说服性沟通与向上管理(managing up) | Wes Kao (Maven, altMBA, Section4)
Persuasive communication and managing up | Wes Kao (Maven, altMBA, Section4)
Anticipating the Damage of Poor Communication
Wes Kao: I often see operators who explain things poorly and then are shocked and horrified when people are confused or there’s skepticism, there’s apathy. I’m a big proponent of asking myself, if I’m not getting the reaction that I’m looking for, how might I be contributing? How could I explain this more clearly? How can I be more compelling? How can I anticipate any questions that they might have?
Guest Introduction and Opening
Lenny Rachitsky: You are one of the best teachers of communication I’ve ever come across. I made a list of people’s favorite tactics and frameworks and approaches that you teach in writing. Any tactics you can share for someone to be a little more concise?
Wes Kao: I think the blast radius of a poorly written memo is way bigger than most people think. If you are just shooting off a message in a Slack channel with 15 other people, and it’s confusing, you didn’t include information you should have included, there’s going to be a bunch of back and forth. Whereas if you had just taken another look at it, those 15 people would be off to the races.
Communication Is the Work Itself
Lenny Rachitsky: You have an awesome framework called MOO.
The Scope of Communication
Wes Kao: MOO stands for Most Obvious Objection. A lot of times we’re surprised by the questions that we get especially in meetings, we feel blindsided. When really, if you thought for even two minutes about what are obvious objections that I’m likely to get, you often immediately come up with what some of those things are. Are you going to be able to anticipate every single objection? No. But can you anticipate the obvious ones? Absolutely.
Selling First, Logistics Later
Lenny Rachitsky: Today my guest is Wes Kao. Wes co-created the Alt-MBA program with Seth Godin. She Co-Founded a company called Maven, which I often collaborate with, which makes it easy for people to host live cohort-based courses. She recently left Maven to launch her own course on Executive Communication and Influence. There’s a quote that came to mind after I stopped recording this conversation with Wes by George Bernard Shaw, “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.”
By the end of this podcast if you listen to what Wes suggests, you’ll be a lot closer to becoming a world-class communicator. If you enjoy this podcast, don’t forget to subscribe and follow it in your favorite podcasting app or YouTube. Also, if you become a yearly subscriber of my newsletter, you get a year free of Perplexity Pro, Superhuman, Notion, Linear and Granola. Check it out at lennysnewsletter.com. With that, I bring you Wes Kao.
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Breaking Through the Executive Mindset
Wes Kao: Thanks, Lenny. I’m very honored to be a second-time guest.
Lenny Rachitsky: Very rare honor. No pressure, but I think this is going to be one of the highest leverage episodes I’ve done and let me tell you why I think that’s the case in the newsletter and on the podcast, I often talk about just how important and how high leverage the skill of communication is to product leaders, to leaders, just to people in general. There’s this quote that Boz, the CTO of Meta, he’s been on the podcast, he wrote this famous blog post, “Communication is the job.” And I think that’s true for product people, but it’s true for basically any sort of leadership role. Anyone trying to get ahead. And you are one of the best communicators I’ve ever met. You are one of the best teachers of communication I’ve ever come across. You have one of the most popular courses on Maven, on executive communication, so I’m really excited to have you here and to help people become better communicators, better at influence and all these things. So thank you again for being here.
The True Meaning of Conciseness
Wes Kao: Absolutely.
Conciseness and Self-Reflection in Writing
Lenny Rachitsky: Okay. So something that I often do with guests on the podcast, not even often, always, I ping people that the guests have worked with and ask them, “What should I ask Wes? What should I know about Wes?” Let me read a few quotes about you in regards to your communication skills from folks that have worked with you-
Wes Kao: All right.
The Pre-Send Review Habit
Lenny Rachitsky: And these are three different people. Okay, so first, “Wes single handedly raised the quality of the entire company’s writing by like two X across the board. I always say the best writing course I ever took was working with Wes for a year.”
Wes Kao: Wow.
Recommended Books on Writing
Lenny Rachitsky: Okay. That’s one.
The Blast Radius of Bad Writing
Wes Kao: Great.
Lenny Rachitsky: “Wes never just throws things out there, she’s precise with her use of language, meticulous about examining her own ideas before bringing them in front of others and knows how to make her points in a way that people will understand them and buy into them.” Okay. And third, “Wes includes a reasoning with every proposal in the context behind all of her recommendations so that everyone around her learns in order of magnitude faster. This also makes her an exceptional teacher because she can clearly define what excellence is and why something is the goal, and then break down the steps and principles involved.” Okay, reactions.
Using Signposting Effectively
Wes Kao: Those are really nice things. That’s amazing. Yeah, thank you so much.
The Boundaries of Formatting
Lenny Rachitsky: And these are people across different companies, so.
Wes Kao: Cool.
