Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
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?
01:02:28 · Lenny Rachitsky, Jessica Fain
[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? [01:02:45] S0: Something people miss is the extremely broad context that execs bring to bear from not only their experiences, but the things that they are hearing in their day-to-day life. They understand what other product teams are working on better than you. They understand the conversation at the e-staff level. They've been to executive round tables and [inaudible 01:03:08]. And one of your jobs is to extract that insight and information and apply it to your ideas. And they want to feel like you care, like you respect that, like you can apply it to your own thinking. And so this keeps coming back to that curiosity and empathy. What do they know that you don't, that you can actually apply to strengthen your thinking or inform the direction that you want to take your team? And I think people just often don't ask those things of their executives. They don't show a curiosity for the expertise that that person has brought to bear. And frankly, I think often they don't really care, which is the chief mistake. They should really actually take it into account to strengthen their own thinking.