Diana Alt [00:00:04]:
Hey, Diana Alt here. And this is Work Should Feel Good, the podcast where your career growth meets your real life. Each week I share stories, strategies and mindset shifts to help you build a work life that works for you on your terms. Okay. Good morning and welcome to Where Should Feel Good, the show where your career growth meets your real life. I'm your host Diana Alt and today my Guest Linda Oishi, Ph.D. and I are going to dig into how the idea of taking charge of your career in your life isn't just something that sounds good as a quote on Instagram, it's something we should all strive for. Lindsay is a Stanford trained expert in adult learning, recognized innovation catalyst at Intuit, and a former design thinking researcher at the Stanford School of Design.

Diana Alt [00:01:00]:
Her doctoral dissertation influenced core concepts for the New York Times best selling book Designing youg How to Build a well Lived Joyful Life. Today, Lindsay is a senior Product manager at Indeed focused on product discovery and teaches a course at Stanford on breaking into product management. She's also a product advisory consultant and a coach who helps people from non technical backgrounds break into product. Welcome to the show, Lindsay.

Lindsay Oishi [00:01:29]:
Thank you so much, Diana. I've really been looking forward to this and I appreciate you inviting me.

Diana Alt [00:01:34]:
Oh, I was so excited whenever I ran across the person that mentioned you in the Women in Product group on Facebook. Yay Internet. And Facebook isn't dead, even though people want to say it because your friend connected us because of a random conversation there. So yeah, it was a really great thing. And I love the book Designing youg Life that you helped with researching. So I was excited to be able to talk about that. But you've done a ton of stuff since then, so we won't only talk about the book today. So I want to kick off with a question that is related to that and to the fact that you're trying to coach people to better career.

Diana Alt [00:02:16]:
And that is why do you think so many people just aren't very intentional about their careers?

Lindsay Oishi [00:02:23]:
Oh, that's a great question. I actually think it kind of folds into the larger question of why are people not intentional in general? And I think, right, it's like one, there's a lot of reasons. I think a lot of them are emotional and they also have to do with how humans think. So even though a lot of us think about the future, a ton of thinking about the future is actually hard. And it's scary because as soon as you start thinking about the future, you think, well, where does the future end? It ends in my death. I mean Sorry, I went straight there.

Diana Alt [00:02:58]:
Ah, here we are. We're being asked. Honestly, like, I sometimes tell people that, like, I've been coaching for a long time. I coached before I knew coaching was a thing for free, like, just helping my friends. And then I started doing it on the side. Now it is my business, is what it is, and I hope to grow it more. But when people ask me about that, I say, well, I consider it existential. Like, I consider finding a great way to spend your work life existential because it has so much bearing on the rest of your life.

Diana Alt [00:03:32]:
And I was widowed at 34. My husband was 40, and he and I both were in crap jobs at the time that he got sick and passed. So something that I'd already been doing because I'd already been coaching people some, that was still in my free days. I really love doing it, but I was like, oh, my gosh, like, that job that he had was awful. And that was the last job he ever got to do.

Lindsay Oishi [00:04:00]:
Wow.

Diana Alt [00:04:01]:
Right? So now we're morbid together. That's great.

Lindsay Oishi [00:04:04]:
Yeah. No, I always go straight to that. I've been known to be very focused on that. But I actually think it's a really, really powerful thing to focus on entirety of your life, knowing that it will end in death and thinking about what will make that life as rich, as vibrant, as true to what to be as possible. Knowing you don't know when it's going to end.

Diana Alt [00:04:22]:
Yes.

Lindsay Oishi [00:04:24]:
So if I pull that back to a little less giant philosophy concept to your original question, why are people less intentional about careers or lives? It's fear. Fear of what's eventually going to happen. And then also I think fear of making mistakes along the way, so that when you come to the end of your life, you're filled with regret. Like, I feel like so many people are terrified of being full of regret. And you would think, well, wouldn't that make them more intentional? It's like, no, because when people feel fear, they avoid. And so by making those decisions, they avoid the fear that they made mistakes and they just kind of go along with the flow and then hope that things will work out.

Diana Alt [00:05:05]:
Yeah, hope never drove a career.

Lindsay Oishi [00:05:07]:
Yeah, it's true.

Diana Alt [00:05:09]:
But I think also there's. I think there's a happy medium. Like, before we jumped on the call or jumped hit record, rather, we were talking about, like, being professional or formal versus informal and all that kind of stuff. Because you and I met recently but don't know each other that well yet. And I think that a lot of people Feel like having an intentional career is the same as being buttoned up all the time.

Lindsay Oishi [00:05:37]:
That's true.

Diana Alt [00:05:37]:
I have to be professional. And we have weird ideas of what professional is anyway. Maybe we'll get to talking about that, maybe we won't. But we just have all these weird ideas about what is the role of work in life, our status related to work. Like all that stuff goes into everything you said too. So you, you do, you do a lot of cool stuff.

Lindsay Oishi [00:06:05]:
Thank you.

Diana Alt [00:06:06]:
Researched in adult education. You did the research for designing your life. You've worked in product management for umpteen years. What do you feel like have been your most intentional move, like your most intentional move in your career and your most like accidental or unintentional move in your career?

Lindsay Oishi [00:06:29]:
I love that. Well, you know, you said it's okay to get personal. And I do think that career is so interwoven with life and the other parts of your life. I think a pivotal and intentional moment in my career was when I decided to turn down an opportunity I had dreamed of for years. I worked really hard to get, and I turned it down for love. So what actually happened was when I was just finishing one of my jobs, I was looking at to pivoting into an international development space, that was one of my dreams, was to do kind of non profit and international work. I'd always wanted that. It was like part of my original life plan back in college and I was offered actually a Clinton fellowship to do that type of work in India.

Lindsay Oishi [00:07:22]:
I had just met and started dating my now husband and I would have been gone for a year or more. And he was like, don't you think that this deserves a chance? And I said, you know what? Between this dream and the dream that I have of a lifelong partner, I'm gonna choose that. And I, I don't regret it, but it was a hard decision. I'm really happy it worked out.

Diana Alt [00:07:48]:
I love that story so much because I think people like going back to the fear thing. First off, I'm glad you have your husband and your lifelong partnership and all of that stuff. Like I'm on team marriage even if I haven't ever remarried since my husband passed. But I think that so many people are afraid that if they give up an opportunity, there's never going to be anything good to replace it. And I'm sure you would have had a great time in India, but that would have been a great time in India for a year instead of however many years you've been married so far.

Lindsay Oishi [00:08:27]:
Exactly. And a whole Lot of other things that happened afterwards in terms of my career and you know, what we've done together. We actually ended up getting to go to India together later. Nice own adventure and disaster. But yes, exactly to your point, that wasn't the last chance I had to do something like the adventure that I wanted. It wasn't the original adventure that I thought I was going to have. But we did eventually go.

Diana Alt [00:08:51]:
I love that. I've never been to India and I've always wanted to go.

Lindsay Oishi [00:08:55]:
Oh yeah, it's an incredible.

Diana Alt [00:08:58]:
Where did you spend time in India?

Lindsay Oishi [00:09:00]:
A couple of different places. So I've been on a couple of trips for work and then with my husband, which was also actually for work. Spent time in Delhi about eight weeks. Spent time in Chennai a couple months and spent time in Bangalore. So three different metro areas which were all fantastic life experiences that I'm so glad I had in my 20s. Don't know if I can do it now, I'll be honest.

