Evan LaPointe: Why your history department wrecks strategy

1. 0:00 – 2:37

   Evan’s background

   1. ELEvan LaPointe0:00

      The brain is like a college campus that has different departments in it. Most people rely on their history department way too much. If you instead send things to the, kind of the more experimental, open-minded science department, the more creative art department, you get dramatically better answers.

   2. LRLenny Rachitsky0:13

      I know you have a bunch of awesome advice on becoming more influential.

   3. ELEvan LaPointe0:16

      It's almost like you're playing like Elden Ring or some video game. The starting point is to choose your character. "Hey, I'm the devil's advocate approach," or, "I'm the break it and see if it still stands after I hit it really hard with a sledgehammer," kind of guy. Your personality kind of has a natural fit.

   4. LRLenny Rachitsky0:30

      How do we create better relationships within our teams?

   5. ELEvan LaPointe0:32

      It's critical to ask, "What kind of experience am I?" Not, "How good am I at my job? How much do I know? How critical am I to this process?" But, "Am I a miserable experience?" (laughs) And if the answer is yes, don't worry too much about the other pieces yet. You got to fix that first.

   6. LRLenny Rachitsky0:47

      I am really excited for this episode. I think it's going to be unlike any other conversation I've had on this podcast.

   7. ELEvan LaPointe0:52

      And then here's the surprise ending.

   8. LRLenny Rachitsky0:55

      (instrumental music) Today, my guest is Evan Lapointe. Evan is the founder of Core Sciences, which teaches companies and individuals how our brains actually work, and through that lens, how to more effectively work with other people on teams, how to build better products, how to grow your business, and how to make smarter and faster decisions. Evan is a four-time founder, including founding a company called Satellite, which is the fourth-largest analytics product on the internet today, which was acquired by Adobe, where he later ran product strategy and innovation for Adobe's digital business. In our conversation, Evan shares a simple way to understand how our brains work, and through that framework, how we can get better at vision work, influence, running meetings, to having more focus, and building better and more productive relationships with our colleagues. This conversation is a beautiful mix of science, theory, and also a ton of very actionable and concrete things you can do to be more effective in your work. If you enjoy this podcast, don't forget to subscribe and follow it in your favorite podcasting app or YouTube. It's the best way to avoid missing future episodes and helps the podcast tremendously. With that, I bring you Evan Lapointe. Evan, thank you so much for being here and welcome to the podcast.

   9. ELEvan LaPointe2:16

      Thanks very much for having me. I'm excited to share some stuff with people.

   10. LRLenny Rachitsky2:19

       I am really excited for this episode because, one, I think it's going to be unlike any other conversation I've had on this podcast. Two, I think it's going to really stretch our brains as we learn about how the brain works. And three, I think it's really going to make an impact on how people work and how they relate to other people and work with other people.

2. 2:37 – 7:17

   Understanding the brain’s complex systems

   1. LRLenny Rachitsky2:37

      I thought it'd be great to start by laying a little bit of foundation for people to-

   2. ELEvan LaPointe2:42

      Sure.

   3. LRLenny Rachitsky2:42

      ... get a sense of just what they need to understand about how the brain works before we get into how we can actually apply some of this stuff. So, could you just share some of the stuff that is really important for us to know about how the brain works?

   4. ELEvan LaPointe2:53

      The brain is like a big, a big galaxy. I mean, there's a National Geographic quote that we throw up in all of our programs that when we train teams, for example, that says the brain is more complex than any known structure in the universe, and it's easy to read a sentence like that and just run straight away from the problem. And I think that's important for people to not run away from this problem, but more run toward it. Uh, and it's our job to kind of translate the complexity of the brain into like really simple, straightforward systems that you can remember and the, the three or four main systems to stack on top of each other, like layers, start with the fact that the brain has systems like different... I kind of think of it like the brain is like a college campus that has different departments in it, and your brain has a science department responsible for open-minded experimentation. It has an art department in it responsible for creative, kind of boundless thinking. It has a history department designed for looking stuff up that you already know. And if you think about sending your thoughts to the right department on the campus or just different departments, you're going to get super different responses back from your brain. And where we're stuck largely is most people rely on their history department way too much, and that's because the brain is actually built to conserve energy and that's the lowest energy form of generating an answer to a question that the brain can pull off. But if you instead send things to the, kind of the more experimental, open-minded science department, the more creative art department, the humanities department of your compassion, et cetera, you get totally different answers.

   5. LRLenny Rachitsky4:23

      And certainly if you ever build products as a company or offer services, those departments are going to give you dramatically better answers than the reference material just in your history department. This episode is brought to you by Webflow. We're all friends here, so let's be real for a second. We all know that your website shouldn't be a static asset. It should be a dynamic part of your strategy that drives conversions. That's Business 101. But here's a number for you. 54% of leaders say web updates take too long. That's over half of you listening right now. That's where Webflow comes in. Their visual first platform allows you to build, launch, and optimize webpages fast. That means you can set ambitious business goals and your site can rise to the challenge. Learn how teams like Dropbox, IDEO, and Orangetheory trust Webflow to achieve their most ambitious goals today at webflow.com. This episode is brought to you by Explo, a game changer for customer-facing analytics and data reporting. Are your users craving more dashboards, reports, and analytics within your product? Are you tired of trying to build it yourself? As a product leader, you probably have these requests in your roadmap, but the struggle to prioritize them is real. Building analytics from scratch can be time-consuming, expensive, and a really challenging process. Enter Explo. Explo is a fully white-labeled embedded analytics solution designed entirely with your user in mind. Getting started is easy. Explo connects to any relational database or warehouse, and with its low-code functionality, you can build and style dashboards in minutes. Once you're ready, simply embed the dashboard or report into your application with a tiny code snippet. The best part? Your end users can use Explo's AI features for their own report and dashboard generation, eliminating customer data requests for your support team.Build and embed a fully white labeled analytics experience in days. Try for free at explo.co/lenny. That's E-X-P-L-O.co/lenny.

   6. ELEvan LaPointe6:33

      So, that's kind of the first thing is that the brain has these departments and systems in it, and it also has pathways. And the pathways thing is really important to understand, because there's a likelihood that thought will go down certain pathways in each of our brains. Some of that has to do with personality, uh, which kind of sort of predisposes us to have a higher anxiety or a lower anxiety response, or a higher creativity or lower creativity response. But you can also be more intentional with these pathways, and, uh, that's a big component of self-awareness is to kind of know what are my preferences, and then am I actually letting those preferences take over in this situation, or am I being more intentional steering down the pathways to activate

