Pod Insights Lenny's Podcast An inside look at how CNN builds product | Upasna Gautam About this episode Upasna Gautam is a product manager at CNN Digital, where she works closely with editorial staff and journalists to build their internal content management system. She is also a longtime meditation coach and a board member of the News Product Alliance. In today’s episode, we delve into how product teams are structured and operate at CNN, how CNN uses OKRs and roadmaps, and the unique challenges and opportunities in designing a digital product for journalists. Upasna also shares a story about her team's product saving the day during the 2020 elections and gives listeners a free mini lesson on meditation.
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Find the full transcript here: https://www.lennyspodcast.com/an-inside-look-at-how-cnn-builds-product-upasna-gautam/#transcription
Where to find Upasna Gautam:
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/UpasnaGautam
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/upasnagautam/
• Website: https://linktr.ee/upasnagautam
Where to find Lenny:
• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/lennysan
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/
Referenced:
• Insight Timer: https://insighttimer.com/
• News Product Alliance: https://newsproduct.org/
• Mindfulness in Plain English: https://www.amazon.com/Mindfulness-English-Bhante-Henepola-Gunaratana/dp/0861719069
• How to Win Friends & Influence People: https://www.amazon.com/How-Win-Friends-Influence-People/dp/0671027034/
• The New Product Development Game: https://hbr.org/1986/01/the-new-new-product-development-game
• The Mandalorian on Disney+: https://www.disneyplus.com/series/the-mandalorian/3jLIGMDYINqD
• Ted Lasso on AppleTV+: https://tv.apple.com/us/show/ted-lasso/umc.cmc.vtoh0mn0xn7t3c643xqonfzy
• Everything Everywhere All at Once on Showtime: https://www.sho.com/titles/3493875/everything-everywhere-all-at-once
• Andor on Disney+: https://disneyplusoriginals.disney.com/show/andor
In this episode, we cover:
(00:00) Upasna’s background
(03:13) How Upasna’s meditation background helps her thrive in the chaotic world of product at CNN
(08:55) How PMs at CNN build in buffer time and create backup plans when breaking news hits
(10:26) How the product team works with editorial staff and journalists at CNN
(15:22) The product org structure at CNN Digital
(19:02) OKRs at CNN
(20:10) How CNN’s product teams do long-term planning
(21:37) Why Upasna involves the tech lead in all product discovery/product review meetings
(23:51) How to boost morale with remote teams
(27:39) Balancing maintenance with building new stuff
(29:21) The time CNN.com went down in 2020 and the new platform saved the day
(31:21) How the product team rehearses breaking news
(34:22) The superpowers Upasna and her team have cultivated
(35:50) Why meditation and honing your communication skills help you excel as a PM
(42:01) How to get started on the path of meditation
(44:39) The work News Product Alliance is doing and how to get involved
(51:54) Lightning round
Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected] .
Transcript 10,139 words · 2 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Speaker 00 It happens all the time, right? That is the nature of breaking news. I mean, you have to be ready to pivot at, you know, the drop of a hat. I had a big working session planned with my users to do research with them or do user testing and breaking news breaks. And it takes so much time and effort to gather a team of editors across the globe to do a user testing session. And when breaking news happens, they have to prioritize that over everything. Right? So like, what do you do in that situation? You can be frustrated. Absolutely, it's frustrating. But you always have to have the ability to a pivot, of course, but also have backup and, you know, buffers in those types of scenarios.
0:45 Lenny Rachitsky? 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 most successful products. Today, my guest is Upasna Gautam. Upasna is a product manager at CNN where she leads the team responsible for the content management system that journalists use to write and publish their stories. She's also in the front lines of elevating the discipline of product management within newsrooms through her work at the News Product Alliance. She's also a longtime meditation and mindfulness teacher, which, as we discuss, ends up being pretty damn handy working at a place like CNN. We dig into how the product team operates within CNN, how they collaborate with journalists, their breaking news dress rehearsals, and also some simple tricks to build your own mindfulness in your day-to-day work as a PM.
1:31 Lenny Rachitsky? Enjoy this episode with Upasna Gautam after a short word from our wonderful sponsors. This episode is brought to you by Amplitude. If you're setting up your analytics stack but not using Amplitude, what are you doing? Anyone can sell you analytics while Amplitude unlocks the power of your product and guides you every step of the way. Get the right data, ask the right questions, get the right answers and make growth happen. To get started with Amplitude for free, visit amplitude.com. Amplitude, power to your products.
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3:13 Lenny Rachitsky? Upasna, welcome to the podcast. Thank you, Lenny. I'm so excited to be here. As you probably know, I'm on this kind of quest to understand how different companies build product, especially companies that are kind of outside the Silicon Valley, just like standard tech scene. And I've always wondered what it was like to build product at a company like CNN, which is like very different from where most, I don't know, tech PMs work. And so I'm really excited to have you on and to give us a little glimpse into what it's like to build product at CNN. Awesome. I'm very excited to share as well. So I was doing a little research on you before this chat, and I noticed that you've been teaching and studying meditation and mindfulness for, I don't know, maybe a decade? And I imagine that comes in handy at a company like CNN, which also, I imagine, is like
3:58 Lenny Rachitsky? quite hectic at times with breaking news all the time. And so here's my question. What have you learned or brought from that practice to your ability to lead and ability to just like keep your team calm and focused during, I imagine, many hectic moments?
4:16 Speaker 00 Love that question. And working in product in news is a very beast. We hear a lot about having the skills to thrive in ambiguity in order to be a successful product manager. But to be a successful product manager in news, you have to be able to thrive in chaos. And equanimity is the most important skill I've developed, I think, across my entire life. And it's due to all of those years of practicing mindfulness and meditation. And equanimity is one of my favorite words. It means mental calmness, composure, evenness of temper, especially in crazy stressful situations.
