“We'll hear sometimes people talk about, what's someone's learning rate? Do they have a growth mindset? I'm actually looking a lot right now for people, what's their unlearning rate? How fast can they learn something and then walk away from it?”
Lenny's Newsletter · Product & Design · October 2026
Asked which skills are rising in value on his teams, Woodward names "unlearning rate": how quickly someone drops an idea once their product tests show it's wrong. He also lists "explosive endurance" and the ability to build trust with people as well as with agents.
Transcript
Yeah, definitely. Definitely.
…What skills are you finding are trending up in value in the people that you're working with? And what do you feel are trending down when you look at people who are doing really well now? What are the kind of attributes and skills of those people versus things that are maybe less important now?
Yeah, I feel like there's a whole lot out there on taste and judgment and vibe coding and all of that. I guess the things I'm looking for, I'm always trying to find like what are the missed price signals. And so, like, one, I think, is how we'll hear sometimes people talk about like, what's someone's like learning rate? Like, do they have a growth mindset? What's their learning rate? I'm actually looking a lot right now for people, what's their unlearning rate? Like, how fast can they learn something and then walk away from it? Based on maybe what they're seeing when they test their product or something. So, unlearning rate is one. Another one I'm interested in, I read a book a year or so ago about Roger Federer, the amazing tennis player. And there was this phrase in there about Federer had explosive endurance. It's just this beautiful turn of phrase and with the alliteration and everything. But it's like there's something around like, how are people taking care of themselves and the people around them where they can go…
Yeah, these are so interesting. On that last one, is that kind of a growing, emerging, even more important skill you're finding with Rise of AI? And I'm curious why.
I think so for a couple of reasons. I mean, I would say one maybe is like uniquely Google. It's a larger organization. So you've got to be able to kind of do that. But the ones that don't feel uniquely Google, one, it feels like as the execution costs of making products goes down, we'll be able to…
along those lines i imagine you have been pulling designers engineers and pms into labs and they kind of all kind of work together and sometimes different functions take leads is there has there been a shift in who you find is most uh impactful and successful in leading product ideas labs teams in…
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