Twitter’s former Head of Product opens up: being fired, meeting Elon, changing stagnant culture, building consumer product, more | Kayvon Beykpour

1. Secure Top-Level Alignment

To drive significant cultural change in an organization, ensure you have alignment from the top leadership, as it’s difficult to effect change from a small pocket within the company.

2. Identify Sacred Cows

View ‘sacred cows’ (things the organization believes cannot be changed) as a built-in roadmap for innovation. Addressing these reveals cultural hesitations and opens opportunities for product evolution.

3. Cultivate Product Obsession

Staff projects with teams who are not only skilled but also deeply obsessed with the idea they are pursuing. This obsession drives harder work, creativity, ambition, and the will to bring the product into existence.

4. Embrace Aqua-Hires for Innovation

Accelerate cultural change and speculative product initiatives by acquiring small companies led by entrepreneurial founders. Give these founders significant responsibility and latitude to run their projects like startups within the larger organization.

5. Balance Core Refinement & New Bets

Maintain a portfolio of product bets that balances refining the core product (which drives reliable growth) with speculative initiatives that add new capabilities. This ensures continuous evolution while sustaining existing success.

6. Be a Voracious Product User

To improve your product sense and craft, become a voracious user of various products, constantly trying new things. This practice helps hone your taste, build muscle memory, and understand what works and why.

7. Practice Repetitive Storytelling

Internally, tell the story of your product vision, strategy, and bets repetitively to build alignment and excitement. Externally, clearly communicate what you’re doing and why to users and constituents, inviting constructive criticism.

8. Address Team Alignment Swiftly

At the leadership level, quickly identify whether team members are aligned with the vision (‘on the wagon’). Swiftly convince those who are not, or ensure they are not in roles that hinder progress, as talented individuals have limited patience for organizational friction.

9. Bet on People in the Deep End

Take bets on individuals, especially by throwing them into challenging roles they might seem unqualified for on paper. This approach fosters significant learning and drives change and growth more effectively than other contexts.

10. Avoid Internal Product Competition

Do not allow separate internal teams to build competing products or features that address the same core user need (e.g., two different video stacks). This wastes resources, creates political friction, and leads to a subpar, fragmented product experience.

11. Prioritize Radically

When pursuing a new, high-potential product, be willing to make it the number one priority across the entire company, even above other established projects. This radical focus can accelerate development and ensure success, especially when learning from past failures.

12. Design Durable Live Video Products

For generalized short-form live video consumer products, ensure they are surrounded by asynchronous features and capabilities. A live-only product is unlikely to be durable on its own, as users need ways to stay in touch with the community outside of live broadcasts.

13. Use Frameworks with Nuance

Avoid following any product framework (like Jobs to Be Done or OKRs) to a religious extreme. Instead, apply frameworks with nuance to avoid losing sight of the customer and making decisions solely for process’s sake.

14. Balance Org & Customer Needs

Make trade-off decisions that balance what’s right for the organization with what’s right for the customer. Recognize that sometimes metrics aligned with frameworks may not benefit the customer, requiring judgment and product taste.

15. Recognize Framework Over-Reliance

Identify when a framework has been implemented too religiously by observing if it leads to subjectively bad decisions for users or prevents the organization from taking big, bold bets that don’t immediately drive current metrics.

16. Ask About Failures in Hiring

When hiring, ask candidates to discuss projects they worked on that failed. This question provides insight into their self-reflection, passion, willingness to take risks, and what they learned from setbacks.

17. Always Find Something to Do

Adopt the work ethic of ‘when you’ve got nothing to do, sweep.’ Always look for something productive to do to move the ball forward, be impactful, and avoid idleness.

18. Build Products You Want

Be a customer of your own product to identify pain points and build features that you genuinely want to use. This direct user perspective can lead to more compelling and useful products.

19. Try ‘Dumb’ New Things

Maintain curiosity and be open to trying new products, even if they seem ‘dumb’ initially. Some of the most meaningful innovations start with seemingly simple or unconventional ideas.

20. Seek Inspiration Broadly

Draw inspiration from diverse sources, including sci-fi, fantasy, and other creative content, to jog your imagination and foster creativity. This can lead to novel approaches in product development.