3. 7:17 – 11:03

   The three core brain systems: safety, reward, and purpose

   1. ELEvan LaPointe7:17

      these best regions and systems of the brain? And the simplest way to keep track of the systems is there's three. There's three really big ones. There, there probably are more than three that you can learn about, but the ones we want to have everybody learn about are your safety system, your reward system, and your purpose system. And out of those three, two of them sound really real, and s- one of them sounds like fantasy, to most people. So yeah, the safety system is pretty obvious to most people. When we're scared, afraid, uncertain, we have doubt, we're resentful, angry, apathetic, et cetera, this system of our brain is like trying to restore our standing in the universe. Like, I need to get out of this stress, out of this danger, out of this anger, et cetera. And you have an objective that that part of your brain, that system sets, and you go chase that objective. Like, I want to get safe. So if you're in a meeting, you know, a practical, everyday situation, and you s- you're exposed to a statement that makes you feel unsafe, your objective now actually isn't to contribute to the meeting productively anymore. Like, your brain's objective is to get back to safety. And the same thing of rewards, that if somebody says, you know, "You'll get something if you do this," which is the opposite of safety, that if you don't do this, something bad will happen, then yeah, your brain gets into this kind of pursuit, desire state, which seems great and can be great in a lot of cases, but also can be pretty narrow. So, when you hear people say, "That's not my job," that's actually the reward system speaking, saying, "I get rewarded for the things in this list, and this thing that you're talking about is not on my reward list, and I therefore am not interested in it." Like, I have a easier time pushing away from it, uh, because the reward system of the brain is, you know, more transactional at, you know, in a conceptual way. And then you get to this vague and ridiculous sounding purpose system, but until you realize what purpose is, and we've all felt it, uh, if you, if you understand the impact of the thing that you're doing, and you understand and care about the people that are impacted by your actions, that's, those are the conditions for purpose. And that can be really big. Like, curing cancer, I understand the impact on the people. That's huge. But it can also be like I'm writing an email, I understand the impact of this email, and the people affected by it. You can feel purpose at this tiny little grain of sand level of your life, not just at the whole, you know, beach and shoreline level. And we teach people that that's super important. So, that's kind of the foundational layer. And then on top of that, there are a few layers that have to do with your focus, 'cause the brain can dramatically shift focus from like open-mindedness to deep, deep focus. And then there's kind of the final layer of ability, which is a le- less, like, science-y, you know, less n- neuroscience and more just practical that your ability is regulated by how much reality you know. Like, do you have the context for the decision, or you just know you're supposed to make the decision? People with context have higher ability than people without. And the same thing w- with imagination and, and logic, that if you push those boundaries in your mind further, your ability increases almost disproportionately to how much you've pushed. So, these layers just kind of stack on, and I think that's kind of, you know, it's approachable. It's simple. It's like we can all understand is my safety, reward, or purpose system active right now? What is my level of focus? What level of connection with reality, reason, and imagination do I have right now? And then there's your output as a human or as a team. And all these things are like levers we can pull, which is super fun.

   2. LRLenny Rachitsky10:49

      Amazing. So just to summarize here, so we have these three systems: safety, reward, purpose; then, uh, our level of focus; and, and then there's the ability. Like, are we able to actually do the job? Is that, those are kind of the-

   3. ELEvan LaPointe11:02

      Exactly right.

4. 11:03 – 14:27

   Applying brain science to team dynamics

   1. ELEvan LaPointe11:03

   2. LRLenny Rachitsky11:03

      ... the puzzle pieces. Okay. So where, where I want to take this is when we work with other people, working with other people is very hard. (laughs)

   3. ELEvan LaPointe11:11

      (laughs)

   4. LRLenny Rachitsky11:11

      And some of the struggles people have at work in building product, in running a company, in building teams, hiring, all these things, is, uh, they often get really frustrated by the way other people operate. Some people want to just start building a thing. Some people want to really think about it. Some people are very customer qualitative, anecdote focused. Some people are very metrics focused. Some people are very, uh, collaborative, want to work in groups. Some people are very, "I want to work alone." So, I guess just first of all, we just talked about here's how the brain works, and then there's this idea of people work very differently. Can you just talk a bit about just, like, this idea of people are very... (laughs) why people behave so differently in an effort to help us learn to work better with people that are just like, "Oh, it's so strange. This person wants to just start building."

   5. ELEvan LaPointe12:01

      You know, the, maybe one of the worst pieces of propaganda that people walk around with in their minds is the phrase, "We're more similar than we are different."

   6. LRLenny Rachitsky12:08

      Yeah.

   7. ELEvan LaPointe12:09

      And my theory on why we walk around with that phrase or why we're told that phrase, if we zoom in on the situations where we hear that, is that we have this theory it's easier to get along with people that are like us. So if we...If we fantasize that this person is like me, then I might get along with them better. When in fact, we should probably be building the muscle that we have the capacity to get along with people that are extremely different than we are. And that fourth piece that we talk about in our, in, like, our coursework, you know, when we train managers, for example, is personality. So we talk about your brain systems, your brain focus, your brain's ability, which sort- sort of paints the picture that humans might be similar to each other and we can activate these things kind of like, unilaterally. But then we have to drop this bomb at the end, which is, and here's why that doesn't work consistently across different types of people. Uh, so I know you took, uh, our profile, our Big Five base profile, and that's just one tool out of many that can help a person understand where on these various spectrum of personality traits and motivations they sit. Uh, we often use the metaphor of, in our training, of, like, culinary school, that we're more culinary school for human performance instead of cooking class, and that helps people kind of conceptualize that I'm used to going to cooking classes in my training, like, here's how to do a one-on-one, here's how to offer feedback, here's a framework for generating product ideas through to, like, prioritization and backlog. But we're kind of like, well, what's going on beneath the surface? What are the underlying principles and forces at work that all that kind of comes to, uh, the, all the stuff that comes to life on the surface really originates from? And in this culinary school metaphor, the, one of the things that's really important for a chef is to actually understand, what are my preferences? What do I like to eat? Because if I don't know what I like, then I assume everybody else likes what I like, (laughs) then I'm not gonna be a very dynamic chef. I'm gonna be like, everybody likes lots of salt and acidity in their dishes, and then you're gonna go to Germany and open a restaurant and be like, that is absolutely not (laughs) what we're looking for-

   8. LRLenny Rachitsky14:13

      Mm-hmm.

   9. ELEvan LaPointe14:13

      ... you know, in this cuisine. So self-awareness is a really important step, not just of culinary school, but like, for everybody, and you sit somewhere on a spectrum. Your brain has these pathways and these kind of like traffic cops directing traffic in your

5. 14:27 – 17:27

   The role of personality in team performance

   1. ELEvan LaPointe14:27

      mind, so you have to start with, you know, square one with yourself and understand, am I, like, prone to try to say things politely and so that they're received well, or am I prone to be super blunt and direct and maybe even mean and harsh? Uh, am I prone to, like, st- sit back in conversations and let things happen, or am I prone to take over? Am I prone to go to, like, intellectual abstract thinking and try to kind of like deconstruct ideas, or am I prone to stay very pragmatic? And if you don't know who you are and you think that, like, the universe resembles you, then you're gonna get super lost in that, in that broader spectrum. So I think the, the Big Five... I mean, there's a bunch of models. You have Myers-Briggs, DiSC, et cetera. They're just all imperfect ways of measuring personality, but just but also useful, despite the fact that they're imperfect and especially useful if you kind of take a growth mentality instead of a justification mentality to reading them. Like, if you say, "Okay, I'm low in politeness. I'm super direct," your justification mentality of that would be like, yeah, damn right. Like, I'm awesome that everybody knows what I really mean and how I really feel. Versus the growth thing, which is like, well, maybe there are situations where I can try a little harder than 0% to phrase things in a way that-

   2. LRLenny Rachitsky15:42

      (laughs)

   3. ELEvan LaPointe15:42

      ... you know, if we ve- if we work backwards from the outcome we want to choose our actions right now, like, would my, would these actions, so direct, actually increase or reduce the probability of that outcome? And that's when we become, like, more dynamic chefs, more dynamic people. But yeah, personality is a, a broad spectrum, uh, and self-awareness is like the, the starting point for the whole thing. The Big Five model gives you a really good list of attributes to kind of scan yourself through, and then you should be making a game plan for how to do that, and then you can turn your attention to the network of humans you're a part of and say, okay, well, in what ways because I'm me, am I so different than these other minds? And how can we kind of create a mesh mentality where thought shifts among the group to, to fit most naturally? And in product work especially, you know, whether you're a founder, entrepreneur, kind of thinking about product at that level and, and your team at that level, or you're in the thick of product work, uh, pushing your mind and other people's minds to get this right, then you're gonna benefit a lot from understanding these traits and these differences.

