Becoming evidence-guided | Itamar Gilad (Gmail, YouTube, Microsoft)
Lenny's Podcast: Product | Growth | Career
Lenny Rachitsky
5.0 • 1.5K Ratings
🗓️ 21 September 2023
⏱️ 73 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
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Itamar Gilad is a product coach, author, and speaker with over two decades of experience in senior product roles at Google, Microsoft, and various startups. He is also the author of Evidence-Guided: Creating High-Impact Products in the Face of Uncertainty and publishes a popular product management newsletter. In today’s episode, we discuss:
• What it means to be “evidence-guided”
• How to think about your KPIs as metric trees
• How to prioritize ideas using the “confidence meter”
• The GIST model for roadmapping
• Common mistakes with ICE
• Advice for using evidence to challenge gut-driven founders
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Find the full transcript at: https://www.lennyspodcast.com/becoming-evidence-guided-itamar-gilad-gmail-youtube-microsoft/#transcript
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Where to find Itamar Gilad:
• Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/ItamarGilad
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/itamargilad/
• Website: https://itamargilad.com/
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Where to find Lenny:
• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com
• Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/lennysan
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/
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In this episode, we cover:
(00:00) Itamar’s background
(04:35) How his time working on Gmail shaped his philosophy of “opinion-based” development
(08:35) Lessons from developing Gmail’s tabbed inbox
(13:40) A brief overview of Itamar’s book, Evidence-Guided
(14:30) Balancing founder creativity with an evidence-based approach
(17:32) Advice on how to push back against founders
(19:36) Signs you aren’t as evidence-guided as you may think
(21:13) Itamar’s GIST model for becoming more evidence-guided
(23:51) How to set overarching goals using his “value exchange loop”
(28:45) North star metrics vs. KPIs
(33:47) Using “ICE” to assess the value of ideas
(37:39) Itamar’s confidence meter
(44:28) Speed of delivery vs. speed of discovery
(46:14) How to apply Itamar’s frameworks based on company type and stage
(49:09) First steps in becoming more evidence-guided
(50:21) Next steps in testing
(55:41) The task layer in the GIST framework
(1:02:54) Thoughts on roadmapping
(1:04:56) How OKRs fit into the whole picture
(1:07:11) Lightning round
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Referenced:
• Itamar’s presentation slides: https://itamargilad.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Podcast-Slides.pdf
• What differentiates the highest-performing product teams | John Cutler (Amplitude, The Beautiful Mess): https://www.lennyspodcast.com/what-differentiates-the-highest-performing-product-teams-john-cutler-amplitude-the-beautiful-mess/
• Evidence-Guided: Creating High-Impact Products in the Face of Uncertainty: https://itamargilad.com/book-evidence-guided/
• The co-founders of Google in Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/profile/larry-page-and-sergey-brin
• Kanban: https://www.atlassian.com/agile/kanban
• Jira: https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira
• The ultimate guide to OKRs | Christina Wodtke (Stanford): https://www.lennyspodcast.com/the-ultimate-guide-to-okrs-christina-wodtke-stanford/
• Amplitude: https://amplitude.com/
• The ultimate guide to A/B testing | Ronny Kohavi (Airbnb, Microsoft, Amazon): https://www.lennyspodcast.com/the-ultimate-guide-to-ab-testing-ronny-kohavi-airbnb-microsoft-amazon/
• ICE framework: https://growthmethod.com/ice-framework/
• Sean Ellis on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/seanellis/
• RICE scoring model: https://www.productplan.com/glossary/rice-scoring-model/
• Idea Prioritization with ICE and the Confidence Meter: https://itamargilad.com/the-tool-that-will-help-you-choose-better-product-ideas/
• Assumptions Mapping: https://designsprintkit.withgoogle.com/methodology/phase2-define/assumptions-mapping
• What is Dog Fooding, Fish Fooding a Product?: https://matt-rickard.com/fishfooding-dogfooding-product
• SVPG books: https://www.svpg.com/books/
• The Lean series: https://theleanstartup.com/the-lean-series
• Dreaming Spanish: https://www.youtube.com/c/DreamingSpanish
• ElevenLabs: https://elevenlabs.io/
• Lennybot: https://www.lennybot.com/
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Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com.
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Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed.
Get full access to Lenny's Newsletter at www.lennysnewsletter.com/subscribe
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | You do a fake door test, you do smoke tests, |
| 0:03.4 | Wizard of Oz tests. |
| 0:04.7 | We used a lot of those in the tabbed inbox, by the way. |
| 0:07.3 | One of the first early versions was actually, |
| 0:10.7 | we showed the tabbed inbox working to people, but it wasn't really Gmail. |
| 0:15.1 | It was just a facade of HTML and behind the scenes and according to the permissions that the |
| 0:19.9 | users gave us, some of us moved just the subject and the sender into the right place. |
| 0:25.0 | So initially the interviewer kind of distracted them and then they showed them their inbox and in it the top 50 messages were sorted to the right place more or less if we got it right and people were like wow this is actually very cool but it gave us some evidence to go and say hey we should try and build this thing |
| 0:46.8 | Welcome to Lenny's podcast, where I interview world-class product leaders and growth experts to learn from their hard-won experiences building and growing today's |
| 0:50.3 | most successful products. |
| 0:52.3 | Today, my guest is Idmar Galad. |
| 0:54.3 | Itamar is a product coach, author, speaker, and former longtime product manager at |
| 0:59.1 | Google, where you worked on Gmail, Identity, and YouTube. |
| 1:03.0 | He also just published an awesome new book called Evidence Guided, |
| 1:06.4 | creating high impact products in the face of uncertainty. |
| 1:09.8 | Itemar has an important perspective on why and also how you can push your team and |
| 1:14.1 | organization from an opinion-based decision-making process to a more evidence-guided |
| 1:18.7 | approach. |
| 1:19.7 | In our conversation, Itemar shares a number of very practical and handy frameworks to do just that, including |
| 1:25.4 | the confidence meter, metrics, trees, gist, and the gist board, plus his take on how people |
| 1:31.1 | often misuse ice for prioritizing ideas, also how you can make your |
| 1:34.8 | OKRs more effective, and so much more. Enjoy this episode with Idmar Galat after a short word from our sponsors. |
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