Airbnb’s Vlad Loktev on embracing chaos, inquiry over advocacy, poking the bear, and “impact, impact, impact” (Partner at Index Ventures, Airbnb GM/VP Product)
Vlad Loktev, former Airbnb product leader and current Index Ventures partner, shares skills, mindsets, and strategies for individual success and scaling organizations. He discusses the importance of impact, inquiry, and embracing chaos, alongside insights into Airbnb's unique top-down approach and culture.
Deep Dive Analysis
16 Topic Outline
Introduction and Vlad's Impact on Lenny's Career
Core Mindsets and Skills for Driving Impact
The Art of Saying No and Inquiry Before Advocacy
Poking the Bear: Challenging Authority with Data
Psychological Tools for Leadership in Hypergrowth
Building Teams with Complementary 'Spikes'
Maintaining Focus and Avoiding Limelight
The 'Let Fires Burn' Philosophy for Prioritization
Embracing Chaos for Creative Product Development
Thinking Big and 10X Goals
The 'Unsell' Strategy for Hiring
Org Design, Hiring, and the Importance of Mission
Airbnb's Unique Culture and Core Values
Airbnb's Current Top-Down Approach and Product Management Evolution
Failure Corner: Overwork, Identity, and Finding Balance
Lightning Round
8 Key Concepts
Impact-Driven Mindset
This mindset prioritizes making a meaningful dent in the company's highest priorities. It involves constantly asking what the top priorities are and what one can do to influence them, often by understanding the core drivers of the business and doing 'back of the envelope' math to estimate potential impact.
Inquiry Versus Advocacy
Instead of immediately advocating for a point of view, this approach emphasizes asking a ton of questions first to understand other perspectives and gather information. Once the other person feels heard and all information is absorbed, then one can advocate their own position, potentially having changed their mind.
Poking the Bear
This refers to the practice of not self-censoring and voicing a strong, well-grounded opinion, even if it means disagreeing with those in power. It encourages sharing information that might challenge the prevailing view, rather than staying silent out of fear.
Let Fires Burn
A prioritization philosophy where leaders intentionally choose to let certain less critical issues or projects not go well, or even fail, in order to dedicate maximum energy to the most important priorities. It requires being comfortable with imperfection in some areas to achieve excellence in others.
Embracing Chaos
This concept suggests that a certain degree of chaos can be beneficial in an organization, as it can push teams to think more creatively and make significant leaps in product development. It involves intentionally introducing constraints or challenges to disrupt calm and foster innovation.
Spike-Based Team Building
Instead of hiring individuals who are good at everything, this approach focuses on assembling teams where each member 'spikes' on specific, crucial skills or areas of expertise. The collective strength of diverse spikes creates a highly effective team, provided members listen and inquire effectively.
Mission Over Domain Expertise
This hiring philosophy prioritizes a candidate's deep resonance with the company's mission and raw drive over specific domain expertise or existing skills. The belief is that if someone is mission-driven and has the horsepower, they can develop any necessary skills as the company evolves.
Unsell Email Strategy
A hiring tactic where a company or leader intentionally shares the potential downsides, challenges, and 'worst-day' scenarios of working there with a candidate. This aims to attract only those who are truly aligned with the demanding work environment, leading to better long-term retention and fit.
10 Questions Answered
To say no effectively, adopt an 'inquiry first' approach: start by asking many questions to understand the other person's perspective and gather all available information. This makes the other person feel heard and allows you to make a more informed decision before advocating your own view, which can lead to better outcomes and less conflict.
Two psychological tools are the Serenity Prayer (accepting what cannot be changed, having courage to change what can, and wisdom to know the difference) and the 'shit bucket' (a visual metaphor for letting go of frustrations by writing them down and symbolically discarding them to avoid dwelling).
Valuable 'spike' skills include being a domain expert (understanding specific market mechanics), excelling at sales or packaging ideas, being great at process (connecting teams and dots), or having strong product design intuition (knowing what interfaces resonate with users).
Leaders should never let major timelines slip, as it sets a bad precedent. Disagreement on strategic decisions or vision must be squashed immediately to prevent widespread disengagement. Finally, the hiring process for senior roles should never be allowed to burn, as delays can significantly set back the entire team.