Diana Alt [00:09:22]:
Yeah, I worked for several years with a team. We had a basically like a flex force contracting force at one of the companies I work for and they were out of Bangalore. And so I was always sad because I never got to go there. Was they were all sending everybody else except for, you know, me because I was a Scrum master in that program for a while and then I became product manager in that program and like why they don't think it's valuable for the product manager to go meet the developers, I'll never understand. But I guess I don't work there for a reason, so. But I wanted to go. And it's funny because I still have like a level of friendship, collegiate, like not BFFs, but like collegiality with people that I worked with that I never saw their faces because company before thing just. I love all the people that I've worked with from India over my career.

Diana Alt [00:10:25]:
Something special culture. So what did you have any moves that were kind of like accidental or a little bit impulsive or. No.

Lindsay Oishi [00:10:37]:
Impulsive? Well, I would say maybe. Yes, I did.

Diana Alt [00:10:41]:
Drifting is another way I'm looking.

Lindsay Oishi [00:10:45]:
Maybe the feeling that goes with it is a little more desperation. And so I couldn't be as careful and intentional and thoughtful. So after my first job, which was for a small English language learning called Global English, they don't exist anymore, but they, you know, their products still exist in the world. Anyway. I was laid off from that job after four years and it was pretty devastating. I loved that job. I loved the people. And I had student loan debt at the time.

Lindsay Oishi [00:11:12]:
And so I was like, I have to get another job. And so the impulsiveness, I think was like the very first job that I got an offer within two weeks, I just took it. Okay. And I, maybe I didn't do justice to myself that I could have gotten more offers. I didn't have the confidence that I might spend a little longer and get a job that was a better fit. Again, don't regret taking that job. I learned a lot and it had definitely helped in my career in many ways. But I definitely just took it because I was like, I need a job.

Lindsay Oishi [00:11:43]:
This is job. I'm going to take this job.

Diana Alt [00:11:44]:
How'd that work out?

Lindsay Oishi [00:11:46]:
Well, that's the thing. It didn't work out super well. Like I said, I don't regret it because I learned stuff and I made some great connections. But I left after nine months. And the main reason for that is that I was a product manager without an engineering team. And so basically useless. Thank you, engineers in the world. We do need you.

Lindsay Oishi [00:12:08]:
And so I had been told when I it's kind of like a dating red flag. Like now I know that's a red flag in a product team. They said, oh, we're going to give you a team, but you don't have one yet. And then that team never materialized. So. So I was not set up for success. I really couldn't accomplish much without a team.

Diana Alt [00:12:26]:
You gotta find a product if you want to build the. Yeah, gross. Glad you moved on from that quickly.

Lindsay Oishi [00:12:35]:
Well, when you say that, because I think right after that I did another impulsive move which was like, I was like, oh, I'm really unhappy, I should just leave. And I've often reflected on that because at the time I had a really great, empathetic, wise manager and I didn't realize that I could have just talked to him and said, hey, I'm really unhappy. What can we do about this? I'd like to stay, but I need xyz. But I thought my only option was walking out the door. So that's what I did. And that is something that I wish I had approached differently.

Diana Alt [00:13:09]:
I appreciate you saying that because one of the things, I work with a lot of people who have been managers and executives in tech and I work with a lot of like high value senior individual contributors, like senior and principal PMs and engineers and stuff like that. But all the people that I work with that are people managers, one of the reasons they're doing it is because they have a drive to help people shape their careers and the people that come to me. I don't know if this is, you know, I don't, I don't do data research like PhDs do. But my anecdote, as it were, over the course of a decade of coaching is that these people care about developing people and they don't even mind if they're developing people on their agenda instead of the company agenda. But at the same time, I'm experiencing this with the leaders that I've coached and some leaders that I've worked for hear all these messages of you should never trust your boss. You can't trust people at work. Never let on that you're unhappy. Just go find something different.

Diana Alt [00:14:20]:
Part of the reason I started leaning harder into career coaching and made it into what it is today is that I live in the Kansas City area and around now, like 2012, like that kind of 2012, 2014, that range of time, it was anybody's market for like getting a job as a software engineer in particular.

Lindsay Oishi [00:14:47]:
Yeah.

Diana Alt [00:14:48]:
The time when I was in product and right before that I had been in QA leading software QA testing teams. You could jump, you could wake up Monday morning, decide you want an offer, have a contract making at least 10% more total comp by Friday. And if you want it full time, you just needed like two or three more weeks because of the cycle of interviews. I watched so many people run away from bad without thinking of what's good and never talking to anybody about what issues they had. It was because a lot of the people didn't have the same social skills or the same networking skills that maybe you and I have learned as project managers, product managers, those types of roles where we're always up in somebody's business. So they just. Where you and I might make the mistake like once or twice, they might make the mistake more times. It was hard to watch.

Diana Alt [00:15:51]:
So I'm glad you talked about that. Let's do hit on. Let's do hit on designing your life for a minute. So you did some research that was around using design thinking to enhance career development Agency.

Lindsay Oishi [00:16:10]:
Yes.

Diana Alt [00:16:11]:
For emerging adults, I think was the term. Can you tell us a little bit about the first thing I think people need to understand? Because I think this is a term people throw around a lot and they don't really understand. What on earth. Give me a little primer on design thinking for the people listening.

Lindsay Oishi [00:16:30]:
Yes. I'm glad you started with that because it has been a hot term in Silicon Valley and without. And there are many different interpretations. So I'm glad you started there. I would say at the most basic level, design thinking is a problem solving methodology. That is a framework you can use particularly for problems that either don't already have a known best practice solution or things that are wicked or complicated human problems. Those two things often go together. Human problems often don't have a known solution.

Lindsay Oishi [00:17:00]:
Like if you want to know how to, I don't know, thinking of a good example, like groom a cat. There are probably tons of known solutions for that. You don't need design on YouTube. You can find on YouTube. Right? You don't need help. But if it's something. If you want to teach a cat to speak, no one has done that. That's something.

Lindsay Oishi [00:17:18]:
There's no known solution. You could use design thinking to approach that problem. And what's really interesting is you can use it to approach a problem like that where you're like, well, that's a silly problem that will never happen. And you might end up with something that never even is about teaching a cat to speak. But you discover the underlying human problem, which is our desire to connect emotionally with our pets, and then you come up with a solution that solves that. I'm sorry, what?

Diana Alt [00:17:46]:
I just got the chills.

Lindsay Oishi [00:17:48]:
Yeah. Oh.

Diana Alt [00:17:49]:
Because I particularly care about cats. I don't have any pets, but because I am so into what is the problem at a deeper level and I never. I'm not educated in design thinking. Like I've read some stuff read in the Harvard Business Review, read the design your life book, similar things like that. I've never, you know, applied it in a disciplined way because honestly, the companies I worked at, they mature enough to apply design thinking to. I probably would have liked working there better, especially when in ed tech, if they had been. But it's just not something everybody gets to use every day. But whatever helps get to root cause problem and start working on that I'm here for.

Lindsay Oishi [00:18:39]:
That's awesome. And I might say that again, we don't know each other super well, but I bet you are using some aspects of design thinking. I'm sure of it because most creative people are and I can creative person. And if you think of it as instead of seeing it as like a methodology where it's like step one, step two, step three, step four, you have to do it just like this. You think of it more as like a set of attitudes and a toolkit and this set of attitudes.

Diana Alt [00:19:07]:
That resonates. That resonates. So what are some of the attitudes associated with design thinking then?

Lindsay Oishi [00:19:14]:
So we touched on one which is kind of like an openness to reframing the problem. So not being hyper focused on. We defined this problem, this is the problem we have to solve, but reframing. So an attitude of like, let me think broader, see the bigger picture, see the real problems and select among those another. There are many. There are like 10 original ones. If you read my dissertation from IDO, which was credited with these original principles, I won't say all of them, probably couldn't remember all of them. But the ones that have been really impactful for my life.