   4. LRLenny Rachitsky16:48

      So I think the big unlock here for a lot of people is that the reason you ma- are struggling getting something done, working with someone, being successful at your company, with your manager, with a partner in your team is they have a very different way of their brain operating and so they think in a very different way, they react in different ways, and you may think the entire world thinks the way you do, but they don't. And these tests help you see that. To make this super concrete for people, are there a couple examples or wins you often find that you can share of just, like, ways to use this to become better in your job, say, this week? Like, whether with meetings or convincing someone of something, anything along these lines.

6. 17:27 – 23:16

   Creating effective work environments

   1. LRLenny Rachitsky17:27

   2. ELEvan LaPointe17:27

      Yeah. I mean, I, I think one more layer would be helpful to this-

   3. LRLenny Rachitsky17:31

      Mm-hmm.

   4. ELEvan LaPointe17:31

      ... especially if you're a leader or manager, which is the, the, the, the business world is just, isn't just hand-to-hand combat between a bunch of individuals on like the, the blank Matrix loading screen, right? Like, you're actually in a habitat as a company and, uh, your team is like a habitat. I, I think of companies and teams almost like little terrariums that we're inside of, and is this terrarium set up with, you know, sand and a heat lamp (laughs) and, and we're a bunch of frogs (laughs) and like we're gonna turn into frog bacon simply because we're in this habitat? So a lot of it is you want to actually create a habitat or an environment that's kind of predisposed to high functioning, thinking, and high functioning interaction between people because if it's, if, if the habitat's working against all of you to begin with, then all the hand-to-hand combat that's gonna show up is actually largely a function of you just being in this, you know, heat lamp, dry...... uh, devoid of life, kind of devoid of, uh, you know, places, w- productive ways to grapple, right? And, and that's where a lot of teams and companies sit today, especially, like, more established teams. They've, they've either lost their way in the habitat and haven't really set the scene for good, kind of, thinking and interaction, or they just never had that to begin with. And some of the stuff, like when you've, when you've talked to a couple other people in the past, you know, your conversation, uh, the, the Canva conversation, the Figma conversation both come to mind, as like, it is super obvious the energy that has gone into the habitat to predispose people to high function.

   5. LRLenny Rachitsky19:08

      Mm. Uh, like, you're-

   6. ELEvan LaPointe19:09

      And then you look in-

   7. LRLenny Rachitsky19:10

      ... you're referring to my interviews with the folks from Figma and Canva.

   8. ELEvan LaPointe19:13

      Exactly right. They-

   9. LRLenny Rachitsky19:13

      I see. Oh, say more about that.

   10. ELEvan LaPointe19:15

       They, yeah. Uh, I mean, so you, you think about the, um, even i- in the, in the Canva context of, like, coaches instead of managers.

   11. LRLenny Rachitsky19:23

       Mm-hmm.

   12. ELEvan LaPointe19:24

       Like, that is a, you're looking at... So, so I love this. Let me back up for just a second. There's a, a great qua- I th- I think Dan Pink has summarized the b- the problem better than anybody when he said, uh, "There's a mismatch between what science knows and what business does." And in that gap, it kinda says, like, "Well, what is it that business is doing that science knows better?" And you can kind of almost look at this as an equation of science knows minus what your business does equals dysfunction, (laughs) right? Like, that's, that is a pretty crystal clear thing. So if you take this, like, managers versus coaches, they're taking... Intuitively, I think, I don't, I don't know if they're neuroscientists, but like, intuitively, I think a lot of great founders understand humans don't work a certain way. And this whole paradigm of managers seems to be failing a lot. And this whole paradigm, like mantra, like fail faster seems to be failing a lot. And like la- e- mission statements seem to fail a lot. So you look at this science knows business does as like a lens to examine yourself through, and stuff that fails very often is kind of worth a look. And when you look at, like, okay, do we really want managers? 'Cause that seems to fail a lot. Or is there something that, is there a paradigm that works better for human beings, that activates more human potential? And they hit the nail on the head. So if you kind of do the math of Canva, what science knows versus what Canva does, whether they know they're doing it scientifically right or not, the, the, the math equals zero. Like, there's no difference between what science knows and what business does in that case. And, uh, also the Figma conversation, I loved the phrase from that conversation, um, imagination is a hypothesis generation engine, I think is-

   13. LRLenny Rachitsky21:12

       Mm-hmm.

   14. ELEvan LaPointe21:12

       ... is what the word was.

   15. LRLenny Rachitsky21:13

       Oh, the Dylan, yeah. Chat with Dylan.

   16. ELEvan LaPointe21:14

       I loved that idea.

   17. LRLenny Rachitsky21:16

       (laughs)

   18. ELEvan LaPointe21:16

       'Cause when we talk about imagination as a par- as a part of ability, uh, we talk about imagination's capacity to generate alternatives for you. Like, that's its, that's its purpose. It's not just to doodle in the margins in the middle of boring meetings. (laughs) Like, that, that's, that's part of it, uh, it's a side benefit. But when you look at imagination's purpose, if you have a great imagination, you always have a lot of choices in life. Like, Mickey Mouse was a choice. It was like a new alternative way to send messages through a talking mouse. (laughs) Like, that's okay, that's interesting. But what's the other part of the hypothesis generation engine that we focus a lot on is it's not just the ability to generate choices and hypotheses, but it's also the ability to kind of load them into your Oculus headset and walk around a world in which that choice already has been executed. Like, that's kind of akin to vision in a sense, that do you have a really good ability to load that one branch of this imaginative tree, this one hypothesis into a simulation, and then explore what the world looks like with this in place? And if you look at this coaching thing at, uh, that's going on at Canva instead of managing, like, you load that in the simulator and you're like, "Boy, this, this looks pretty nice." This is a, this is a higher performance thing. Like, we have advocacy instead of, you know, regulation. We ha- (laughs) we have growth. Eh, eh, there's like a whole bunch of aspects that are inherent in that approach where science... And if you ask a neuroscientist, "Would that work better?" They'd be like, "Oh, hell yeah, that would work way better because it activates this in the brain, it ch- it reduces cortisol." It, like, it does all these things that science knows work much better.

   19. LRLenny Rachitsky23:01

       Hmm.

   20. ELEvan LaPointe23:01

       So like, there's a whole list of stuff, I mean, from very deep to very tactical, of things we can do differently that, that reduce the gap between what you're doing and what science knows, and the dysfunction just shrinks and shrinks and shrinks as you do those things.

7. 23:16 – 29:35

   The science of meetings and decision-making

   1. ELEvan LaPointe23:16

   2. LRLenny Rachitsky23:16

      Are there things that you've found people can change in the way they work based on the way the brain operates? Whether it's run better meetings, be better at influence, like, what are some things people can try to do this week that will make them more successful at their work or working with colleagues?