4:57 Speaker 00 It's, you know, the ability to remain unrattled in like the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. And if you think about it in the dynamic of a workplace or human interaction, it's really the ability to pause before reacting. And reactivity is the root cause of so many of our workplace woes and product management frustrations. And when you're able to pause before reacting, you can start to undo and break a lot of those negative patterns in your brain. And in news, and especially the world's biggest breaking news organization, you can cut through that chaos with equanimity. Because it also really gives you this outsized advantage in everything from stakeholder management,
5:41 Speaker 00 team morale, to the way you're able to translate user feedback to product development velocity. And the thing is, is you're always going to hear things and feedback that you don't like, and opinions that you don't like, and you're going to get frustrated. That's product management, that's life. But real power, to me, comes from equanimity. And that comes from managing your emotional reactions and not trying to control others. So I think when you're able to cultivate that level of self-awareness for yourself, you're able to chart a clear path forward for your team and like serve as a compass in the chaos.
6:21 Lenny Rachitsky? Is there a story or example that comes to mind where things were just like, oh shit? And you were able to tap into that skill that you've built to stay calm and focused, or even just like help your team stay focused?
6:34 Speaker 00 I mean, it happens all the time, right? That is the nature of breaking news. I mean, you have to be ready to pivot at, you know, the drop of a hat. And so I think more than just like the big chaotic moment in those daily interactions, when there's chaos, I think that's when it really shows its power and helps me navigate those day-to-day interactions. When I had a big working session planned with my users to do research with them or do user testing and breaking news breaks and it takes so much time and effort to gather a team of editors across the globe to do a user testing session. And when breaking news happens, they have to prioritize that over everything, right?
7:19 Speaker 00 So like, what do you do in that situation? You can be frustrated, absolutely. It's frustrating, but you always have to have the ability to A pivot, of course, but also have backup and buffers in those types of scenarios. So anytime we're planning, we build in buffers for all of that chaos that's happening on a daily basis.
7:41 Lenny Rachitsky? Wow, that's cool. Is that a real thing that happened? You were like in a big meeting with all the researchers and then something went off the rails in the world?
7:47 Speaker 00 Oh yeah, absolutely. Happens all the time.
7:49 Lenny Rachitsky? I don't know how much you can go into all this, but what is it that you would do in that case? Like as a product team, what are they looking for you to do at that moment?
7:56 Speaker 00 For us, it's not really anything we have to do. It is more so, okay, well, our goal of this session was to get user testing done or user feedback from that user testing session with our editors. And so what do we do? Okay, well, good thing we had a backup planned, right? We don't actually have to go into that scenario, but since our editors and our journalists are our customers, we're there to serve their needs, but they are not here to serve our needs. They have a whole nother job that they have to do. And so we have to have the ability to adapt and accommodate to those really chaotic schedules across global time zones. And so that happens again, like it's not, it's not like once in a while.
8:40 Speaker 00 It's a very regular thing that we have to be aware of and also account for.
8:46 Lenny Rachitsky? Okay, I get it. It's the like this journalist or the ones in the meeting that like, oh, they have to go right about the stuff uncovered.
8:50 Speaker 00 Totally.
8:51 Lenny Rachitsky? I see. That makes sense. You said that you built in some buffer time to kind of account for these things. Is there like a systematic way of doing that? Or is it just broadly, let's add buffer time? Is there like a rule of thumb you you think about there?
9:02 Speaker 00 It depends on the scope of the work we're doing at that time. So one of my main responsibilities is to rebuild our content management system, which also involves onboarding our editors and journalists to it off of our legacy platform and onto our new one. So when we're thinking about onboarding, especially the teams, our onboarding cycle is very long. It involves training, testing, lots of dialogue and feedback, and then only do we actually test and then we onboard. And so it is a long cycle and it's longer than it maybe seems like it needs to be because we have to build in those buffers. Sometimes that buffer is a day or two, and sometimes it's a week or a month.
9:46 Speaker 00 And sometimes when we think we need a buffer, we get it done in a day and we quickly move on to the next phase. And so I think that quick decision making in those times is super important because you have to be able to assess the situation as it stands. And so I think mindfulness is so important too in practices like this because being able to objectively see the scenario for what it is, make a quick decision and move on to the next phase is is something we have to analyze every single day.
10:16 Lenny Rachitsky? It makes me think a little bit about a lot of CEOs are very busy and pulled into a lot of things. And so you have to kind of account for their schedule. And it sounds like you have many, many people that you work with that have crazy schedules.
10:29 Speaker 00 Yes.
10:30 Lenny Rachitsky? I wanted to dig a little bit deeper into how your team worked with the news team. It's such a unique way of working. Most product teams don't have a whole set of journalists that they have to work with and as stakeholders. So I'm curious specifically, say, a journalist has like, hey, I'd love to build a special immersive experience for this story, or I need some special feature to help support this work that I'm doing. How does that work? Did they come to you and like, hey, here's the roadmap, maybe in a quarter, I need to think. Imagine it's like, I need this next week. How do you how do you work with the journalist team, basically, on product?
11:04 Speaker 00 Yep, this is pretty much the foundation of all of my work. We talk to our editorial staff every single day. And after a lot of observation and learning, I implemented a system to manage that kind of intake with four different touchpoints or events. So we have weekly demo days, working sessions, breaking news dress rehearsals and office hours. So with weekly demo days, I facilitate those with my product design lead and my tech lead. And we use that as an open forum of communication to deep dive into features that exist on our platform, also to preview or give a sneak peek of new features to come and kind of recreate their workflows and do a show and tell.
11:49 Speaker 00 Again, we wanted to open that up as a forum to not just our editorial partners, but also anyone across the business who is interested in learning about the product and which is our platform. And it was also a great way to kind of evangelize the product too. Coming off of a legacy system after several years onto a brand new one is a big change at a place like CNN. And so we definitely try to make sure that, you know, smart repetition in different ways is top priority. So weekly demo days is one. Working sessions are interesting. I use the term working session because it's a combination of several things.
