Q: What does Shreyas Doshi say about pre-mortems and risk-management?

"If you do a pre-mortem right, you will not have to do an ugly post-mortem. The genius is the initial prompt: imagine this project has failed six months from now. Now work backwards and ask what went wrong. It creates psychological safety for team members to talk about things they're concerned about without being negative." - Shreyas Doshi "In a pre-mortem, bring up three things: a tiger (a threat that will actually kill us), a paper tiger (a seeming threat others worry about but you're not), and an elephant in the room that nobody is talking about. That shared vocabulary becomes powerful - in future meetings people started saying 'I have this tiger' and it became okay to bring those things up." - Shreyas Doshi "All your tasks are not created equal. There are L tasks (leverage) where you put in effort and get 10X or 100X in return. N tasks (neutral) where you get what you put in. And O tasks (overhead) where you get back less than you put in. Most ambitious people treat each type the same way - and therein lies the problem." - Shreyas Doshi

Q: What are Shreyas Doshi's views on pre-mortems, risk-management, psychological-safety?

Shreyas Doshi: "If you do a pre-mortem right, you will not have to do an ugly post-mortem. The genius is the initial prompt: imagine this project has failed six months from now. Now work backwards and ask what went wrong. It creates psychological safety for team members to talk about things they're concerned about without being negative." Shreyas Doshi: "In a pre-mortem, bring up three things: a tiger (a threat that will actually kill us), a paper tiger (a seeming threat others worry about but you're not), and an elephant in the room that nobody is talking about. That shared vocabulary becomes powerful - in future meetings people started saying 'I have this tiger' and it became okay to bring those things up."

Question 1

What are the key takeaways from Shreyas Doshi's episode on Lenny's Podcast?

Accepted Answer

1. Run pre-mortems with tigers, paper tigers, and elephants - imagine the project failed six months from now and work backwards to identify threats, creating psychological safety to discuss concerns without being 'negative' 2. Use the LNO framework to prioritize time - identify which tasks are Leverage (10-100X return), Neutral (1X return), or Overhead (<1X return), and treat them differently instead of applying equal effort to everything 3. Most execution problems are actually strategy or culture problems - when the same issues keep recurring despite bandaid fixes, look for missing strategy, cultural misalignment, or interpersonal friction as root causes 4. Minimize opportunity cost instead of maximizing ROI - stop asking 'is this good use of time?' and start asking 'is this the BEST use of time?' to avoid filling your roadmap with quick wins while missing transformative bets 5. High agency PMs exceed their on-paper potential through strong ownership, creative execution through challenges, and resilience - they find ways to achieve goals without waiting for perfect conditions or blaming circumstances

Question 2

What does Shreyas Doshi say about pre-mortems and risk-management?

Accepted Answer

"If you do a pre-mortem right, you will not have to do an ugly post-mortem. The genius is the initial prompt: imagine this project has failed six months from now. Now work backwards and ask what went wrong. It creates psychological safety for team members to talk about things they're concerned about without being negative." - Shreyas Doshi "In a pre-mortem, bring up three things: a tiger (a threat that will actually kill us), a paper tiger (a seeming threat others worry about but you're not), and an elephant in the room that nobody is talking about. That shared vocabulary becomes powerful - in future meetings people started saying 'I have this tiger' and it became okay to bring those things up." - Shreyas Doshi "All your tasks are not created equal. There are L tasks (leverage) where you put in effort and get 10X or 100X in return. N tasks (neutral) where you get what you put in. And O tasks (overhead) where you get back less than you put in. Most ambitious people treat each type the same way - and therein lies the problem." - Shreyas Doshi

Question 3

What are Shreyas Doshi's views on pre-mortems, risk-management, psychological-safety?

Accepted Answer

Shreyas Doshi: "If you do a pre-mortem right, you will not have to do an ugly post-mortem. The genius is the initial prompt: imagine this project has failed six months from now. Now work backwards and ask what went wrong. It creates psychological safety for team members to talk about things they're concerned about without being negative." Shreyas Doshi: "In a pre-mortem, bring up three things: a tiger (a threat that will actually kill us), a paper tiger (a seeming threat others worry about but you're not), and an elephant in the room that nobody is talking about. That shared vocabulary becomes powerful - in future meetings people started saying 'I have this tiger' and it became okay to bring those things up."

Shreyas Doshi

The art of product management | Shreyas Doshi (Stripe, Twitter, Google, Yahoo)

TRANSCRIPT

Shreyas Doshi

The art of product management | Shreyas Doshi (Stripe, Twitter, Google, Yahoo)

Shreyas Doshi

The art of product management | Shreyas Doshi (Stripe, Twitter, Google, Yahoo)

TRANSCRIPT

Shreyas Doshi

The art of product management | Shreyas Doshi (Stripe, Twitter, Google, Yahoo)