   3. ELEvan LaPointe23:32

      In the list of what science knows and what business does, like, everything's in there. Culture's in there, meetings are in there, goals are in there, deadlines are in there, uh, team dynamics, you know, all this stuff is in there. So we'll probably just pick a f- a few things out of that (laughs) very long list. Um, meetings are a good one. You know, meetings, I, I forget what the statistic is but it's some insane, like, uh, 12-figure amount of... No, not 12. Nine figure? No, 12 figure. Hundreds of billions, right, amount of, of waste is caught in meetings. I mean, we spend gazillions of dollars on waste of time in meetings. And for us, like, in our, in our programs, the average delta is, is between 10 and 20%, so people save anywhere from a full half of a day to a full day per week of work as a result of just cleaning up the way they're using meetings. Uh, and some of that is just the design of meetings. Like, treat meetings like a product and, you know, treat them like workflows that should be organized and used s- you know, intentionally.... but a lot of it is inside the meeting, like, what's the, what's the tactic? So here's something super tactical, which is meetings, generally speaking, are a combination of priming and decision-making, like, if you look at meetings through the lens of, like, the phases that they are. And, uh, a lot of meetings kind of skip the priming step altogether. They launch directly into decision-making, and it would be safe to skip the priming step if we began the meeting under the assumption that everybody here is under the, you know, on the same page, has the same information, and generally speaking, intends for the same outcome. All right. I think that's a ludicrous assumption (laughs) for most meetings, and yet most people are actually shocked to find out that we're not on the same page, even though we literally never have been and, you know, as long as you're on day two plus of working together. So it's a, it's a crazy thing that we don't do priming, and priming can be simple. It can even be done in the invite. I mean, one of the things that's crazy about Outlook and Google is you can put a very terrible, useless meeting into Outlook, uh, and it will never look at it and be like, "This is probably useless." Just like you can go into, like, Trello and put the dumbest project in the company's history into Trello. It will ingest anything you put into it without any discernment as to its value. Now imagine, we're going to have to do this ourselves for now until, like, a better calendar comes out, but imagine if Outlook or Google Calendar or, or, you know, Cron, which now is part of Notion, would just be like, "Uh, uh, uh." (laughs) You know? Like, what is the point of this meeting? And you could say, "Okay, we... This is here, uh, like, this meeting is about the generation of options. It's... Or, or creative problem-solving or very tactical problem-solving or efficiency-seeking," or, like, what is the category of conversation we are about to have? What are some of the basic principles that should apply? I mean, are we, are we honoring sacred cows, or are we eating sacred cows in this meeting? Like, what is the, what is the mode, mentality, the priming, like how can we all kind of say, "This is the mindset, the, and, and the ultimate purpose that applies to the meeting"? And you can write that and you can read that in under three minutes.

   4. LRLenny Rachitsky26:54

      Mm-hmm.

   5. ELEvan LaPointe26:55

      So it's not some arduous process. Amazon does it, like, in an arduous process, right? They're, they're kind of known for that, but that's wisdom to know, like, we need priming. They, they're wise enough to realize the, the need for it. They make that a very robust execution. It doesn't have to be that robust, so skipping priming is pretty bad. Other meetings get the priming and the decision-making backwards. So we start to open the meeting. You know, you've heard of, like, diamond-shaped thinking. Let's open the meeting with kind of expansionary thought and let's end the second half of the meeting with convergence. Well, we start the meeting instead with convergence, realize that we can't reconcile the various, you know, party in the room, their, their needs for convergence, and then you might hear in the middle of a meeting, like, "Well, let's start over again and remember why we're all here." And we do the priming in the second half of the meeting just in time for the meeting to end.

   6. LRLenny Rachitsky27:47

      Mm-hmm.

   7. ELEvan LaPointe27:48

      So that's a super kind of, like, obvious thing that people can do but that people very rarely do, uh, in priming, and I'm happy to generate, like, a list, you know, so we don't have to talk through everything, but, you know, to maybe make some little PDFs or something that people can download that say, "Here's what great priming looks like." And then when you move to the decision-making, uh, "Here's what great decision-making looks like." And that way, you can have, like, a little bit of a guide and again, do the, do your own math, what science knows and what we're doing in this meeting. We're skipping a bunch of steps. That's growing the pob- probability of dysfunction or things going wrong, uh, and let's shrink that probability instead of growing it.

   8. LRLenny Rachitsky28:28

      Amazing. Yeah, that'd be sweet if you had that. Uh, we'll definitely look to that in the show notes. So advice-

   9. ELEvan LaPointe28:32

      Yeah.

   10. LRLenny Rachitsky28:32

       ... here is make sure when you're starting a meeting, running a meeting, uh, prime everyone around the problem we're trying to solve, what we're trying to get out of this meeting, the context, versus just diving into decision-making.

   11. ELEvan LaPointe28:43

       And, and very notably, the principles that apply.

   12. LRLenny Rachitsky28:46

       Hmm.

   13. ELEvan LaPointe28:46

       You know, I think that's really, really important, not just like what we're here to do but, like, how you, how we can think about this best, and you can even have a debate about the principles. And it's way better to have a debate about the principles than it is to have a debate about the tactics that are rooted in the fact that you have super misaligned principles.

   14. LRLenny Rachitsky29:07

       Mm-hmm.

   15. ELEvan LaPointe29:07

       So if somebody is trying to make the decision, you know, with speed in mind, and another person is trying to make the decision with accuracy in mind-

   16. LRLenny Rachitsky29:15

       Mm-hmm.

   17. ELEvan LaPointe29:16

       ... it is completely inevitable that they're about to have a cat fight in the meeting. And they... It's not resolvable until they come back and revisit the fact that deeper down, we are approaching this in a completely different mentality with completely different objectives.

   18. LRLenny Rachitsky29:31

       Awesome. Okay. If you end up having these PDFs of ways to prime successfully-

   19. ELEvan LaPointe29:34

       For sure.

8. 29:35 – 54:46

   Enhancing strategy and vision

   1. ELEvan LaPointe29:35

   2. LRLenny Rachitsky29:35

      ... that would be amazing.

   3. ELEvan LaPointe29:35

      Will do.

   4. LRLenny Rachitsky29:35

      Okay. Okay, great. Okay, uh, other things that people can do to work with folks better. I know you have some advice on how to influence more effectively. I know you have some advice around strategy and vision, so maybe we go into those two directions.

   5. ELEvan LaPointe29:50

      Let's start with strategy and vision-

   6. LRLenny Rachitsky29:52

      Let's do it.

   7. ELEvan LaPointe29:52

      ... because I think it's nice to be better at strategy and vision before you start influencing people.

   8. LRLenny Rachitsky29:57

      (laughs)

   9. ELEvan LaPointe29:57

      So what you'll, what you'll encounter in life, in your mind, as ideas are swirling, whether you're generating those ideas or other people are, is your go- your brain is gonna sort those ideas into believed, believable, kind of conceivable, and inconceivable. And y- you can c- I mean, you can come up with your own words for that, but that's kind of like a starting point, which is if somebody says something you've already experienced, it's something that is believed to your brain. Right? So if, if we said we should implement an OKR fr- framework and you've experienced it in a, in a, in a prior workplace or you've read all about Google doing it-... then you're gonna be like, "Yeah, we should. It would clean up a lot of junk around here." And, and, okay, great. So it's a, your brain's kind of already in, in a yes. If it's believable, maybe you're reading Harvard Business Review and you're kind of reading about things that your business has never done, that you've never done, but there's all this evidence that it works and it makes sense to you mechanically, so you're kind of like, "Okay, yeah, I find that believable," and now we're kind of leaning toward yes, or we're still in the yes bucket. Now, we get into kind of these like unbelievable yet maybe conceivable. So these are the things that seem to be far-fetched. And most of, like going back to the Canva conversation, the conversation with Uri, right, that you had-

   10. LRLenny Rachitsky31:24

       Hmm.

