The 'Top 10 Things You Should Know' Protocol
by Ebi Atawodi • Director of Product Management, YouTube at YouTube (Google)
A seasoned product leader with deep experience at Netflix and Uber (where she led the Uber Wallet and payments teams). Ebi is known for her ability to craft compelling product visions and foster strong, high-performance team cultures.
🎙️ Episode Context
Ebi Atawodi dissects the elusive skill of crafting and communicating a product vision, moving beyond buzzwords to provide a tactical step-by-step playbook. She details how to transform vague ideas into concrete narratives using storytelling frameworks, how to rigorously define problems before solving them, and how to build deep conviction within a product team. The conversation also explores the nuance of product culture across Uber, Netflix, and Google, and the importance of 'love' over 'liking' in leadership.
Problem It Solves
Prevents the 'blank slate' problem where teams constantly commission new research instead of acting on known, persistent user pain points.
Framework Overview
A living, collaborative document that lists the absolute most critical problems (qualitative, quantitative, and tech debt) facing the product. It serves as the source of truth for planning cycles.
🧠 Framework Structure
Maintain a living document: It is not...
Crowdsource the problems: Ask cross-f...
Include 'Product Debt': Infrastructur...
Force convergence: If leadership asks...
Visualize for alignment: Print the pr...
When to Use
Continuous usage, but specifically critical during the 'Empathize/Understand' phase prior to strategic planning.
Common Mistakes
Creating the list in a silo without input from engineering or data science, or letting the list grow beyond 10 items without prioritization.
Real World Example
At Uber, Ebi created a 'More Money, More Problems' document with her data science and analyst partners to align the team on the exact friction points in the driver payment experience.
If I go around... and ask what are the top five problems for studio? They should all have the same answer. This says I've done my job.
— Ebi Atawodi