What sets great teams apart | Lane Shackleton (CPO of Coda)

**Lane Shackleton** (0:00)
Moments that stretch you, or moments that you feel uncomfortable in, or you find yourself saying like, oh shit, I shouldn't be here, I'm underqualified to be here. Those are the moments you should be seeking out, right? Those are the moments that stretch you and give you sort of like a new foundation. So oftentimes, you'll hear a career question like, hey, do you feel like you're growing in your role? And that's a very ambiguous, in my opinion, way to ask this question. A much sharper way is like, hey, how many like oh shit moments have you had in the last like six months, year, two years? And what are they? I think if you ask yourself that question and the answer is it's been a really long time since I've been like stretched in some meaningful way, or I've felt like I'm under qualified to be there, then it may be worth kind of like digging into.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (0:50)
Welcome to Lenny's podcast, where you interview world-class product leaders and growth experts to learn from their hard-won experiences building and growing today's most successful products. Today, my guest is Lane Shackleton. Lane is Chief Product Officer at Coda, where he's held the role for over eight years. Before that, he was Group Product Manager at YouTube, a product specialist at Google, and as you'll hear, he started his career as an Alaskan Mountain Guide, and then as a manual reviewer of Google AdWords ads. Lane is an incredibly deep thinker, very first principles oriented, and has built an incredible product team and culture at Coda.
In part, he's done that by studying the principles and rituals of great product leaders and great product teams. In our conversation, Lane shares what he's learned, what he's found great PMs and great teams do differently. He shares a bunch of his favorite rituals and principles, how you can implement them on your own team, plus a really clever and unique way of understanding if you're making progress in your career, plus so much more, I could talk to Lane for hours, but we tried to keep this to under an hour and a half. With that, I bring you Lane Shackleton, after a short word from our sponsors.
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Lane, thank you so much for being here. Welcome to the podcast.

**Lane Shackleton** (4:07)
So glad to be here.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (4:09)
It's absolutely my pleasure. I've always really admired the way that you write about product, the way you think about product. And it feels like Coda has one of the strongest and also the most thoughtful product teams out there. And so I am really excited to have you on here and learn from what you've learned over the years. My first question is completely unrelated. I have to ask your last name is Shackleton.