The art of influence: The single most important skill left that AI can’t replace | Jessica Fain

By Lenny's Podcast

Categories: Product, Startup, VC

Summary

Influence is the single highest-leveraged skill for product leaders that AI can't replace—yet most PMs abandon their curiosity and empathy when talking to executives. Jessica Fain reveals that executives operate in constant crisis mode with fragmented attention, requiring PMs to connect pitches to executive goals and board priorities rather than expecting recognition for great work alone.

Key Takeaways

  1. Stop assuming great work speaks for itself. Executive calendars are 'strobe lights'—they wake up with urgent crises and lack bandwidth to center your problems. You must proactively connect your pitch to their success metrics and board priorities.
  2. Build trust by deprioritizing and killing ideas, not just shipping. Showing senior leadership thinking means being the deepest domain expert in the room and wielding that expertise to say 'no' strategically.
  3. Replace pitch-mode with curiosity-mode when influencing up. Ask executives what the board is pushing them on and what they're measured against, rather than launching into your prepared narrative.
  4. Act like a Chief Product Officer, not an Individual Contributor. You get paid to be a domain expert—your job is bringing expertise to bear on executive decisions, not waiting for recognition.
  5. Recognize that some great ideas die not because they're bad, but because executives lack context, time, or alignment with board/business priorities. The PM owns the burden of influence.

Topics

Transcript Excerpt

As product managers, one of our best sets of skills is curiosity and empathy and trying to understand our users. But the moment that we're talking to an executive, we forget those skills and those talents. >> It's your fault if the leaders didn't buy into your ideas. >> People completely misunderstand how executives make decisions. What is going on in the heads? I describe an executive's calendar as a strobe light going off. You wake up at 8:00 a.m., you've already got a huge list of urgent thin...