Lenny Rachitsky Explains How Executive Calendars Shape Product Decisions
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Lenny Rachitsky describes the fragmented, back-to-back nature of an executive's day and why product managers overestimate how much leaders remember of their pitches. He shares this via a video and a quoted post about Jessica Fain's chief-of-staff pitch to Slack's CPO.
Original post · 1 min read
People don't understand executive calendars.
I describe an executive's calendar as like a strobe light going off.
You wake up at 8AM, you've already got a huge list of urgent things going on.
You go from a meeting with finance on a budget, to an interview for another executive, to a people problem, to a legal problem, to a product review.
And the product manager coming to that product review, who's trying to make a pitch thinks I've been prepping for this meeting for two weeks.
But the executive coming into that session hasn't thought about you since.
I describe an executive's calendar as like a strobe light going off.
You wake up at 8AM, you've already got a huge list of urgent things going on.
You go from a meeting with finance on a budget, to an interview for another executive, to a people problem, to a legal problem, to a product review.
And the product manager coming to that product review, who's trying to make a pitch thinks I've been prepping for this meeting for two weeks.
But the executive coming into that session hasn't thought about you since.
Lenny Rachitsky @lennysanJessica Fain's best product ideas kept dying, and she couldn't figure out why.
So at eight and a half months pregnant, she pitched @SlackHQ's CPO @aunder on becoming her Chief of Staff. She wanted to see how executive decisions actually get made from the inside.
What she learned changed everything she knew about influencing execs.
People don't realize that an executive's calendar is like a strobe light going off. Budget meeting, a people problem, a legal issue—then your product review. You've been prepping for three weeks. They haven't thought about you since the last meeting. They may not …
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