JM Nickels, Senior Director of Product Management at Uber, discusses why senior leaders must balance core product execution with strategic presentation skills.
“Cause at the end of the day, executive kind of resource allocation is largely based on the quote unquote optics layer.”
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More from JM Nickels
PredictionNot checkable as stated
Nickels: Autonomous driving will become super cheap within 10 to 20 years
“Well, autonomy is like the given. I think most people would probably agree with that. And you know, we'll probably solve it with just cameras and we'll need LIDAR cause humans don't have LIDAR and you know, the cost of vehicles and sensors will come down, remo…”
JM NickelsOct 6, 2024▶ 27:08Conscious leadership: Unlocking vision, strategy and purpose | JM Nickels (Uber, Waymo, DoorDash)
Opinion
Nickels: Travis Kalanick was a great visionary product leader
“Travis was a very great visionary product leader and we started ATG and elevate and sort of these sort of future forward things.”
JM NickelsOct 6, 2024▶ 8:38Conscious leadership: Unlocking vision, strategy and purpose | JM Nickels (Uber, Waymo, DoorDash)
Insight
Nickels: Focusing on optics and decks stalled his promotions at Uber
“The more I focused on yeah, the, how I show up and optics and having a good deck and all this, the less I got promoted. And then the more I dropped focusing all that. Cause like for my first few years of Uber, I was like hanging out as a senior PM. And then I …”
JM NickelsOct 6, 2024▶ 17:47Conscious leadership: Unlocking vision, strategy and purpose | JM Nickels (Uber, Waymo, DoorDash)
Opinion
JM Nickels: DoorDash culture sometimes leaned toward 'ready, fire, aim' execution
“DoorDash in my experience would do that sometimes where we used to actually even half joke there. Some of us leaders would be like, it's like, ready, fire, aim. And it was like, people would be like, I'm just going to run through a wall. I have no idea if that…”
JM NickelsOct 6, 2024▶ 43:37Conscious leadership: Unlocking vision, strategy and purpose | JM Nickels (Uber, Waymo, DoorDash)
Insight
Nickels: Uber is to Amazon as DoorDash is to Shopify
“So the analogy I use is like Uber is to Amazon as DoorDash is to Shopify, if that makes sense, right? Amazon has been more consumer focused. Shopify is obviously very merchant focused.”
JM NickelsOct 6, 2024▶ 48:35Conscious leadership: Unlocking vision, strategy and purpose | JM Nickels (Uber, Waymo, DoorDash)
Opinion
Nickels: Waymo has largely solved self-driving in complex environments like San Francisco
“I would say what's really interesting about Waymo is they've largely solved the self-driving piece, right? However they've done that. Right. And we, and in a complex environment like San Francisco, and they, you see them driving in fog and rain and puddles and…”
JM NickelsOct 6, 2024▶ 50:51Conscious leadership: Unlocking vision, strategy and purpose | JM Nickels (Uber, Waymo, DoorDash)
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