How to Practice and Improve Communication
Lenny Rachitsky: Okay, so that was just to highlight of how good you are at this stuff. And what we’re going to be doing with our chat is going through a bunch of your tactics that you teach and that have helped people become better communicators, executive communicators, better at influence. Before we get into the specific tactics, is there anything that you think is important for people to understand just broadly around the skill of becoming a better communicator?
Building Habits and Staying Patient
Wes Kao: I often see operators who explain things poorly and then are shocked and horrified when people are confused or there’s skepticism, there’s apathy, there’s a lot of avoidable questions, and I’m a big proponent of asking myself, “If I’m not getting the reaction that I’m looking for, how might I be contributing to that?” So, you know, instead of blaming other people for not understanding me, I think about how could I explain this more clearly? How can I be more compelling? How can I anticipate any questions that they might have? So I’m a big proponent of agency. And realizing that we can only control our own behavior. And so the best place to start, if you’re not getting the reaction you’re looking for, is reflecting on how can I get better at the skill of communicating? And it absolutely is a skill.
Career Leaps from Small Details
Lenny Rachitsky: So what I’m hearing is if you’re having a hard time people buying into what you’re trying to convince them to do or you’re finding people are doing not what you asked them to do, it’s likely an issue with your ability to communicate, it’s probably not their fault.
Gauging Confidence in Expressing Opinions
Wes Kao: Yeah, I would say so. You can’t solve everything with improving your communication, but you can increase the likelihood of getting what you want.
Lenny Rachitsky: Cool. Okay. Anything else along these lines of just things that are important to understand just broadly around communication, executive communication?
Avoiding Bias When Expressing Opinions
Wes Kao: I think another big one that I teach in my course and really kick off with is practicing like it’s game day, playing like it’s game day. So I see a lot of operators who save their best behavior for executives only. So you know, they want to shine when they’re presenting to senior leadership, but with everyone else, they’re kind of calling it. And I just don’t think that you’re going to be able to get enough reps to actually get good at executive communication if you are only doing it with executives. Because many of us only present to execs once a month, right? Or a couple of times a quarter. And that’s just not a lot of chance to practice. So really treating every single stakeholder as if they are important because they are, and you shouldn’t be if you don’t want to waste your CEO’s time, you also shouldn’t waste your cross-functional team members’ time or your manager’s time or your direct reports’ time. So that’s something else that I ask to keep in mind.
Lenny Rachitsky: And maybe a last question before we get into the tactics. When people think communication, they think email, they think meeting presentations, things like that. How do you think about, when you talk about executive communication and communication in general, what’s kind of the umbrella of things that includes?
The Most Obvious Objection (MOO)
Wes Kao: Yeah, I would say broadly the two mediums are verbal communication and written. So verbal being meetings, conversations, presentations. And written being emails, strategy docs, notion docs, Slack messages, text messages, those two categories broadly. And I also think about communication as more of a means to an end, which might be interesting for some people because I teach a course on communication. So you would think that’s like the end in and of itself, but I really see it as a means to an end where the end is getting the ideal outcome you’re looking for. So whether that is buy-in or making a good decision as a team or moving to the next step, whatever that might be, communication is really in service of that end goal.
The Intersection of Communication and Thinking
Lenny Rachitsky: Awesome. Okay. So I made a list of people’s favorite tactics and frameworks and approaches that you teach, and talking to folks that you’ve taught and folks that you’ve worked with. So I’m just going to go through a bunch and let’s just help people get better at these things.
Wes Kao: All right, let’s do it.
Staying Calm in High-Pressure Conversations
Lenny Rachitsky: Okay. So the first is something you call sales, then logistics. What is that about?
Wes Kao: Yes. So a common mistake that I see is overestimating the amount of buy-in that you have from your audience. So that looks like jumping straight into talking about the logistics, the details of the how to do something, of the process. When in reality your audience has not yet decided if they even want to do the thing. So what I see operators do in response then is go even deeper into the logistics and the how, thinking that, “Oh, if I just explain this more than that person will want to do it.” When really a sales note is different than a logistics note. A sales note is meant to get people excited to do the thing you want them to do, and to agree to do it. And only then after they have bought in, does it make sense to share the logistics.
So there’s an order of operations here. If you switch the order of operations, you will likely get a slow response or just no response, right? We’ve all put a Slack message in a channel and got crickets and tumbleweed. So really starting off with selling the person and making sure that they know why we’re doing this, why this matters to the company, why now, and then sharing the logistics tends to be a lot more effective.
The Starting Point for Advice
Lenny Rachitsky: Is there an example of that that might help illustrate that point or that approach?
