Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
00:57:20 · Jessica Fain
[00:57:20] S0: I think in terms of building trust, it's really important to ground yourself in what they believe. If you are pitching an idea that is wildly different than something they believe, don't bother. You probably have nine other good ideas that are more aligned with the beliefs that they already hold. Follow those instead. So there's something about just engaging from a baseline assumption. If they feel strongly about something, okay, maybe you can come back to them once or twice and say, "Are you sure you feel strongly about that? I really see this data." And if they say, "Yeah, I feel really strongly," you probably have to drop it. But in terms of building that long-term trust, I think the biggest things that do that are really hearing them out and actioning on the feedback that you've gotten in the past. Having results. It cannot be overstated that impact in the organization, building great products, shipping amazing things quickly, feeding that back to the leader to say, "Hey, we worked with you on this. We shipped it. It went well. Here's the results." That builds you momentum to be able to go back with the more novel approach or the scarier one. I think the other thing I would say is one of my favorite ... Well, actually one of the only business books I've ever liked is called Switch. It's about change management, and they talk a lot about shrinking the change, which is this brilliant idea. If something seems scary and overwhelming, how do you make it so much smaller so that it's an experiment? It's a one week proof of concept. It's something that feels really small that can get people over the hump of, "Well, I'm not going to invest in six months for this project if I don't know if it's going to work." So shrinking the change is a huge way to build momentum and trust. And I think this applies to the way that we develop all products, especially if you're doing something that lasts longer than a month. What are your milestones? What are the chunks at which you're showing outcomes and fit? And this is easier than ever to do with the tools that we have at our disposal. How are we showing that we are taking a much more iterative approach so that you can build that momentum, build that buy-in, and get that trust to do the bigger thing?
00:59:36 · Lenny Rachitsky, Jessica Fain
[00:59:36] S1: That's an awesome, very tactical piece of advice here to convince someone to do something, is just reduce the risk essentially, reduce the investment to help build trust in, okay, this is showing success because obviously it's much easier to bite off on something that's going to take two weeks or- [00:59:52] S0: Absolutely. [00:59:52] S1: ... have a very low risk and impact if it's not a good idea.
00:59:52 · Lenny Rachitsky, Jessica Fain
[00:59:52] S1: ... have a very low risk and impact if it's not a good idea. [00:59:55] S0: Yeah, I think that's absolutely right. And I think what is the type of risk that they are most afraid of too? Is it wasting time? Is it time to market? Is it that they don't actually think this is going to work with customers? So if you can start to, and you can and should ask this, what are the outcomes you're most afraid of? What would a failure state be for you in this experiment? There's a concept of red teaming, which is originally a military tactic and now being applied to businesses. How do you take an outsider's perspective to your idea and not just be so obsessed with your own thinking, with your own concept? Because so often we get wrapped around the axle, especially ... I actually find this happens even more with prototyping. You build a prototype and you're like, "Oh, it looks so beautiful. I would've never been able to build that before." It's actually not a very good idea, but you get obsessed with it and you're unwilling to accept that it could fail. I think one of the biggest things you can do to build trust is kill things, deprioritize things. That is a very, very senior way of thinking, and it shows that you have the same aligned incentives as the executive who's thinking about the good of the company outcome, the user outcome, and not just your own.
00:59:55 · Jessica Fain, Lenny Rachitsky
[00:59:55] S0: Yeah, I think that's absolutely right. And I think what is the type of risk that they are most afraid of too? Is it wasting time? Is it time to market? Is it that they don't actually think this is going to work with customers? So if you can start to, and you can and should ask this, what are the outcomes you're most afraid of? What would a failure state be for you in this experiment? There's a concept of red teaming, which is originally a military tactic and now being applied to businesses. How do you take an outsider's perspective to your idea and not just be so obsessed with your own thinking, with your own concept? Because so often we get wrapped around the axle, especially ... I actually find this happens even more with prototyping. You build a prototype and you're like, "Oh, it looks so beautiful. I would've never been able to build that before." It's actually not a very good idea, but you get obsessed with it and you're unwilling to accept that it could fail. I think one of the biggest things you can do to build trust is kill things, deprioritize things. That is a very, very senior way of thinking, and it shows that you have the same aligned incentives as the executive who's thinking about the good of the company outcome, the user outcome, and not just your own. [01:01:13] S1: That is such a good one because everyone's always just trying to acquire more resources, more investment, just like more features and showing that, "Okay, this is a terrible idea. I know I spent months on this, but no, we should kill this because it's not working."
01:01:13 · Lenny Rachitsky, Jessica Fain
[01:01:13] S1: That is such a good one because everyone's always just trying to acquire more resources, more investment, just like more features and showing that, "Okay, this is a terrible idea. I know I spent months on this, but no, we should kill this because it's not working." [01:01:26] S0: Right. It's not working. And here's how I'm going to know that it's not working. Here's when I'm going to come back to you with a decision. So sometimes we don't know that. Well, a lot of times we don't know the outcome, especially with AI native products. And if we can say, "We're going to test this. Here's how we're going to know it's working. We'll come back to you on X date." I think one thing that really spirals people out of control is a desire for certainty. As human beings, many of us have a huge desire for certainty. Now more than ever, that is not possible. And so one trick that I learned, especially working with engineers who often have a very, very high desire for certainty, is to say, "I don't know the answer right now. I don't know if this is going to be successful. I'm going to check in with you on X date. That's when we're going to come back and have another conversation." And so at least there's certainty about the next check-in point, and that can be a really powerful tool for deescalating the fears and risks around a given initiative or idea.
01:01:26 · Jessica Fain, Lenny Rachitsky
[01:01:26] S0: Right. It's not working. And here's how I'm going to know that it's not working. Here's when I'm going to come back to you with a decision. So sometimes we don't know that. Well, a lot of times we don't know the outcome, especially with AI native products. And if we can say, "We're going to test this. Here's how we're going to know it's working. We'll come back to you on X date." I think one thing that really spirals people out of control is a desire for certainty. As human beings, many of us have a huge desire for certainty. Now more than ever, that is not possible. And so one trick that I learned, especially working with engineers who often have a very, very high desire for certainty, is to say, "I don't know the answer right now. I don't know if this is going to be successful. I'm going to check in with you on X date. That's when we're going to come back and have another conversation." And so at least there's certainty about the next check-in point, and that can be a really powerful tool for deescalating the fears and risks around a given initiative or idea. [01:02:28] S1: Okay. Before we get into AI's impact and all this stuff, are there any other common mistakes people make when they are trying to get better at the skill of influence or just any other really powerful tactics for increasing your ability to influence leaders?