Entries by matt

The outliers tactic for stakeholders

Yesterday, I wrote about using an Alternative Universe exercise to get stakeholders focused on behaviors. Today, I’ll share a second tactic: Outliers. Let’s use a different example and focus on an internal use case: “I want people to be more inclusive in meetings.” And for variety, our stakeholder can be a glasses-wearing CEO named Satya. […]

The alternate universe tactic for stakeholders

One of the hardest jobs that applied behavioral scientists have is getting stakeholders to focus on behaviors, rather than emotions or cognitions. Over the years, I’ve come to rely on three tactics for creating a behavioral outcome and while none of them is a silver bullet, at least one of them usually manages to do […]

The delicate balance of delight and satisfaction

Delight without satisfaction is addiction. And so when we design to make people feel happy in the moment, we must be mindful that it also enhances their long-term happiness, or risk creating a suboptimal world. Over the weekend, designer Taurean Bryant posted about his hatred for the term “delight” in design. And Justin Maxwell shared […]

The real oversights in Lenny Rachitsky’s lists

Yesterday, I wrote about Lenny Rachitsky’s attempt to figure out which companies produce the best PMs and the problems with his analysis. But today is more important: even if you correct for method errors, this data doesn’t really answer the question he is asking. But it may tell PMs, particularly those underrepresented in tech, what […]

Oversights in Lenny Rachitsky’s lists

Newsletter expert Lenny Rachitsky tried to figure out which companies produce the best product managers, using a very large dataset. And not only did he arrive at the wrong conclusion, he inadvertently produced a list of places you probably shouldn’t work, particularly if you’re underrepresented in tech. Preamble: I don’t know Rachitsky but our mutuals […]

Who makes your dinner guest list?

During breakfast on Monday, my son turned to me and said “Last night was really fun. Thank you for having them over.” That is an exact quote and, I think we can all agree, an utterly bizarre thing for a nine-year-old to say. It was sandwiched between two long soliloquies about anime, so I’m fairly […]

Mentorship as co-labor: play a video game with your mentee

Over the last few years, I’ve done thousands of office hours: first-come-first-served blocks that mentees set the goals for. And this is the dominant model for how mentorship is viewed in the workplace today: a 1:1 meeting, set on a calendar, with an explicit agenda. I’m also the dad of a wonderful, quirky nine-year-old. He […]

Choices, mistakes, soup, and murder

Last week, someone was murdered. In reality, many people were murdered last week but someone leapt to mind the moment you read it. On social media, people argue about the validity of who you think about and why you should have thought of someone else. I have never seen these arguments at a funeral. I […]

Justice vs value- shifting the frame of compensation

People often seem to forget the root of compensation is compensate: a force exerted in order to counterbalance an opposing force. Think of it like a balance scale; something is loaded on one side, so we compensate by loading the other. But what exactly is it that we’re loading? There are generally two frames that […]