The Art of Managing Up
Wes Kao: Yeah. So one of my clients is a head of operations and she was trying to get the rest of her executive team, which she was a part of, to fill in some wins for the week so that they could share this out with the whole company. And this was going to be motivating, it was going to shine a light on folks. And she led with the logistics of which document to send, to put the details in, what time to put it in by, the format that you should put these wins and didn’t really get much of a response from the leadership team, which makes sense, right? Because this totally sounds like one of those things that’s another item to check off on your list when you already have so many other things to do and here’s this other process that like we’re all supposed to do now, like yay, right? And so she wasn’t really getting response. And that’s because she dove straight into logistics.
Whereas what she could have done is start by selling folks, selling the other executives on why are we doing this? Well, we’re doing this because this is a chance to shine a light on your team members who are doing amazing work, for them to feel motivated and to feel like the rest of the company really sees them and understands what they’re doing. And this is all something that is going to motivate your team, right? So sharing why this is helpful and useful and how this is in service of you and your team versus like, “Oh, this is a favor that you’re doing for me to fill out this form and fill it out this way and by this date,” et cetera, et cetera.
Lenny Rachitsky: I know that execs often want the opposite where they’re just like, “Okay, I know, just tell me what you want to do. Just like, okay, just get to the point. I don’t want time for all this context and background.” Any advice on when to spend any time on the sales? Like what are signs that, okay, maybe you don’t have them sold yet, or what are maybe contexts where you should probably still try to sell them first?
Giving Feedback Effectively
Wes Kao: Yeah. So I actually think that you should always do a little bit of selling even for situations where people have generally bought in. Because most of us have a lot going on and we’re not actively thinking about whatever you’re talking about. So even though I agreed to something two weeks ago, by the time you’re telling me about it again, like I thought about a billion other things since then, right? So reminding me of why are we talking about this? Why does this matter? And then getting into it and framing that conversation upfront is way more likely for us to not get stuck in a cold start and not kind of go two steps back one step forward.
The other thing is, you can frame a conversation and sell a bit at the beginning very concisely. So I’m not talking about spending 15 minutes out of a 30 minute meeting selling, I’m talking about one to two minutes, even a couple sentences, and then transitioning into the main thing you want to talk about. So I’m a huge proponent of doing that and basically reminding people, why are we doing this? Why are we here today? Why does this matter? And then getting into the meat.
Lenny Rachitsky: I love that. So basically you can do this really briefly, it doesn’t have to be a whole pitch for half an hour. It’s just a reminder, “Here’s why we think this is important.” And I think that’s such a good point because a lot of times it’s like a leader is looking at this thing you’re asking them to do and they’re like, “Why are we even, why am I spending time on this?” And just a reminder of like, “Okay, I see, I forgot this was going to be, this a part of our strategy, this has this much impact potential or here’s how it could help our team be more efficient.”
The CEDAF Delegation Framework
Wes Kao: Yeah. And you can really do that in like 30 seconds.
Lenny Rachitsky: Is there like a, I don’t know, structure to this? Is it just like why? Is there a kind of a template you like or some way you recommend of selling first? Is it like, “Here’s why we’re doing this.” Starting like that? Anything along those lines?
Building a Swipe File for Inspiration
Wes Kao: Yeah. I think explaining why we’re doing this, why this benefits the business, what problem this is solving. Again, you can do a lot of this in a couple of sentences. And then I also like asking or stating what I need from the other person upfront. So saying, “Hey, we’re here today because two weeks ago we were reviewing the product flow and realized that there were a couple of parts that were kind of confusing. So I took a stab at fixing those areas, rewriting the microcopy, and I want to present them to you today, see if you agree with these changes, and then we’re going to roll them out. What I’m looking for from you is feedback on the changes and if you agree.” So like that was like 15 seconds, right? Super fast. And then now we’re all on the same page about why we’re here. And you can listen more intently knowing that I’m looking for a certain kind of feedback.
AI Corner: AI in Work and Life
Lenny Rachitsky: I would love to hear it that way. I think there’s like an implication here that maybe is worth sharing of just, a lot of this is about communicating effectively to execs, which will make you communicate better to most people. But especially with folks up the ladder. They don’t have a lot of time, they have a million things in their head. Maybe just share like why this is so important, like what the state of mind of a leader is that you need to kind of break through.
Lightning Round Q&A
Wes Kao: Yeah. So I call it the yes, yes, yes, next, next, next mindset where if I’m listening to direct reports present something to me, very often I find myself thinking, “Got it. All right, yes, let’s keep going.” Right? And you know, on the other side of that, I’ve often presented to executives where I had a 15 slide deck and execs would do that and I’d be like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Like I have a whole sequence, I have a whole order, you know? And sometimes they would give me buy or make the decision by slide four, you know? And I’d be like, “Okay, well you know, slide 13, I want to show you this great graph I put together.” Right? And what was really helpful for me was realizing that I should take the win. Okay, if five seconds already agreed, take the win and keep it moving, move on.
Lenny Rachitsky: Yeah. What’s that quote like? “If you’ve sold them, stop talking.”
