Leadershipedelics Leadershipedelics S1E5 - Ryan McMinn, ex-Microsoft Head of Product for OneNote
What do you get when two ex-Microsoft guys get together (in-person, not zoom) to talk about psychedelics, building products, and the corporate world? You get this awesome episode with Ryan McMinn! 🕺
Up until the end of last year, Ryan was the head of product for Microsoft OneNote. He started his career in the music business during the first dot com boom. Then as bankruptcy hit that startup, he started another one and was eventually recruited by Microsoft. He spent time on Microsoft Access, Xbox, Skype, and eventually found his way to OneNote where he spent the last 5 years as its head of product.
We discuss insights gained from his early use of psychedelics and how he applies them to helping others, building products, and making sense of it all. We cover the importance of belonging, creating a space for yourself and your team, and knowing when you are in a place that doesn’t nourish your soul. We exchange notes about our experiences at Microsoft and we don’t hold back.
This one is not to be missed whether you’re interested in psychedelics, building products, or Microsoft. You can also watch the in-person interview on our new YouTube channel.
💡Highlights💡
- Seeing through social dynamics
- Belonging in the workplace and the fear of being cast out
- Creativity and technology
- Coming to terms with spaces that don’t nourish your soul
- Teaching the concept of multiple truths
- The culture of not enough in public companies
- Insights from going from an individual contributor to a lead
- Helping people create a space for themselves
- Supporting initiatives that benefit in non-measurable ways
- The religion of OKR’s (Objective Key Results)
- The illusion of bottom-up vs. the reality of running a business
- Teaming up with people you’ve met in previous lives
🧠Memorable Quotes 🧠
“We’re always playing this game of trying to understand what the right projection is within this group and how we get closer to that.”
“You can’t cling to either world but what I see at work is a lot of people clinging to this world.”
“What’s next, what’s more. And you realize that it doesn’t matter what milestone you hit, it’s a culture, and the culture is more is better and that’s an endless culture. There is no Enough.”
“The gift this role has given me is it allowed me into a room that I previously wasn’t able to go into. And when I went in that room, I found people who were very upset they weren’t in control of anything, and they worked for people who weren’t in control of anything, and it just went all the way up.”
“We are at this moment in time, where groups of company are completely unaware to the extent at which their tools affect people because we’re moving faster than our brains and people can keep up.”
“There are two heads of product inside a company, there are some with a vision, and there are some with a backlog.”
How to connect with Ryan
About Leadershipedelics
- Podcast: https://www.leadershipedelics.com/
- Follow Sébastien: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sebastienfouillade/