Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth

What sets great teams apart | Lane Shackleton (CPO of Coda)

October 1, 2023

AI Summary

5 min read

Lane Shackleton, CPO of Coda, outlines principles that guide effective product management and shares rituals that enable strong teams to operate with clarity and velocity, based on his observations across companies like Google, YouTube, and Coda.

Principles for product managers

Shackleton's unifying thesis is that product work centers on turning ambiguity into clarity across roles, problems, customers, and prototypes. Key principles include systems over goals—build repeatable habits like regular customer talks rather than fluctuating OKRs, as seen in early Coda's Friday customer demos or Seinfeld's daily writing routine. Teams should pursue cathedrals, not bricks: elevate daily tasks to a shared broader vision, showing it through multiple facets like metrics, mocks, and writeups tailored to each role. Other principles emphasize proactive stances, learning by making prototypes over endless debate (e.g., YouTube's rapid skippable ads experiments testing button sizes), and drawing inspiration broadly from sports, storytelling, and non-tech fields.

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What you'll learn

1 `* (00:00) **Intro and Guiding Lessons**`
2 `* (04:37) **Motivation for Product Principles**`
3 `* (13:06) **Coda's Role Stages Framework**`
4 `* (16:38) **Core PM Principles**`
5 `* (36:27) **Feedback and Review Rituals**`
6 `* (53:17) **Team Processes and Handbook**`
7 `* (57:24) **Learn by Making**`

+ Full timestamped outline available in the app

Show Notes

Brought to you by Eppo—Run reliable, impactful experiments | Vanta—Automate compliance. Simplify security | Ezra—The leading full-body cancer screening company

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Lane Shackleton is CPO of Coda, where he’s been leading the product and design team for over eight years. Lane started his career as an Alaskan climbing guide and then as a manual reviewer of AdWords ads before becoming a product specialist at Google and later a Group PM at YouTube. He also writes a weekly newsletter with insights and rituals for PMs, product teams, and startups. In today’s conversation, we discuss:• Principles that set great PMs apart• Rituals of great product teams• The fine line between OKRs and strategy, and why it matters• “Two-way write-up”• The story of how skippable YouTube ads were born and lessons learned• How to gauge personal career growth• “Tim Ferriss Day” and its impact on Coda’s history• How Lane bootstrapped his way to CPO from the bottom of the tech ladder

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Find the transcript and references at: https://www.lennyspodcast.com/what-sets-great-teams-apart-lane-shackleton-cpo-of-coda/

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Where to find Lane Shackleton:

• X: https://twitter.com/lshackleton

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laneshackleton

• Substack: https://lane.substack.com/

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Where to find Lenny:

• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com

• X: https://twitter.com/lennysan

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/