Bangaly Kaba
Director of Product Management at YouTube / Former Instagram & Instacart
Currently at YouTube, previously Head of Growth at Instagram, VP of Product at Instacart, and early growth PM at Facebook; known for his legendary blog post on choosing where to work.
Dimension Profile
Key Themes
Episode Summary
Bangaly Kaba, with growth leadership experience spanning Facebook, Instagram, Instacart, and YouTube, shares his understand-identify-execute framework that replaces the common anti-pattern of building first and justifying later. He introduces his five-component change management framework (vision, skills, incentives, resources, action plan) and discusses how to build genuine growth culture through first-principles thinking rather than confirmation bias.
Leadership Principles
- → Replace 'identify, justify, execute' with 'understand, identify, execute' — understand from first principles before proposing solutions
- → Change requires five components: vision, skills, incentives, resources, and action plan — missing any one causes failure
- → Don't pull data to justify why something would be great to build — first understand what's actually going on
Notable Quotes
"What I call the anti-pattern: someone says 'this would be great to build' and you pull data to justify it. That's identify, justify, execute. Instead: understand, identify, execute. First understand from first principles what is actually going on."
— On replacing confirmation bias with genuine understanding
"This framework has five components: vision, skills, incentives, resources, action plan. You need all of those to have change. Within those buckets you've got to figure out what's missing."
— On his change management framework used across Facebook, Instagram, Instacart, and YouTube
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