   11. ELEvan LaPointe31:24

       ... um, most of the things that are totally believed by these leaders are unbelievable to most other leaders. Like, "We don't need managers?" That's, I, I don't believe it. So there's like now we've shifted the mind from in-built kind of tailwind to in-built headwind. And this is why minds struggle with strategy and with vision, is that every mind, based on like personality we talked about earlier, that line of demarcation between like believed, you know, we all have different li- lived experience, so the more experience you have, the more believed you have. And then the believable and then the unbelievable but yet conceivable, like these lines shift a lot from person to person. So an idea that totally makes sense to Uri, he's probably been in a thousand meetings where other people are like, "That'll never work," even though obviously science knows, for example, it totally will. One of the great benefits of science and culinary school is let- let's not reinvent ideas that are already proven. So we already know that certain things activate people's purposeful state and the full brain that seeks comprehension, seeks deeper problem-solving, seeks human connection. Those are known things, and the same thing is like the debate about the value of design sits in the strategy and vision, like how do we know there's an ROI to a better design here? Well, if you could disprove that instead of proving it, because the last million people who asked this question proved it, if you could disprove it, you probably win a Nobel Prize for being the first human to disprove something that is like ironclad. Like, we're done. We are done with this debate. So that, I think, is what we have to recognize in ourselves. A big part of self-awareness is where our, like, unbelievable threshold begins, where our believable threshold ends. And then the inconceivable is like get-out-of-my-office-level stuff. And a lot of the vision kind of thinking and dialogue that happens inside of businesses directly activates people's inconceivable response, without any self-awareness that that is a, that's a personal problem, not a objective problem. And I think that's like, it's a really, really important thing for companies and individuals to invest in themselves to kind of say, "Do I have the capacity to recognize a situation that I find inconceivable but that could be totally wrong?" And then we can avoid the months, potentially, of arguing that sit between us and experimentation. So I think that's, that's, that's the starting point for that. And all right, if we were to kind of do paint by numbers on that, you know, what dominoes do you want to knock down? Know your personality. What you're looking for in, in the Big Five model, which we lean into, is openness. If you are low in openness, your brain e- essentially has abstract creative, intellectual, complex thinking wired to the pain systems of the brain, right? That's like how your wiring is. As soon as things get abstract, not only are you like, "Ah, I don't like this," you have a much more visceral negative response to these types of ideas and you are now going into your pain cave, (laughs) right? While somebody else in the room may have all that abstract creative exploratory thinking wired to their reward systems. So that's something to really know, and vulnerability is kind of the best approach to this, 'cause if you think about your, you know, there's domino two once you kind of know this stuff, then the question is, how do we socialize this knowledge, you know, in a team? Let's say it's a C-suite, a, a leadership team, a founder and co-founder and, you know, the rest of the leadership team. And we work a lot with like YC companies on this here, 'cause it's super important. As they hire people, they, every incremental hire is an increment of psychological diversity and it changes everything about how these conversations go. So knowing this, okay, what are our options to socialize this knowledge? Vulnerability is the best option, but you know, like Brene Brown will kind of sell vulnerability for its own sake. Not everybody buys selling vulnerability for its own sake, 'cause it's, it's a scary thing. But it gets a little less scary when we consider how much scarier our alternatives are. Like, I can pretend to hide this, that's my other option; or I can not hide it, be a Tasmanian devil, and then be unapologetic.

   12. LRLenny Rachitsky36:00

       Hmm.

   13. ELEvan LaPointe36:00

       So like, those are your three options. And when you realize like, "I can be vulnerable, I can attempt to hide it, or I can be unapologetic," those other two options are ruinous (laughs) compared to vulnerability.

   14. LRLenny Rachitsky36:12

       The, the thing you said about, hm, openness and not being good at big vision brainstorming super resonates with me, 'cause that's exactly me. So I took-

   15. ELEvan LaPointe36:23

       (laughs)

   16. LRLenny Rachitsky36:23

       ... I took your test. Uh, what is it called? What do you, what's the, what do you call this test by the way, this-

   17. ELEvan LaPointe36:27

       Core Identity is what we call it.

   18. LRLenny Rachitsky36:28

       ... Core Identity Test.

   19. ELEvan LaPointe36:29

       Yeah.

   20. LRLenny Rachitsky36:29

       Okay, cool. And we'll link to it in the, in the-

   21. ELEvan LaPointe36:31

       Okay.

   22. LRLenny Rachitsky36:31

       ... show notes. So I took it. It's basically the Big Five, agreeableness, conscientiousness, extraversion, openness, and, uh, formerly known as neuroticism, now called need for stability. And I'm looking at it right here and I'm actually, and I knew this about myself, I'm pretty low on openness, which I don't like to see.

   23. ELEvan LaPointe36:48

       (laughs)

   24. LRLenny Rachitsky36:48

       But it very much aligns with exactly what you said. I'm not great at big vision thinking and super... Like, like, when people propose, say, our des- a designer on my team proposes this whole redesign, big vision rethink of the way we... I'm like, "No."

   25. ELEvan LaPointe37:03

       (laughs)

   26. LRLenny Rachitsky37:03

       (laughs) Uh, it's like, in my pain cave, like you said. (laughs) And, uh, and that's exactly what this test reflected. So, I think it's a really powerful, uh, example of just, uh, I... Understanding this is the way your brain is gonna respond to things that are, say, totally out there, inconceivable or, uh, how would you call it? Somewhat conceivable, but not-

   27. ELEvan LaPointe37:25

       Yeah.

   28. LRLenny Rachitsky37:25

       ... necessarily believable. And that being aware that that's how your brain works is really powerful. Being aware other people have a very different experience with that is really powerful. And your advice here is, one, this combination of this habitat, create this habitat where you have kind of all, all these versions of people's ways of thinking, where some people are in their happy cave when they're thinking big. And then, along those lines, your point about being very vul- like, vulnerably sharing, "Hey, this is me. I am low on openness. People need to understand this on my team, and let's work together to not use... Not let that hinder us." Is that right?

   29. ELEvan LaPointe38:04

       Yeah, absolutely. I mean, because if you think about these ideas as pegs in holes, right? We're gonna take a creativity-shaped peg and try to put it through a more pragmatic-shaped hole. That there's like a translation problem there. And that's a... It's a huge burden. Like if the team actually needs to be innovative, it's a huge burden just in terms of time spent on that, you know, translation to translate the, the visionary strategic ideas that are accurate but are inconceivable into ideas that feel believable for those who kinda need that more grounded thing. Uh, and of course, the, the, the most common scenario here is ROI, which is, you know, the, the, the classic question to ask about any idea. What's the ROI? Well, if the idea is inherently generating nth order effects instead of first order effects, like, what is the ROI of having fresh flowers in the lobby of a Four Seasons hotel? Th- th- there's two possibilities for the Four Seasons. They either have an answer to that question which satisfies the pragmatic-shaped hole, or they have said in their habitat, "We don't ask those types of questions because they're a huge waste of time." And if you're thinking about a competitive market, you know, like most of the people that you interview are in highly competitive markets, the team that spends less time translating satisfactory language before they move, which inevitably they will move, whether... And sometimes they'll move because the market forces them to, right? They spend so much time locked up in the ROI conversation or the justification, the translation conversation that eventually customers start leaving, employees start leaving, and they're like, "Oh, okay, it's becoming more believable now." Well, 'cause it's moved out of the realm of ideas into the physical world that we can see, like, right in front of us.