Chaos can be beneficial because it pushes an organization to think creatively and make leaps in product development. Introducing artificial time constraints, for example, can force teams to dial up their intuition and innovate beyond conventional processes.
Founders should recognize that 'all org charts suck' and no single structure is perfect. Instead of overthinking org design, they should pick one, study its pros and cons, and then focus their energy on the people, the culture, and designing processes that ensure effective collaboration despite the inherent flaws of any structure.
The most important factor is 'mission over domain expertise.' Hiring individuals who are deeply resonant with the company's mission and possess raw drive is crucial, as skills and strategies change, but a strong belief in the mission helps people persevere through difficult times and adapt to new challenges.
Companies build strong culture by being intentional and thoughtful about it, dedicating as much energy to culture as to product or hiring. This involves defining core values, making them prominent in every process (e.g., hiring for values, incorporating them into performance reviews), and ensuring they are constantly reinforced and visible throughout the organization.
While perceived as top-down, the reality at Airbnb was that leaders like Brian Chesky asked extensive questions and listened to inform decisions, often changing their minds. Many contributed information, and leaders were expected to be deeply 'in the details' to provide informed input. It was a blend of top-down conviction and bottom-up information flow, aiming for higher quality and better judgment.
The shift to 'Product Marketing Managers' (PMMs) at Airbnb was a rebranding that shed project management duties (now handled by Program Managers) and emphasized user-centric product experience, launch, and marketing. While liberating for many PMs, it's not a universal future, as the ability to be a strong marketer is a rare and developed skill that not all PMs possess.
42 Actionable Insights
1. Prioritize Impact Above All Else
Focus relentlessly on driving impact by aligning your work with the company’s highest priorities and understanding the core drivers of the business.
2. Daily Impact Alignment Questions
Start each day by asking what the company’s highest priorities are for the next three months and what you can do to make a meaningful impact on those priorities.
3. Learn Business Drivers Deeply
Immerse yourself in understanding why certain behaviors exist on the product you’re working on and how you can influence those behaviors to drive the most impact for the business.
4. Prioritize Inquiry Over Advocacy
Approach conversations by asking many questions first to understand different perspectives and gather information, rather than immediately advocating for your own point of view. This helps make better decisions and ensures others feel heard.
5. Lead Conversations with Curiosity
Prepare for meetings by formulating questions that come from a place of curiosity, aiming to learn more about other perspectives before presenting your own views.
6. Don’t Be Afraid to Poke the Bear
If you have a strong, well-grounded view and have done your homework, don’t self-censor or be afraid to voice disagreement with those in power, even if it’s difficult.
7. Surface Information for Group Decisions
Frame your disagreements or ‘poking the bear’ as an act of surfacing and sharing crucial information that will help the group make a better, more informed decision.
8. Embrace Questions and Negativity
When facing concerns or negativity, embrace questions and maintain an open mind, acknowledging that you might have missed something, which can be disarming and lead to better outcomes.
9. Master the Art of Saying No
Learn to say no to requests and projects that will not drive significant impact, even if it’s emotionally hard, to avoid distraction and maintain focus on high-priority work.
10. Quantify Project Impact Early
For every project, perform back-of-the-envelope math with assumptions to understand its potential impact, ensuring you focus on initiatives that can make a big dent.
11. Keep Main Thing the Main Thing
Maintain hyper-focus on your core job and responsibilities, dedicating all your energy to the most important tasks rather than getting distracted by external engagements or less impactful activities.
12. Dedicate Time to Strategic Thinking
Block off dedicated time on your calendar specifically for thinking through the core drivers of the business and identifying which ones will yield the most significant impact.
13. Learn to Let Fires Burn
Be comfortable with some things not going well and intentionally let certain ‘fires’ burn to dedicate your energy to the few things that truly matter and are most important.
14. Weekly Leadership Priority Alignment
Conduct weekly leadership meetings to align on 1-3 top priorities for that specific week and jointly agree on which less critical ‘fires’ will be allowed to burn.
15. Empower Others to Let Fires Burn
Empower your team members to identify and let certain fires burn, trusting their judgment on what can be deprioritized to focus on more impactful work.
16. Never Let Major Timelines Slip
Do not allow major project timelines, especially for huge product launches, to slip, as this sets a dangerous precedent that timelines are not important; immediately intervene to prevent this.
