Becoming evidence-guided | Itamar Gilad (Gmail, YouTube, Microsoft)

Itamar Gilad is a product coach, author, and speaker with over two decades of experience in senior product roles at Google, Microsoft, and various startups. He is also the author of Evidence-Guided: Creating High-Impact Products in the Face of Uncertainty and publishes a popular product management newsletter. In today’s episode, we discuss: • What it means to be “evidence-guided” • How to think about your KPIs as metric trees • How to prioritize ideas using the “confidence meter” • The GIST model for roadmapping • Common mistakes with ICE • Advice for using evidence to challenge gut-driven founders — Brought to you by Ezra—The leading full-body cancer screening company: http://www.ezra.com/lenny | Vanta—Automate compliance. Simplify security: https://vanta.com/lenny | LinkedIn Ads—Reach professionals and drive results for your business: https://www.linkedin.com/podlenny Find the full transcript at: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/becoming-evidence-guided-itamar-gilad Where to find Itamar Gilad: • Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/ItamarGilad • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/itamargilad/ • Website: https://itamargilad.com/ Where to find Lenny: • Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com • Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/lennysan • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/ In this episode, we cover: (00:00) Itamar’s background (04:35) How his time working on Gmail shaped his philosophy of “opinion-based” development (08:35) Lessons from developing Gmail’s tabbed inbox (13:40) A brief overview of Itamar’s book, Evidence-Guided (14:30) Balancing founder creativity with an evidence-based approach (17:32) Advice on how to push back against founders (19:36) Signs you aren’t as evidence-guided as you may think (21:13) Itamar’s GIST model for becoming more evidence-guided (23:51) How to set overarching goals using his “value exchange loop” (28:45) North star metrics vs. KPIs (33:47) Using “ICE” to assess the value of ideas (37:39) Itamar’s confidence meter (44:28) Speed of delivery vs. speed of discovery (46:14) How to apply Itamar’s frameworks based on company type and stage (49:09) First steps in becoming more evidence-guided (50:21) Next steps in testing (55:41) The task layer in the GIST framework (1:02:54) Thoughts on roadmapping (1:04:56) How OKRs fit into the whole picture (1:07:11) Lightning round Referenced: • Itamar’s presentation slides: https://itamargilad.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Podcast-Slides.pdf • What differentiates the highest-performing product teams |…