Focus and Freedom as a Creator
Wes Kao: Right. Yes. Yeah, you might talk them out of agreeing.
Lenny Rachitsky: Yeah. Okay. You mentioned being concise. Let’s talk about that. You have some really good advice on just how to effectively be concise and not too concise. What’s your advice there?
Saying No and Finding Leverage
Wes Kao: Yes. One of my pet peeves is when people are too concise and they equate being concise with brief, being brief. And being concise is not about absolute word count, it’s about economy of words. It’s about the density of the insight that you’re sharing. And so you can have a 300 word memo that’s meandering and long-winded and a thousand word memo that is tight and concise. And so not equating concision with briefness I think is a really big one to understand.
The second thing is a lot of advice about being concise, I think misses an important point. So we’ve all heard, “Don’t bury the lead, cut to the chase.” Main point, put the main point at the top, bottom line up front, right? And all of these pithy aphorisms assume that you actually know what your core point is. So you can’t cut to the chase unless you know what the chase is. You can’t unbury the lead unless you know what the lead is. And so that I found is the bottleneck to being concise. It’s actually not really being clear of what you are thinking, that’s what’s leading to being long-winded.
And you can kind of test this theory because most of us have a go-to story that we’ve told a bunch of times, right? We’re like, you know exactly when people are going to laugh, you know when they’re going to gasp or hold their breath, right? And why are you so good at telling that story and why are you so concise about it? Because you’ve told it a bunch of times, you know all of the beats. So in meetings though, at work, we are very rarely talking about the same thing that many times it’s always something new. It’s something that we are also probably likely processing ourselves and are in the midst of processing as we are in a quick turnaround time, telling someone else about it, telling our team about it. And so you are basically asking your brain to do a lot of different processes, especially in a real time conversation. You’re listening to the other person absorbing, making sense of it, processing it, figuring out what you think and how you would react.
And then trying to say something cohesive that makes sense, right? And then trying to be concise about it. So it’s just a lot of different processes. And so the only solution I found consistently to being concise is preparation. It’s not a very glamorous solution by any means, but the clearer I am going into a meeting, going into a conversation, going into a pitch, the better I am at being concise and being able to bring the conversation back to the most important points at being able to stay flexible, but also firm and preparation. I don’t mean spending hours and hours preparing for a weekly meeting, even a couple of minutes really makes a huge difference.
Most of us are so back to back in meetings that we’re doing zero preparation. It’s like the meeting has started 30 seconds in and you’re still unwinding from the last Zoom call that you were on, right? So most of us are in that mental state. So if you even take 30 seconds to one minute to ground yourself on why am I in this meeting? What do I want to share and make sure I get across in the time that we have, you’re going to go in there so much more focused and so much more able to be concise.
Closing and Contact Information
Lenny Rachitsky: So the advice there, so this is for meetings and I want to talk about writing also, but for meetings, the advice here is before you get into a meeting, actually think about why am I in this meeting? What do I want to get out of it? Instead of in the meeting figuring out a lot as you go, which to your point, you’re just going to ramble and be like, “Oh, okay, here’s what I actually want to say.”
Wes Kao: Yeah. And what might I want to share in the meeting too? You know, especially for more introverted folks. Sometimes you need to decide beforehand that you want to speak and you want to make sure you get a certain point across. So even deciding that beforehand makes a huge difference.
Lenny Rachitsky: Yeah, I found this extremely powerful just like five minutes before you get into a meeting. And it could happen earlier in the day, right? It doesn’t have to happen right before the meeting, or worst case, it’s right before the meeting. Just, “Okay, what do I want to get out of this? What am I here? What do I want to say?” And just like giving your brain a little bit of time to prepare. Super powerful. In writing, is there like any tactics you can share for someone to be a little more concise?
Wes Kao: I think the main tactic is to remind yourself to be concise. And usually when I do that, I end up trimming 20% at least of what I wrote, tightening up some sentences. I also ask myself, how might I be adding cognitive load to whatever it is that I’m saying? So is there a tighter, clearer, cleaner way that I can ask what I’m asking or present the information I’m presenting or make the recommendation that I’m making? And usually if you even ask yourself that, your brain automatically comes up with stuff. You just see whatever you wrote differently and you’re like, “Oh shit, I could trim this entire paragraph because that’s secondary.” And maybe you have your primary message in Slack, and then within the thread add some of the secondary stuff, right? So I find that most of us, it’s reminding yourself to be concise. And once you think of it, your brain naturally will see places where you can trim.
Lenny Rachitsky: There’s a layer of advice under this that you’re not saying that I’m going to say, which is actually look at the thing you wrote at least once before you share it. Because I used to be really bad at this. I just like, “Okay, I don’t have time. I wrote this doc, send it, get feedback.
… really bad at this. I just like, “Okay, I don’t have time. We wrote this doc, send it, get feedback. All right. Send this email. I don’t have time to read this email.” And I find just forcing yourself to look at it solves so much of this.
