How I Learned To Love The Product War Room (with Victoria Ku)

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Hannah Clark: Here’s a test: I want you to think about two scenarios from your real recent experience. For scenario one, think about the last time you were handed a significant goal—maybe a target to hit or a really aggressive deadline, but something that left you no choice but to develop a detailed plan. Okay, that’s scenario one. Now here’s scenario two: think about the last time something at work, metaphorically, caught on fire. Specifically, a time when your team needed to respond urgently and you had to jump in. Now, I want you to think of how both of these scenarios made you feel and just hold on to that for a second.

There is a point to this exercise by the way. And my guest today, Victoria Ku, Highnote’s Head of Product & Design, will make it in a moment. But before her time at Highnote, Victoria spent eight years at Airbnb, so she has been at the table of a lot of product war rooms. What she’s discovered is that there are two main camps of people in those rooms, and while both are critical for every organization, one camp tends to get a lot more shine than the other. So think about those scenarios because you’re about to find out which camp you are in and how that might impact the course of your entire career. Let’s jump in.

Welcome back to The CPO Club podcast. Victoria, thank you so much for joining us.

Victoria Ku: I’m so excited to be here.

Hannah Clark: Can you tell us a little bit about your background and how you arrived at where you are today at Highnote?

Victoria Ku: I arrived several, so it’s more than a decade at this point, in San Francisco, seeing that the Silicon Valley startup scene was really becoming a thing. And at that time I had just quit my financial analyst banking job. So I started a health tech startup that really wasn’t that successful, and I joined Airbnb for about eight years building a ton of products.

So business travel, vacation rentals, co-hosting, which became alive and then defunct and alive again in several of those years. Magical Trips was probably my biggest launch. But then I spent six years scaling the payments or as a product manager, handling global pay ins and pay outs. Before taking this opportunity with Highnote where I am today on the processor side and leading the product and design team there.

Hannah Clark: This episode today has a really interesting topic to me because often when we think about product teams, we’re thinking about the function and the job title of each individual contributor. But today we’re diving in a little bit more into the ways that people operate and how that connects to strategy and planning and execution, even crisis management.

So to start us off, what are we talking about when we refer to the product war room?

Victoria Ku: Yes, so the product war room oftentimes conjures up images of like a fishbowl like room where everyone’s heads down in that room and there’s probably whiteboards everywhere. Really what it is, is an aligned strategic group of multi talents, but all specialists in their fields together achieving one goal, and usually that’s a pretty significant launch. It’s all of these specialists coming together to execute a successful launch, to get a product out the door, to get the marketing out the door, and really for that full end to end product foray into the world.

Hannah Clark: When we talk about the different talents in the war room, what are some of the different working styles that you observed in the war rooms that you’ve been in and kind of what are the significance of each of them?

Victoria Ku: The part that I’ve recognized in the war room in my years in tech is that these are specialists typically, the ones that thrive under pressure are typically what I call the SWAT team.

And this is like after the major planning and those that are planners, I like to call the Pentagon, right? And that’s usually ahead of the actual execution. But it’s like once things are super clear, once the deadlines are unmovable, once the marketing has been planned and the press has been already notified of a schedule, now it’s go time.

And so these are the SWAT team members who are really great under pressure. When something comes up, when there needs to be a pivot in information or execution or tactical execution, these are the people that are able to take their experience and they’re usually really cool under pressure. They’re able to take information and think about how all the avenues of change that will occur and move forward very succinctly and decisively on a path forward on behalf of their teams.

And so they can be executors, but they are also leaders in their own right, because they’re able to think so coolly and decisively under pressure. That’s a very different skill in today’s world. We’ve all kind of heard of like leaders who’ve lost their cool a bit, you know, but these are people who know their job and they know what they need to do and they also like lead their teams, whether they are officially titled as such or not, they lead their teams because there are people who know that they can execute them through a storm.

Hannah Clark: It’s interesting to kind of think about people in terms of like psychographic profiles.

So I’m curious, are there any anecdotes that you can pull from your past in which the value of these types of thinkers was made abundantly clear?

Victoria Ku: And both at Hino and at Airbnb, like we’ve had pretty major launches.

Airbnb launches are pretty legendary, so I can go with that. But like in the Magical Trips launches, working with a team of people who represent CX, data science, obviously the design product and engineering nucleuses, basically these are people who they were fabulous at their jobs and they were specialists.

They knew exactly what to do, even when it came to the wee hours when everyone was tired and had to pivot. But like, there were multiple instances in which I noticed that these individuals thrived under their pressure. So like, yes, of course, everyone can be tired, but the thing is the energy generation, the invigoration of working together with like minded and really talented individuals kind of fueled the creativity of the war room.