Lindsay Oishi [00:19:45]:
Another example is like bias to action. So rather than think and plan and talk about and discuss and agonize, my motto is like just pick something and.

Diana Alt [00:19:56]:
Do has taken me a long time. I have a stash behind me that says Ms. Overthinker.

Lindsay Oishi [00:20:03]:
Oh, I just saw that.

Diana Alt [00:20:04]:
Yeah, a coach of mine that was trying to help me with bias to action. I started working with him right after I left corporate. So I went from like enterprise, all the things that we have to do for these multi million dollar product investments into my own little business. And he got me that like about a year or so after I met him. And I love it. I love having it up because it's my reminder. It's my reminder to myself to try to like get a move on, which I largely do. I do a lot of deconstructing, like to the point where you would be like the one point agile user story on the Scrum team.

Diana Alt [00:20:50]:
I try to make things really small. I try to get things really tiny when. Not all the time, but whenever I'm having trouble with momentum. It's a really effective thing for me to say I can just do this one thing. Just this one. Right now I'm doing the exercise where you've gone through and found all the freaking subscriptions and figured out, oh my gosh, I'm not doing these. And when I looked at them I was like, it's going to take me forever to cancel this stuff because some of them I have to figure out. I have a duplicate Hulu account.

Diana Alt [00:21:23]:
I have no idea how that's interesting.

Lindsay Oishi [00:21:26]:
Can I use it?

Diana Alt [00:21:29]:
I can figure it out. Sure. Or I'm just going to cancel that one actually. But I kept looking at it as like I have to sit down for a whole afternoon and cancel all this. I'm like, look that I have 15 minutes and I can cancel something. So that's helped me in quiet because I juggle. I feel like my work is kind of like product management still and kind of not like product management still in that I. It's cross functional because I'm on all the functions.

Diana Alt [00:22:02]:
When we're in product management, it's cross functional because we interface with all the functions. But still. Yeah. And that can help me pull out of chaos in my mind is good.

Lindsay Oishi [00:22:12]:
So that makes sense. Well, it's interesting you said that because I think there's an intersection with design thinking as well, which is like in product management, you're thinking about yourself here and your business as your product. It's not like, I don't know, like this rubber ducky, which is also a.

Diana Alt [00:22:29]:
Product.

Lindsay Oishi [00:22:32]:
There, but yourself, your business. Oh my gosh, that's so cute.

Diana Alt [00:22:37]:
Anymore. I have a lot of cool stuff.

Lindsay Oishi [00:22:38]:
On my desk and you're doing iteration on yourself and your business and so ultimately you're using design thinking for your career and that intersects with your product management skills as well. So I just think there's a ton of overlap in how you're thinking about those things.

Diana Alt [00:22:56]:
Now I'm going to be going through your dissertation more.

Lindsay Oishi [00:22:59]:
Well, yeah, because if you're not doing.

Diana Alt [00:23:01]:
More than I realize. But also I think there's some things I can pull out for my clients. Like this is gonna be. I read the book Designing your life and I liked it. But like I have my own things that work too. But I think I can get back and revisit some of these principles for sure.

Lindsay Oishi [00:23:20]:
Well, that's why I said it's a toolkit as well, because it's not an exclusionary toolkit. You know, Stanford has design thinking tools. IDEO has design thinking tools. When I worked at Intuit, they have design thinking tools. And none of them are going to say, oh, these, their tools aren't good. They're all in the same family.

Diana Alt [00:23:39]:
Yeah.

Lindsay Oishi [00:23:39]:
And so your toolkit the better.

Diana Alt [00:23:41]:
Yeah, I. What are you familiar with CliftonStrengths? Have you ever. Okay, what are your top.

Lindsay Oishi [00:23:50]:
Tell me. Oh, I just claim to be familiar, but I know of a leader.

Diana Alt [00:23:58]:
My top one. If you want to pull it up, we'll talk. We'll nerd out about this. We've done that on a lot of shows. My top are Input Learner and Intellection 3 and then Maximizer and Connectedness. But those top three mean I could just sit and like read and think about stuff all day and be perfectly happy. So it is. That's part of the reason why breaking things down so small works for me because anything that can pull me out of that because you could leave me in my house for a solid week Reading books and like, watching documentaries and I would probably be fine.

Diana Alt [00:24:39]:
And then I would, you know, want to talk to somebody about the cool book that I read. So hopefully I find a nerd that likes the same books as me.

Lindsay Oishi [00:24:47]:
That does sound like a great vision for a week. I think I would get a little bored, but that's why.

Diana Alt [00:24:54]:
I mean, I think I would. I'm about to find out how bored I get with not that much to do because I'm going to be having surgery in a few weeks and I have to be off work for six to eight weeks.

Lindsay Oishi [00:25:06]:
So I really wish that that goes really smoothly and well for you.

Diana Alt [00:25:11]:
I do too. I need it. It's like things when your endocrine system's messed up, then it messes up your energy. And I'm too brilliant to not have more energy. Okay, so basically, design thinking helps to solve complex problems with unknown solutions, especially with humans. It's a set of principles. What did you give me a little. Give us a little summary of what you researched and what you found that helped inform the book.

Lindsay Oishi [00:25:49]:
Sure. So my PhD was in education and I was specifically focusing on adult learning. You mentioned emerging adulthood. That's defined as 18 to 13. So what I was researching was the outcomes of a class at Stanford called Designing your Life. That class and its curriculum is what became the book. To be clear, I didn't write the book or anything like that, but what I did as an education PhD student was I evaluated that class's outcomes because people were leaving and saying, oh, that was so great and wow, I feel so much more confident everyone should take this class and that's awesome, but they want a little more. Right.

Lindsay Oishi [00:26:25]:
Especially an institution like Stanford. They want to know what are the actual outcomes and should we continue to fund and expand this program. And so that was what I worked with the course creators on is this research. And so we looked at a class that was going through the Design youn Life program. And then we did, of course, experimental. We compared it with two different control groups. And then we saw that at the end of the class there were differences between the class group and the control groups. What was really interesting, I thought, of course, it's my dissertation.

Lindsay Oishi [00:26:59]:
So I thought it was interesting, is that what didn't change was how certain they were of their career. Because a lot of the career decision making research previously had focused on helping people make a decision. But in the modern world, you don't make a decision. You make decisions every year, every two years, every five years, you reinvent yourself. These groups they didn't differ in. They didn't leave the class going. Now I know I want to be a doctor.

Diana Alt [00:27:25]:
Right?

Lindsay Oishi [00:27:25]:
They left the class going. I feel more confident that even if I don't know what I want to do after college, that I'm going to be okay. I have the skills to experiment with my career. I have the emotional resilience to handle the challenges. And critically, I'm not as susceptible to believing what we call these career myths or dysfunctional beliefs, which are things like, by the time I'm 25, I should really have it all figured out, or everyone else has a passion. I should have a passion, too. And those kind of deleterious beliefs and dysfunctional beliefs are the types of beliefs that people in the class were less likely to subscribe to than the people who weren't in the class. And so those are kind of our findings.

Lindsay Oishi [00:28:14]:
And that was what was reported in the book as well.

Diana Alt [00:28:17]:
I love that so much. And that's why we're here. Because when I saw someone say in the group, I know this gal that did this research in this book, I was like, I must meet her. I think it's really important because I have said for many years, like, I've been laid off three times in my career.

Lindsay Oishi [00:28:38]:
Wow.

Diana Alt [00:28:39]:
So I started my career. I graduated with my master's degree in December of 1990. I actually had commencement the day that Bill Clinton was impeached. I'll never forget that. And I was standing underneath. I was standing underneath the gym, like, we're all lined up to go in the gym for commencement next to John Ashcroft's son, Jay, because he and I were in the same program the day that Bill Clinton got impeached. And we're like, watching this on television, and everyone's like, oh, I'm so sorry that your dad couldn't come, because his dad was in the Senate. And he's like, my dad's in the Senate, like, not the House.

