6 ms·

TL;DR: You don't have to convince the designer of anything---you can "disagree and commit" and spend time on other decisions. Maybe some help: > Third, use the

by meagher 10y ago

TL;DR: You don't have to convince the designer of anything---you can "disagree and commit" and spend time on other decisions. Maybe some help: > Third, use the phrase “disagree and commit.” This phrase will save a lot of time. If you have conviction on a particular direction even though there’s no consensus, it’s helpful to say, “Look, I know we disagree on this but will you gamble with me on it? Disagree and commit?” By the time you’re at this point, no one can know the answer for sure, and you’ll probably get a quick yes. > Consider how much slower this decision cycle would have been if the team had actually had to convince me rather than simply get my commitment. From Jeff Bezos' Annual Letter (https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1018724/000119312517120198/d373368dex991.htm https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1018724/000119312517...)

interdrift 10y ago
Thanks, your answer is great!
anigbrowl 10y ago
Ugh. Added to my list of 'manipulation tactics to be on the lookout for.'
- zuck9 10y ago
  I'd love to see the whole list, do you have it written down?
  - anigbrowl 10y ago
    You won't get me to hand it over that easily XD Seriously though, I think a lot of sales and leadership skills are unethical forms of manipulation. By this I mean covert or implicit triggers to change behavior. I'm fine with bargaining strategies, even aggressive ones - I don't enjoy bargaining but it's honestly self-interested conflict, if you see what I mean. Where it stops being ethical is in the deliberate use of ambiguity to create informational asymmetry. In the example above, I'm very wary of propositions like 'we need to move on, will you take a gamble with me on this?' What exactly does the proposition of a gamble mean here? It has implications of win and loss, but the sense of urgency and the lack of clarity could mean that if the gamble is a win the proponent will take all the credit, whereas if it's a loss I'll be blamed for not having spotted the pitfalls. Of course you can't infer too much from a single example out of context, but the idea of 'privatizing the gains and socializing the losses' is sadly widespread and I have encountered many decision-makers who seem to operate on such a principle. Of course it's natural to want to take a decision and move on rather than get bogged down in many situations. When I'm in charge I like to do this by saying 'I want X, if it doesn't work I'll take responsibility and we'll do Y instead.' Obviously not a brilliant business strategy from many people's point of view :-)
- true_religion 10y ago
  It's not a manipulation, it's acknowledgement of the reality that one party has the power and the other doesn't. Why have a leader who cannot make decisions without taking a vote?
  - anigbrowl 10y ago
    Then what is the point of asking for buy-in? As opposed to 'Interesting views everyone, thanks. I'm gonna go with option B.' Then there's no ambiguity about who took the decision. I didn't remember it when I commented earlier, about 15 years ago I was in a job where boss walked in when I was with clients and asked me to proofread some ad copy. I did and made one minor correction (with a pen, I didn't talk about it). He called me into his office a few moments later and reamed me for 'undermining him in front of clients' because I had failed to understand that his intention was to show off rather than actually have me proofread the copy. He became so abusive (threatening violence and so on) that I quit on the spot. tl;dr don't ask an open-ended question if what you actually want is validation of your decision.
    - true_religion 10y ago
      I'm not really seeing a buy-in clause. It's called 'disagree and commit', wherein you can disagree with the direction the leader has decided to go in, but still commit to following direction. This is opposed to 'disagree and dig your heels in' which is the default expectation. Or 'disagree and implement poorly'.
