Crafting a compelling product vision | Ebi Atawodi (YouTube, Netflix, Uber)
Aby Atawoudi, Director of Product Management at YouTube, shares tactical advice on developing and communicating product vision, the craft of product management (clarity and conviction), and fostering a strong product culture within teams and companies.
Deep Dive Analysis
18 Topic Outline
Ebi's Personal Philosophy on Love and Leadership
Four Key Elements of a Strong Product Vision
Clarifying the Difference Between Vision and Mission
Practical Frameworks for Communicating Product Vision
Step-by-Step Process for Developing a Product Vision
Using the '10 Things You Should Know' Document for Problem Clarity
Structuring a Three-Day Strategy Session
The Three Concentric Circles of Vision Evangelization
Distinguishing Macro and Micro Product Visions
Product Management as Clarity and Conviction
Ebi's Narrative Document for Strategic Planning
Building Strong Conviction in Product Decisions
Impact of Company Culture on Product Development
Lessons from Uber's Monolithic Culture
Principles for Building Strong Team Culture
Assessing Your Relationship with Your Engineering Manager
Exciting New Features for YouTube Creators
Advice for Aspiring Product Managers
9 Key Concepts
Product Vision
A product vision is a descriptive picture of what the world looks like when a product's goal is achieved, serving as a clear destination image. It should be lofty yet attainable, free from current technical or resource limitations, and grounded in a clear, potent problem.
Product Mission
A product mission defines the underlying purpose or 'why' a company or product exists. It represents the reason for doing something and often includes guiding principles, rather than depicting the final desired state.
Clarity (in PM)
In product management, clarity is the act of bringing transparency and simplicity to understanding a problem or situation by sifting out extraneous information. It involves focusing on the core issues and communicating them in an easily digestible way.
Conviction (in PM)
Conviction in product management is a strong feeling or belief about what the world should be, which guides product decisions. It involves having the firmness to pick a strategic direction and commit to it, even if it feels uncomfortable or carries some risk.
Product Sense
Product sense is an intuitive feeling for what is right in product development, distinct from mere product logic. It is refined over time through continuous exposure to various products and a deep curiosity about how they work and what makes them successful.
Monolithic Culture
A monolithic culture refers to a company environment where a core set of values, norms, and beliefs are deeply ingrained and widely adopted across the entire organization. While it can foster strong alignment, it requires intentional evolution to adapt to changing contexts and avoid becoming stagnant.
Microcultures
Microcultures are distinct sub-cultures that emerge within different departments or teams of a larger organization, each with its own specific norms and ways of working. This allows for flexibility and diverse approaches within a broader, more loosely defined macro-culture.
Freedom and Responsibility
This cultural tenet emphasizes giving individuals significant autonomy and trust in their work, coupled with accountability for the outcomes of their decisions. It encourages an 'owner, not a renter' mentality, where people take full ownership of their areas.
Informed Captain
The 'informed captain' principle advocates for a single, empowered individual to make a decision after thoroughly gathering all necessary context and input from relevant parties. This approach aims to clarify accountability and avoid decision-making by consensus.
10 Questions Answered
A good product vision must be lofty yet realistic and attainable, devoid of current technical or resource limitations, and grounded in a clear, potent problem that excites people.
A product vision describes the future state or what the world will look like when the product's goals are achieved (the 'picture'), while a mission defines the purpose or 'why' the company or product exists.
PMs can communicate vision through a simple storytelling framework (e.g., 'once upon a time... and one day...'), by writing a future news article headline or full article, or by visualizing it through sketches, mockups, or app store screenshots.
'Understand work' involves dogfooding (using your own product) and catfooding (using competitors' products), building intuition from good product exposure, and maintaining a 'Top 10 Things You Should Know' living document of known user and technical problems.
Evangelization involves three concentric circles: first, ensuring the core team understands and buys into the vision, then engaging key stakeholders and their teams, and finally presenting to leadership as high up as possible, allowing for feedback and iteration at each stage.
The core craft of product management is bringing clarity to problems and decisions, and having conviction in the chosen direction. This involves sifting out noise to focus on core issues and committing to a path.
Company culture, defined by its norms and beliefs, profoundly shapes product development by influencing how teams work, what decisions are prioritized, and even what problems are deemed worth solving, as seen in the monolithic culture of early Uber versus the microcultures of Google.