Diana Alt [00:29:21]:
He's here. It was really one of those moments that sticks in your brain. But rabbit trail aside, I was starting in it like, 18 to 24 months before the dot com bubble burst, consulting. I went into, like, the IT consulting realm, focused on a little bit of everything. And I got trained as a baby consultant in my first job, which was fun and it's informed everything I've done since. But I got laid off from there quickly. Found a job through my network, which I actually liked. But then six months later, that job went away.

Diana Alt [00:30:03]:
And so I learned very early and very abruptly that there's no such thing as job security, which is a weird thing for me to learn because my parents both worked in higher education and at the community college level. They were at the same place for decades. You know, I don't think my dad ever had to fill out a job application in his whole career because he always just knew people. And that was an environment where we grew up thinking about job security. So I learned by the age of 26 or 27, that's a fiction. Now I preach marketability or career longevity or career security. Those are some of the terms I use. And the resilience to figure out what are, where's, where things go.

Diana Alt [00:30:52]:
Where do my interests lie, experience lie, what's adjacent to that, that I can stay marketable. How can I use these things in something more interesting? That's how I help people figure out how to be happier at work.

Lindsay Oishi [00:31:08]:
That's awesome.

Diana Alt [00:31:09]:
Yeah. I actually made a four pillar framework that has no data because I'm not a PhD. It's anecdotal. Someday I should actually study it because I have high confidence in it. But I developed four pillars. Right work, right years, right environment, and right culture. And if you get most of the things pretty close to your ideal, you're gonna have a heck of a lot better time at work. So I really enjoy that.

Diana Alt [00:31:40]:
I actually have a little training that's called is it time to walk?

Lindsay Oishi [00:31:47]:
Like, leave your job walk?

Diana Alt [00:31:48]:
Yeah, walk away from your job. I'll put that little, I'm gonna put that web, that little website up because I have a mini training people can grab if they want, but I walk through what that is, so I'll make sure that you have access to that.

Lindsay Oishi [00:32:01]:
Very curious about that because people ask me that question all the time. I think every, you know, in tech now, everybody's asking themselves that question every day. They're like, oh, is it time?

Diana Alt [00:32:11]:
This training goes through, like, a couple of different, like, questions and my takes on it from each of those pillars. So. But the thing is, like, what's so surprising is when I sit and talk to people and I say, a lot of people will say everything is great at my job except my pay.

Lindsay Oishi [00:32:31]:
Interesting.

Diana Alt [00:32:32]:
That does happen sometimes. But when I dig further, what I find out a lot of times is, number one, that's not true, or number two, like, pay comes into a couple of different areas. So, right, work briefly is about, are you doing work that you enjoy, Joy? Are you minimizing things that suck? Are you using and growing skills that you're interested in? Are you getting the appropriate level of challenge so you can kind of refine that state of flow and enjoy what you're actually tasked with doing. Right. Leaders is about your relationship with your direct boss and also the strategic direction of the company. You could have a great boss, but if the strategic direction of the company is terrible, like if it's like Blockbuster not acknowledging that streaming content is going to be the same, then that's great for you. In most cases. Right.

Diana Alt [00:33:25]:
Environment is about all the things that make your work and life work together. So being paid barely falls under there for the most part. If you can't make enough money to reach your goals, which could be anything from I just want to pay my bills to I want to retire when I'm 45 and you have a mismatch. But it's also anything related to flexibility, structure, formality. Believe it or not, some people actually do want to go to the office. Some people don't. Like all those things are in there. And then culture is specifically the way I define it as values in action.

Diana Alt [00:34:00]:
So that person that says everything is great about my job except I'm not paid enough usually hits a minimum of two of those. Being off more because environmentally, oh my gosh, if you're paid $50,000 below market, maybe you're not paying your bills or able to save in your 401k.

Lindsay Oishi [00:34:25]:
Right.

Diana Alt [00:34:26]:
But also if your company says that they pay competitively or that they value the contributions of people, or they appreciate loyalty, but they're still underpaying you from what the market says, then that's a values problem in most cases. And if you're strategic, if your leadership, whether it's your direct boss not allocating raises fairly or the senior leadership not seeing this, if they are not taking care of compensation for the people that they claim are their most valuable resources or our employees, then you might have a leadership problem too. So it was so much broader than just, I'm not making enough money. Oh, and that's one issue. So, yeah, And I love nerding out with people about that. When I do offer evaluations with clients, I typically will have like, oh, this is your offer, great. And we might talk about how to improve it or whatever, but a lot of times it's, should I take this? And it's not uncommon for us to figure out, especially in a market that's a little more candidate friendly, before we talk about the money that they start somewhere.

Lindsay Oishi [00:35:39]:
It's so interesting that you mentioned that, because I do think when people think job, they immediately think money. Of course, right Like, a lot of us wouldn't be working if money, if we had all the money we needed. But like you said, that's just the tip of the iceberg. And going back to the idea of like dysfunctional beliefs, I think people have a lot of beliefs about money and how it relates to their job that are very societal. You know, like, I need X amount of money. Like, you see all the surveys that are like, Americans think you need $400,000 a year to be happy or, you know, they feel poor if they don't make X amount. And they're, it's. There's so much there beyond just like, than dollar amount.

Lindsay Oishi [00:36:19]:
It's really again, about feelings, societal expectations, beliefs about where they should be in their career at this time. And often money is making people so unhappy. And it's not about the money. I mean, sometimes, like you said, it's totally.

Diana Alt [00:36:36]:
I don't think money is making people unhappy, I think, or the lack of it exacerbates the feelings already there.

Lindsay Oishi [00:36:47]:
Right. Yeah.

Diana Alt [00:36:48]:
I also heard it said, like, that's kind of a twist on another statement I've heard that the, that extreme amounts of money or extreme lack of money exacerbate character. So they.

Lindsay Oishi [00:37:02]:
Oh, that makes sense. Yeah.

Diana Alt [00:37:04]:
Somebody that you might not notice is a very generous person. If they make $50,000, could win $5 million in the lottery. And then you might see that they're generous. Well, if they're smart. They're not talent people, but you get the idea they are a greedy piece of crap. You're going to see behaviors that are 100x because they have a hundred times more money. But I think the same thing happens with how we feel about our career, our life. If you feel, if you would feel stressed just because it's like hard to be a mom or you work industry that is rewarding to you, but challenging.

Diana Alt [00:37:45]:
If they cut your weight in half for no good reason. Yeah, that's going to make everything feel worse. So that I know that your research centered around that emerging adults category because you got to center around something. You have to define your. Yeah.

Lindsay Oishi [00:38:03]:
Yes.

Diana Alt [00:38:05]:
What do you suspect or maybe know from things that weren't in your dissertation about how it impacts people that are 30 plus?

Lindsay Oishi [00:38:16]:
Yes. Well, I'm 40 plus, so I @ least have my lived experience in this. Let's talk about that. Which is, I think there's a plus side or. Sorry, there's a similarity and there's a difference. So the similarity is because of the modern employment world. You're not, as I said, you're not going to make a career decision once or even twice. You're probably going to make five or six big career decisions and many, many more smaller career decisions.

Lindsay Oishi [00:38:42]:
So it's a little more fraught because when you're coming out of college or when you're in early adulthood, you've never done it before, and you feel like it's going to set you on a certain path and close other paths, which is actually, you know, to some extent true. There's a certain point at which you can no longer be an astronaut or, or even a medical doctor, and you are going to close some paths. So it'. It's fraught in that time, more fraught. So as an older person, not older, but older than 30, the similarity is that you're still making these big decisions. The difference is that you now have the experience and learning and confidence from having made those decisions and survived. And I think when we look at, like, studies of people's happiness and sense of meaning, what I've read about is that people create a narrative of their life that often is kind of going down from the bottom and going up into the right, like they'll tell a story. It's.