      - anigbrowl 10y ago
        Where Bezos asks 'will you take a gamble with me on this?' If you're not seeing it that's because it's already fallen below your language-processing radar and you're not actually evaluating the words coming out of his mouth, but rather the subtext you feel is being communicated. This isn't an accident.
  - actsasbuffoon 10y ago
    Sometimes underlings see problems that leaders do not. Underlings were hired for a reason; you trust their judgement. If you find yourself disregarding their opinions on a regular basis then you may have a dysfunctional team (maybe your problem or theirs). Here's a juicy real-world example. I used to work at a publicly traded Fortune 500 tech company. My boss' boss called us into a meeting to see a pitch deck he was planning to show to the executive team. He'd done a survey that showed we should completely change the way we monitized our product. We would slash the price of our bread and butter product and charge more for add-ons. His survey showed that respondents really liked our add-on products, so it should be possible to make more money this way. Our team worked on add-on products, so that was nice to hear. His survey validated our opinion that we were doing good work and the company should pay more attention to us. However something in the back of my brain said that his survey didn't add up. I asked him some questions about his methodology and discovered a big problem. He only contacted people who had made money by using our add-on products. Roughly half of users didn't earn a penny, and he was ignoring those people in his survey. That would have dramatically lowered the satisfaction numbers in his survey. I brought it up and he got very angry. He insisted that he'd conducted the survey correctly, and he didn't consider non-money-makers to be real customers. Several engineers chimed in and said I was right; he'd biased his sample and this survey wasn't accurate. He got even angrier and so we dropped it. He brought it to the executives and they loved it. They completely changed the monitization system for the whole company. Within a year revenue had collapsed. It was so bad than many investors accused management of actively trying to hurt revenue. At least 5 class action lawsuits were launched over our rapidly declining stock price. Most of the executives were forced out by the board, and the company was acquired for a fraction of its former value. I had a chance to stop all of this during that meeting, and I didn't. I let my boss' boss intimidate me into dropping it, and I can't help but feel like I'm partially to blame for everything that happened after. He was a smart person, and generally someone I enjoyed being around. The problem is that he didn't have a science background and didn't understand how to create a controlled study. He also didn't understand the concept of statistical significance. Some of the engineering team did understand these things, but he dismissed our feedback. The result was a disaster.
- suresk 10y ago
  I think the blind copy/pasting of "disagree and commit" into every decision-related thread we're probably going to endure for some time will be annoying, and I don't think it is appropriate in this case, but I don't necessarily think it is a manipulation tactic in and of itself. There are lots of times where intelligent, informed, well-meaning people cannot come to an agreement on something important, and at some point, someone has to make a decision and everyone else should get on board with making it successful (this is hard - I've been in situations where a decision was made I didn't disagree with and it is against human nature to work hard on something you don't agree with - but the alternative is worse). There is a lot of subtlety in making that approach successful, though, which probably will get lost on a lot of people. If this is always unidirectional (from the manager) or is wielded too bluntly, then yes, it is manipulative and is really worse than just flatly saying "I'm the boss, do what I say". You'll note that even Bezos himself is on the other end of "disagree and commit", though.