12:30 Speaker 00 This is a really critical part of our onboarding process where we gather breakout groups of our journalists and editors to work with us to recreate their workflows in the new platform. This allows us to, you know, address any friction or issues, of course, that are occurring in their workflows. But also we're able to gather a lot of awesome feedback from them in those sessions. So we used to call them user testing sessions, but decided to move away from that and just call them working sessions. So they're more collaborative. And again, it's a really critical part of our onboarding process. We usually do three to six of them, depending on the size of the group, before the team is actually on boarded for two hours per session.
13:13 Speaker 00 So they're like deep dives into their specific workflows. So as you can imagine, the way the politics team programs content is wildly different than the way the entertainment team does or the way that the The health team does and the very different than the way that the CNN homepage even even interact. So all of those are separate teams we have to work with when it comes to getting feedback. So in addition to that, we also do, I mentioned, breaking news stress rehearsals. And you can imagine this is exactly what it sounds like. We create a script and do a simulation of a breaking news scenario to stress test our platform. Because all breaking news scenarios are definitely not the same either.
13:57 Speaker 00 So this gives us a lot of great feedback in that short amount of time at the speed of breaking news. And then last but not least, we have office hours, which I just started last year. And that's also probably what you can imagine, open blocks of time where me and my product design partner and my tech lead. Are this there to answer questions, help people troubleshoot any friction they might be experiencing in their workflow? Get their feedback. We just wanted to open up another line of communication. So we do those right now, once a week. Sometimes they go up to two times a week if we're in a really rigorous onboarding phase. After those conversations and sessions and events happen.
14:39 Speaker 00 You know, it's our job to translate their needs into the functions that we A, either maybe already have that we can optimize. B, we build anew, or we tell them it's not viable. And the good thing is, is that because they've been along for the ride with us throughout the product discovery process. We've earned their trust and respect so that when we tell them something like it's not viable, they usually get it.
15:07 Lenny Rachitsky? Man, I have so many questions about just working with journalists. I feel like pushing back on a journalist is probably extra hard versus their type of stakeholders.
15:14 Speaker 00 It is.
15:15 Lenny Rachitsky? Can we zoom out a little bit? And you talked about what you work on at CNN, which is the content management system and things around that. Can you just talk about whatever you can share? Just like, what does the product team look like at CNN? How many PMs are there? How is like the product work structured? And where do you fit in there?
15:31 Speaker 00 Yes, so I mentioned earlier, my team sits on CNN Digital. And I think when most people think of CNN, of course, you think of TV and linear programming. I have nothing to do with that. CNN Digital is digital and it's made up of several teams that are structured around a lot of different product areas. It includes everything from the content management platforms that I work on to data infrastructure, to personalization, to video experience, which includes like the products of video editor and the video player to podcasts. There's a lot. So each of those are product teams. And so we also split out, you know, the way CNN is split out into CNN Digital is because
16:16 Speaker 00 there's a separate core content platform that powers broadcast and linear TV. And the one that I work on powers CNN Digital. So on my team, the core platform team, our stakeholders and our customers are, like I mentioned, our journalists and our editors, which presents a really unique dynamic. And it's one that I love. We have direct access to our customers at all times of day, for better or for worse. And they're embedded into our product development process. And each of those teams under CNN Digital is kind of like a squad, very similar to how it is at other larger tech companies.
16:56 Speaker 00 We have PMs, we have engineers, designers and delivery managers embedded in those squads. And since my team is a core platform team, our main responsibility is to A, build our newer, faster, more flexible content management platform to replace our legacy one. And B, onboard our entire editorial staff to it. And so even more specifically, my role is focused on rebuilding the tooling and the editorial experience of that platform as well as doing the actual onboarding of our journalists. So we work cross-functionally because our team kind of is the umbrella over a lot of different teams.
17:37 Speaker 00 So we truly work cross-functionally to make sure that, you know, we're serving our journalists with the tools that they need to do their job in the most efficient way possible.
17:48 Lenny Rachitsky? What would surprise people most about how product is built at CNN?
17:53 Speaker 00 I think the most surprising thing may actually be that there's just so many different types of products that we build. Like I said, I think when most people think of CNN, you see TV and you think of Anderson Cooper and all of the things that are very publicly, you know, visible. There is, most of our product work and product teams all sit behind the scenes. And so I think just that in itself, like the sheer size of that is surprising to a lot of people. So I mentioned like all of the different teams, right? Product teams that are based off of function, content management platforms, infrastructure, personalization, video, podcasts, linear TV.
18:38 Speaker 00 And I think that in itself, the sheer size of it, like we're not the size of Google by any means, but at the same time, we have the expertise and the depth and breadth of a lot of those larger companies.
18:52 Lenny Rachitsky? I'm curious about the day-to-day operational work of how you build product at CNN. So a first question here is just, you use like OKRs, you know, OKRs with like key objectives and outcomes and 70% of a goal of success?
19:05 Speaker 00 Yeah, absolutely. We do. We've used OKRs for a long time and they've served as an anchor for my team over the last three years. I kind of already, I can't go into specifics on like what our OKRs are, but I did kind of cover the two main parts of it, which is, you know, rebuilding our content management form and onboarding our users to it. So again, this is a long game at C and M when you're working on a core platform to replace a legacy one. And so we break those OKRs down, of course, even further into, you know, we look two to three years out and build goals based off of that. Then we break them down by quarter and month.
19:46 Speaker 00 And then out of that, for my team and what I do, I need to, for my own sake and my team's sake, break those down by the week. And when we're in rapid development phases, we're planning on a daily basis.