Lindsay Oishi [00:39:43]:
It's working out. You know, I had setbacks, but I overcame them. And this unexpected thing happened, but I learned from it. And really unhappy people kind of see the opposite, where the same kinds of things happen, but they're like. And then, you know, I couldn't control it and there was this huge tragedy and then this happened. I mean, for example, in your life, having that loss in your. Of your husband is a terrible loss, regardless, as you go on on that. Do you create a story in which that, you know, gave you wisdom or strength, or do you create a story in which it devastated you and you never recovered? Both can happen.

Diana Alt [00:40:21]:
I'll tell you the answer.

Lindsay Oishi [00:40:23]:
Yeah, I'm curious.

Diana Alt [00:40:24]:
I knew. Well, it wasn't. It was like a surprise, but not a surprise when my husband died because, like, he had a cancer diagnosis. He had a brain, but also like, they. We didn't even get to start chemo or anything like that with him. He just had a seizure one day. And then when we got more, we're like, well, that was probably going to be rough anyway, like when we realized what the prognosis for that kind of tumor actually was. But the day that he died, they take you in the little room in hospitals, like, where they take people whenever their person is, like, critical or just passed because they want you out of the view of the other Loved ones and patients.

Diana Alt [00:41:10]:
And I was in there by myself for a little while, waiting for some family to come curled up in the fetal position. And I made a decision that I was going to have an awesome life because somehow I knew, and I don't know that I've always lived that, but it's been the goal. But I knew that if I didn't make a decision that it was gonna. And I felt urgency to do it right then. I had no idea what I meant when I made that decision. I have urgency that like I have to decide right now that I'm gonna live. Well, I latched on to that in some incredibly low times. So I decided this.

Diana Alt [00:41:55]:
I decided this. So I'm gonna do my best on that. So, yeah, I'm an option. I'm an up into the right kind.

Lindsay Oishi [00:42:01]:
Of girl, whenever I love for you. And I, I find that really inspirational because I'll tell you honestly, like, losing my husband is my greatest fear in life. And so I cannot, I cannot even imagine or I don't want to imagine how hard that must have been. But hearing kind of going back to the answer, which is like, what is the strength, what is the gift of aging is wisdom and the, that you get out of those experiences and the fact and the joy of still being here. You know, I lost a friend when she was 30, also to cancer. And I often think of her and I just think like, you know, when things are down or I'm not loving work or I'm not happy, I'm like, it is a privilege to still be here. Even if I do have to be here in this 40 plus year old body that's kind of falling apart sometimes.

Diana Alt [00:42:48]:
You know, for sure. Thank you so much for that. Okay, so I want to talk a little bit about how you manage to get yourself into product management. So your journey there, you, you've been in that for quite some time, over 10 years. What led you to product management and what do you consider your, like your sweet spot or your superpower in product?

Lindsay Oishi [00:43:18]:
Thanks for asking. So I have to admit, I was very lucky. And luck is so critical in career, right? It, you have to get lucky sometimes and you have to capitalize on the luck. So the very short story is, as I was approaching graduation at Stanford, I realized I needed a job because of the aforementioned student loans. And I went to a Stanford career fair and I went first to a booth of a company I'd never heard of because I thought, hey, I don't care about this company, so I'll warm up with them.

Diana Alt [00:43:48]:
Oh, so funny.

Lindsay Oishi [00:43:50]:
Yeah. I was like, I've never heard of them. I don't care. This will be good. I'll get my nerves out. And I really liked them and they really liked me. And they said, well, we, we don't have this open role like advertised, but we would consider you for an associate product owner slash product manager type job. And I was like, I have literally never heard of that.

Lindsay Oishi [00:44:09]:
Never heard of that. And they were like, but, you know, we'll pay you. And I was like, that is what I'm looking for.

Diana Alt [00:44:14]:
I like money.

Lindsay Oishi [00:44:16]:
I like money. I need money. And I really liked them. And they were in my space. So the real answer of how I got into product was because my PhD was in education and specifically evaluation. Right. Adult learning evaluation. What are the outcome outcomes? They did EdTech, they did English language learning online.

Lindsay Oishi [00:44:33]:
And they faced the question their customers were asking them, how do we know that your products work? And so they said, can you help us show that our products work? And I was like, yes, I can do that. And so is that really a product manager role? No. But they saw, they were like, so we're going to bring you in, we're going to train you in product. And then I ended up actually taking over English language assessment products.

Diana Alt [00:44:55]:
I love that so much because in all the things like I, I didn't look at that part of your career, but I did ed tech in nursing education.

Lindsay Oishi [00:45:06]:
Oh, that's so cool.

Diana Alt [00:45:07]:
And I own data analytics.

Lindsay Oishi [00:45:10]:
Nice. So we do have a lot of overlap then.

Diana Alt [00:45:12]:
Yeah, but the big difference is that you actually had the research background. So one of my, one of the things I'm the most proud of is I worked at this company that did nursing education. I was in data analytics. I had like reporting stuff that I had a big hand in and also worked with some other product management managers that actually owned the assessment products like you did. I was the data girl. Right. And I knew how to think about that differently. But what was so interesting about it is that we worked with the assessment sciences group, which was all the people that were doing test development, the psychometricians, like all of that stuff.

Diana Alt [00:45:58]:
One of my products was to predict success on the nclex.

Lindsay Oishi [00:46:02]:
Oh, that's a fun problem.

Diana Alt [00:46:05]:
Simulations and assessments related to all the subject areas for nurses. And then our psychometricians and data science folk had created this predictive model. And that's one of the products that I worked on. I first owned it as a scrum master of that tool. And two years later I ended up moving into product for that same group because I had product background from before then, so. But one of my proudest moments was like, we clashed with that assessment sciences team all the time, all the way up into the executive level. Like, there was just clash in the relationships and we got work done, but it was not fun. And when I moved into product, my director said, I want you to spend time.

Diana Alt [00:46:56]:
Like, I want you to take these people to lunch. Because he knew he had been kind of part of that. He's like, you have a clean slate so you and you can meet these people. And we figured out the reason why we didn't get along. No, it's because product management is inherently trying to push innovation. Discipline of test development and assessment sciences is by nature conservative. And one day the test development directors took me aside and said, did you know that, like, number one, people get whole PhDs and how to present data on assessment, and number two, there's code of ethics in this field. And so she walked me through that and we did that.

Diana Alt [00:47:39]:
Hash it out in a conference room, like, what is the deal? Where are we clashing? Because there was a lot of, like, I'm the product manager in my world, in my head, I make decisions on the product with input from the stakeholders.

Lindsay Oishi [00:47:54]:
Yeah.

Diana Alt [00:47:55]:
And we figured out, like, a new way to escalate when we had problems, like all this kind of stuff, because we realized the problem was one was innovative and one was conservative.

Lindsay Oishi [00:48:07]:
Oh, that's so fascinating. There's actually so much I would want to ask you about. Like, there's so many themes in that story you just told. If I could just name four that came to mind. One is like, people ask me about how to break into product management. And you said, oh, I was a Scrum master. And then I became product. And I always talk to them about, like, product adjacent roles.

Diana Alt [00:48:26]:
Yes.

Lindsay Oishi [00:48:26]:
And if you excel in those, you become a natural fit for when that product role is needed. And that's a great transition. Well, and I.