by meagher 10y ago

interdrift 10y ago

Thanks, your answer is great!

anigbrowl 10y ago

Ugh. Added to my list of 'manipulation tactics to be on the lookout for.'

zuck9 10y ago
I'd love to see the whole list, do you have it written down?
- anigbrowl 10y ago
  You won't get me to hand it over that easily XD Seriously though, I think a lot of sales and leadership skills are unethical forms of manipulation. By this I mean covert or implicit triggers to change behavior. I'm fine with bargaining strategies, even aggressive ones - I don't enjoy bargaining but it's honestly self-interested conflict, if you see what I mean. Where it stops being ethical is in the deliberate use of ambiguity to create informational asymmetry. In the example above, I'm very wary of propositions like 'we need to move on, will you take a gamble with me on this?' What exactly does the proposition of a gamble mean here? It has implications of win and loss, but the sense of urgency and the lack of clarity could mean that if the gamble is a win the proponent will take all the credit, whereas if it's a loss I'll be blamed for not having spotted the pitfalls. Of course you can't infer too much from a single example out of context, but the idea of 'privatizing the gains and socializing the losses' is sadly widespread and I have encountered many decision-makers who seem to operate on such a principle. Of course it's natural to want to take a decision and move on rather than get bogged down in many situations. When I'm in charge I like to do this by saying 'I want X, if it doesn't work I'll take responsibility and we'll do Y instead.' Obviously not a brilliant business strategy from many people's point of view :-)
true_religion 10y ago
It's not a manipulation, it's acknowledgement of the reality that one party has the power and the other doesn't. Why have a leader who cannot make decisions without taking a vote?
- anigbrowl 10y ago
  Then what is the point of asking for buy-in? As opposed to 'Interesting views everyone, thanks. I'm gonna go with option B.' Then there's no ambiguity about who took the decision. I didn't remember it when I commented earlier, about 15 years ago I was in a job where boss walked in when I was with clients and asked me to proofread some ad copy. I did and made one minor correction (with a pen, I didn't talk about it). He called me into his office a few moments later and reamed me for 'undermining him in front of clients' because I had failed to understand that his intention was to show off rather than actually have me proofread the copy. He became so abusive (threatening violence and so on) that I quit on the spot. tl;dr don't ask an open-ended question if what you actually want is validation of your decision.
  - true_religion 10y ago
    I'm not really seeing a buy-in clause. It's called 'disagree and commit', wherein you can disagree with the direction the leader has decided to go in, but still commit to following direction. This is opposed to 'disagree and dig your heels in' which is the default expectation. Or 'disagree and implement poorly'.
    - anigbrowl 10y ago
      Where Bezos asks 'will you take a gamble with me on this?' If you're not seeing it that's because it's already fallen below your language-processing radar and you're not actually evaluating the words coming out of his mouth, but rather the subtext you feel is being communicated. This isn't an accident.
- actsasbuffoon 10y ago
  Sometimes underlings see problems that leaders do not. Underlings were hired for a reason; you trust their judgement. If you find yourself disregarding their opinions on a regular basis then you may have a dysfunctional team (maybe your problem or theirs). Here's a juicy real-world example. I used to work at a publicly traded Fortune 500 tech company. My boss' boss called us into a meeting to see a pitch deck he was planning to show to the executive team. He'd done a survey that showed we should completely change the way we monitized our product. We would slash the price of our bread and butter product and charge more for add-ons. His survey showed that respondents really liked our add-on products, so it should be possible to make more money this way. Our team worked on add-on products, so that was nice to hear. His survey validated our opinion that we were doing good work and the company should pay more attention to us. However something in the back of my brain said that his survey didn't add up. I asked him some questions about his methodology and discovered a big problem. He only contacted people who had made money by using our add-on products. Roughly half of users didn't earn a penny, and he was ignoring those people in his survey. That would have dramatically lowered the satisfaction numbers in his survey. I brought it up and he got very angry. He insisted that he'd conducted the survey correctly, and he didn't consider non-money-makers to be real customers. Several engineers chimed in and said I was right; he'd biased his sample and this survey wasn't accurate. He got even angrier and so we dropped it. He brought it to the executives and they loved it. They completely changed the monitization system for the whole company. Within a year revenue had collapsed. It was so bad than many investors accused management of actively trying to hurt revenue. At least 5 class action lawsuits were launched over our rapidly declining stock price. Most of the executives were forced out by the board, and the company was acquired for a fraction of its former value. I had a chance to stop all of this during that meeting, and I didn't. I let my boss' boss intimidate me into dropping it, and I can't help but feel like I'm partially to blame for everything that happened after. He was a smart person, and generally someone I enjoyed being around. The problem is that he didn't have a science background and didn't understand how to create a controlled study. He also didn't understand the concept of statistical significance. Some of the engineering team did understand these things, but he dismissed our feedback. The result was a disaster.
suresk 10y ago
I think the blind copy/pasting of "disagree and commit" into every decision-related thread we're probably going to endure for some time will be annoying, and I don't think it is appropriate in this case, but I don't necessarily think it is a manipulation tactic in and of itself. There are lots of times where intelligent, informed, well-meaning people cannot come to an agreement on something important, and at some point, someone has to make a decision and everyone else should get on board with making it successful (this is hard - I've been in situations where a decision was made I didn't disagree with and it is against human nature to work hard on something you don't agree with - but the alternative is worse). There is a lot of subtlety in making that approach successful, though, which probably will get lost on a lot of people. If this is always unidirectional (from the manager) or is wielded too bluntly, then yes, it is manipulative and is really worse than just flatly saying "I'm the boss, do what I say". You'll note that even Bezos himself is on the other end of "disagree and commit", though.