Wes Kao: Oh, yes, yes, definitely. I was assuming before doing that, but you’re right, some people might not be. And yes, definitely reading your own message first is huge. And yeah, I find that even doing that you can often spot a lot of low-hanging fruit.
Lenny Rachitsky: Right. You’ll find the typos and grammar issues and you’ll be like, “Oh, I don’t need this word.” Along those lines, let me share two books. People always ask me, “How did you learn to write?” I’m like, “I’m not a writer, I don’t know what I’m doing.” But two books really helped me write more effectively. And one is specifically to help you write more concisely called On Writing Well. I don’t know if you’ve read that.
Wes Kao: Yeah.
Lenny Rachitsky: Okay. And it’s basically chapter after chapter of, “Here’s what you can cut. And you can cut more. And look what more you can cut and cut this stuff.” And he has screenshots of essays that students have written in his class and he’s like, “Look at all those words you cut and nothing has changed. It’s exactly the same message and even is better with 40% of the words cut.”
Wes Kao: Is this by Sol Stein or another author?
Lenny Rachitsky: I don’t have it… It’s somewhere in my bookshelf. So we’ll look it up.
Wes Kao: Yeah, there’s a writing book by Sol Stein that I absolutely love. And I feel like it might be called On Writing Well, but then also I could see there being multiple books called On Writing Well.
Lenny Rachitsky: There’s also Writing Well I think by Stephen King, that’s another one that people love, but there On Writing Well is the one I really loved because it’s very tactical.
Wes Kao: Going back to something that you were saying earlier with rereading what you wrote, I think the blast radius of a poorly written memo is way bigger than most people think. So if you’re just shooting off a message in a Slack channel with 15 other people and it’s confusing and you didn’t include information you should have included, there’s going to be a bunch of back and forth. All 15 of these people are reading this being like, “Okay, what do I do with this?”
Whereas if you had just taken another look at it, those 15 people would be off to the races. They would’ve read your message and then known exactly what to do next or what their part was or what you were looking for from them. So I think about that a lot too. It’s not just me writing this and sending it off. It’s, “Who are all the people who are going to come in contact with this message who are going to refer to it and use it? And if I just take 30 more seconds to make sure that it’s clean, how much can I unblock from their work?”
Lenny Rachitsky: That’s such a good point. I like that, I love that term blast radius. It’s such a good point. Just like there’s so much negative leverage in writing inefficiently and inconcisely. If you spend like… Inconcisely? I don’t know the word is there, but if you just spend three minutes spending a little more time making it more clear just like the impact and leverage that has, that’s such a good point. I looked up the books, it’s so funny. Okay, so there’s On Writing Well by William Zinsser. There’s Stein On Writing by Sol Stein, which is what you said you were talking about. And then Stephen King has a book called On Writing. Everyone’s got the same.
Wes Kao: Yeah. Common title.
Lenny Rachitsky: Not ideal for SEO but On Writing Well is the one that I love by William Zinsser. There’s also one called A Series Of Short Sentences if you haven’t seen that one. It’s a really good rate too. It’s just how to write short sentences and just the power of just keeping sentences short, which I struggle with.
Wes Kao: Yeah. Yeah, I like that.
Lenny Rachitsky: Okay. Back to our agenda. There’s another framework/tactic that I’ve heard you recommend. It’s called signposting. What is signposting?
Wes Kao: Signposting is using certain words, phrases, formatting, and an overall structure in your writing that helps guide your reader and signals what is coming in the rest of the post. So, this is especially helpful if you have a long memo. It adds structure to where are we going and what certain sections of paragraphs are about. So some of my favorite signposting words are, “for example,” shows that you’re about to show an example because shows that you’re about to share your logic and rationale behind something. “As a next step,” is a great one. People’s eyes automatically zoom to, “as a next step.” Even “First, second, third,” kicking off a paragraph with that, you’re not needing to rely on rich text formatting with bolding, italics, underlines and all that craziness. If you kick off sentences with signposting words, you can often signal, “Here’s what I’m about to talk about in this paragraph.”
Lenny Rachitsky: These are power words for clarity. There’s this whole concept of power words like, “free.”
Wes Kao: Yeah. “A gift.”
Lenny Rachitsky: “Gift.” Yeah. For copywriting and these are basically power words for helping your brain see the structure and get to the thing you want to pay attention to. So I’ll read back the words you just used. “For example,” ” because,” “as a next step,” and then, “first, second, third.”
Wes Kao: Yeah. Yeah. You can use signposting in writing and verbally too. So if you’re doing a product demo, you might say something like, “The most important part to pay attention to is, blank.” Or, “The part that we were most surprised by is, blank.” Or, “The part that customers are,” et cetera. Right? So it’s, you’re signaling that whatever comes after this thing is something that you may want to pay attention to. So it’s a great way not only to add structure, but to also grab people’s attention back if it has strayed some time as they were either listening to you or reading.
