🎾 On The Art of Persuasion: Tips and Techniques to Convince Others, The Big Book of Prioritization & The Clarity of Feature Demos: Lessons from Speed Racer
Did you know that you can pre-order The Big Book of Prioritization at $39?
Did you know that I released a pre-order of my new product, “The Big Book of Prioritization”?
I’ve sold out of the early-bird pricing, but it’s still $39 before I release it, so you should grab a copy.
If you’re not sure about it, you can read more here:
📚 Master the Art of Influence — Persuasion as a Skill and Habit
In 2023, influence and persuasion will be even more important than before.
In times of abundance, you could get by with a simple ask. Now, the pool of options might be smaller. You need to get better at convincing people.
This piece from First Round by a Google PM is great.
“It’s infinitely more difficult to persuade someone that they’re wrong than to persuade them that there’s new information that should change their minds. Any time you’re trying to convince someone to change their thinking, always frame it as an opportunity to be right going forward — not an admission of past error.”
How many of you have tried to
Convince your team to work on something?
Convince the company to be more agile?
Convince your stakeholders that the direction they’re pushing for might not be the best?
“Let’s say you’re a product manager or founder trying to get a team to ship faster. There’s no point in arguing that they should have shipped code last week. Only talk about when and how they can ship things at a quicker cadence in the future based on the information you have today. That’s the only conversation worth having.”
The main premise here is to leverage System I and avoid triggering System II (concepts I’m sure you’re familiar from “Thinking Fast, and Slow”).
Speaking to System I is key to persuasion. Speaking to System II, you risk being doubted. While listening, many of us have thought, "I don't know why you're wrong, but I don't believe you." It's System II. System I wants to believe you because it makes sense.
How do you talk to System I, though? One way is to use biases to help.
For example, the availability bias makes ideas that are easy to think of seem more true. Our brains are built to spot danger, and the more we see of something, the more sure we can be that it won't hurt us. This is why we feel more at ease with things and ideas we've seen a lot of in our lives.
You should keep in mind that other people may not know as much about your ideas as you do. It's easy to think they'll be more open than they actually are.
To deal with this, you might want to have a friend from a different industry or background who can give you a fresh look at your ideas.
The representation bias was another one for me.
It says that people will remember a random sample of the information they are given. This is why it's important to give a clear and concise message instead of trying to sell everything you can think of in a meeting.
Simple language, repeated over and over. Charts and data that an infant would understand. No bullet points or elaborate setups.
👀 Features Demo - Speed Racer
I hope you’re not back to work. But if you are, I still hope you’re just easing into it after the holidays.
I found this video from the cartoon Speed Racer that outlines the feature of Speed Racer’s car (Mach 5).
I thought it was low-key hilarious, but also great because of the simplicity and clarity of what each feature is for, with a brief demonstration of its use case.
I bet not everyone’s feature demos are this clear:
✍️ Remember
“A fully democratic system doesn’t even make sense in a for-profit setting, given performance pressure, and the reality that decisions need to be made fast and sometimes on the fly.”
“Executives keep on believing that achieving one’s desires is causally related to deploying those desires in the form of OKRs. Desire is not a strategy.”
🧠 Consider
How Great Leaders Communicate: this is a good addition to the article I shared above.
Use short words to talk about hard things.
Choose sticky metaphors to reinforce key concepts.
Humanize data to create value.
Make mission your mantra to align teams.
PMwheel Visualiser: Jason Knight (“One Knight In Product” podcast) shared a web-based tool he built for creating the PM Wheel to map the competencies of your product team, then visualise it for future reference.
3 Books on Finding Your Next Job: I recently read one of Marty Cagan’s posts on empowered product teams (again), and at the end he says that if your company doesn't understand why being empowered is foundational and you've exhausted all efforts to explain it, you may need to consider companies where you'll have a better chance of success. With all the layoffs happening, I put together a list of books to help you in your job search:
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Who's George?
I’m an underdog product manager.
Product management in New Zealand (where I live) is still a relatively immature discipline. I also came into it late via data science and UX. I may be older than others, but I often feel like a rookie.
To become better at my craft, I learn and explore new ideas relentlessly.
Then I share high-quality, tried-and-true ideas that can be used right away.
How I can help you:
If you’re learning about product as a cross-functional leader, I’ve compiled my best actionable finds in prodmgmt.world.
Get some help via prodmgmt.help. People ask about How to prioritise, How to do market research, how to work with engineers, how to go from a service to a product, how to develop a deep coherent product strategy, what books to read and courses to take on product topics & design systems product management.
See you next week.
— George.