Diana Alt [00:48:34]:
Product before. So the time that I was in product before, I'm in the Midwest, and product hit the Midwest like 10 years later than it was so early in my career, I did a lot of business analyst work, and I also had project management work that had a lot of analysts work alongside it. And I worked at one company that was founded in the Midwest where I was basically a senior ba and then we got purchased by RSA that was in Boston or emc. So now we're learning about this product manager world. Well, it was the same job. I'd been doing for over 10 years.

Lindsay Oishi [00:49:10]:
That makes sense.

Diana Alt [00:49:12]:
What it was. So ba into product is very interesting.

Lindsay Oishi [00:49:18]:
Yes. I've seen that.

Diana Alt [00:49:19]:
I've seen about a 50, 50 success rate in that.

Lindsay Oishi [00:49:23]:
Oh, that's interesting.

Diana Alt [00:49:24]:
You know what the biggest difference is? No People are comfortable owning decisions that are not census.

Lindsay Oishi [00:49:32]:
Right. And maybe not even data completely database. But you have to use judgment.

Diana Alt [00:49:36]:
Yeah. And so what I found is the best team for me. The best situation for me is I can facilitate, but I'm also good and don't mind making a hard decision. So if I had a analyst that I was working with on the Scrum team that was facilitation minded.

Lindsay Oishi [00:50:03]:
Yeah.

Diana Alt [00:50:03]:
And I was partnering with them and I was decision minded. It was. But when I saw bas turn into product owners and they didn't enjoy making the decisions or they struggled with the aftermath of people with them, that's when I saw struggle. And I've known several people that went back to being a ba.

Lindsay Oishi [00:50:30]:
Okay, that's a really good call out.

Diana Alt [00:50:33]:
Yeah.

Lindsay Oishi [00:50:33]:
You have making decisions in product.

Diana Alt [00:50:36]:
Well, and then there's also like all the layers of decisions too. One environment that I was in where a BA that had been a BA for a long time ended up moving into product. At that same time, I was the Scrum Master that moved into product. She did not like the not making decisions, but also I was granted more latitude decisions than she was. And I don't know if that was like a chicken and an egg thing or if my boss, because we had the same boss, it wasn't like bosses, but my boss was like, you've worked on this stuff. You've half the time you've proxied for me if I was traveling. So I trust you. And, and I was fine with making those decisions.

Diana Alt [00:51:23]:
It was so interesting because Scrum Master is fundamentally, if you're, if you're a decision maker, as a Scrum Master, you're doing the job wrong.

Lindsay Oishi [00:51:31]:
Yeah, yeah. That's more of facilitation. A facilitation role.

Diana Alt [00:51:35]:
Yeah. So what are some of the other adjacent roles that you like to suggest people are good candidates to go into product from?

Lindsay Oishi [00:51:46]:
So it's a great question because there's such a wide variety. I actually did a little bit of digging in Reddit. So the Reddit product management community, because we're data oriented. Right. Like I don't like to say data driven, but I like to say data informed. And so I can tell you my anecdotal answer, but when I looked in Reddit and people are asking like how did you get into product? One of the things that popped that was quite surprising for me is customer success and sales. And then when you think about, well you're not surprised because you have a ton of experience. But I, you know, in coaching.

Lindsay Oishi [00:52:17]:
But I was actually kind of surprised because I think a lot of people are like well, but don't I need to be technical and I'm not a customer. As customer success in sales, maybe I'm not super technical. And I was like no, you won't have to. There are some roles for sure, you have to be super technical but there are many, many that you don't. And that's why, you know, CS and sales, they often have the right product knowledge, attitude, customer centricity that makes them really successful in product.

Diana Alt [00:52:42]:
The thing with sales in particular that I think is hardest because there's so many kinds of customer success.

Lindsay Oishi [00:52:48]:
Yes.

Diana Alt [00:52:49]:
There's glorified tech support, there is implementation and onboarding, there's really retention and relationship focus and then there's glorified sales. So yeah, that continuum there. My experience with people that are sales focused no matter what department they came out of is that they really struggle with the one to many. When, when I, when people ask me like what's the difference between product and not really product and I, I often make the statement I can work in either a services company or a product company, but you ought to know which one you are.

Lindsay Oishi [00:53:29]:
Interesting.

Diana Alt [00:53:31]:
I worked at a, at an agency that thought it was a product company and it was 100, not a product company. But the thing is, and I went through pragmatic marketing training as well. Like I'm. Are you familiar with pragmatic? No, I know that about when we get off of here. Pragmatic marketing is marketing focused product management. So they have lots of trainings. They started out with just like six or seven product management focus. They've since added UX and data science and data analytics.

Diana Alt [00:54:02]:
But the whole idea is that we're looking at problems in the market. Anything that I've ever taken from them, it's problems in the market, how are we using that information to decide how we're managing things, etc. And sales is fundamentally one to many. One to one. But product is one to many.

Lindsay Oishi [00:54:24]:
Yes.

Diana Alt [00:54:25]:
So sales reps struggle sometimes moving to product because they're used to being able to write a custom deal.

Lindsay Oishi [00:54:32]:
Yeah, I hear you individual.

Diana Alt [00:54:34]:
I've seen it with consultants too. So people that worked like in professional services, in a product company, they sometimes will have trouble with this notion of like that doesn't make sense for 90 of our clients. Well, but bank of America needs it or whoever. Super interesting. But I guess I need to hang out in that Reddit, it sounds like. Does it mean a lot of Reddit is mean?

Lindsay Oishi [00:55:03]:
No, it's not mean. There's definitely some cynicism, but it's not mean. Actually, people are quite supportive and encouraging. But there is some, you know, some people are very tired.

Diana Alt [00:55:16]:
That's understandable. I didn't use Reddit very much until like a year and a half ago. The reason I started looking at it is because my friend was on Survivor. So I was in the Survivor Reddit.

Lindsay Oishi [00:55:31]:
And that's, I have to admit, I'm a big fan of Reddit. There's so much information there and honestly the reason I started using it was because I was getting sucked into negative news and I was like, well, it's too idealistic to think that I cannot use my phone or not read stuff online. I'm still going to read stuff online, but at least on Reddit I can focus on the subreddits I like. Like cats, gardening, pickleball, you know, the stuff I want to hear about and not like the world is on a fire.

Diana Alt [00:56:03]:
It was really funny because I, I don't even know how I found out. Like I. And I loved a good discussion board where you could be anonymous like years ago and now we're flipping back around with Reddit. But some of the forums are terrible and mean and some of them are great. So if product's great, I'll definitely hang out in there. Your sweet spot in product is what is it discovery because you're doing that in Indeed or do you feel like you're even stronger at something else?

Lindsay Oishi [00:56:35]:
So I am an emerging expert on product discovery because that's what I'm working on at Indeed right now. Shout out to Teresa Torres's Continuous Discovery habits. That's what we based on. So I'm learning about, about that. I don't know that it's sweet spot yet, honestly. I think my sweet spot is in managing other PMs. So I've been. And coaching and mentoring other PMs.

Lindsay Oishi [00:57:01]:
That's why I started doing it.

Diana Alt [00:57:04]:
What I feel like the better the PM is, the harder they are to manage.

Lindsay Oishi [00:57:09]:
As I'm sure you know, sometimes being a good manager is just giving people the space they need to blossom and excel and being more, you know, it's about the judgment of knowing when to be more hands on, when to be more hands off, who needs help and when do they need help and when do they not need help? I hope my directs would agree that that's where I really shine because I've done IC product management work for more than a dozen years and it's super fun. But the challenge of enabling others to do excellent work I think is again more human, more complex, more interesting and I love that human motivation teaching, like how to get people to do things, how to scaffold their learning and then seeing the results. So I think that's.

