Tavel: Moving Pinterest's growth team under product leadership streamlined execution
Sarah Tavel · #113 Sarah Tavel: The Value of Intellectual Rigor · Jun 15, 2021 · at 11:24
Benchmark General Partner Sarah Tavel discusses organizational design and friction points from her earlier career leading product at Pinterest.
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“And so there was a point in time when the growth team at Pinterest was actually reporting to the marketing team. And so you had a team that was separate from the product team that was making changes to the product and wasn't actually aligned with what the product strategy was going to be, what the priority features were for the product team. And it meant because they were, we were all making changes to the same products, we had to have a lot of meetings to coordinate. You know, there was no single leader who was the one who was, you know, making sure that everybody's strategy and tactics were aligned, and so it got pushed down to the rest of the team. A lot of overhead, a lot of meetings, a lot of people with different incentives pointing in different directions, and it slowed everything down. And so when the org changed so that the growth team reported to the head of product, everything just got streamlined and more aligned and we all executed a lot better.”
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