Succeeding as an introvert, building zero-to-one, and why you should PM your career like you PM your product | Deb Liu (CEO of Ancestry, ex-Facebook, PayPal, eBay)
Deb Liu, former VP of Product at Facebook and current CEO of Ancestry, shares tactical career advice. She discusses PMing your career, building zero-to-one businesses within large companies, and succeeding as an introvert.
Deep Dive Analysis
13 Topic Outline
The Importance of Continuous Learning in Career Growth
Embracing Failure and Building Resilience
Strategies for Zero-to-One Innovation in Large Companies
Applying Product Management Principles to Your Career
Navigating the Workplace as an Introvert
Reframing Self-Promotion as Education
The Power of Accountability in Personal Development
Understanding Growth as a Game of Inches
Implementing a 30-60-90 Day Plan for New Roles
Contrarian View: The Most Important Career Decision
The Transformative Role of Coaching
Book Recommendations and Favorite Products
Most Interesting Facebook Marketplace Transactions
7 Key Concepts
Always Be Learning
This concept emphasizes that continuous learning is more valuable than being an expert. It involves constantly seeking feedback, learning from others, and balancing periods of high impact with periods of learning new skills, rather than following a linear career path.
Resilience in Career
Resilience is the ability to turn stumbling blocks into stepping stones, learning from hard feedback and product failures to become stronger. The most successful people are those who overcome adversity and bounce back quickly, rather than those who avoid failure.
Zero-to-One Innovation
This refers to building entirely new products or businesses within a large company. It requires patience, minimal resources, and the freedom to fail and iterate rapidly, as the failure rate is high and over-scrutiny can kill nascent projects.
PM Your Career
This mental model suggests approaching one's career with the same intentionality as a product manager approaches a product. It involves defining success metrics, setting milestones, identifying desired skills, and having a long-term plan to guide decision-making, rather than drifting accidentally.
Introvert Success in Business
Introverts can succeed in business by recognizing that the workplace often favors extroverted communication. Strategies include learning to speak up as a necessary, learnable skill, and reframing 'self-promotion' as 'educating about your team's work' or 'getting resources'.
Growth as a Game of Inches
This perspective views growth not as a single 'magic bullet' or huge step function, but as the cumulative effect of many small, incremental optimizations. It involves constantly testing hypotheses, iterating, and learning from both successes and failures to achieve significant long-term growth.
Perfectionism as a Curse
Perfectionism is described as a dangerous self-imposed curse, especially for product leaders, because things will inevitably go wrong in product development. It represents a lack of trust in one's ability to adapt and bounce back, hindering flexibility and learning from mistakes.
8 Questions Answered
Always be learning. Someone who is always learning will always exceed an expert, as careers are non-linear and there's always room to improve by seeking feedback and mastering new skills.
Approach the job with curiosity rather than assumed mastery. Be willing to learn the craft, understand customer use cases, and be open to iteration and feedback, even if you initially 'fake it till you make it' with passion.
Leaders should allow for patience, minimal resources, and freedom to fail for new initiatives. Avoid over-scrutiny and understand that a high failure rate is normal, focusing on learning and iteration over immediate linear success.
Define what success looks like in the long term (e.g., five years), identify desired skills and milestones, and use these as metrics to intentionally evaluate job opportunities and guide career decisions, rather than passively drifting.
Introverts need to view speaking up and sharing their work as a necessary, learnable skill, not an inherent personality flaw. Reframe 'self-promotion' as 'educating others' or 'securing resources' for their team and product.
Reframe it as 'educating your manager about your team's work' or 'helping people see why your team should get more resources.' This shifts the focus from personal gain to team and product benefit, making it feel less 'icky'.
The most important career decision is who you marry. A supportive partner who lifts you up and helps balance home life is crucial for a successful and balanced career, as an imbalanced home life can negatively impact professional aspirations.
Coaching can be expensive, but alternatives include joining peer coaching circles or lean-in groups for mutual support and learning. For more senior unique situations, individual coaching can be highly beneficial.
17 Actionable Insights
1. Choose a Supportive Life Partner
Consider the long-term impact of your relationship on your career, choosing a partner who lifts you up and acts as your greatest cheerleader. A balanced home life is crucial for a successful career.
