Review of Decisive

I read “Decisive” by Dan Heath and Chip Heath recently and picked up a few techniques on making great decisions. It's definitely worth a quick read. The most common technique for decision making is the Pros and Cons table. But this technique is insufficient. It does not take into account the four villains of decision making, which are: 

1) Emotional Ties, 

2) Narrow Framing,

3) Confirmation Bias, 

4) Over Confidence. 

Emotional Ties:

Ever have a friend walk up to your problem and give you a clear perspective? That’s a sign of emotional ties acting to weigh down our perspective. Daily contact with our projects gives us depth, but also gives us attachment. To make an objective decision, we can attain distance before deciding by using these techniques:

• Ask : What would I advise my best friend to do in this situation? 
• Ask : What would my successor do? 
• Try the 10-10-10 rule. How would I feel in 10 minutes, 10 months, 10 years for each of the decision options? 

Narrow Framing
We are often making binary decisions when there may be more options. We may ask ourselves: Should we implement solution A or solution B? Should we ship feature A or not? Framing the question this way can block us from seeing other alternatives. Maybe the decision should be: Should we ship feature A, A+, B, C or keep the money? It is most common to overlook the opportunity cost. Not doing something is often the choice overlooked. To avoid narrow framing, try:

• Zooming in and out. By expanding and contracting the range of consideration, its often possible to capture the right range of options to consider. 
• Asking other people. Other people have different perspectives of the same problem. So including others in our decision, especially those with a different world-view, can help avoid narrow framing. 

Confirmation Bias

The human brain is very good at justifying decisions made by our hearts. That’s why statistics can be construed to proof just about any point of view. It’s also easy to ask leading questions that force the person answering into confirming the point rather than truly answering. To avoid confirmation bias, ask discovering questions and reality test our assumptions:

• Ask discovering questions. Ask open ended questions such as “How would you approach this issue?” rather than leading questions such as “Don’t you think solution X is a good idea?" 
• Take our options for a reality spin. Establish a range of possible outcomes, then create A/B tests to test our assumptions. 

Over confidence

It turns out we are really bad at predictions. The author reviewed expert predictions by expert investors and showed that it performed no better than amateur predictions. There are techniques to minimize the risks, mainly by being prepared for a range of possible outcomes. Here’s how it works:

• Use the “book ends” prediction method. Predict a range of outcomes, then optimize within the outcomes. For example, and this is an example only, don’t take this as investment advice. Instead of predicting the fair market value of a stock price, predict the lower and upper end a fair market value range. Then buy in during the low end of the established range. This method goes for the lowest risk and highest upside investment without knowing the outcome. 
• Do a Pre-mortem. Imagine your project failed, what could have caused it to fail? 
• Do a Pre-parade. Imagine your project was a wild success, what could have caused it to be so successful? 

Finally, good decisions are guided by Critical Priorities. That’s why companies have mission statements, and why something similar is useful for our personal lives too. To avoid decision paralysis, use critical priorities as guiding principles, exercise the techniques above, then make the decision. To avoid agonizing over the decision, add trip wires. These are conditions that would trigger a re-decision. Set up these trip wires so that you receive an alarm when the decision should be re-evaluated, and sleep well tonight knowing that you have made the best possible decision.  Learn more by reading the book.

David and Goliath, by Malcolm Gladwell

This well researched masterpiece by Malcolm Gladwell challenges the common belief that David, as the underdog, is at a disadvantage compared to Goliath. Gladwell's argues the opposite in masterful story telling style. David, with his position as underdog, enjoys advantages not afforded Goliath. In fact, if David's strengths were examined in detail, Goliath actually stood no chance at all.

