The Leaflet #121: product development journey; enrolling those you wish to persuade; a replacement

1. Product development: a simplified journey

1. Make a thing. Maybe it’s a humble MVP. Maybe it’s the very best version of the thing you can do. Either way, you’re getting some representation of your effort and insight out of your head / hard drive and into someone else’s experience.

2. People like the thing. They ask for more of it. More people ask for it.

3. Figure out how to make more of the thing. Figure that out within the same constraints that originally bound you. Then figure it out with new constraints (more money, more people).

   1. Sometimes in this step, you simplify the thing you made. You strip away features people ignored or didn’t like. Sometimes this hurts because those were features you really liked; they’re ones you thought, and maybe still think, your audience/customers/community should like.

   2. Sometimes in this step, you realize the thing you’re making more of isn’t even the thing you set out to make in the first place. It’s not just a different version; it lives in a different category.

-eric

2. Enrolling those you wish to persuade

There’s a theory of persuasion that assumes at some point you have to remind the one you wish to persuade that you can hurt them. This is the bad cop theory from the movies: “We can do this the easy way or the hard way.” When you’re trying to get reimbursed or renegotiate a deal or get your proposal reviewed on an accelerated schedule, the person you’re talking to might need to pick up on the fact that you’re not afraid of tough talk.

I think this is a theory that applies in a very narrow set of circumstances. But it matches a certain intuition we have about what it takes to get things done. So it carries cultural weight far greater than it deserves. Even agreeable, humble people can enter a conversation with this model whirring in the background, doing unhelpful work.

A counter-intuitive theory that I think applies in a much broader set of circumstances: the person you wish to persuade is not an adversary who needs a reminder you are willing to defeat them. That person is an ally who needs a reminder that you see their virtue, their excellence, their desire to get things done for the greater good.

-eric

3. A suggested replacement

Clarity of purpose, allocation, and boundary can be really propulsive for your team. You, the leader, might be the only person who can provide those.

If you are a people pleaser, it can feel bad, wrong, counter-intuitive to say some of the things you need to say to deliver those clarities. It can feel better, more polite, more palatable to say nothing or to say “maybe”, which is almost the same as saying nothing.

Consider replacing “maybe” with “at the moment, no.” If you’ve thought it through enough to be able to do so, consider adding a one sentence explanation.

-eric