Persuading people sucks!

In April, I outlined six things Leader/Communicators should always do and six to never do. You can use these skills every day at work. Wanna see how?

CHAPTER ONE

Welcome to WidgetCo, which makes widgets their customers love. The software company has grown at an enviable pace since Monica and Arun founded it in 2012. They were planning an IPO in 2022, but, well, the market.

The current capital crunch isn’t a huge issue, but the company is facing big questions about generative AI. WidgetCo’s current product could incorporate generative AI in kind of a bandaid way, or they could re-imagine the whole stack and make something amazing. The question for WidgetCo is this: Should we be first or should we be best?

Clara, who works in product management, is deep in the first vs. best debate.

“No one read my e-mail,” Clara said to Marcus, her friend and ally in product marketing. “I laid out the entire issue with competitive analysis, customer sentiment, current product features, planned upgrades, everything. It was only about eight pages long. But then I got to the meeting and no one had absorbed my doc.”

“TL;DRs exist for a reason my friend,” said Marcus, who never wrote anything longer than three paragraphs.

“You’re a former cheerleader. You like to skim over things.”

Marcus rolled his eyes. “Drum major. Not cheerleader.”

“OK. Uniformed non-athlete on the field at college football games. Whatever. The point is that I showed that we can do both,” Clara said, raising her voice from a whisper to a normal tone, which meant she was worked up. “We can do something now and we can rebuild to create something great. It won’t be as hard as everyone thinks. If the whole company looks deeply at the data, the path forward is self-evident. I just have to get them to study the facts.”

Marcus knew that Clara was super smart but sometimes so blind. “You can’t package information the way YOU want to receive it, Clara. You have to package it the way YOUR AUDIENCE wants to receive it.”

“Fine. Help me dumb it down then.”

“Not dumb. Distill.”

Marcus had learned the hard way in his last job that he must always put his audiences first whenever he communicated. He also thought that Clara’s strategy was sound. He was on board. He suggested they spend lunch doing a Who What What table.

In the first column Marcus listed each member of the management team:
Jones, the douchey product marketing VP who shouldn’t even be on the management team, but the VCs insisted.
Justine, the fierce, snobby engineering VP who went to ESIEE in Paris. She never wants to talk to anyone beneath her. And she thinks everyone is beneath her.
Hector, the CRO, who is impatient and blustery but does have good customer instincts.
April, the take-no-prisoners CMO with finger tattoos who swears like a sailor. Because she came from the consumer world, April has no patience for any discussions that don’t center on customers or the brand.
Gary, the jovial, chill CFO, who is on his fourth start up. VPs of Ops, HR and Legal report to Gary, so he makes the company function. No one has even seen him raise his voice.
Monica - co-founder and CEO. WidgetCo is Monica’s first start up. She is 100% unwilling to make a mistake.
Arun - co-founder and CTO. WidgetCo is his third start up. No one knows if he’s talented or just lucky. He’d much rather be out on the speaking circuit than taking work meetings.

In the Who What What table’s second column, Clara and Marcus put in what each person hoped for, was afraid of, their biases, their beliefs, their risk tolerance, etc. In the third column they put what they wanted each person to think and feel and do and believe after they’d been persuaded (lobbied?) by Clara and Marcus.

After they’d put their audiences first, Clara and Marcus were ready to create their communication plan. . .