1. Goliath-style benefits such as strength and size makes it vulnerable in some situations. Goliaths have to play by the rules. Underdogs have nothing to lose. This translates into a huge advantage in life and business.
2. An example is a parent basketball coach who had never played basketball before coaching his all-girls team into repeated championships. He looked at his group of middle school girls, many of whom cannot shoot a basket and coached them to play the full court press.  It is an extremely tiring strategy but one does not require good shooters, just persistent blockers.  Rival teams complained that they did not play the way the industry intends the game to be played, that they "cheated."  But the fact is the team abided by all the rules.  It just did not win in the usual way by being good shooters.  The team won championships because they did not play the standard game and took their rivals by surprise.  
3. Big fish in small pond is better off for your kids' development.  The confidence gained from being top of the peer group is important to success.  This has implications such as the fact that affirmative action ends up hurting more than helping because it sends people into a school that is above their ability. 
4. Force without legitimacy leads to defiance.
5. For when I am weak then I am strong. A higher percentage of entrepreneurs than average are dyslexic.  This is because of desirable difficulty.  Living with dyslexia usually puts people at a disadvantage.  Except those who manage to overcome this disadvantage come out with unusual skills that put them on the top.

Got 2h or so?  Totally worth a quick read and loved every minute.

5 Ways to Fascinate your Audience

I listened to the book Fascinate along with 13+ of my Product Management peers at Atlassian.   We
wanted to see how this book can improve our work as product managers and here are the lessons I learned.  I recommend listening to the book at 1.5x speed, since author Sally Hogshead narrates the book slowly. In the book, she breaks down "fascination" into 7 triggers.  Brands and individuals can use these 7 triggers to capture their target's attention.  

1. Fascination is Love, and it is irrational.
2. Marketing is about what you inspire about others to say about you, not your message directly.
3. The 6 criteria for a fascinating msg 
   1. Promotes strong emotional response
   2. Creates advocates
   3. The message becomes cultural shorthand
   4. Insights conversation.. builds social currency
   5. Forces competitors to realign around it
   6. Triggers social revolutions 
4. Triggers are emotional and creates emotional meaning for your audience.  That's why every fascinating message touches on a few of these triggers.  The seven triggers are:
1. Trust.. you can rely on it
2. Lust.. sex sells
3. Mystique.. we want to solve puzzles
4. Power.. we want it
5. Alarm.. we want to avoid negative consequences
6. Prestige.. earns us status and respect
7. Vices.. tempts us
5. Trust is the hardest trigger to establish. It takes years and can be lost in a few missteps. But it is powerful because it is the fall-back in a complicated world. Established brands tend to use trust and prestige as their main trigger, with some lust and vices sprinkled in for variety.  New start-up brands will be more successful with lust, vice, and mystique as their dominant triggers.

Learn how to Fasciate today.

5 Tips from Blue Ocean Strategy

I woke up this morning thinking about work, and wanted to summarize a great book that I read while in business school.  The book is Blue Ocean Strategy.  It's a short but powerful competitive framework by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne.

1. Most businesses compete in "Red Oceans," a bloodbath of me-too products targeted at a limited segment.

2. To carve an "in" and to eventually dominate, Blue Ocean Strategy is called for.

3. Less is More.  Blue Ocean strategy targets a sub-segment, an under-served segment. Find Blue Oceans by examining every feature of an existing product and how well it serves this sub-segment.  Then consciously drop the features that do not matter and refine the ones that do.  Dropping features is as important if not more-so than refining or adding features.  Think about the iPhone UX and how it targets beginner technology users.

4. If this smells vaguely of "niche market strategy," you are correct.  But just because it is a niche market does not make it a small market.  By way of a niche market you can then establish your business as a tastemaker. Consider Cirque du Soleil, an adult targeted circus entertainment chain.  By dropping the expensive animals in the act, and adding artistry and choreography to their act, they have penetrated the adult circus entertainment business.

5. Make a strategy canvas to figure out the right features to drop, keep and create.  See below for an example of Southwest Airlines' strategy canvas:

Try it for your business, you may uncover some interesting directions that gives you fresh blue oceans.

Influencer

Influencer was written back in 2007 but a friend lent me her copy and I have to say, it's the best read so far this year for me.  As a Product Manager, my work is all about influence.  The powerful concepts in this book coupled with rich stories will be very influential to my work, no pun intended.