And so I find that these individuals really thrive because of all that I said, the creativity that was driven from working with everyone who knew exactly what to do, knew the timeline was immovable, and focused on getting everything shipped and out the door through their own expertise.

Hannah Clark: So you’ve hinted in the past that there’s a bit of an unfair narrative around strategists as being more valuable than reactors. So why do you think that is and what do you see as kind of the flaw in that mindset?

Victoria Ku: So I think that today’s performance review cycle really takes into account strategy, right? Like leaders are considered strategists. They set the direction. They set the vision. But I think that part of what is unfortunate is that the performance review cycle doesn’t always account for those that are executing who also are leaders, but their main skill set is, as I said, in the SWAT team analogy, is getting things through the door.

And so, yes, you have to have good planning, yes, you have to have good visionary leadership and clarity and communication and helping to corral all team members knowing where they’re supposed to move forward. But the performance review cycle forgets that the people actually doing the work are also the ones who are incredibly valuable.

And that’s the part that, that I do find to be missing in today’s modern performance review cycle. So as an example, you do find that these SWAT team members who executed nearly flawlessly in these launches, oftentimes will start slowly pivoting and trying to get into a more strategic role. And oftentimes those strategic roles can be taken up because again, like that’s where the performance review cycle incentivizes you.

But not everybody thrives under like a strategic or visionary sort of environment, like they might actually thrive in a better environment where they are leading with their expertise, like at the tip of their chair, right? Like leading people through a storm and that there is leadership that is needed in these environments that the performance review cycle doesn’t really account for.

Hannah Clark: Yeah. This kind of calls to mind, like this idea of managerial skillset versus the individual contributor skillset. And they’re not the same thing, right? And we tend to reward one over the other in spite of the fact that we need both equally.

Victoria Ku: Yeah, great managers often are also great executors. They have that purview. They have the communication skill set, but it’s not always the case, right? Oftentimes you have people who are really great communicators, but haven’t ever truly executed at the level of really great, you know, operators, SWAT team members. And so that gap can be really jarring for someone who is an executor, right?

Like they’re kind of like, I have to tell you everything, like what it takes to be successful. Well, why do I need to tell you this? I know this, right? You should know this too. So that’s some real talk right there.

Hannah Clark: I’m glad that we got into some real talk.

I’m gonna have to put you on the spot just a little bit because I know that you’re kind of, you’ve got a bit of critique around the performance review cycle as it is right now. I’m curious, if you had your druthers, how would you change it so that it was more reflective of the kind of balance that’s required in a company in order to thrive?

Victoria Ku: I think similar to what Google has done with the managerial track and the high principle individual contributor track, I think similarly, there should be the in this matrix of performance reviews, there should be tracks for the type of work that you do.

So one could be strategic and visionary, in which case that would be the matrix of like what it takes to succeed in that sort of environment. But the other one is also execution, you should be able to be measured on whether or not you’re in the SWAT team, like executing track, and what success looks like that way.

Because oftentimes, if you conflate the two, which is what happens today, you’ll find that in some positions you are not able to move the needle on whatever you’re being measured on. You’re being measured, performance review cycle wise, on an environment that you lack control over. In other environments, you seemingly got lucky, right?

You seemingly had control over this environment, but maybe you really didn’t in the reality of scene. In which case, that’s a much better environment to be in. But we’re kind of failing people who are actually incredibly skilled and are able to move like metrics when push comes to shove by not comparing them to the right matrix for their skill set and their environment.

Hannah Clark: So what are some of the questions that leaders can ask themselves to evaluate if they’re placing the right people in the right places?

Victoria Ku: My opinion is that it really comes down to energy management, right? People lean into where they derive energy and that’s usually where they are happiest. Some people, like I said, they are SWAT team people, right?

They like to go in, they like to do the job, they like to execute. And then once that intensity is over, they need a little bit of a break where they gather their learnings and maybe go and inject those learnings back into the process. Right? And that’s the cycle over and over. And then some other people are great strategists, right?

And the thing is like, you don’t really see them that often. They’re sitting in a corner, maybe they have their headphones on, they’re thinking about the entire end to end cycle and what it takes to be successful. But maybe they don’t have the platform to communicate that really great strategy. I think it’s like really understanding where people derive their energy and also making sure that they have the ability to communicate where it is that they best see themselves regardless of the compensation or the performance review cycle.

I think that the performance review framework unfortunately does kind of muck up these sort of areas and incentives. But I think that if we take that performance review cycle out and just ask people, where do you derive energy? Where do you see yourself performing the best, just absent of all the influential forces?