20:01 Lenny Rachitsky? How about in terms of just planning broadly? How far out does the product team it's in and plan in detail? Like have an actual roadmap? And is that standardized across teams? Or can each team kind of do their own approach?
20:13 Speaker 00 It's a combination of both. So we have one that is an overarching roadmap that tracks to like our company OKRs and our product organization OKRs. And then from there, I mentioned, we have our squads, product teams, and we have OKRs on those as well, track up to the larger, broader ones. And so, once we get down to that level, though, there is flexibility and we have autonomy to tackle those how we want, which is really great because the scope of work across our different product teams is drastically different. Working on core platform like I do versus working on video experience versus podcasts.
20:58 Speaker 00 I mean, it's apples and oranges. And so, it's really awesome that we have the flexibility to kind of make it work for us, while also having these larger goals that we know that, okay, this is what we need to work towards. And that makes, you know, we had like the saying we always hear in product, right? Of stay firm on the goal, but flexible on the process. And like, we've definitely been able to, to use that and leverage that in the way that we track against our goals.
21:27 Lenny Rachitsky? Something else that a lot of people are always curious about is product review meetings and design review meetings. You talked about a couple of these meetings that you have. But do you have standard product review meetings where folks get together and just review stuff in progress? And if so, how do they work? Like, who runs them? Who comes to them? How do you make decisions, things like that?
21:46 Speaker 00 We have multiple variations of those. Some are standing ceremonies, of course, and some are ad hoc. Again, it's really based on the work we're doing in that, in whatever phase we're in. But when it comes to product review and product discovery or design review meetings, in addition to my design lead, I've made it a point to bring in my tech lead and engineers along for this product discovery ride, and that's definitely been a game changer as well. When our engineers are able to understand our journalists' needs at the same level as we are, they're able to define the how to do it with so much greater clarity and precision. And so my tech lead is embedded also in our product discovery process.
22:30 Speaker 00 He joins our user testing sessions and our design jams and our editorial conversations, planning sessions, and it's helped him and the rest of our tech and engineering team become experts on the why are we doing this and what are we working towards to better determine technical feasibility. And he's done an amazing job of also passing that knowledge down to the rest of our engineers on our team. So it's really like this mentality of getting that important feedback from our journalists, understanding their pain points, and then sharing and teaching it across the team. And I think, you know, the key takeaway on that is it's so important to think of your engineers as partners and not just resources.
23:12 Speaker 00 And when they are embedded, you know, into the process right up front, it makes the whole process in general more efficient.
23:21 Lenny Rachitsky? So it sounds like that was maybe an evolution of the way the team works as engineering has been looped into a lot of this early stuff more recently.
23:30 Speaker 00 Totally. Yeah. Recently, meaning, I mean, we, again, long game, right? So it's been, it's been a couple of years.
23:39 Lenny Rachitsky? Got it. Going in a slightly different direction, I'm curious if there's any fun or unique traditions or rituals that the CNN product team has, is always fun to hear about.
23:50 Speaker 00 So I'll be very honest, we are not one of the cool teams, the politics team, like, and the breaking news teams have all these cool rituals and fun things that they do.
24:02 Lenny Rachitsky? What kind of stuff do they do?
24:03 Speaker 00 It's different also because they're usually in person in the newsroom and I work remotely. And so, and actually, most of my team works remotely. And so, you know, they have their rituals. I will say, one of the things that we started to do is so onboarding teams has been a big goal of ours and that we've slowly checked off the list over 2022. And anytime we successfully onboard a team or launch a new feature, you know, it's not anything crazy or fun. Like, there's only so much you can do when you work remotely, but we definitely make it a point to celebrate. And it's been hard to figure out ways to keep team morale up when you're all remote. And it started with, we knew we needed to start doing something when we would have a big launch.
24:48 Speaker 00 And it was so anticlimactic and we'd literally hit publish and onboard onto like a politics page. And we're like, oh, okay. So I guess that's it. So one thing we started doing is sending like, like these gift boxes of like random shot pieces and stuff that would, that mean things to us from the whole year. And it's like just cheap little like gag gifts and stuff that we send to each other. I have like random stuff all over my, over my desk. I don't even know if I can share some of it. But, but it, um, so we try to make it a point to at least like share and celebrate. And then when we're in person, we do too. But again, being remote, there's definitely, there's definitely a challenge there.
25:32 Lenny Rachitsky? Are you ever able to get like a cameo from an Anderson Cooper or someone else on, on air to, uh, thank the teams? That feels like a cool feature potential.
25:40 Speaker 00 So one of my, uh, key stakeholders, she is a, she leads the video team at CNN and she is, uh, uh, we've, we've had some discussions about doing a Sizzler reel for our content management platform, uh, as since we're onboarding people and, you know, building new features and there have been discussions with her about getting a celebrity to come and promote product for us. So working on it.
26:07 Lenny Rachitsky? Yeah, that feels like a missed opportunity. You've got so much talent around.
26:10 Speaker 00 Totally.
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26:56 Lenny Rachitsky? It's time consuming, tedious, and expensive. Enter Vanta. Over 3,000 fast-growing companies use Vanta to automate up to 90% of the work involved with SOC 2. Vanta can get you ready for security audits in weeks instead of months, less than a third of the time that it usually takes. For a limited time, Lenny's podcast listeners get $1,000 off Vanta. Just go to vanta.com/Lenny. That's V A N T A dot com slash Lenny to learn more and to claim your discount. Get started today. Coming back a little bit to the way you all built product, I'm curious how you balance new product work and new features versus maintenance and bugs. Do you have kind of a, is there like a philosophy at CNN of
27:40 Lenny Rachitsky? how much goes to bugs maintenance versus new stuff? Or is it per team? And just how do you all think about that?