1. Search for and establish Vital Behaviors. When it comes to influence, it's about establishing behaviors at the end, not just talking about goals.  Don't confuse means (behavior) and end (goals).  After you decided on your goal, you need to identify the vital behavior and the recovery behavior that will march towards the goal.  Recovery behavior is the behavior you desire if you "fall off the wagon" of the vial behavior.  Then focus on establishing those behaviors.  Talk is cheap, adherence to behavior is measurable and a sure sign that you are marching towards your goal.  To establish the vital behaviors,study positive deviants, those people or groups who have succeded despite the odds.  Study them to identify vital behaviors. An example is Dr. Silbert's Delancy Street project in SF.  In her project to reform repeat crinimals she focuses on two vital behaviors:  1) take responsibility for someone else' success and 2) call out misbehaviors.  These two behaviors directly challenges the rules of the "street" which are 1) only look out for oneself, and 2) never rat out your friend.

2. When it comes to persuasion, you need to help others answer 2 questions:  1) Is it worth it?  2) Can i do it?  If you want to change behavior, change one or both of these expectations.

3. The great persuader is personal experience.  If you cannot place your target directly into that experience, create a surrogate for the actual experience.  Create a vicarious experience.   For example, in one study they were helping targets overcome snake phobia.  By having the targets observe another person handle a snake, they were able to open up to that idea and eventually work up to handling the snake themselves.  That's why story telling is so powerful for changing minds. Concrete and vivid stories exert extraordinary influence because it transport the listener from a role of a critic to that of a participant.

4. Enlist social support through opinion leaders.  Opinion leaders are people who are: 1) viewed as knowledgeable about the issue at hand, 2) have other people's best interest in mind and are therefore viewed as trustworthy.  

5. Always use extrinsic rewards as your third motivator.  You must do you work with personal and social motivators first.  And if you've done your work with both personal and social motives, symbolic awards take on enormous value.  Instead of awarding pricey awards, provide smaller awards targeted at desired behaviors (not outcomes).  Remember, symbolic gold stars that cost 20 cents can hold enormous value.

Because this book is so full of goodness, here are a few bonus lessons:

6. Below is the chart that helps you quickly visualize the different dimensions of influence.  You must provide motivation and ensure ability across personal, social and structural dimensions to exert maximum influence.

7. Find Strength in Numbers - leverage the power of many. Build social capital, you cannot succeed on your own. "Each one teach one."i

8. For personal development, seek immediate feedback.  Four hours of guided instruction in context is better than months without feedback or with delayed feedback.

9.  "Turn a me problem into a we problem."

There is simply too much goodness to do the book justice here.  Have a read.

Daring Greatly

Darling Greatly is a book by Brene Brown about having the courage to be vulnerable. Brown is a vulnerability researcher and was invited to speak at TED. Her book talks about the fences we put up to protect our egos that get in the way of truly and honestly engaging with people. While it has broad application in and out of the work place, I suggest reading it when you're in a more "touchy-feely" mood.

1. Shame is prevalent. Often people are unable to truly engage because of shamefulness as a result of societal pressures and norms. Consider societal messages that instill a sense of shame in all of us: ideals about masculinity and femininity, appearing successful and independent at all times, demonstrating strength and invulnerability, etc. We are surrounded by success stories that lead us believe that "ordinary" people are losers. But a belief in self worthiness can be cultivated. 
2. These are the 3 major protection mechanism we use to avoid shame: Foreboding Joy, Perfectionism and Numbing.
3. Foreboding joy: Have you ever met a "joy squelcher," someone in a great situation who nonetheless complains about everything? When congratulated, this person provides a self deprecating comment instead? You may have just observed a person who is actively avoiding joy in order to avoid experiencing the emotional downhill that inevitably follows a high.
4. Perfectionism: Perfectionists tend to tag accomplishment to self worth. What I do is never good enough, and thus "I" am not good enough.
5. Numbing: Social media, reality television, and other external influences can distract ourselves from connecting with our worthiness. We fall into the cycle of watching other people's lives to fill our own void. 

Daring Greatly purports that we must embrace vulnerability and open ourselves to one another in order to fully experience life.

Conversation

“The true spirit of conversation consists more in bringing out the cleverness of others than in showing a great deal of it yourself; he who goes away pleased with himself and his own wit is also greatly pleased with you.”
- Jean de La Brùyere