太多事情了。
Lenny: 你在产品开发流程中做过什么相对小的改动,但对团队执行方式产生了很大影响?
Melissa Tan: 这个也是我之前提到过的,就是想清楚你的 DACI。听起来很简单,但我确实觉得很多时候团队在想的是:怎么和其他团队协作?谁是驱动者?谁是决策者?所以建立 DACI 框架,我发现真的非常有帮助。
Lenny: 最后一个问题,你在 Webflow 已经工作了几年了。关于使用 Webflow,你最喜欢的 pro tip 是什么?
Melissa Tan: 其实我有两个,如果可以的话。
Lenny: 好啊,更好。
Melissa Tan: 一个是我经常从大家那里听到的反馈是 Webflow 很难学。所以建议是观看我们的 University 视频,我们在教你使用 Webflow 的同时也在构建 Designer,而且我们现在实际上已经支持在产品内观看视频,所以你可以一边操作一边学习。另一个是我们的 Figma to Webflow 插件,可以把 Figma 设计直接转换到 Webflow 里,如果你已经有 Figma 设计的话,这是一个很棒的捷径。
Lenny: 哇,我都不知道有这个功能。这个想法和功能真的很聪明。Melissa,我现在明白为什么人们会跟着你从一家公司到另一家公司了。我觉得在你人生这个新阶段能够与你合作的公司也会非常幸运。谢谢你来这里。最后两个问题。大家如果想联系你,在线上哪里可以找到你?另外,听众怎样才能帮到你?
Melissa Tan: 大家可以在 LinkedIn 上找到我,Twitter 上也可以,账号是 Melissamtan。至于听众怎么帮到我——我很喜欢和人讨论各种话题,增长、领导力思考、管理方面的内容,如果这些话题引起了你的共鸣,欢迎联系我。我很乐意交流。
Lenny: 太好了。Melissa,再次感谢你来做客。
Melissa Tan: 谢谢,Lenny。很开心。
Lenny: 大家再见。非常感谢收听。如果你觉得这期节目有价值,可以在 Apple Podcasts、Spotify 或你喜欢的播客应用上订阅。另外,也请考虑给我们评分或写评论,这对其他听众发现这个播客真的很有帮助。你可以在 lennyspodcast.com 找到所有往期节目或了解更多关于这个节目的信息。下期再见。
术语表
| 原文 | 中文 |
|---|---|
| AB testing | AB 测试 |
| Air | Air(电影名,保留原文) |
| ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue) | ARR(年度经常性收入) |
| CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost) | CAC(客户获取成本) |
| Canva | Canva(公司名,保留原文) |
| Cheryl Sandberg | 谢丽尔·桑德伯格(Cheryl Sandberg) |
| DACI | DACI(驱动者 Driver、负责人 Accountable、贡献者 Contributor、知情者 Informed 框架) |
| Designer | Designer(Webflow 产品内设计器功能名,保留原文) |
| Dropbox | Dropbox(公司名,保留原文) |
| first principles thinking | 第一性原理思维(first principles thinking) |
| flying formation | 飞行编队 |
| founder intuition | 创始人直觉 |
| freemium | 免费增值 |
| GC Lionetti | GC Lionetti(人名,保留原文) |
| go-to-market motions | 走向市场方式 |
| go-to-market strategy | 走向市场策略 |
| Grammarly | Grammarly(公司名,保留原文) |
| growth mindset | 成长型思维(growth mindset) |
| ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) | ICP(理想客户画像) |
| incrementality | 增量性(incrementality) |
| institutional knowledge | 制度性知识 |
| Jo Wang | Jo Wang(人名,保留原文) |
| Kim Scott | Kim Scott(人名,保留原文) |
| Leaders Eat Last | Leaders Eat Last(书名,保留原文) |
| Lean In | Lean In(书名,保留原文) |
| Lenny | Lenny(人名,播客主持人,保留原文) |
| loom | loom(工具名,保留原文) |
| Melissa Tan | Melissa Tan(人名,保留原文) |
| mental model | 心智模型 |
| Michael Jordan | Michael Jordan(人名,保留原文) |
| Miro | Miro(公司名,保留原文) |
| Nike | Nike(品牌名,保留原文) |
| North Star | 北极星指标 |
| Oliver Jay | Oliver Jay(人名,保留原文,昵称 OJ) |
| onboarding | onboarding(用户引导/新手上路流程) |
| pricing and packaging | 定价和包装 |
| product led | product led(产品驱动) |
| product market fit | product market fit(产品市场匹配) |
| Radical Candor | Radical Candor(书名,保留原文) |
| Reforge | Reforge(增长领域的培训课程/社区,保留原文) |
| Ro | Ro(公司名,保留原文) |
| Rory Davidson | Rory Davidson(人名,保留原文) |
| self-serve | self-serve(自助服务) |
| SEO | SEO(搜索引擎优化) |
| Showtime | Showtime(湖人队历史时期名称,保留原文) |
| Simon Sinek | Simon Sinek(人名,保留原文) |
| The Four Agreements | The Four Agreements(书名,保留原文) |
| The Untethered Soul | The Untethered Soul(书名,保留原文) |
| Tim Ferriss | Tim Ferriss(人名,保留原文) |
| Typeform | Typeform(公司名,保留原文) |
| University | University(Webflow 的教学视频系列名,保留原文) |
| value metric | 价值指标 |
| Webflow | Webflow(公司名,保留原文) |
| Winning Time | Winning Time(剧名,保留原文) |
| Xing Lin | Xing Lin(人名,保留原文) |
此文档由 AI 分片翻译(translate_long_document)