Thread by @shreyas

The CEO Test, a thread about compromising with conviction:

(1/20)

The scene: At the Product Review

You share your detailed plan with the CEO. You glance at the execs. Their body language says it all. Something is wrong. The CEO says that your plan needs to be more ambitious. “Think bigger”, is the feedback you get afterwards from your manager.

My friend, you may have just failed The CEO Test.

Another scenario👇🏾

You’re facing a major policy issue in your product. It’s complicated, nuanced. You painstakingly strike a compromise with Legal, Privacy, Compliance, and Security teams. You’ve pushed the limits of what’s possible. You take the proposal to the CEO.
👇🏾

CEO asks why this feature is an opt-in (leading to lower adoption, but a better policy story) rather than an opt-out (leading to greater adoption, but a messier policy story). You describe why it’s a major challenge from a Legal/Privacy perspective to make it an opt-out.
👇🏾

“Opt-in is best, all things considered”, you say. You share why it’s going to be fine & how you’re going to mitigate the associated adoption risk.

CEO pauses for what feels like an eternity, turns to Legal and asks if it can be an opt-out instead of an opt-in.
👇🏾

Your Legal counterpart responds “Well, actually it can. Here’s how we might want to do that. [Proceeds to describe how it might be done, in detail]”. CEO asks if that works for you. All you can mumble is "Yes, definitely works".
👇🏾

You walk out of the meeting confused. You literally had several hours of meetings with Legal about this issue & had jointly concluded that it would be impossible to make this an opt-out.

So what just happened in that room?

My friend, you failed to apply The CEO Test upfront.

Real-world products are complex & complicated under the hood. Anyone who’s never made compromises when making products hasn’t made products long enough. I don’t care what Steve Jobs quote you throw back at me — compromises are a necessary part of building products.

A compromise can seem perfectly rational to everyone – the absolute right thing to do given the crappy situation we are in — until you reach the CEO (or whoever’s the CxO that calls the shots).

You see, that “perfectly rational” argument that you’ll need 3 more ops headcount to implement the feature in the ideal way & that the Head of Ops says that their headcount is frozen for the rest of the year & so now you have to implement the feature the non-ideal way etc etc etc

You say, "Believe me, it sucks, but what else can I do?"

You continue, "We have to make the most optimal, rational choice, given the cards we've been dealt"

Yeah, that perfectly rational argument gets shattered to a thousand and one pieces when it collides with the visionary, big picture, customer-focused thinking of the CEO.

Enter The CEO Test: a simple tool I’ve used for 7+ years with my cross-functional counterparts & my team.

Anytime I sense an ugly compromise being made for “perfectly rational reasons”, I request that we pause and apply The CEO Test.

Every once in a while, there will be a new team member who asks what The CEO Test is.

Here's how The CEO Test goes:

Let’s imagine we were making this same argument to the CEO. That we can’t pull off a better customer experience here because we’re facing limitations X, Y, Z. How does that argument sound to us? Do we think we’ll be able to stand our ground on this?

Often when we apply The CEO Test, the answer is:
“Hmm.. actually we aren’t sure, because we bet the CEO will say A, B, C.”

Me:
“Ah-ha. So why don’t we assume this dialogue has already happened, and why don’t we look into A, B, C before settling on this compromise?”

If you can’t tell by now, The CEO Test isn’t about using the possible wrath of an authority figure to arm twist anyone into doing something they think is bad for the company or its customers.

The CEO Test is just a powerful shortcut to add to our collective vocabulary so we can preemptively think bigger, question our constraints & overall gain more conviction with the compromises we do end up making. That last part is perhaps the most life-changing for product teams.

So the next time, as a product manager or product leader, you’re facing an ugly compromise, suggest to your team that it should pause & consider if the compromise would pass The CEO Test. If not, keep refining until you pass it.

Enjoy, and may all your products be great!

❤️

Back to the top of this thread:

https://twitter.com/shreyas/status/1327518749310676994

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