   30. LRLenny Rachitsky40:05

       Mm-hmm.
9. 54:46 – 58:58

   Understanding personality traits in strategy and vision

   1. LRLenny Rachitsky54:46

      and, uh, I'm also high in agreeableness. (laughs) I don't like the sound of that. Um, thoughts on just, like, it's okay if you're not amazing at vision because your openness is low, but you can be better at other stuff, and together you end up... You can be really successful no matter how your personality...

   2. ELEvan LaPointe55:03

      Absolutely right. Yeah.

   3. LRLenny Rachitsky55:05

      Cool.

   4. ELEvan LaPointe55:05

      I mean, the- the truth is, we look at, I mean, taking that Canva example of coaches and managers, not only does that change the way an employee feels about the way this connection they have is invested in them, but it also changes inherently a lot of the meeting dynamics and teaming dynamics from, like, okay, hierarchical feeling things, manager, to more mesh-based, uh, intellect, right? And within the mesh, you don't have to worry too much about the hierarchy anymore. You can kind of say, like, "This is the nature of my contribution." So even in the vision and strategy piece, maybe your contributions to idea- idea generation, they're g- they're gonna be some and they're probably gonna be good, but th- those are not ideas to protect in the state that you brought them to the table. They're ideas to set on the table so that people can surround them and improve them. And then as other people contribute ideas that aren't as natural to you, kind of just realize we're not in the phase yet of judging and ranking and priori- prioritizing these ideas. That's not where we are in the overall storyline. So let it happen. And then if you can improve those ideas, improve them. And once ideas kind of have that early stage, that kind of, like, what Jony Ive described, uh, as, like, the infancy of an idea when it's really weak and delicate and susceptible, if you can nurture that idea to kind of adolescence where it has a little bit of ability to defend itself, then y- now you're in a situation where your conscientiousness can start to think about things like, how would we resource this? What sequencing makes the most sense? What is the ROI of these things relative to each other? And consider the second and third order effects and so on. And what would the project plans... And to your point of being both conscientious and agreeable, you are this master of coordination and alignment naturally. So, like, when that phase of the project begins and we have to get people bought in, high functioning together, you know, getting on the same page, staying on- on, you know, staying focused, getting the project done, like, all of the people that were good at the beginning with all the vision and strategy, they are just a complete disaster in that phase. (laughs) So, like, that's- that's just how things really work in the real world and I think we're so, again, focused, like we talked about at the, kind of at the beginning, we alluded to the fact, like, there's- you have to unpack enough complexity. I love the Einstein quote, "Make things as simple as possible, but no simpler." And we've made things way simpler than possible in business by saying, like, "This is the right way of doing the whole thing." It's like, no, no, no, the whole... If you've ever lived a day in real life building a real product, y- the dynamics shift a lot throughout the course of, you know, product lifecycle, as an example, or really any lifecycle as an example. And the peak humans as the dynamics shift are very different, peak humans. Lenny is awesome here, contributes here 10%, contributes here 98%. Evan contributes 98% here. Please get Evan out of the room when it comes to- (laughs) to these- these meetings. Like, that's- that's great, and yes, we should lean into our strengths, but not so much that we don't know our weaknesses because another human's strength on your team is the patch for the bug of your weakness. And we run buggy software in companies and pe- we say, "Oh, I- I'm leaning into my strengths. I don't need to worry about my weaknesses." Well, then you become the person who needs everything translated into your language because when your weakness flares its head up, it slows everybody else down. So it's really, uh, just from an operations business fluidity perspective, a team that is highly unaware of its weaknesses is going to have a lot of slowness and a lot of problems as a result of that. They don't have to fix all their weaknesses, but be aware of them and know who's the patch to your weakness.

10. 58:58 – 1:05:46

    Tactical tips for increasing openness

    1. LRLenny Rachitsky58:58

       Evan, this is so interesting. I love that we're digging deep on this. Is there one tactical thing you could recommend for someone to become better at openness in, say, a brainstorming experience when they're doing vision work when they're low at this? Say, me.

    2. ELEvan LaPointe59:13

       I think the best exercise for a conscientious person, especially, to feel more open is to become obsessed with reverse engineering. And it's to say... Uh, there's two forms of reverse engineering that I think are really helpful here. Number one, it would be reverse engineering against a d- a desired outcome, to truly understand the inputs that generate that outcome. And if we think about that at a big level, like, okay, we want to win a market, what are the real inputs to deconstruct that outcome and understand what our strategy should look like to attack all of the most relevant inputs that generate that outcome? I think that's, um, that's the specific form, and then at a super tactical level, like, if you wanna give feedback to somebody and let's say, you know, like, for me, I'm l- low in politeness. You're probably much higher in politeness than I am and I struggled for years with feedback to generate the intended outcome. Like, I delivered the feedback, but the- the delivery wasn't the intended outcome and the way that I delivered it actually reduced the probability of the intended outcome because I was being too impolite, too direct in many cases, too harsh. And what does harshness do to the brain? Well, that's crystal clear. So what I was doing and what science knows were very different things.

    3. LRLenny Rachitsky1:00:33

       Mm-hmm.

    4. ELEvan LaPointe1:00:33

       And that's why I failed in those cases. But as soon as I started closing the gap and realized I need to try harder to, like, think about the story arc of this feedback, I c- I can... That becomes clearest to me how to do it when I have the intended outcome in mind for the feedback. Like, I really would like this person to start turning the corner on this particular way of thinking. Like, if you and I worked together and it was about openness, it would be like, what are some things that I could do right now to increment and set the stage for a big shift in openness as time goes on that you are bought into?And that's a very, if I'm impolite and be like, "Lenny, what's your problem? Why can't you do this? Everybody else can do this." Your willingness to, to start turning that corner. I mean, it may be there 'cause the safety system is active. You're like, "Oh, bad things could happen if I don't do this." But like, I don't want your safety system to motivate this change. I mean, in most cases, that's an optics-based change instead of a material change that will occur. And that's why a lot of people, they're like, accountability is a great example. Asking for accountability is the best way to not get it, because as- asking for accountability activates people's safety systems. (laughs) Or especially saying, "I'm gonna hold people accountable." Then everybody's like, "Oh, great. We should set up a whole movie set of facade houses that pretend everything's great, with no substance behind them." And that's why so many companies end up that way. So, but yeah, I would say that's kind of tactical. The second thing to understand about openness and reverse engineering is just situational awareness. Very few conscientious people spend, in my opinion, as a very open person, enough time immersing themselves in the reality that is every day situational awareness ne- necessary to do their job. A simp- simplest example of this is how many executives have ever talked to N greater than five customers. You know, like, that is a, 'cause, "Well, I'm busy. I got a lot of stuff to do. I can't, I don't have time to go to, take a world tour, which is a lot like we don't have the ti- the rest of our lives to talk about this." I'm not asking you to take a world tour. I'm asking you to stuff into your brain enough situational awareness that the decisions you make every day that affect all those people you're not talking to are considering those people that you're not talking to. So, th- it, less about an intended specific outcome in this case, and more about do I really know the, you know, the, I would kind of think about this as like if we th- could think about, like, uh, aeronautical engineering, like do I actually have a, an understanding of the conditions, the flight conditions that I'm in every day in order to fly really well? And the answer to that for a lot of people is no. So r- reverse engineering is, like, probably the whole categ- I don't know if that makes enough tactical sense. I'm happy to, to, to be more descriptive, but like, that's the category I think is like have you reversed engineered how to get outcomes and have you reversed engineered to predispose your mind to come up with really good ideas and good decisions, as opposed to come up with decisions that are super disconnected from reality? Great example being like PLG. I mean, if you haven't done enough situational awareness work, you have no idea if PLG is a remotely viable strategy for growing your business, if it's remotely relevant strategy for growing your business. And company after company after company has leadership team obsessed with this concept that, in principle, we should be able to let people just sign up and swipe a credit card and onboard and great. No, our, we have a hyper-technical solution. Like, that is never going to happen. Or it's like, that's not the way they do budget or, like, there could be any number of ways that, that that's, you know, not gonna work out. And that, those are just some concrete examples.