Lenny Rachitsky: Along those lines, I find I find formatting really helpful here, just bold and bullets. I know you have a pet peeve with too much formatting. How much is too much formatting?
Wes Kao: I really hate excessive formatting. So, I’ve seen memos where 30% of the note was bolded. And that just negates the entire point of bolding because if everything is bolded then nothing is being highlighted, right? So I think using formatting in general more sparingly than you think you have to is probably a good rule of thumb. I also dislike when people overuse bullets and sentence fragments, phrases in bullets when they should use complete sentences that actually show the connected tissue between ideas, that show the logical flow of what it is that you’re saying.
And it feels faster and more concise to put bullets and fragments, but a lot of times your reader on the other end of that is needing to decipher and interpret and guess what you actually meant. So it net, net takes longer. And I also think that it can be a little bit of a crutch, it can be a little bit lazy because you are telling yourself that you’re being concise when really, if you had to turn your sentence fragment into a full sentence, a lot of times it actually is harder than you think because you realize that you actually didn’t really know exactly what you meant. So as you’re trying to turn it into a full sentence, you’re actually needing to use brainpower.
So that’s I think a great litmus test of, “Was that idea fully thought out?” Because if it was, you should be able to really quickly turn it into a complete sentence. And many times, you actually aren’t. So I see people like basically think, “Oh, I want to make this easier to read, more skimmable. I’m just going to throw a bunch of formatting and bullets and turn everything into bullets.” And it’s not quite that easy of a solution.
Lenny Rachitsky: This is very much along the lines of the whole Amazon six-page memo where Jeff Bezos just realized, “If you can’t write it out as a long memo and explain yourself in prose, you don’t actually know what you’re saying.” And it’s a really good filter for helping people actually crystallize and know themselves, “Okay, I see. I don’t actually know what I’m doing here.” And I love this is a microcosm of that. Can you just make a bullet point a real sentence versus a fragment of a sentence?
I’m thinking about as a listener being like, “Okay, how do I actually get better at this?” So maybe let’s take a tangent. I know that you teach a whole course, you do all this stuff hands-on with people to help them actually build these skills. For someone that hasn’t taken the course or isn’t taking it, what’s a good way to start practicing these skills and know if what you’re writing is getting better, is good. Is it find a mentor, find someone that you think is a great writer and have them review stuff? Any tips there?
Wes Kao: Yeah. So I have a pretty first principles driven approach for this, which is to think about how long does it take me right now to get to the reaction I’m looking for from my recipient? If it takes a bunch of back and forth and a bunch of friction, then that’s my baseline. And once you start practicing some of these communication skills, how does that speed up? If you would have had seven different touch points of back and forth, does that shrink to two to three?
Not every point of friction is going to be avoidable, but a lot of it is if you get better at communicating. So I like watching for the reaction and how quickly and how enthusiastically I’m able to get that reaction. And for the things that are working, do more of that. For things that are not working, adjust your execution because it might not be that the tactic doesn’t work, it might be your execution of it wasn’t great. And keep trying, basically.
Lenny Rachitsky: So the advice here is just see how well you’re writing/meeting/suggestion goes, how well it does. And if it’s not like there’s the ideal immediately, “Yes, let’s do it.” And then there’s the, “I don’t really understand.” There’s the spectrum of response. And what I’m hearing is just pay attention to if the speed to getting what you want is increasing in general.
Wes Kao: Yeah, yeah. I don’t think that there’s any single shortcut on how to get better besides that. I do think that being fascinated by a topic and being excited about it makes it more likely that you’re going to find it fun to try all these different things and try different ways to get through to people. So, I would approach it with a hypothesis-driven experimental mindset and almost like a game. Like, “When I do this, how does that other person react? If I frame it this way, do I get a different reaction? When I try this, am I able to cut through the noise more?”
Yeah. So I really think it’s about practicing. And I will say that the way not to do it is to try to incorporate 30 different tactics at the same time and then beat yourself up when you don’t remember to do them. It’s really easy when you are learning a new field or function to get overwhelmed when you’re learning a new skill. And the way to build a habit is usually not changing so many different things at once. It’s picking one thing that you want to try and keeping that top of mind, trying it in a bunch of different settings in different ways. And getting it better at that thing before moving on to the next thing.
So that’s like a really common thing I see in my course is people feeling overwhelmed. And I always remind folks that, “You are building a new habit here. And be patient with yourself, take it step by step.”
Lenny Rachitsky: There’s a lot of stuff we’re talking about here that a lot of people might be like, “This is so minor. What? I just bullet point sentences, be a little… Tell them the why at the beginning.”