27:45 Speaker 00 It's certainly team-specific because again, the scope of work across teams really varies. But since my team's product is an entire platform, it's my job to ensure we're crystal clear on our goals. Because like I said, they may change on a week-by-week basis. One sprint might be high-priority feature development, and another sprint, maybe we're focused on medium-priority optimizations and bug fixes. But we know that Anytime there's a critical incident in production, it also takes critical priority over everything else. So it's a balancing and juggling act that relies heavily on intuitive decision making.
28:26 Speaker 00 But I will say, we're also really fortunate to have a global 24/7 editorial support team that we work really closely with. So they are the ones who handle troubleshoot, escalate incidences, incidents up to the relevant teams. There are a lot of layers to that protocol when a critical incident occurs. And so our editorial support team is that first layer of support. Whereas my team might be the second or third, depending on the level of severity and who it gets escalated to. So there's definitely a lot of processes in place. We're not always that first line of defense, which is actually, it alleviates a lot of stress to know that we have an entire team around the clock, globally dedicated just to that.
29:12 Lenny Rachitsky? You're talking about these incidents and moments. And it makes me wonder, is there a memory of just like a wild time of something happened in the news of just like, oh, man, we got to get on top of this thing? Like, is there a memory that you think of like, wow, that was crazy?
29:25 Speaker 00 It's funny, but also crazy and amazing. And so our new content management platform, you know, it's where we've been building it for a while and stress testing it for a while. And, you know, politics and election season at CNN is Super Bowl like times 100. And so we have to be, you know, all hands on deck, like all layers of support intact. And so we have also a lot of layers of fallback in case something happened, right? Like there's layers and layers of infrastructure fallback. If CNN.com goes down or another service goes down. And so, and actually did happen a couple of years ago in the 2020 election.
30:10 Speaker 00 And one of the fallbacks at that time, because we were not, we are, you know, we're still on our current content management platform. But we had our new one as we're building it as one of the levels of fallback. And if XYZ fails, then it goes to our current platform. And it did. And so that's actually happened where our new platform saved the day, even though it wasn't fully ready. But that just goes to show, we think about that kind of stuff, like in granular detail, when we think about everything that could possibly go wrong, because it has been and it will happen and it does go wrong. So that was kind of cool.
30:54 Speaker 00 It was validation to know that the platform we have is really stable and strong and secure, that it was a fallback for the election.
31:03 Lenny Rachitsky? Yeah, and that must have felt good. That feels like a promotion material right there, that your work in progress system saved the day.
31:10 Speaker 00 Yeah, I agree.
31:12 Lenny Rachitsky? You talked about how you have these like breaking news dress rehearsals. I just noted that and I thought it'd be cool to just revisit that briefly. Like, what does that, how does that work? You just like get the team together and like, here's, here's a new story that just broke. What do we do? Like, how does, how does that work?
31:27 Speaker 00 It is scripted, right? So we can only get so close to the real thing. But one thing we do is, I mean, we script everything, right? Like the teams and the players that we need involved in it, what the incident is. And it usually starts when breaking news occurs with an email. The news gathering team sends an email to our writers and our producers. And then from there, it goes out all the places it needs to go. There's a video that needs to be created. There's an article that needs to be written. If there are, you know, and again, the TV side, I have no insight into. It's like a foreign land to me. But as far as the digital scope goes, there's a lot of work that has to be done. Even things like photo and imagery, right? Like, we have a whole team dedicated just to selecting photos.
32:10 Speaker 00 Like, the photo desk is very involved with that process. And so that is all scripted out. And so we say, okay, here's the news. Here's how it's going to break. And then we, we, we run it. And so we use, you know, interpersonal communication tools that work, of course, email. And like, we run the whole thing from the minute the email is sent to, and of course, since we're testing the platform with this breaking news dress rehearsal, to the minute you hit publish on that page. And there's a lot of stuff that goes on in there. And it all happens in the span of minutes. And so. While that is happening, while that dress rehearsal is happening, we have our engineers and our editorial support team on hand as well. So they're observing what's happening
32:55 Speaker 00 while it's usually me and one of our editorial stakeholders and leads facilitating the actual rehearsal part and, you know, getting user feedback on, okay, what did engraved? And everything work as it was supposed to work? And also allows us to understand like how far we can go with stress testing different features on our system. So each one is different, but it's a crazy amount of stuff and information you can gather in such a short span of time because it cannot serve the needs of breaking news, then it's useless. So it's, it's a lot of work that goes into it for, you know, this three minute event.
33:35 Lenny Rachitsky? That is cool. It feels like just a cool tactic you could use anywhere.
33:39 Speaker 00 Yeah.
33:39 Lenny Rachitsky? And that's a good segue to the next question I had is just having built product at CNN and seeing how the product team works. What is it that you think you'll take with you to future product teams and future companies that if you ever move on to anything else?
33:53 Speaker 00 So I of course can't speak for the entire CNN product team, but I can speak for myself and my specific team. So in order to stay competitive in our modern news landscape, building this content management platform and the technology behind it has taught us how to enable rapid development and integration of new features and workflows. And we've been able to quickly test hypotheses while reducing risk. And again, time is of the essence, right? When it comes to breaking news and when you layer that with a very complex content
34:34 Speaker 00 management technology, there's a lot of moving parts and we've been able to do that successfully. And that's pretty amazing. And because of that, we've developed, I think, this unique skill of high agency under high pressure. And I really think that that skill or combination of skills is our superpower. And that is something you can take anywhere. That is something that that is an asset to any, any product development team.
35:03 Lenny Rachitsky? This circles back to our original topic about mindfulness and meditation. Other than just living through it and either becoming a meditation expert or having worked at a company like CNN that has a lot of this. Is there any, I don't know, tactic you could share, something that someone could take tomorrow and be like, okay, I'm gonna get better at dealing with crazy, unexpected events? Based on the experience you've had.