    5. LRLenny Rachitsky1:04:18

       This episode is brought to you by Eppo. Eppo is a next generation A/B testing and feature management platform built by alums of Airbnb and Snowflake for modern growth teams. Companies like Twitch, Miro, ClickUp, and DraftKings rely on Eppo to power their experiments. Experimentation is increasingly essential for driving growth and for understanding the performance of new features. And Eppo helps you increase experimentation velocity while unlocking rigorous deep analysis in a way that no other commercial tool does. When I was at Airbnb, one of the things that I loved most was our experimentation platform, where I could set up experiments easily, troubleshoot issues, and analyze performance all on my own. Eppo does all that and more with advanced statistical methods that can help you shave weeks off experiment time, an accessible UI for diving deeper into performance, and out of the box reporting that helps you avoid annoying prolonged analytic cycles. Eppo also makes it easy for you to share experiment insights with your team, sparking new ideas for the A/B testing flywheel. Eppo powers experimentation across every use case, including product, growth, machine learning, monetization, and email marketing. Check out Eppo at GetEppo.com/Lenny and 10X your experiment velocity. That's GetE-P-P-O.com/Lenny. It feels like there's a fractal of stuff we could talk about and this endless threads of things that I wanna dig into.

11. 1:05:46 – 1:21:17

    Building influence and effective relationships

    1. LRLenny Rachitsky1:05:46

       Let me shift a little bit to influence. We mentioned this a little bit earlier. I know you have a bunch of awesome advice on how to build your skill at becoming more influential. That's something a lot of listeners to the podcast, product managers, also founders need the skill. Who doesn't need to become better at influence? What can we learn about how to become better influencers?

    2. ELEvan LaPointe1:06:05

       We'll probably unpack, uh, a second topic and open up a side, you know, an off-ramp here right at the beginning. But there's two things. There, there's influence itself and then there's relationships. And we should probably talk a little bit about relationships. Trying to exert influence through a dysfunctional relationship is not gonna go great. And most human beings, especially when they go to work, are pretty, uh, pretty out of, out of sorts when it comes to relationships. And you even hear crazy mantra like, "We don't have to like each other to work together," which are like, good luck with that. I mean, just watch a text message pop up on a phone of a person who doesn't like you and watch their response time to the text message or their Slack message or whatever. I mean, you're talking about you've built in a multi-day, at least multi-hour delay into responsiveness. Sure, sh- purely because the relationship isn't good. And then you compound that effect over the, over the, whatever size your company is.That's, you know, that's massive operational inefficiency. Just because I don't want to respond to Evan right now. (laughs) Right? Like, that's... So that's, that's the one piece. Now, assuming the relationship is in place, and we'll come back to that and talk about that, 'cause that's a whole very actionable framework to unpack. Assuming the relationship is good, I think the f- the starting point for influence is to choose your character, and, and choose your mode. It's almost like you're playing, like, Elden Ring or some, you know, video game, and you're gonna be, like, "Am I gonna influence in this way, as, like, the hero, or the, you know, the kind of like the, the exemplar of these things? Or am I gonna influence through back channels, or am I..." Like, "What is my character?" And everybody, for per- your personality, kind of has a natural fit for, like, the character you're gonna select as this mode of influence. And then you're gonna pick a speed of influence, which is slow, moderate, or fast. And the habitat can help a lot with this. Is, is like if you're... If a founder is listening to this, and you haven't created a habitat where fast influence is easy, and ha- like, the permission isn't there, then you're slowing the company down inadvertently by just not kind of clarifying this with the team. So, slow influence is kind of the, "We'll let them find out the hard way" influence. Like, they're going off a cliff. We know they're going off a cliff. W- and a lot of times, we find ourselves in what's called the Abilene paradox. And the Abilene paradox is where everybody in the room knows it's a bad idea, but we're all like, "We're in." (laughs) You know? And the classic Abilene paradox kind of... If you look up memes on Google, it'll be like, "The dad thinks that the kids might want to go camping. Mom doesn't want to go camping. The kids don't want to go camping. Dad also doesn't really want to go camping." But everybody's like, "Dad probably wants us to go camping, so let's give it a go." And like, they all go and don't enjoy it, so that's... And we see that play out, you know, all the time. And a lot of people will just kind of say, "I can't do anything. I don't have any influence in this case. We're just gonna let them fail, and they'll learn." Or this impolite person, like me giving feedback the wrong way years in the past, like, "We're... You know, I'm not gonna sit Evan down and talk to him about this. He'll figure out on his own through failure that this doesn't work." And that can take months. That can take years. That can take a lifetime for people to learn the slow way, and it is a form of influence, right? Like, you're, you are being intentional to say, "I think the world will create s- enough failure, that adaptation will occur." That is a form of influence, just the slowest one. And a lot of people listening probably realize, "Oh, that's what I'm doing. How can I go way faster than just letting things fail?" So, that's where moderate influence comes in, and a great book to read for, uh, moderate influence is The Challenger Sale. And in The Challenger Sale, what we're looking at is the concept of teaching people something, and then when they live with this k- new knowledge, they'll see things that they weren't seeing before. So, for example, uh, the, in the feedback example, that we can kind of keep using over and over again through this, is, "Hey, Evan, you might, you might want to notice people's body language while you're saying these things, and here's some signs to look out for that when you've done this, and you get this, that's probably a sign that people are bought in and still with you. And when you see this, that's probably a sign that people are pushing back. And you can ask this question in that moment, and you'll probably hear answers like this." So, you're, like, giving somebody a tool that their future is gonna unpack, and the challenger sale kind of assumes a long enough sales cycle where you're not going to s- land the sale in the meeting. You're not trying to close them right there. You'll teach them some stuff, and you'll say, "Hey, if you see this stuff, that's a pretty clear sign that you need to take action. So, why don't we call you in 30 days?" And, and, and 30 days later we get on ph-... "Hey, have you been seeing this?" And they'll go, "Everywhere I look. I can't not see it now." And that's how you influence a person in a few days, a few weeks, maybe a few months at worst. Way faster than letting them fail.

    3. LRLenny Rachitsky1:11:22

       We actually had... I don't know if you know this. (clears throat) We had the author of that book, uh, on the podcast, Matt Dixon, I think his name-

    4. ELEvan LaPointe1:11:27

       Yeah.

