9. The Dangerous Questions List
● What is the next most important thing we could learn about this?
● What are we currently learning about the last thing we shipped?
How are we acting on those learnings?
● How are we holding ourselves accountable for learning from
customer data?
● What could we be doing to have a bigger impact right now? Why
aren’t we doing that?
● What data do we have to inform this decision? Where did we get
that from?
● And many more!
@intentionaut@intentionaut
http://shorturl.at/zHMRT
15. [You] have to get comfortable with risk. You simply
can’t innovate the way you need to if you don’t.
― Marty Cagan
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@intentionaut
16. Value Risk
Would users choose this over what they currently do/don’t do?
01
@intentionaut
17. Value Risk
Would users choose this over what they currently do/don’t do?
01
Usability Risk
Can customers use it? Do they enjoy using it?
02
@intentionaut
18. Value Risk
Would users choose this over what they currently do/don’t do?
01
Usability Risk
Can customers use it? Do they enjoy using it?
02
Feasibility Risk
Can we make a reasonable investment to build what we need to address the problem?
03
@intentionaut
19. Value Risk
Would users choose this over what they currently do/don’t do?
01
Usability Risk
Can customers use it? Do they enjoy using it?
02
Feasibility Risk
Can we make a reasonable investment to build what we need to address the problem?
03
Business Viability
Can we support and own this as a business? Security, sales, marketing, brand, customer
support, etc.
04
@intentionaut
20. Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash
Dangerous Question:
Are there any risks we could be better paying
attention to?
@intentionaut
23. Dangerous Question:
Are we spending time or effort on the right
things? How do we know that?
Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash
@intentionaut
24. ...[Everything] you know, and everything everyone knows,
is only a model.
Get your model out there where it can be viewed. Invite
others to challenge your assumptions and add their own.
― Donella H. Meadows, Thinking in Systems: A Primer
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@intentionaut
28. You can optimize everything and still fail, because you have to optimize
for the right things.
That's where reflection and qualitative approaches come in.
― Erika Hall, Just Enough Research
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@intentionaut
35. What makes a decision great is not that it has a great outcome.
A great decision is the result of a good process, and that process must
include an attempt to accurately represent our own state of knowledge
― Annie Duke, Thinking in Bets
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@intentionaut
36. @intentionaut
Bad Process
Bad
Outcome
Good
Outcome
Good Process
Gambling and losing.
Bad luck meets poor skill.
Gambling and winning.
Leaves decision process
unchecked.
We’re not omniscient.
Build the courage and resilience
to weather and own these.
Conscious competence.
This is what we’re aiming for.
37. Dangerous Question:
Is this a one-way decision or a
two-way decision?
Photo by Greta Farnedi on Unsplash
@intentionaut
44. Vulnerability is not about winning or losing.
It’s having the courage to show up even when you
can’t control the outcome.
― Brene Brown
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@intentionaut
For thousands of years, we evolved a fear of the unknown because it kept us safe.
For thousands of years, we evolved a fear of the unknown because it kept us safe.
What we know is actually very, very small. Every time we learn something new, we’re only increasing the amount of ignorance we have.
“We live on an island surrounded by a sea of ignorance. As our island of knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance” - John Archibald Wheeler
“Knowledge is a big subject. Ignorance is bigger. And it is more interesting.”
― Stuart Firestein, Ignorance: How It Drives Science
Stuart Firestein: Ignorance https://www.ted.com/talks/stuart_firestein_the_pursuit_of_ignorance?language=en#t-1065431
Jared Spool has been talking about unconscious incompetence in his talk about the UX tipping point, and it’s a great model for thinking about decision making as well.
The Learning Model by Noel Burch – https://medium.com/@anhminhdo/4-levels-of-competence-fb1bbddd945d
Jared Spool has been talking about unconscious incompetence in his talk about the UX tipping point, and it’s a great model for thinking about decision making as well.
The Learning Model by Noel Burch – https://medium.com/@anhminhdo/4-levels-of-competence-fb1bbddd945d
Cool to be able to share as a standalone doc. Prep this, make a link to the list.
Sticking it out and having a public doc that people can add to anonymously. (Google Doc)
JOKE: We will offer a therapy session to the person with the best question.
Explain how to – Keep an open mind.
Ask big questions.
Don’t commit to one narrative.
See multiple possible solutions.
Explain how to – Keep an open mind.
Ask big questions.
Don’t commit to one narrative.
See multiple possible solutions.
Explain how to – Keep an open mind.
Ask big questions.
Don’t commit to one narrative.
See multiple possible solutions.
Every decision we make represents a risk. In a very real sense, everyone in this room is in the business of risk management.
Source: https://svpg.com/product-management-risk/
Explain how to – Keep an open mind.
Ask big questions.
Don’t commit to one narrative.
See multiple possible solutions.
Don’t forget to take others with you when you start to go on that journey.
Tell the story of reading every 1 Star Review we’d gotten. I had to make it social.
Explain how to – Keep an open mind.
Ask big questions.
Don’t commit to one narrative.
See multiple possible solutions.
We turn to data a lot. It’s good to have data. But data can only tell half-the story at most.
Data & Metrics
Roadmaps with dates on them
Number of pageviews
Engagement metrics
Just because you have the data doesn’t mean you have the story
The way the government measures carrier quality for airlines is to track the number of flights run.
Explain how to – Keep an open mind.
Ask big questions.
Don’t commit to one narrative.
See multiple possible solutions.
Bad things happen to good decisions.
As you start to clarify problems and understand them together, inevitably your focus will change.
You’ll begin to realize just how much you don’t know. That’s a good thing.
We often think of decisions as a zero-sum game where we have to get the right answer the first time.
When faced with decisions, we often think we need to get it right the first time. Most decisions in life do not need this kind of thinking.
Photo by Greta Farnedi on Unsplash
Jared Spool has been talking about unconscious incompetence in his talk about the UX tipping point, and it’s a great model for thinking about decision making as well.
The Learning Model by Noel Burch – https://medium.com/@anhminhdo/4-levels-of-competence-fb1bbddd945d
We often think of decisions as a zero-sum game where we have to get the right answer the first time.
When faced with decisions, we often think we need to get it right the first time. Most decisions in life do not need this kind of thinking.
Photo by Greta Farnedi on Unsplash
Jared Spool has been talking about unconscious incompetence in his talk about the UX tipping point, and it’s a great model for thinking about decision making as well.
The Learning Model by Noel Burch – https://medium.com/@anhminhdo/4-levels-of-competence-fb1bbddd945d
What got you here won’t get you there. Even if you made lots of good decisions, there’s always room to be asking about where we need to go next.
Joke about a knuckle tattoo.
Reward learning with time. Time ultimately makes a critical difference in how we think about problems. There’s no substitute for giving people TIME to make informed decisions. This is no excuse for taking away accountability, but you should work to set timelines that allow people learning time. It’s not unreasonable for research to take 1-8 weeks, depending on the size of the problem.
You’re going to have to lead by example and share the value of learning with others. Bring up articles, books, videos and other resources. Bring it up in your 1-1’s. Show you work.