17. Immediately Address Strategic Disagreements
Never let disagreements on strategic decisions or core vision persist; address and resolve them immediately to prevent them from spreading and causing a loss of meaning or belief within the team.
18. Prioritize Senior Hiring Processes
Never let the hiring process for senior roles burn or be delayed, as neglecting it can set the entire team back significantly.
19. Embrace Strategic Chaos
Intentionally introduce moments of chaos or artificial constraints (e.g., extremely tight deadlines) to force creative thinking and accelerate product development leaps within an organization.
20. Think 10X, Not Incrementally
When faced with ambitious goals, focus on the creative journey of imagining what the world would need to look like for that ‘crazy goal’ to be true, pushing you to test extremes and unlock bigger ideas rather than incremental thinking.
21. Regulate Your Mind Daily
Recognize that success in hyper-growth environments often depends on daily mental regulation to avoid getting lost in projects, priorities, and dependencies, and to stay focused on what’s within your control.
22. Apply the Serenity Prayer
Use the Serenity Prayer as a daily psychological tool to gain perspective, accept what you cannot change, find courage to change what you can, and discern the difference between the two.
23. Use a ‘Shit Bucket’ for Letting Go
Create a ‘shit bucket’ (physical or mental) to symbolically discard frustrations, unresolved issues, or things you need to let go of, preventing you from dwelling on them and freeing up mental space.
24. Don’t Be Afraid to Ask for Help
Recognize that you cannot achieve success alone; actively ask for help from experts and colleagues, especially when reinventing yourself or facing new challenges in a rapidly changing role.
25. Ask for the Impossible
Don’t hesitate to ask for seemingly impossible things, as you might be surprised by the willingness of experts to help or the unexpected outcomes.
26. Hire for Complementary ‘Spikes’
When building teams, focus on hiring individuals who ‘spike’ on specific, crucial skills rather than trying to find people good at everything, then assemble a team with diverse, complementary spikes.
27. Use an ‘Anti-Sell’ in Hiring
In the hiring process, use an ‘anti-sell’ approach by transparently sharing the most challenging aspects or ‘worst day’ scenarios of the job to set realistic expectations and attract candidates who are truly aligned with the work environment.
28. Prioritize Mission Over Skills in Hiring
When hiring, prioritize a candidate’s deep resonance with the company’s mission over specific domain expertise or existing skills, as mission-driven individuals can acquire necessary skills and persevere through challenges.
29. Prepare to Lose Friends in Hypergrowth
Understand that in hyper-growth companies, it’s rare for most early employees to scale with the company, so be prepared for the emotional challenge of losing deep relationships as roles and needs evolve.
30. Don’t Over-Optimize Org Charts
Recognize that all organizational structures have inherent problems; instead of over-focusing on reorganizing, concentrate on the people, culture, and processes that enable effective collaboration within the chosen structure.
31. Prioritize People/Culture Over Org Design
After selecting an organizational structure, dedicate more energy to fostering a strong culture and ensuring people work effectively together, rather than constantly tweaking the org design.
32. Be Intentional About Building Culture
Dedicate as much intentional energy to building culture and defining core values as you do to product development and hiring, as a strong culture creates a positive and memorable work environment.
33. Integrate Core Values Everywhere
Ensure core values are prominent and integrated into every aspect of the company, including hiring processes (e.g., core value interviewers), performance reviews, and promotions, making them tangible and consistently reinforced.
34. Don’t Copy Other Companies’ Operating Models
Avoid directly copying another company’s operating model, as how a company works is unique to its founders, leadership, employees, domain, and specific moment in time.
35. Explicitly Define Operating Model
Explicitly define and clearly communicate your company’s chosen operating model to every employee, ensuring everyone has clarity on how to do their job and drive impact.
36. Focus Leadership Involvement on Your Spikes
As a leader, identify your unique ‘spikes’ or areas where you have an edge and can make the best decisions, then immerse yourself in those specific decisions, delegating others.
37. Separate Project from Product Management
Consider separating the project management aspects from the product management role, creating a dedicated program management function to handle timelines and coordination, allowing PMs to focus more on product experience and strategy.
38. Over-Communicate as a Leader
As a leader, over-communicate your priorities, decisions, and context to the broader organization, as this helps people find meaning in their work and make better decisions themselves.