    5. LRLenny Rachitsky1:11:28

       And, yeah. And The Challenger Sale, the whole... The idea there is, like, challenge their perspective and view on what is actually real about the market and what they need.

    6. ELEvan LaPointe1:11:36

       Exactly, yeah. And I think it's, it's... I- and I think, yes, there's the challenge component to it, but I think the underappreciated piece of that methodology is that you're still letting that person see the world-

    7. LRLenny Rachitsky1:11:50

       Mm-hmm.

    8. ELEvan LaPointe1:11:50

       ... but you've given them new information that is breaking some calcification in their brain. It's not the challenge. It's not the moment of the challenge where all the magic happens. Like, there's moments that occur later that continue kind of putting that, you know, calcium, lime, and rust melting formula on this, on this expectation or this kind of decision in their mind, to the point where sometimes they'll turn around and be like, "Thank you for even telling me this."

    9. LRLenny Rachitsky1:12:19

       So, the advice here is, uh, if you're trying to influence someone, try to figure out what they don't know. Like, find information that you know that they may not know, because once they know that, then they may be like, "Oh, wow, I totally see what you're saying."

    10. ELEvan LaPointe1:12:33

        Yeah, exactly right. And, and let them know it, and let them live with it. Don't, don't cram it down their throat and make them accept it. If w- if they live with it just a little bit, even just a couple days, that might be enough to come back to a much softer conversation.

    11. LRLenny Rachitsky1:12:47

        Does this connect to what you said earlier, which I love, this idea of pick a character? Like, how your influence... Like, pick your influence style based on your personality, whether it's back channeling... And that makes me think of a s- very specific person who's, like... He's coming on the podcast, actually. He's, like, this Jedi that just gets people aligned, but very behind the scenes, very, like, the meetings before the meetings. Uh, so, that's one character. Or it's just, like...... uh, telling a compelling story probably in a deck or a, or there's other character, I guess. Yeah. Is that- is, does this idea of, uh, sharing information, is that like a type of character or is that just something that like everyone should just do 'cause that's a really effective strategy?

    12. ELEvan LaPointe1:13:27

        I like the idea of intentionality in just about everything. Like, are we, uh, are we letting trade winds push us into certain things or are we actually making choices? And I think that step of being intentional about your style in this kind of notion of a character, uh, is a, is a wise step to take so that you can kind of have some guard rails as you go through this, and some consistency, right? It helps other people understand the role you're playing in influence if you are consistently kind of coming from the same place, you're articulate about that style. Like, "I want to try to influence this organization by doing this, this way and you're gonna see that from me over and over and over again." You've ac- y- you kind of had given yourself a little permission and, and also you can get some buy-in from people. If you do wanna be more the barbarian or, you know, kind of approach, you can say, "Hey, I'm the devil's advocate approach," or, "I'm the break it and see if it still stands after I hit it really hard with a sledgehammer kind of guy. Is it okay if I do that over and over and over again?" And now you've bought future you the permission to approach things in certain ways that would yield meaningfully different influence outcomes, right? Like, meaningfully different, like, "I was able to do this and it accelerated something."

    13. LRLenny Rachitsky1:14:40

        So what I, the way I- I am hearing this is, uh, there are many ways to get what you want. Think about your personality style and find the path that is most aligned with the way you operate.

    14. ELEvan LaPointe1:14:52

        Exactly.

    15. LRLenny Rachitsky1:14:52

        Whether it's behind the scenes, whether it's a compelling story. Awesome. So, so this character's basically figure out what you're... This kind of comes back to leverage your strengths.

    16. ELEvan LaPointe1:15:02

        Oh, yeah.

    17. LRLenny Rachitsky1:15:02

        What are you good at? And use that channel to convince people of the thing you want them to be convinced of.

    18. ELEvan LaPointe1:15:08

        Yep, absolutely.

    19. LRLenny Rachitsky1:15:09

        Are there, uh... I imagine, like my mind goes to what are the list of thi- of ways, what are the character options (laughs) in this list when I'm opening up the game and choosing? Is there any, you went through a few, but just to give people like, "Oh, okay, I see. I could try it this way." If there're like a small list you could share of just like, "Here's ways you could try approaching influence."

    20. ELEvan LaPointe1:15:27

        Probably the dimensions are most valuable to people. Uh, I would say one of the dimensions is compassion, which is, do I want to influence by trying to help people, by trying to make sure that people, that we get it right and that people get value? And then, uh, the permission I'm seeking there is can I ask questions about why, why are we not thinking about the user right now? You know, why, why are we not concerned with the value they're ge- they're getting and challenge us in that way? I think there are characters based on logic and, and even belief, which is, I would like to be the one to kind of insert more knowledge and insert more kind of causality into conversations and challenge causality in conversations to make us think harder, and, and challenge what we believe and, like, break up the sacred cows of the stuff we walked in the meeting with so that we feel differently about things walking out of meetings. So I think there's a, a bunch of different, uh, very useful dimensions. One could be very creativity based. If you follow this big five format, they, they're kind of spelled out for you. Um, enthusiasm, interesting dimension. Like, I want to challenge us on the, through the lens of what do people get excited about? What do, what does, what makes people feel good? Does this make people feel good? And could, are there tweaks we could make to the product or this marketing campaign or whatever? I mean, look at what Tziki just did with Runway. I mean, like, I love that guy so much and there's so many components of his character and obviously the characters he surrounded himself with that contribute to really next level stuff.

    21. LRLenny Rachitsky1:17:10

        Mm-hmm.

    22. ELEvan LaPointe1:17:10

        Right? And they're definitely challenging each other using these dimensions of, like, compassion to be the, you know, the, the character of caregiver or the character of, like, protector, right? And so there's a bunch of different kind of ways you could turn those dimensions into characters. But I think when you see the value of each of those perspectives, especially in product, I'm a really big fan of product. If you have dysfunctionally high compassion, dysfunctionally high openness, you, you have internal rewards and, and motivations to explore regions of product that other minds aren't exploring as intuitively. And you don't have to have the whole deck, you know, to, to be amazing at product, but you have some unfair advantages if you are super prone to reverse engineering just by your nature. You ha- you're gonna b- be more situationally aware and probably make a series of vastly better decisions than the team that has le- l- a lot less situational awareness than you do. It's a huge advantage. So, but, but when it comes to, to the concept of influence, yeah, I mean, figuring out these dimensions that define who you are and then using them to kind of say, "I want the permission to ask a series of questions and challenge our thinking through this very intuitive strength that I have. I... Can we all see the value in that or do I need to further, you know, sell myself?" (laughs) Right? And then you, and then you'll find, like, you can take on that character and, and play that role really well.

    23. LRLenny Rachitsky1:18:45

        I imagine the ultimate unlock is that combined with what is that person's personality style and what is the best way they receive information, which is a little harder 'cause you can't force them take some test and you can't, like, tell 'em, make them give you the results. But I know a lot of teams do these tests, uh, together as a team and share their results. And so it's, I guess, a reminder of just that's really powerful if you and your team, especially the execs at a company Yeah, exactly. Can do something about this.

    24. ELEvan LaPointe1:19:10

        And, and when you move into the, this vulnerability out of your three choices state-We don't need a bunch of data for that to work really well. You know, if you said, "Hey, I'm not super strong at this," and the rest of the room was like, "Well wait, this other person's super awesome at this, why don't the two of you work together?" Then it's, like, under 30 seconds, we've unlocked potential that wasn't there.

Episode duration: 2:14:38