35:25 Speaker 00 Two parts to this. So, one, I would be remiss as a meditation educator if I didn't say that there is no substitution for meditation. So just do it. It takes a long time and it's a lifelong work in progress. But the good thing is, is that it also, like, the more you do it and consistently you do it, it compounds over time. And I always, okay, if you think of any job description for a product manager, right? It's mostly the same core stuff. You need to be able to lead a team without having authority. You need to have great communication skills. You need to be able to thrive in ambiguity. You need to be able to work with a lot of different people on the technical side, business side, all of the stuff that we hear all the time, right?
36:11 Speaker 00 But like, how do you actually become better at those things, right? Like, there's only so much you can gain from reading a book. To me, it's either A, you gotta go do it, and B, meditation has helped so much because of the clarity of mind and clarity of thinking you're able to cultivate because of it. Especially when it comes to communication. And this comes back to another tactic, I think, right? So meditation is one. You can't get around it. It's a very, very powerful tool. I'll die on that hill. But thinking about workplace tactics, communication is so essential. When I started at CNN, it was a very new chapter for me. It's my first official product management role
36:53 Speaker 00 after working a decade in tech in data and search infrastructure. And it was really scary to make that change so far into my career. But when I asked my boss why he took such a big chance on me, he said, "It's because of your communication skills and relationship building skills." And that, "I've seen you in a room where engineers listen to you and what you have to say, and you listen to them." And he was like, "That in itself is..." Really, really hard to teach. And I was like, okay, yeah, I can do that. So when I think about what communication means, I also attach that to mindfulness. Like mindful communication is so critical for successful product management, no matter what type of product environment you're in.
37:37 Speaker 00 And it means being like deeply aware of the conversation you're having. And when I'm having this conversation with you, I'm only having this conversation with you. When I'm talking to my design lead, I'm only talking to my design lead. When one of my journalists is venting because this feature is not working the way we told them it was going to, I am shutting my mouth and I am listening to them vent. And then I'm extracting what the root cause of the problem is. And I think the takeaway or the tactic is that goes back to exactly what we talked about in the beginning is the ability to pause before reacting is the key to mindful communication and being a successful product manager.
38:19 Speaker 00 I think a lot of times we are taught to like have all the answers or we're expected to have all the answers. And people assume we have all the answers, so it's a really frustrating sometimes place to be in. But if you listen and you know where to go to get the answers, that in itself is like a tremendous place to be. So I think the power of meditation, being able to pause before reacting, lets you do things like conversate in the language of the listener. So when I'm talking to my journalists or I'm not using technical terms or like content management technology terms, they have whole different vocabulary that they use.
39:00 Speaker 00 They have shortcuts that they have, you know, lingo for in our content management system. They call things nicknames. And so you have to speak many different languages as a product manager. And there's One thing that, you know, learning and teaching mindfulness has like strengthened, it is that communication, yes, it's very important. How do you become an effective communicator? I think a lot of times we think of speaking articulately first and foremost, or we think about writing well, which those two are really, really important things. But those can't be effective for us as product leaders if we're not listening.
39:43 Speaker 00 So I think listening and being able to converse in the language of the listener is the utmost importance. And how do you like do that in your day to day? It's like, okay, if you're having a conversation with your customer, are you actually listening to what they say? Or are you going in with your own assumptions? Because maybe you're a user of the product. And it was very interesting because I actually started writing freelance for CNN this past year. And I was like, oh, okay, I'm the user now. And no, I'm not. I I'm not going to say that. It helped me understand their pain points so much more and where they're coming from in a whole different light.
40:28 Speaker 00 But again, I am merely a proxy. I'm not actually the user. What they do is still drastically different. And so when like having those like customer interactions and stakeholder interactions, the priority should be to listen. And I think that is one of the most important things I've learned. And it's also helped build trust and respect between a previously fragmented structure where product and editorial didn't talk to each other. And now we're a unified, you know, partnership.
41:00 Lenny Rachitsky? Oh, I love that. I love the reminder that a lot of communication is incredibly important for product managers. And so much of it is not actually you talking. It's you being really good at listening. And that makes you a better communicator. Imagine some people listening to this, they're going to be like, yeah, meditation. That's, I should be doing that. What's like one thing someone could do to move forward on the path to starting to meditate? Is there a resource you recommend, a tip of just like getting, starting to do something there?
41:27 Speaker 00 Totally. I think when people think of meditation, you immediately think of sitting on a meditation cushion like a monk for an hour.
41:39 Speaker 00 And that doesn't have to be true, especially if you're just starting. And there's also, of course, social media has commercialized what meditation is a lot as well. But at its core, all it is, is being deeply aware of the present moment. Right? So I always tell people who are, for example, like really busy moms who have no time, right, in the morning for an hour long meditation is, okay, take something in your day that you do every single day. You brush your teeth every morning, right? Okay, take brushing your teeth. Can you brush your teeth and just brush your teeth? And when you're brushing your teeth, you are engaging all of your senses and being fully present
42:24 Speaker 00 and aware of how it feels, how it smells, how it sounds. That's, you know, two, three minutes of your day. That's meditation. And I think it's an amazing way to, in an easy way. Oh, sorry, not easy, simple, not easy way always to think about what meditation actually is. It's like, instead of like having to uproot your whole life and the way you live to like bring meditation in, think about what you already do every day and how you can just be more present, like fully present. And that's one of the core examples I give is start with brushing your teeth and just brush your teeth. There's an old app I've been using for a long time. If you're into that, I stopped using it recently, but it's still amazing. It's called Insight Timer.
43:09 Speaker 00 The free version is amazing. It started as like a single frame app about 10 years ago. And it's turned into this, like they've, they've done amazing things with that product. So that's what I recommend. But again, you don't, I think, again, when people have a vision of meditation in their mind, they're like, well, I need these tools and I need these resources and I need these things and I need knowledge. You don't need anything. You need five minutes and yourself and that's it.