2. Plan Your Career Like a Product
Approach your career with intentionality, just as you would a product, by defining milestones, desired skills, and metrics for success. This allows you to measure decisions against long-term goals and shape your path.
3. Prioritize Continuous Learning
Consistently seek to learn from the best and get feedback, as continuous learning will help you improve daily and outperform those who are merely experts today. Balance learning new things with having impact in your current role to keep growing.
4. Embrace Adversity for Resilience
View failures and hard feedback as opportunities to learn and grow, rather than avoiding them. Overcoming adversity builds resilience, which is crucial for long-term career success and strength.
5. Fall in Love with the Problem
When seeking a role, especially in product, demonstrate genuine passion for the problem you’re trying to solve, the use case, and the customer, rather than just the product or company. This passion can help you succeed even without extensive experience.
6. Reframe Self-Promotion as Education
Overcome discomfort with self-promotion by reframing it as educating others about your team’s great work or advocating for more resources. This shifts the focus from personal gain to collective benefit.
7. Practice Speaking Up as a Skill
For introverts, treat speaking up and communicating your work as a learnable skill, not an innate trait. Practice it consistently, even if uncomfortable, to build credibility and momentum for your product and team.
8. Take Strategic Career Swings
After gaining core skills, strategically take ‘big swings’ in your career (e.g., working on innovative, high-risk projects) to create impactful stories and change your trajectory, understanding that these ventures come with a higher failure rate.
9. Envision Ideal Career, Work Backwards
Envision your ideal long-term career destination (e.g., joining a specific board) and then break down the path into actionable first steps. This approach helps guide your choices and provides a clear direction.
10. Implement a 30-60-90 Day Plan
When joining a new company, adopt a 30-60-90 day plan focused on listening and learning first (e.g., a listening tour for the first 30 days), then aligning on vision, and finally executing. Share this plan with your manager to align expectations.
11. Focus on Incremental Growth
Understand that significant growth often comes from a ‘game of inches,’ where small, consistent optimizations (e.g., 1% faster each week) accumulate over time. Prioritize shipping many small hypotheses to learn and iterate quickly.
12. Cultivate Patience for New Product Innovation
When building new products or ‘zero-to-one’ initiatives within a large company, cultivate patience, as the failure rate is high and success often requires significant iteration with minimal resources and attention. Treat it as a portfolio strategy where not everything will succeed.
13. Ensure Equal Voice in Meetings
Implement practices like offline voting in documents or going around in a circle for opinions to ensure all team members, especially introverts, have an equal voice in decision-making and discussions.
14. Offer Help to Build Relationships
When joining a new team, actively ask colleagues, especially in cross-functional roles like engineering, what one small thing you can do to help them. This builds reciprocal relationships and trust.
15. Leverage Coaching for Feedback
Seek out coaching (individual or peer groups) to help process feedback constructively and overcome personal challenges like perfectionism or imposter syndrome. Coaching can transform how you react to setbacks and adapt.
16. Transform Your Current Role
If you don’t get a desired job, choose to transform your current role and team into what you want it to be. This involves taking the raw materials you have and shaping them towards your aspirations.
17. Document Repeated Advice
If you find yourself repeating the same advice or insights more than once, write them down. This practice helps you organize your thoughts and share your knowledge more broadly.
5 Key Quotes
The most important career decision you make is who you marry. Is this person lifting you up or pushing you back? You will have a much more successful career if your home life is in balance.
Deb Liu
Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it.
Chuck Swindoll (quoted by Deb Liu)
If you aren't sure what your destination is, that's definitely where you're going to end up.
Deb Liu
If a great product is out in the world, but no one's told about it, did it exist?
Deb Liu
I think sometimes we take things so personally that it becomes kind of this thing. It's like you're, it's, it is your white whale. It's like the thing you're chasing.
Deb Liu
1 Protocols
30-60-90 Day Plan for New Roles
Deb Liu- Days 1-30: Focus on listening and learning. Conduct a 'listening tour' by talking to many people in the organization, taking extensive notes, and summarizing what you hear (challenges, wish lists). Offer to help with one small thing to build reciprocal relationships.
- Days 31-60: Align on the vision for the future. Based on your listening, propose a shared understanding of the problems to tackle and the direction the team should head.
- Days 61-90: Begin executing and setting up for impact. Start delivering on agreed-upon initiatives, ensuring you have found your footing and are contributing effectively to the team's goals.