39. Explain Decision Rationale
After making a decision, invest a little extra time and energy to explain the rationale behind it to everyone, providing context that helps them learn and make better future decisions.
40. Prioritize Personal Balance for Effectiveness
If feeling overworked and unhappy, intentionally spend less time on work and lean into personal life, hobbies, and relationships, as being a more balanced human being can paradoxically lead to greater effectiveness and impact at work.
41. Practice Self-Compassion for Well-being
Don’t be too hard on yourself; cut yourself some slack and practice self-compassion, recognizing that as long as you’re genuinely pouring your heart and soul into your work, you’re doing all you can.
42. Align Work with Personal Impact
Avoid staying in a job where you are not impactful or working on top priorities; instead, seek roles where your unique ‘spikes’ can make a significant dent in the hardest, most important challenges.
8 Key Quotes
I've always used inquiry versus advocacy. A lot of people approach a conversation with a point of view and they begin advocating immediately. We should do this or no, we should not do this, right? Me, I always took the opposite approach. I inquire first.
Vlad Loktev
His response was, things are just too calm. Sometimes you want to create chaos in an organization to push the organization to think creatively and to actually like make leaps in product development.
Vlad Loktev
Impact, impact, impact, impact. That's the only thing that mattered.
Vlad Loktev
Don't be afraid to poke the bear. What that means is don't self-censor. If you have a strong view after you've really grounded yourself in the truth and you feel like you've done your homework and you've asked all the questions, if you still disagree, if you still feel like we're going in the wrong direction, don't be afraid to poke the bear no matter how hard things get.
Vlad Loktev
You gotta let fires burn. And what that means is you can do it all. Like you just need to let go of things that are not important because if you have 20 different things that you're equally engaged on, it just means you don't actually know what is most important.
Vlad Loktev
I always set expectations about how we work. And so I think some leaders do this. It's like the anti-sell cell where I will share the worst day or what I think you will think as a candidate, what the worst day would be at Airbnb, and then still ask you if you want to join the team.
Vlad Loktev
The reality is most people, if the company is truly going through hyper growth, most people are not going to scale. It is very rare for somebody to scale with a company.
Vlad Loktev
All org charts suck. Like there is no good org chart. Every single org chart has problems.
Vlad Loktev
5 Protocols
Impact-Driven Daily Questions
Vlad Loktev- Ask: What are the highest priorities for the company today and over the next 3 months?
- Ask: What can I do to actually make a meaningful dent in those priorities?
- Learn the drivers of the business to understand why certain behaviors exist and how they can be influenced.
- Block off calendar time specifically for thinking through business drivers and their potential impact.
Inquiry Before Advocacy Framework
Vlad Loktev- Approach conversations with curiosity, not a fixed point of view.
- Dial up inquiry: Ask a ton of questions to understand the other person's perspective and gather information.
- Tone down advocacy: Respect other opinions and absorb information, being open to changing your mind.
- Only begin to advocate your point of view once the other person feels heard and you have a comprehensive understanding.
Psychological Tool: The Serenity Prayer
Vlad Loktev- Internalize the prayer: 'Grant me the serenity to accept the things that I cannot change, the courage to change the things that I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.'
- Regularly reflect on the prayer to put daily challenges into context.
- Focus energy on what is within your control and let go of what isn't.
Psychological Tool: The Shit Bucket
Vlad Loktev- Identify something that is not going well, causing frustration, or is a dependency outside your control.
- Write it down on a piece of paper.
- Crumble the paper and throw it into a 'shit bucket' (e.g., a trash can).
- Once thrown in, commit to not dwelling on that issue, allowing yourself to let it go and focus on what matters.
The 'Let Fires Burn' Prioritization Strategy
Vlad Loktev- Recognize you cannot do everything; be okay with some things not going well.
- Dedicate most energy to the few things that actually matter and are most important.
- Kick off each week with a leadership meeting to discuss weekly priorities (1-3 things).
- Jointly agree on which 'fires' to let burn, ensuring team alignment.
- Empower others to also let fires burn within their domains, focusing on their highest priorities.
- Never let certain critical fires burn: major timelines, disagreements on strategic decisions/vision, and senior hire processes.