43:37 Lenny Rachitsky? Amazing. I imagine many people with any of this coming into thinking, I'm going to learn about CNN and how they build product and then get a free meditation lesson. What a bonus. That was awesome. I'm going to be brushing my teeth very mindfully today.
43:49 Speaker 00 Love it.
43:49 Lenny Rachitsky? My takeaway.
43:50 Speaker 00 Love it.
43:52 Lenny Rachitsky? Final question around something that I know is important to you that is basically there's this growing shift of product thinking in the news industry at large. And I know that's something that you're passionate about and something you're trying to create is just to kind of move the media industry and the news industry towards more product thinking. So I'd love for you to just talk about what you're doing there, what's happening there. And then maybe if there's anything people can do to help in that effort.
44:16 Speaker 00 Compared to the rest of product management as a discipline and the tech industry, product management in news is still in its, I will say infancy. And that's just because it hasn't been an innovated role for as long as it has been in big tech. But it is starting to become more and more, not just prominent now, but people are realizing the value and power of it. Because especially in smaller newsrooms, I mean, CNN, places like New York Times, Washington Post, we have great embedded, you know, strong product teams. But that is not the case for the majority of newsrooms across the country and the world.
45:00 Speaker 00 Newsrooms are strapped for resources. They are strapped and all, all resources, including financial resources. And so first, bringing in product and tech talent is expensive. And that itself has forced editorial staff and journalists to take on other jobs that they never signed up for. And so they've had to learn how to do things, product management and engineering and coding hacks, because there was nobody else to do it. And so it's interesting because a lot of times when you talk to editors and journalists, they're, they're doing so many other things other than just their reporting of the news, right?
45:44 Speaker 00 They've had to take on other roles because of those restraints in the newsroom. And so. There was a group established, a community established during the pandemic called the News Product Alliance. And there was like a realization occurring all at the same time that wow, there's a lot of us doing this work. Like, what do we call it? Is this product management? And it was, it's product management at so many different levels. And so the News Product Alliance was formed during the pandemic in 2020, I believe, by several media and news executives who had been there and done that and have seen people in their newsrooms do that.
46:27 Speaker 00 And the goal of it is to increase the awareness and education of product thinking and product management in newsrooms while also increasing the diversity of thought and the diversity of people in those positions as well. And making the resources more readily available, especially for those smaller newsrooms that don't have the money to hire tech talent. And that in itself has, so that group, the News Product Alliance, has grown dramatically in the past three years, since I've been a part of it since the beginning. And we regularly produce, you know, the resources that are catered,
47:08 Speaker 00 product management resources that are catered to working in a newsroom because it is different. It is very unique, but there are of course frameworks and processes that are still relevant, right? Like editors who have been cobbling together how to make this thing that they want. But hey, maybe this PRD framework will help you just to keep it, you know, on, on, on track. So like these very simple, like rudimentary types of things have helped them so much. And so last year, we kicked off a Mentorship network in which we had about 400 people apply. There was, we accepted 150 mentees from across the world and matched them with 50 mentors
47:52 Speaker 00 from different newsrooms across the world in leadership positions. And each mentee defined a goal that they wanted to work on. And all of course, having to do with product management. And some of them were creating a product management role for themselves in the newsroom. Some of it was creating a product managed practice. Maybe they were given the title product manager and said, okay, you can hire a couple of people. But it was all on them and they had no idea what to do. Right. And so some of it, it's, it's across the board and it's amazing to see people doing this from scratch, who never in a million years thought they'd like walk into it. You know, they're not coming from big tech. They don't have startup backgrounds.
48:35 Speaker 00 They had journalism degrees from around the world and they're learning how to do product and build, not just learning how to do it, they're building product practices. They're actually building and developing products and features and they're creating more leaders in the space as well and across their newsrooms to empower each other. So it's been really amazing to see and it's the most valuable professional organization I've been a part of, just because it is so niche that, you know, talking about product management is always fun, but when you talk about it at a level that specific, it becomes even more believable.
49:16 Lenny Rachitsky? That is some really impactful product work. Where can people find that if they want to maybe participate, maybe apply if you're doing another cohort in the future?
49:24 Speaker 00 Go to newsproduct.org. There is a very active Slack group with a couple thousand people in it, a very active and popular job board as well. And you just have to submit an application on the website, a form, sorry, on that, on the website to join the Slack and then you'll get an invitation to join the Slack and then you'll have all of the resources.
49:47 Speaker 00 Your fingertips. It's very low barrier to entry. We want everyone and everyone who is interested in in the intersection of news and product to be a part of it. And the cool thing about it is, like mentioned, it's it's a global network and we have people from the biggest newsrooms across the world to all of the regional ones to, you know, even big tech. One of my fellow board members was, you know, doing news at Twitter. One was working on the Google News Initiative. So it's a really, really awesome group of people and everyone is so hungry and passionate about sharing and paying it forward.
50:23 Lenny Rachitsky? We'll put a link to this in the show notes. One last question. What kind of people are you looking for? Who should apply? They're listening.
50:29 Speaker 00 If you are interested in working in news and have a product background, or the the inverse of that, if you work in news and you're interested in breaking into product. So either side of the coin or any combination of that, news, media, product, technology, even audio, we have a lot of audience development and analytics and data science folks in there, too. It's just an amazing community for knowledge sharing in tech and news. So there will be a fit for you somewhere or to learn something, or at the very least to meet other really amazing people.
51:06 Lenny Rachitsky? Well, with that, we've reached our very exciting lightning round. I've got five questions for you. And you ready?
51:14 Speaker 00 I'm ready.
51:15 Lenny Rachitsky? All right. What are two or three books that you recommend most to other people or that you've recommended most?