And I just want to share in my experience the biggest jump I made in my career was actually getting better at these very specific skills. I had this manager, Vlad, who’s been on the podcast and I talk about him regularly, who was such a stickler about communicating well and being very clear and concise and thinking and just spending more time on documents and emails, on strategy docs. Just like, “No, this isn’t ready. Spend more time, here’s something that’s not clear.” And just doing that was such an accelerant for me.
And it’s all these little things. That’s what’s interesting about it. It’s like everything seems really minor but it all adds up to a lot of impact because to your point, people see it, “Okay, cool, I get it, let’s go.” Versus like, “I don’t like this idea.” And then it’s like it all falls apart. So I guess any reactions to that?
Wes Kao: Yeah. All these little things compound and make a big difference. I often hear people think, “Well, this individual instance, this individual email, the Slack message is not worth spending a couple more minutes on. It’s just an email or it’s just a Slack message.” The problem with that line of thinking is that no one instance of something is ever going to feel important enough to spend a little bit more time on that. And then, but when you zoom out, that’s like, “Well that’s all your work then. This is literally everything you’ve touched. This is all your work output then.” because any piece of that process you thought wasn’t worth spending time on and now this is just the quality of your work and it’s not as good as it could be.
So yes, these might seem minor but A, it compounds. And also B, all the “big things,” everyone else is already doing. So, there’s not a lot of alpha in that. Whereas if you are paying attention to skills that people think are boring or too basic and realizing that’s a lever that you can pull, that someone else thought, “Oh, we’re hitting diminishing returns on that. I’m not going to spend more time on that.” But you realize that there’s actually more juice left to squeeze there and you decide to squeeze that juice. Well, now, you have extra juice that the other person doesn’t have.
So yeah, in my experience I find that people claim the point of diminishing returns way too early. And this isn’t just for communication, this is for strategies, tactics, et cetera. They’ll try something once, a mediocre attempt and be like, “This channel doesn’t work. This tactic doesn’t work.” It’s like, “Really? Because it’s working for a lot of other people who are getting really creative with it.”
I’m not saying that everything has to work for you but for you to claim, “This thing just doesn’t work,” feels a little bit intellectually dishonest. It’s more likely that your skill level, your creativity, your execution ability was not good enough. And that’s fine. Let’s admit that to ourselves because if we admit that, then we can do the hard work of getting better at those things.
Lenny Rachitsky: It feels like if you really boil this down, all the advice comes down to just spend a little more time on all these things you’re putting out.
Wes Kao: I like thinking about it as a little bit more upfront investment. And it is an investment. It’s not just time. It’s an investment because yes, it takes a little bit longer to make a Slack message a little bit better, but net, net if you save a bunch of questions and back and forth and people asking you things that you don’t think they should be asking, then by investing a little bit of upfront effort, you’ve prevented all that from happening. So yeah, it is a little bit more time in the moment but reaps a lot of benefits down the line.
Lenny Rachitsky:
You mentioned Slack. I have a great quote also about you that I didn’t read that I’m just going to read right now from someone that worked with you. She said she searched the Slack channel at the company you worked at for old posts from Wes for inspiration for what to ask you. And she said you had zero half-baked thoughts, 100% complete sentences, perfect punctuation, clear takeaways at the top of every message. It’s the kind of thing you don’t notice in isolation, but once you see everyone else’s messages in a remote-first company, it’s a stark contrast.
Wes Kao: Yeah, thank you. I will also say that as someone who tries to walk the talk, I feel like I get a pretty good response rate pretty quickly for the things that I ask for, for the recommendations I’m making. It’s not instant, it’s not 100%, but over time I’ve realized that improving my communication has led to people receiving my ideas better. Ideas that used to be locked in my head that I would get frustrated that no one else understood. People were now understanding and that feels really good. That’s very, very exciting and it made me want to do it more and pay more attention to that. So that’s going back to what I said earlier about watching for what’s working. There’s momentum is really encouraging.
Lenny Rachitsky: And I totally feel that. If you start getting the things you want, that feels great. I’d be like, “Okay, cool.”
Wes Kao: Yeah, more.
Lenny Rachitsky: “Let’s do more of that.” Yeah, and again, it’s like very minor things. It’s like a couple more minutes on the Slack message, a couple more minutes on email.
Wes Kao: Very doable.
Lenny Rachitsky: Yeah, which everyone can do. There’s no magic here, it’s just spend a little more time and use some of these tactics that we’re talking about. Speaking of that, let me talk about another tactic. Apparently you have some really good advice on finding the right level of confidence in what you’re saying. There’s always this question of, “I come to this leader. How confident should I be about, ‘This is the answer,’ versus, ‘Here’s a bunch of ideas’?” What do you think? What’s your advice there?
Wes Kao: I find that people tend to naturally be on the spectrum a little bit too confident as a baseline or not confident enough. So people who are too confident might state hypotheses as if they are fact. So that really bothers me. That’s another one of my pet peeves, where if you say, “This is X,” or, “This will X,” that is different than saying, “This could X,” or, “This might X,” or, “This will increase the likelihood of X.”