Key principles include fostering freedom with responsibility (owner, not a renter mentality), identifying an 'informed captain' for clear decision-making, and valuing vulnerability and genuine care for the human behind the role.
A simple test is to ask if you know your engineering manager's birthday, work anniversary, or their career aspirations. This indicates a deeper, human connection beyond just work tasks.
Aspiring PMs should start 'doing product management' before they are PMs by analyzing favorite apps, identifying problems, and sketching solutions. This builds product sense and prepares them for opportunities, emphasizing that opportunity meets preparation.
21 Actionable Insights
1. Define Your Product Vision
Develop a product vision that is lofty yet realistic, unconstrained by current technical limitations, and grounded in a clear, potent problem. This vision acts as a destination, guiding your team’s efforts and inspiring excitement.
2. Create an ‘Understand Work’ Doc
Maintain a living document titled ‘Top 10 Things You Should Know’ (or similar) listing the most critical problems with your product, including tech debt. Regularly update this document to ensure everyone on your team and key stakeholders are aligned on the core issues.
3. Practice Dogfooding and Catfooding
Consistently use your own product (‘dogfooding’) and competitor products (‘catfooding’) to build intuition and expose yourself to good product design. This helps refine your ‘product sense’ and deepens your understanding of user experience.
4. Use the ‘Once Upon a Time’ Vision Framework
Communicate your product vision using a simple narrative structure: ‘Once upon a time, [problem]… and because of that, [consequence]… and one day, [solution/vision]… and as a result, [new world state].’ This helps tell a compelling story.
5. Write a Future Press Release or Article
Draft a news article or TechCrunch headline (and potentially the full article) from the future, announcing the successful realization of your product vision. This forces clarity on the impact and helps socialize the idea.
6. Visualize Your Product Vision
Sketch or mock up what your product’s future state will look like, even if it’s low-fidelity (e.g., drawing on post-it notes or creating app store screenshots). This brings the narrative to life and makes the vision tangible for others.
7. Lead 3-Day Strategy Sessions
Conduct focused, multi-day strategy sessions (e.g., 3 days) with core leadership (product, engineering, design, research) to move from insights to strategy to big rocks. Dedicate the first day solely to understanding problems and insights.
8. Involve Stakeholders in Problem Definition
Bring in key stakeholders (marketing, comms, support) at the beginning of strategy sessions, asking them to provide their ‘Top 10 Things You Should Know’ about product problems. This ensures their perspectives are heard and fosters buy-in for the eventual vision.
9. Evangelize Vision in Concentric Circles
Share your vision starting with your core team, then expand to stakeholders, and finally to leadership. Make vision documents living, open for comments, and encourage friction to polish ideas, knowing that not everyone needs 100% certainty to get on board.
10. Craft a Clear Narrative Document
Create a concise (2-4 page) narrative document outlining your team’s insights, strategy (or approach), and ‘big rocks’ (3-5 key initiatives). This document serves as a foundational reference for onboarding, stakeholder alignment, and internal communication.
11. Prioritize with ‘Big Rocks’ Mentality
Focus your roadmap on a few ‘big rocks’ – the most impactful initiatives that solve core problems. Avoid spreading resources thin; prioritize the largest, most critical items first, and fill in smaller tasks around them.
12. Cultivate Clarity and Conviction
As a product manager, focus on bringing clarity to problems and having conviction in your proposed solutions. Force clarity by asking ‘what do you want me to do?’ in communications and by picking a lane when faced with multiple options.
13. Intentionally Evolve Team Culture
Actively define and evolve your team’s culture by discussing desired behaviors and norms. Reward good behaviors and address undesirable ones to ensure the culture serves the team’s goals and adapts to changing contexts.
14. Adopt an ‘Owner, Not a Renter’ Mindset
Empower individuals to act as owners of their decisions and responsibilities, fostering a ‘buck stops with you’ mentality. This encourages thoroughness and accountability, leading to stronger conviction in choices.
15. Identify the ‘Informed Captain’
For every major decision, clearly identify one ‘informed captain’ who is on the hook for that decision. This person gathers all context and input, makes the final call, and prevents decision-making by consensus that can lead to chaos.
