Lenny's Podcast · 2 min instead of 1 h 2 m · Oct 11, 2026
The team knows before the leader that an idea should die
Josh Woodward
VP, Google Labs
Lenny RachitskyHost · Host, Lenny's Podcast
Spent seven years at Airbnb; his product newsletter has over 1M subscribers.
About this segment
Josh says teams usually sense a failing project before leadership does, and the leader's job is to make it safe to say so. He describes a Gemini feature a PM pulled after early user data fell flat.
From “Why every company now needs to think and operate like a lab team | Josh Woodward (VP Google Labs)”, Oct 11, 2026. Watch the full episode
“What I found is the opposite. The team usually knows before the leader knows.”
Takeaways
- Fading passion is a leading sign a project isn't working
- Make it safe to ask uncomfortable questions
- Reward the PM who kills a launch publicly
In this episode
Full episode- 5:43The best ideas come from side projects, not design sprints4:00
18:00The team knows before the leader that an idea should die1:47
- 14:55Product-market fit early shows up in people's eyes1:42Up next
Transcript
Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.
- 18:07
kill an idea? Yeah. One of the things on this one, and I talked a lot to the team about this too, is sometimes a team is looking for, hey, the leader needs to make the decision. And that's kind of where it comes from. What I found is the opposite. The team usually knows before the leader knows. And the signs are like, does the passion start to run out? You've tried everything you can think of and it's just not working. And people know when a project's not working or a relationship's not working, that's something that people see. And so I think as a leader, what I try to do, say in labs or even some of our features in Gemini is like, how do you create an environment where people can ask those uncomfortable questions and be able to say like, hey, I don't think this is working. And yesterday, just as an example, we had a feature we were
- 18:56
really excited about in Gemini we were going to launch. And we got some of the early data back. People went out, looked in the eyes, and it just wasn't there. And so I was so proud of the PM on the team because she was like, I don't think we should launch this. It's not good. And so I replied all. I was like, this is great. Thank you for doing this. And so it's like, how do you create a culture where the team can call both like good things and bad things out. And I guess in that way, as a leader, in my case, I trust the team a lot because they're the ones every day trying to make this thing go. And I think if they're like, hey, it's not going, then it's like, all right, that's okay. Let's pivot. Let's do something different. I have to ask you this question. I was going to ask it later, but I'm so curious. It's so interesting that you oversee labs, which is