Annie Duke: recommendation

Transcript context

…I think the one that's easiest to implement is this. And it's so easy, and I just wish more people would do it. The best way to get somebody's opinion is independently of other people's opinions, independently asynchronously. So the way that I put is I want people to stop talking to each other so much. When we think about what did people generally think the purpose of a meeting is, they think it's for three things. Discovery, which is I want to discover what your opinions are, what your judgments are of something, right? So I want to find out what you think about something. So for example, if we're in product development and we're trying to figure out a timeline, we're trying to develop a product roadmap and we're trying to figure out how long it's going to take to release certain features or something like that, we all come into a room and we start yelling it out together. It's so bad for decision-making, I can't even tell you. There's cross influence, the loudest person in the room tends to then have an outsized influence on the decision, the most confident person in the room tends to have an outsized influence on the decision. And that's great if the most confident person is also right, but the problem is that's not always so. And so that's the discovery piece, right? And we tend to do that in a group. And then there's discussion, which is I've now discovered the way that Lenny is modeling this problem or what his judgments are about certain things or his forecasts are, his estimates are. And now, we're going to discuss those ideas and we're going to discuss your ideas in comparison to my ideas, and that's going to happen in the group setting. And then there's also now, we're going to decide in the group setting. So we're going to make some set of decisions about say what the roadmap is going to look like. Here's the thing that I think is the easiest to change, is to realize the only thing that's ever supposed to happen in a meeting is the discussion part. So we should absolutely be coming together as human beings to discuss everybody's judgments and opinions and the way they're modeling the problem and their forecasts. In particular, it's really good to come in and discuss the places where people are different. So you've been in many meetings, I'm sure about 80% of the time is double clicking. Oh, I agree. And I want to now we've literally just used different words to say the exact same thing because I'm in agreement. If we can focus the discussion on places that people disagree, we're much better off. But so now we can take this, discover, discuss, decide. So I'm saying discuss is only supposed to happen in the meeting, that's the only thing that's supposed to happen in the meeting. So what's happening with the other stuff, the discover and the decide? Well, and this is the thing that I think I actually have been able to get people to do is discover what people think before you get in a room independently of each other. the discover and the decide? Well, and this is the thing that I think I actually have been able to get people to do is discover what people think before you get in a room independently of each other. So how would you do that? Well, let's imagine that you're going to have a meeting about the product roadmap. So you would say to yourself in this meeting, what are the opinions that I need to get from the people in the room? It could be a brainstorm. What are all the different features that we could develop? So it could be a brainstorm. Fine. Write to them independently and say, "Hey, free for off. Just come up with all the different features that you think would be reasonable for us to consider developing and then give me a forced rank from best to worst of your own ideas with some three to five sentence rationale as to why you have these things in this order." And so I could do that, but maybe we already have a list. I can send that out for a forced rank to everybody. Okay, so here's the final list of things we're really considering. Prioritize those for me, just force rank them. And then again, give me a rationale. Give me a little bit of free writing as to why you think this should be, that you have these things in this order. Maybe we've decided now on what our top five priorities are. Great. I could, before the meeting, send the top five priorities out. "Hey, we've decided on this stuff. " For each thing, I'd like to understand what you think a reasonable timeline is, how many sprints it's going to take, so on, so forth, right? So we can ask for that type of information so that we can start making estimates because that's going to affect budget and what we're going back to the board with and so on so forth. But regardless, just figure out what is the thing that we're going to be discussing in this meeting? And I'm going to send it out to everybody independently and I'm going to say, "Don't reply all, just send it back to me independently." If it's a repeated decision, you can actually create a rubric that lives on Airtable or Coda or Google Sheets or whatever, I don't really care. And people can input their decisions there where they can't see anybody else's decision. So with Google, you can use Google Forms in order to do it, and then it dumps into a spreadsheet that only you can see. That's a great way to do it. So anyway, so you do that and now you can now see everybody's opinions that you then now send out to the group and say, "Everybody, look this over before we come in and discuss." So notice you're still working as a group, but you're working as a group where you're not in the same room together and talking at the same time. And there's a word for that, which is nominal group. So it's a group that at that moment is working independently and asynchronously of each other. So if you can get people to do that, and I do have companies where I don't consult with them, but I've just come in and talked to them briefly or whatever that do actually implement that piece of it. That is a huge piece of it, that's ginormous. And then you do the same thing for deciding. So the decision should not be made in a room, it's made either. that do actually implement that piece of it. That is a huge piece of it, that's ginormous. And then you do the same thing for deciding. So the decision should not be made in a room, it's made either. I love the one decision maker model, but not everybody's down with that. But you can have a vote forum where people go vote in private about the way they're leaning. You can do a variety of things with that, but just don't do it. Don't do it in the meeting. And then just the last thing that I'll add, which is a muscle that you really have to exercise, is I think it's really important to understand that the word alignment in terms of we're all aligned as a group, right? The word alignment is stupid and it shouldn't be used. And I know I'm saying that very harshly, but it's true. It's dumb because it doesn't exist. You have 10 people in a room and they're all really different people with different opinions, and they're never going to come out of the room agreeing with each other. And it's really bad if the expectation is that they're supposed to, and it's really bad for a few reasons. One is it isn't reality, and that I don't like coming out of things without reality actually kicking. So it's not reality. People don't actually agree, they're not actually aligned on the decision. That's just the thing that makes you feel better, right? So I think that that's problem number one. But problem number two is that if the goal is alignment, if the goal is agreement, then the meeting becomes coercive and you never want that. So the way that I'm supposed to talk about my ideas is to convey why I believe what I do, not to convince anybody that I'm right because if I'm working to convince people that I'm right, it becomes coercive and that's horrible. So you have to get comfortable with walking out of the room. This is the nevertheless. Walking out of the room understanding that once you have that discussion, it's not that Lenny, your opinion might change. It could, right? I could say my thing and it could be just so damn brilliant that you change your mind somewhat, right? So you come maybe you're like, "Oh, I'm thinking about this differently and actually", but maybe you don't and you still believe a thing that's very different than me. And leadership has to say, "That's fine. I've heard both of you and I know that this isn't going Annie's way. Nevertheless, trying to think about what all of our goals are, this is what the decision is going to be and it's totally fine that you ended up not agreeing with each other because it's reality. And what it allows me to do is get a better sense of what the space of decisions is." So those things I have been able to get people to do and they're actually quite impactful.…

Stored transcript either side of the excerpt. The highlighted words are the published quote; the surrounding text is unedited source, never generated.