Diana Alt [00:57:58]:
So it's such a challenge to do that because product is quite frankly one of the weirdest domains that there is because there's no one way to think about doing it. Like if you're a software engineer, especially if you're working like in a certain style of tech stack, there's so much you can do. Like the world is run on software, but the stakeholders that you work with are static across different roles. The stakeholders that I had to work with when I was doing product management for GRC versus product management, it was called business analyst but it was internal platform product management back when I was working on CRM systems and what I was doing when I was in EdTech were all completely different except for working with engineering. And the other thing people don't understand is that you often spend less time with other product managers than anybody else.

Lindsay Oishi [00:59:06]:
That's so true.

Diana Alt [00:59:09]:
The level of intentionality required to learn from each other and to make sure that there's not silos is insane. Oh, you're taking me back, girl.

Lindsay Oishi [00:59:21]:
I know, right? Hopefully good memories. And if I could just add to that, I think because every product management role is different in what it needs to be successful. Not just full stop, but every six months it changes in tech. What is needed to be successful in this role in this company, on this product changes in and then the people, they are also changing. And so it's that two moving target. And I think what I really enjoy is seeing this person is good and passionate about these things and this project really needs that. Let's put these two things together. Whereas this person is amazing, but they are just dying in this team and this role.

Lindsay Oishi [01:00:00]:
They are not flourishing. Let's take them out of that and put them where they will excel. Because I think that that's where I really, I see the joy of that connection.

Diana Alt [01:00:10]:
Another thing that's great about that is I'm a big believer that most companies rely they have too many single points of failure in product with their products. So I could see an argument like you gotta have somebody like I had a woman that I worked with that had cancer out, you know, for surgery for several weeks at a very critical time. Like, if she knows everything and nobody else knows anything, big progress. And there were some critical projects going on that we all tried to pitch in. But like a bunch of people trying to pitch in based on what they think they understand about how product works is not a continuity plan. It's. It's very risky. So your approach of, well, maybe we can move people around to something they're better suited for, but potentially we make sure the old pm, like at least kind of knows what's going on in case something happens.

Diana Alt [01:01:15]:
Like, we can leverage that knowledge. That's all really important. You are doing something that Seth Godin gave me words for in his book the Song of Significance, which I highly recommend and I think you would love. Are you familiar with Seth Godin?

Lindsay Oishi [01:01:33]:
No.

Diana Alt [01:01:34]:
Okay, so he is sometimes. His original origins were in marketing. In fact, a lot of people attribute him to being kind of the guy that good or bad, invented marketing. He's one of the, of email marketing. And over time he talked lots about marketing, lots about trying to be innovative with your marketing or with your products. But in more recent years, he's gotten more into talking about just like leadership and culture type things. The Song of Significance is in that realm. And the statement that he makes is that basically the purpose of a leader is to create the conditions for their team to do meaningful work.

Diana Alt [01:02:18]:
Yeah, right. And I had a. I have a. I have a client that I've worked with kind of in executive coaching realm for a while that I was coaching as he was preparing to take a very large promotion that was going to take him from having just like one or two direct reports into 25 and holding and owning a whole business unit like the US Business unit of his company. And I asked him, like, what do you think your job is going to be in this? He starts like rattling off the metrics and all the things. He's worked there for 10 years, so he knows, he knows a lot about the business. And I said, none of that's your job. And he's tough.

Diana Alt [01:02:58]:
I said, your job is to create the conditions where it can happen. And some of it you're going to directly own. But yeah, you should check that out. I think you want to.

Lindsay Oishi [01:03:08]:
I'm gonna check that out. It actually reminds me of a book I'm sure you're familiar with, Multipliers, which is a similar concept.

Diana Alt [01:03:16]:
I've heard of that book so many times and I've Never read it.

Lindsay Oishi [01:03:19]:
It's so great. You are going to love it. So we're going to enter an agreement. I will read your book or at least the ChatGPT summary of it and you'll check out multipliers because I will do that.

Diana Alt [01:03:31]:
We have a commitment here.

Lindsay Oishi [01:03:34]:
It really changed how I thought about managing others and also just collaborating in teams and just being a multiplier in life. Making others better.

Diana Alt [01:03:44]:
Yeah.

Lindsay Oishi [01:03:44]:
And I just, I think that's one of my missions in life.

Diana Alt [01:03:49]:
I think I, I like that. Yeah. I'm gonna be. I'll be reading. I'll probably be reading the chat GPT version of that since I figured out how to analyze your dissertation earlier today. This call, I have a couple of. I've got a couple of like lightning roundish type questions I want to hear about is more about what you're doing. I know one of the things is how to break into product management class.

Diana Alt [01:04:20]:
The URL is 27 miles long so I'm just going to leave it up here for a while. But my first question is what is the worst piece of career advice you've ever been given?

Lindsay Oishi [01:04:32]:
Oh, that's so easy. Find your passion and just do that and everything will work out. That's a social. No one individual told me that. But that's like our social belief that just permeates everything. It is trash. Don't listen to that.

Diana Alt [01:04:50]:
That's one of the top answers I've. This is the one question I think I've asked every single guest and I've been making using like a tool called Opus Clip and I think I'm just going to make a playlist of the mistakes of the worst advice. That one's coming up and the other one that comes up a lot is do good work and like you'll be rewarded or some version of that. I actually hate the word passion.

Lindsay Oishi [01:05:15]:
Same. Even though I've used it today.

Diana Alt [01:05:18]:
I, I think it's used as a club to beat people with especially women.

Lindsay Oishi [01:05:25]:
Yeah.

Diana Alt [01:05:26]:
A dollar. And I did not realize that it was actually an insult whenever, when a lot of leaders would go to a high energy young technologist, product manager, whoever and say we love your passion. But that is highly negative feedback.

Lindsay Oishi [01:05:46]:
Thank you.

Diana Alt [01:05:47]:
Prejudicial in the case of women who have the reputation of being like too emotional for work. So I hate it. And anytime I see in particular a woman coming through my coaching practice that has passion anywhere on their resume, I take it off.

Lindsay Oishi [01:06:09]:
That's so great.

Diana Alt [01:06:10]:
Getting rid of that. We substitute it with purpose meaning.

Lindsay Oishi [01:06:18]:
Enthusiasm all of those things. I agree.

Diana Alt [01:06:21]:
I also think it's too much pressure on your job to tick all the boxes.

Lindsay Oishi [01:06:25]:
I agree. There's so many things wrong with it. There's. And I want to be clear, there's nothing wrong with having passion. It's more about the advice of finding it and how to find it, or that it has to be there in order for you to be happy when that's not the case for a lot of people. And then just to add on too, I think it's used to exploit people. Not just women, but if you look at any industry that's driven by passion, those people are underpaid.

Diana Alt [01:06:49]:
Churches, teachers, nurses, nonprofits, environmental, all of them. It's like a top gaslighting tool. That should be the after show. Okay, next, what is a personal habit that has helped you be successful?

Lindsay Oishi [01:07:09]:
Well, we talked about intentionality. I am super intentional about every aspect of my life. So the habit is about every six months I do something called, called a Life Score assessment. This is a free tool online. It's just a questionnaire. You could make up your own, but instead of just saying work, it looks across all the dimensions of your life. Physical, emotional, spiritual.

Diana Alt [01:07:34]:
Like Michael Hyatt has a wheel of life. A lot of people that.

Lindsay Oishi [01:07:38]:
Yes. I don't know if it's theirs exactly, but it's like that. So I do that and then based on those results, I make a plan for the half year of what I want to improve in each of those areas with very specific milestones that I then track monthly. When I say that out loud, it sounds really controlling, but I actually find it gives me a structure and direction and goals that I can make progress towards. And to me that's very fulfilling. And I have been able to reach those goals as a result.

