Thread by @andybudd

One of my major frustrations over the years has been people's natural tendency (mine included) to spend more time coming up with reasons why something will fail than why we should go ahead. Essentially demonstrating a "no, but" rather than a "yes, and" mindset 🧵

This is most commonly seen in meetings where one person presents and idea, and then the rest of the participants then come up with reasons why the idea won't work.

If the person who has come up with the idea has organisational power (e.g. CEO), they'll often move ahead with conviction, irrespective of any raised concerns. Often holding the perspective that the concerns are largely theoretical and can be overcome with effort.

By contrast, if the person coming up with the idea doesn't hold organisational power, they will be required to provide overwhelming evidence against the concerns—especially if raised by the CEO—in order to be able to move forwards.

The challenge here is that if said person doesn't have organisational capital, gathering enough time and resources to prove the strength of the idea is almost impossible. This is one of the reasons why product people often feel like they're in a feature factory.

Ironically it's also why people with organisational power don't see this, because they're labouring under the mistaken belief that a) the best ideas win and b) they're in that position because they come up with the best ideas.

One of the reasons for the classic "brainstorming" approach is to postpone critique in order to get as many ideas out of your head as possible, irrespective of fit. Essentially making it against the rules for attendees to start problem finding.

It's also why I favour workshops over meetings, and love books like Game Storming (❤️ @davegray @SunniBrown) because they provide structures that minimise power dynamics and postpone problem finding.

Ironically it's also why I love the "Pre-mortum" game, because it front-loads and ring-fences the "no, but" tendency.

The fundamental problem is that people are just hard wired to be better at sensing danger than opportunity. For some reason I think designers and developers are better than most.

Whenever I raise an idea with a group of designers and developers, I can see the cogs working, as they start to come up with a whole list of why the idea won't work. However once they've got all the negatives out, something amazing happens.

A week or two later they'll come back to me and say something along the line of "you know I've been thinking about that idea you had and it might just work if we do x, y and z".

If you hold power, this is great. You've now found a couple of allies and can move the project forwards. However if you don't hold power there's a good chance you've lost the momentum you needed to get the idea over the line. This eventually becomes an "I told you so" project.

I think a lot of entrepreneurs are natural optimists. Actually, I think a lot of natural optimists become entrepreneurs. They don't care about all the ways the thing could go wrong. They care about the few big ways it could go right.

These people have a natural tendency to want to push at closed doors because of what they believe could be on the other side. This is in direct opposition to the pessimists who get glee out of being able to say "I told you this wouldn't work"

The problem is it's much easier to be a pessimist, because there's a much higher chance the thing won't work. Especially if you have one optimist trying to push it through a sea of pessimism.

I know many of my followers won't like this, but most execs boards I know have been filled with optimists trying to push interesting (if flawed) ideas through friction filled organisations telling them all the reasons why it won't work.

Of course, this power dynamic can have really bad consequences. If you're used to hearing lots of reasons why something won't work each day, you stop listening. This means you may miss a really important point. Like the idea isn't accessible or has ethical problems.

I think a lot of the problems we're facing with tech at the moment is because the executives have either lost the ability to judge a genuine problem from the usual background resistance, or have flat out stopped listening.

Anyway, I've always quite liked the "holocratic" method of decision making. One that optimises for "yes, and" over "no, but". I guess it's not a million miles from "move fast and break things" but a lot less, you know, smashy.

The key things with any "yes, and" process is that you need to have some ability to pull the red cord and stop the train. Something most systems lack. In overly "yes, and" cultures it's often more of a "yes sir/madam" culture where only the leaders can pull the cord.

Anyway, I think one of the best ways to avoid falling into an endless cycle of analysis paralysis is to make, and more importantly to think and understand through making.

Engineering led cultures like to learn by shipping, and I do get the value of this. However as a designer I've always favoured making models—these could be concept models, user journeys, wireframes and prototypes—and then using these objects to have better conversations.

So rather than having lots of conversations where leaders either ignore others feedback, or use their feedback to prematurely shelve an idea, I'd like to see more experimentation. "That's an interesting idea. Spend 6 weeks exploring it further"

This isn't a radical idea. Far from it. However it's a lot less common that you'd expect. For many of the reasons I stated earlier.

Just to say it isn't always a week or two. I've seen ideas that we're summarily rejected 3-4 years ago become company policy. Largely because those naysayers needed a) time to process the idea and b) evidence that other people also though the idea had merit.

Of course if it takes a team 3-4 years to come round to an idea, somebody else will almost certainly have got their before you. Organisational friction is such a huge problem.