How do I provide that for you, right? I think people can give you a pretty solid answer. I mean, we’re all adults working. I’m fairly certain people can give you a solid answer.

Hannah Clark: I tend to agree. I think that people generally have an idea what really lights the fire under them. But on that note, I’m thinking also about there’s natural cycles of energy and productivity in terms of kind of like you said, like some folks, they go really hard and then they need a break. Some folks work on a bit of a steady pace, but I think that there’s always some element of ebb and flow when it comes to the amount of energy that we have at any given moment to.

And I’m curious as a leader, do you have any strategies or does it come to mind managing kind of that natural flow of productivity, especially when you’re working with really tight timelines. Like how do you factor that into a leadership approach?

Victoria Ku: Yeah, I would say that it starts just from the day to day. Even I employ something called calendar defense, where I know my most productive hours are in the morning, right? So I try to save those hours for like the most important decision making and I block it off on my calendar.

I also block off when a full day is just meetings, back to back, half an hour meetings, and I know that I’m going to be drained by the time 3pm comes around. So I block off after 3pm and say, like, do not schedule. I will not show up to your meeting unless you ask me, right, because you’ve been warned this block of time I need to get work done.

And so from the day to day element, right, if you build that discipline, you’re essentially managing the energy flow for yourself. And as a leader, your directs see that. If you are working on this on yourself, your directs also have permission to do that for themselves. Now, not every single day is going to be perfect.

But I do firmly believe in servant leadership, that like, you are the role model, and if you are practicing what you’re preaching, right, people will follow, especially when they see that it is effective. The gap is when you preach something, but you don’t necessarily practice it, then people get confused.

But just even from the day to day, that’s how I would start from a energy versus time management. And that slowly builds up that muscle, especially during really high intensity times for project management.

Hannah Clark: I love that answer. Yeah, I think that’s so important to kind of be point guard and yeah, it’s so true. We all kind of lead it by example when we’re working with teams.

So on the topic of leadership, how can leaders better empower both of their Pentagon and SWAT team members to contribute to the best of their abilities?

Victoria Ku: There’s a twofold answer to that. One is really setting the environment up for success, depending on who you have, right?

Like if the person is more aligned to be Pentagon versus SWAT team, you set up that environment for them. And I’ll go through a little bit more of what that means, but also the same for SWAT team. For SWAT team it’s easier, like selecting the people who are best work under pressure during like really intense spurts of time and giving them the ability to de-stress afterwards and inject their learnings back into the process.

For those who are a little bit more on the strategic side, right? It’s really setting up that environment for them. But also what I mean by that is making sure that if the project is more needed to be strategic and more needed to be on the presentation side and more needing clarity from the get go, really assigning them to that environment so that they can showcase their skillset in the best light possible.

It’s also like making sure that each of these individuals have coverage from leadership. If leadership is expecting you to deliver something like to execute, you’re expecting to deliver kind of a strategy and vision, then there’s gonna be a bit of a gap there. And I think like good managers are really consistent about communicating and clarifying what each of these paths and the expectations of success and each of these paths are to those in the C-suite, for example.

Hannah Clark: Where would you place yourself? Are you a Pentagon or are you a SWAT team?

Victoria Ku: When I think about my day to day, I definitely see myself as more of the SWAT team. Like, I also feel the responsibility now that I’ve done it so many times, like, now that I’ve learned to love the war room and I derive energy from it, to also showcase to other people what a really delightful war room experience could be.

So in that sense, I find myself moving up funnel a bit into the more strategic side. So in those cases, I hope that I’m doing right by my fellow war room warriors and hoping that I’m playing both the role of strategic advisor, but also SWAT team leader hoping to like unblock all the nebulous and ambiguity areas and turning them into like clear direction and getting all of us to successful launches.

Hannah Clark: For sure, yeah, I think that once you reach that level of maturity as a leader, you really have to empathize with both sides of the coin, so.

Victoria Ku: Definitely do, and I think that there’s a responsibility of those who have, like, executed so often in the war room to bring themselves that funnel and to share their learnings and also to improve that process.

It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but it is a known, it is a known scenario that we all have to go through in product management and in tech.

Hannah Clark: Absolutely. Well, Victoria, this has been really intriguing and I really love this topic. Thank you so much for joining us. Where can folks follow you online?

Victoria Ku: You can find me on LinkedIn.

Hannah Clark: Well, thanks so much for being here and we really appreciate your insights today.

Victoria Ku: Thanks, Hannah.

Hannah Clark: Thanks for listening in. For more great insights, how-to guides and tool reviews, subscribe to our newsletter at theproductmanager.com/subscribe. You can hear more conversations like this by subscribing to The CPO Club wherever you get your podcasts.