16. Embrace Vulnerability as Strength
Foster a team environment where vulnerability is seen as a strength, recognizing the ‘human behind the role.’ This builds trust, encourages open feedback, and leads to stronger team collaboration and support.
17. Build Personal Relationships with Peers
Invest time in understanding your engineering manager and other partners as people, knowing their birthdays, work anniversaries, and career aspirations. Strong personal bonds enhance collaboration and make difficult conversations more productive.
18. Start Doing PM Work Before You Are a PM
If aspiring to be a product manager, begin practicing product sense by analyzing favorite apps, identifying their top problems, and sketching potential solutions. This builds practical skills and prepares you for opportunities.
19. Use AI for Content Inspiration
Leverage AI tools (like YouTube’s AI Inspiration feature) to generate ideas for content based on what your audience is watching and searching. This streamlines the creative process and helps identify relevant topics.
20. A/B Test Thumbnails
Utilize tools (like YouTube’s Thumbnail Test and Compare) to A/B test different thumbnails for your content. This data-driven approach helps optimize for engagement and discoverability.
21. Master Your Fate and Soul
Embrace the mindset that ‘I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.’ This powerful reminder encourages personal agency and responsibility for your actions and direction, even amidst challenges.
7 Key Quotes
I do not believe in being liked. I believe in being loved, right? And that's a very, very different thing.
Ebi Atawodi
Love is the choice to extend yourself for the spiritual growth of oneself or another.
Ebi Atawodi
The whole point of going to the future and saying, I time traveled five years out is to say, okay, I've come back to tell you what we need to fix in order to get there.
Ebi Atawodi
If I could put all the research into BARD or ChatGPT and it could spit out a PRD, then you haven't done your job.
Ebi Atawodi
Infrastructure is the product. Period. people are like, oh, tech debt. I'm like, yeah, it's a product debt.
Ebi Atawodi
It matters not how straight the gate, how charged with punishments the scroll. I am the master of my fate. I am the captain of my soul.
William Ernest Henley (quoted by Ebi Atawodi)
You don't get lucky, right? But you get, it's opportunity meets preparation. You're already prepared.
Ebi Atawodi
3 Protocols
Developing a Product Vision (Ebi Atawodi's Approach)
Ebi Atawodi- Empathize: Do 'understand work' by dogfooding your own product, catfooding competitors' products, and building intuition from good product exposure.
- Empathize: Create and maintain a 'Top 10 Things You Should Know' living document of known user and technical problems for your product/area, updating it quarterly.
- Empathize: Bring in stakeholders (marketing, comms, support, research, content strategy) and ask them to use the '10 Things' framework to identify their top problems, then consolidate into a final list.
- Create: Use a storytelling framework (e.g., 'once upon a time... and one day...') to describe the vision.
- Create: Write a future news article headline or full article (e.g., TechCrunch) announcing the product's success.
- Create: Visualize the future through sketches, low-fidelity mocks, or app store screenshots (even if you draw them yourself).
- Evangelize: Core Team - Present the vision to your immediate team (PMs, engineers, designers), share a written output of the vision workshop, and keep it open for comments to encourage friction and polishing.
- Evangelize: Stakeholders - Engage adjacent teams and their managers to get their buy-in and gather feedback, addressing concerns about current problems versus future vision.
- Evangelize: Leadership - Present the vision to leadership as high up as possible, allowing them to pull back if needed, but aiming for maximum impact.
Structuring a Three-Day Strategy Session (Ebi Atawodi)
Ebi Atawodi- Day 1: Insights - Focus on 'understand work' by reviewing the 'Top 10 Things You Should Know' problems, using the app, and doing teardowns of other apps. Experts (data science, marketing, etc.) present their '10 Things.'
- Day 2: Strategy - Decide which of the identified problems to focus on and in what order, involving product, engineering, design, and research leaders.
- Day 3: Big Rocks - Determine the 3-5 biggest initiatives or 'rocks' that, if landed, will solve the chosen problems and move towards the vision.
Crafting a Product Narrative Document (Ebi Atawodi)
Ebi Atawodi- Insights: Clearly articulate the core problems being solved.
- Strategy/Approach: Outline the strategic direction or approach to address those problems.
- Big Rocks: List the 3-5 biggest initiatives or deliverables that will achieve the strategy.