51:21 Speaker 00 One, mindfulness in plain English. Two, how to win friends that influence people. I have to attribute a lot of my communication skills to my dad forcing me to read that book when I was like 10 years old.
51:36 Lenny Rachitsky? Wow, 10 years old.
51:37 Speaker 00 Yeah.
51:37 Lenny Rachitsky? Intense.
51:39 Speaker 00 He was an engineer and they were in their very beginning phases of introducing, well, at that time, there was no product, but product type stuff into his engineering practice. And so he had to read the book and was like, you need to read this book. So I never forgot about it. And then the third one is actually, it's, it's not a book, but it's an article that I think is still very powerful and relevant to this day. It's the new product development game published by Harvard Business Review in 1986. And it looks at a really different approach, one that I resonate a lot with because it's a lot along the lines of how we work at CNN around rapid development and, you know,
52:23 Speaker 00 time and flexibility being like key anchors of successful development. So I threw that in there as well.
52:29 Lenny Rachitsky? Favorite recent movie or TV show? And it can't be White Lotus.
52:32 Speaker 00 Okay. I haven't even seen that show.
52:34 Lenny Rachitsky? Okay, great. It's come up so many times. You gotta not allow it anymore.
52:38 Speaker 00 TV show is a toss up between The Mandalorian and Ted Lasso. I know it's not very new, but I don't watch tons and tons of TV and I usually find like the few that I latch on to and then I get obsessed with and then I gotta take a break for a while. So those are my last two obsessions. Movie is Everything Everywhere All at Once. Last amazing one that really, really struck a chord with me.
53:02 Lenny Rachitsky? If you like Mandalorian, check out Andor. It's incredible. It's like the best Star Wars thing. Okay, you've seen it. Okay, great. You're on it.
53:08 Speaker 00 I, I still love Mandalorian more. I do like that one too. My, my husband is obsessed.
53:14 Lenny Rachitsky? Okay. Wow. Contrarian. Favorite interview question that you like to ask candidates?
53:21 Speaker 00 What's something that would not exist without your initiative?
53:26 Lenny Rachitsky? Hmm. And what do you look for in an answer? That's a sign that this is someone you may want to hire.
53:31 Speaker 00 The whole point of the question is like, Do you have and can you exhibit high agency? And especially, again, working in news, it's so important. And so there's not like a specific answer. I think the ability to actually define something specific and tangible in itself is a really, really, really good sign. I think a lot of, you know, people definitely get startled by that, by that question sometimes because it requires you to kind of have to know what it is that you put on the table, right? So, um, yeah, it's, it's different every single time, but the fact, if they can define something out of that question, it's, it's, it's usually a positive sign.
54:15 Lenny Rachitsky? Cool. Thanks for sharing that additional detail. Next question, what's something relatively minor you've changed in your product development process at CNN or on your team specifically? That's had a tremendous impact on your ability to execute.
54:29 Speaker 00 Bridging the gap between product and editorial, that mutual trust and respect has had an outsized impact on our success as a high performing team.
54:38 Lenny Rachitsky? Sadly, not something other people can use, but that's cool to know. They'll have to hire some journalists now, I think, to take advantage of that learning.
54:46 Speaker 00 I can add on to that to make it relevant for, for others, which is, it just goes back to, you know, there's, there's no substitute for having those direct conversations with your customers and your users, right? And it's like, when you understand that the assumptions you make are not one to one, or ever going to be one to one with their actual feedback and developing that line of communication with your users and your customers is of utmost importance. I think, you know, that in itself is, is the key takeaway, right? It's like, how do you bridge the gap between collecting that feedback, having those conversations? Like, how far are you from your users? How frequently are you having conversations?
55:30 Speaker 00 How consistently are you having conversations? And I always think the more frequently and the more consistently and earlier on in the process that you're having those conversations, the better.
55:43 Lenny Rachitsky? Final question, maybe you already answered this. What's the most crazy or most memorable story from working at CNN?
55:51 Speaker 00 Every election season is absolutely crazy in the best way possible. It's incredible to see our democracy in action and watch history unfold. And while that's happening, using the platform, you had a direct hand in building. And it's never lost on me that my work impacts the world every single day. And on the crazy, frustrating, stressful days, like that is what serves as my anchor.
56:19 Lenny Rachitsky? Awesome. Pause. This was amazing. I learned how to brush my teeth more mindfully about elections, downtime, Trump, all these things. Final two questions, where can folks find you online if they want to reach out and learn more? And how can listeners be useful to you?
56:34 Speaker 00 It's very easy to find me online. I'm pretty active on Twitter and Instagram. I recently became an amateur content creator, so I share lots of stuff here and there on, on social. So any social platform, well, not any, only on Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram. So any, any of those three is, is, is good. And I always love to hear feedback on stuff that resonated and made sense. And the stuff that, you know, there were further questions on, always love having conversations around that. So yeah, DMs are always open.
57:08 Lenny Rachitsky? I know we'll link to this in the show, but just what's your handle on these networks?
57:12 Speaker 00 It's my first and last name, very creative. I thought about it all by myself.
57:16 Lenny Rachitsky? Awesome. And then I don't know if you answered the second question, how can listeners be useful to you?
57:21 Speaker 00 It's the feedback, right? Like, I love to hear what you found valuable, what has helped, what helped you? What was a tactic that you took away and employed that helped you? Things that made sense, things that didn't make sense, what you'd like to hear more about? Any, any specific topic that would be valuable to do a deeper dive on? All of those things are very valuable to me.
57:42 Lenny Rachitsky? Amazing. Again, thank you for being here and adios.
57:46 Speaker 00 Thank you.
57:49 Lenny Rachitsky? Thank you so much for listening. If you found this valuable, you can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your favorite podcast app. Also, please consider giving us a rating or leaving a review as that really helps other listeners find the podcast. You can find all past episodes or learn more about the show at lennyspodcast.com. See you in the next episode.
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