Diana Alt [01:08:10]:
No one like runs an Ironman triathlon by accident. So I also like what you said about. Because a lot of people will beat themselves up if they don't complete all the things. So if you just look at it as directional, these things intentionally for six months, I'm going to check in once a month. And if one of them falls off, fine. Like who cares?

Lindsay Oishi [01:08:35]:
Yeah, they're not written in stone. And that, that also goes back to design thinking, which is one of the principles is iteration. So when I do my like six month plan, I don't think it'll be the same plan when I, six months from now, every month I make adjustments. I was like, you know what? Six of these events, like, maybe I have a goal of volunteering. Six is Too many. I'm halfway through. I only have one. That's okay.

Lindsay Oishi [01:09:00]:
Let's make my goal three.

Diana Alt [01:09:02]:
Yeah.

Lindsay Oishi [01:09:03]:
And so they don't. They change over time. They adapt.

Diana Alt [01:09:08]:
I love that I actually have a client that I do. It's. It's a little bit different, but anytime you put a score to something, you can turn it into a spider chart, and that's a win. So I have one that I do whenever I do an annual meeting with him. What's something you've changed your mind about? Recently.

Lindsay Oishi [01:09:32]:
I changed my mind about AI. So about a year and a half ago, one woman on my team, one of my directs, was like, hey, I want to take this AI course. Do you think it's worth it? I was like, I've been through every hype cycle in Silicon Valley. I don't know yet. Now, I have to admit, like, yes, we all need to be on this AI bandwagon or we're going to be left behind. So I've been learning all the tools. Started using Superhuman, the email tool. And I know you're on top of it because our meeting you did with Fathom.

Lindsay Oishi [01:10:01]:
So I've been trying that.

Diana Alt [01:10:03]:
I love Calvin so much.

Lindsay Oishi [01:10:05]:
Yeah. Thank you for introducing.

Diana Alt [01:10:08]:
Made me a better coach.

Lindsay Oishi [01:10:10]:
That's awesome. So I've really embraced it. And I'm like, I actually saw this Instagram ad that was so ageist and offensive, and it was like, learn AI tools for people over 40. And I'm like, why can't it just be learning high tools, folks? Okay. But that's what I'm doing.

Diana Alt [01:10:26]:
Have a niche for their marketing. That's why I changed my mind on it, too.

Lindsay Oishi [01:10:34]:
Yeah.

Diana Alt [01:10:34]:
And it's gradual iteration, but I have a few things that I'm really happy that I've made work. Chat GPT is my primary tool, but I started the podcast because I wanted to have a podcast. And then I was like, oh, my God, the administrative work. So, yeah, I started making custom GPTs for my VA team to work on, and they hadn't used as much. There's a few tools they'd use, but they hadn't used custom GPTs. And they're like, my life just changed. So I'm enjoying that. What is a common misperception that people have about your work in product?

Lindsay Oishi [01:11:21]:
There are so many. I think one that you've probably heard is like, CEO of the product or CEO of your feature. There's nothing CEO like about what we do, except for that maybe it's very stressful. I don't know. I know, we talked about decision making. I guess what I'm trying to say is like, while we do make a lot of decisions and we do own the vision and strategy, a lot of what we're doing is building collaboration. Not necessarily consensus, but at least alignment. And really that's less about being in control or being an authority and more about being a connector and a diplomat and a communicator and a compromiser.

Lindsay Oishi [01:12:00]:
And so I think people see me as bossy and I totally am. But that's not what makes me good at product.

Diana Alt [01:12:09]:
I consider like the farther out I get from my time in product and the more people I work with that are in leadership. Like I coach people that conceivably could have been two layers above me on an org chart in corporate sometimes and definitely one layer above is common. But I realize that if I would have, excuse me, if I would have tampered back some of that more, I want to be in control of the product. I would have been better off. Part of the reason I did it is because I had a suite of products that it took two and a half people to replace me when I left. I had been begging for help. And so when you have too much to do, like the only way to get through it is to try to control it. And it was, it was a key cause of burnout that led me to take like a three or four month break after I left.

Diana Alt [01:13:09]:
So. Well, that is, we went longer than I expected. But I am not sad about it. This is one of the best episodes I've had. What are you. You have your product management basics workshop, how to break into product management that is on the screen. And I'll make sure that it ends up in the YouTube show show notes too when we get to that. How do you want people to get in touch with you, like other than LinkedIn? I'll put your LinkedIn back up too because I've had that course up for a long time.

Lindsay Oishi [01:13:42]:
Thank you.

Diana Alt [01:13:43]:
Any other projects or things that you're working on you want people to be aware of?

Lindsay Oishi [01:13:48]:
Yeah, thanks for asking. So I do have a live online course that's going to be launching in July with Stanford continuing studies. This is called Breaking into Product Management. So what you've got here is the lightning lesson on Maven, which is one hour and free.

Diana Alt [01:14:03]:
Okay.

Lindsay Oishi [01:14:04]:
That on the screen. In July, Stanford Continuing Studies will be offering a six week online course Live with me. Registration is going to open on May 19th.

Diana Alt [01:14:15]:
Nice.

Lindsay Oishi [01:14:16]:
And that information and the registration link will be on my website. Lindsayoishi.com. the other way that people can get in touch and a lot of people do this, which I love, is you can just schedule 30 minutes with me via my website under the coaching tab. There's a calendly and I'm happy to speak to anyone about career stuff. Early product. Early career product managers who are maybe unhappy or struggling or people want to break in or PhDs and postdocs who are curious about industry. Those are. Any topic is fun, you know, enjoy talking to people.

Diana Alt [01:14:51]:
Well, I'm so glad that we got to talk today. This really gets to the heart of something I think is so important and that is intentionality. And one of the themes that happens, like I work with a lot of leaders in tech, but a high percentage of them are the people that they have one leg in people business and one leg in tech, like product and program managers. And it's really hard to figure out how to move around sometimes because we get don't. The career ladder is one of the worst pictures that anyone's ever drawn because it's not a ladder, it's a jungle gym.

Lindsay Oishi [01:15:32]:
Yeah.

Diana Alt [01:15:33]:
And I really love talking to people about the intentionality behind what do you want to do and. And what are the problems that you want to solve so they can figure out the next right move? It's not always up the ladder. So. Yeah, thank you so much.

Lindsay Oishi [01:15:48]:
That's the other thing. It's like I said, going around on the jungle gym, coming up with your next move and remembering that it's okay to make mistakes. And not only is it okay, you will make mistakes, that will happen and you'll be okay.

Diana Alt [01:16:01]:
You'll make more mistakes when you're trying not to make mistakes than you will if you just let yourself.

Lindsay Oishi [01:16:07]:
That's a really good point.

Diana Alt [01:16:09]:
Well, great to talk to you and hopefully we get to do this again sometime. I think we have million things that we could do another episode on sometime in the future. So how fun.

Lindsay Oishi [01:16:20]:
Yes. Well, let me know. I'm always interested in talking to you, Dan.

Diana Alt [01:16:23]:
All right, thank you so much.

Lindsay Oishi [01:16:25]:
All right, thanks.

Diana Alt [01:16:26]:
Hey, are you sabotaging your job search without even realizing it? You might be. I break down the most common job search mistakes and how to fix them in my free [email protected] so go grab it today. And that's it for this episode of Work should feel good. If something made you laugh, think, cry, or just want to yell yes. At your phone, send it to a friend. Hit follow, hit, subscribe, do all the things. And even better, leave a review if you've got a sec. I'm not going to tell you to give it five stars.

Diana Alt [01:17:02]:
You get to decide if I earned them. Work should feel good. Let's make that your reality.