So I’m a big proponent of speaking accurately. You can avoid a lot of problems if you speak accurately about your level of conviction and about the actual amount of evidence that you have for something. It’s okay for something to be an initial hunch. Say, “It’s an initial hunch.” Don’t act like this is something that you are super sure about. You’ve proven out that this is absolutely this way because the rest of your team is listening to you at face value. And y’all might spend real headcount and dollars pursuing something that you have advocated for in a way where you overreached with your level of confidence.
So, that’s for people who are overconfident. It’s equally a problem if you’re under-confident. So I have some clients who their CEO asked them to share some recommendations with another team because they’ve run something before and so they share all this amazing information and at the end they’re like, “Oh, but you can ignore everything I just said. Obviously, make your own decision. Do what you think is best. And if you want to just ignore everything, that’s totally cool too.” And it’s like you just didn’t have to say that. You could say, “Make your own decision, take all this into account,” but you don’t have to diminish to that degree.
And so again, speaking accurately, if you have really strong reasons to recommend something to the cross-functional team, it’s almost irresponsible to act like you are not really sure and it’s just this random idea, “Hey, try it if you want to.” We might lose a lot of money and time if we don’t take this idea, right? So again, speaking accurately is so, so important.
Lenny Rachitsky: Is a simple way to think about then the right balance is have a point of view, have a recommendation, present accurate facts, and be clear when you are not? “It’s not actually 100% true, but here’s a hunch I have, or here’s a theory we have.”
Wes Kao: Yeah, I think sharing a point of view, sharing a recommendation, and then backing it up with evidence, with logic, with first principles, with examples, with data, if you have it. Not every situation you’re going to have data for, especially if you’re building something new. So this is where first principles comes in. Even explaining how you got to where you got to and why you think this is going to work, that all gives your team, your manager, something to push back on, to poke holes on or to align on and say, “Yeah, I agree here, but I disagree on this part.”
So you can talk about ideas with a lot more specificity when you share your thought process. And you can frame it all kicking off saying, “My initial thinking is,” or, “Based on what we know, my hunch is, blank.” So speaking accurately and then still bringing up those facts so that we can all make as informed of a decision as we can make given what we know.
Lenny Rachitsky: Advice I got that really helped here for me was to try not to be biased with how you frame everything. You have your suggestion for how to do something. It’s easy to just bias all of the data to point in that direction. And if people notice that, they’re like, “Oh, okay. Well, I can’t really trust this because I see you’re just like, you clearly have an agenda.” So it’s a little bit like having an agenda and a POV, but be clear about what is actually true. Be accurate.
Wes Kao: Yeah. I think anytime people have to discount what you’re saying because you are biased in this way is not great.
Lenny Rachitsky: Is there an example by any chance that highlights what you’re describing here?
Wes Kao: Yeah, so in my course I talk about not being a single-minded martyr. So single-minded martyr is someone who very much has an agenda, who wants the recommendation to go through and is presenting a bunch of evidence, supporting that direction. And then gets really frustrated when other people are not seeing it or are skeptical. And so one of my clients was a single-minded martyr in a recommendation she was making. So she was on the growth acquisition side of her company. And was having trouble with cross-functional team members lending headcount to her project. And so everyone would say like, ” Oh, yes, we believe in this, this is important,” but wouldn’t want to actually give her half of their engineer for two weeks.
And we were talking about it and as we were talking, she revealed that the CEO had at the beginning of the year said that the company-wide goal is retention that year. That their biggest challenges and areas of opportunity were in retention, not necessarily in growth. And once she zoomed out and realized this, she was able to put her recommendation in context. And realized that it’s not just-
… recommendation in context. And realize that it’s not just I’m the only one who cares about this company. Everyone is a hypocrite. They say they believe this, but don’t actually want to work on it. Before that was kind of her narrative, but once she zoomed out and realized she was being a single [inaudible 00:48:16], she could better fit her proposal in the context of what else was happening in the organization. I think actually this is a really big difference between more junior people versus more senior people. More junior people are like, “I need to win. I need to get a yes for this proposal and I’m going to keep advocating for it until I get a yes.” Whereas really sometimes the best decision for the company is not right now. This doesn’t actually fit our priorities right now, right?
Or maybe yes, but let’s right size the level of investment. So it might look like half whatever the size of what that recommendation actually was, and having the maturity to realize that, to put your idea into context is huge. That took me a really long time to learn and I think that goes under the umbrella of always do what’s best for the company, not necessarily what’s best for me, my career, my team, my wins. If you prioritize what’s best for the company, that helps you have a more right-sized way of still advocating for your ideas, but doing it with a bit more equanimity.
Lenny Rachitsky: And also just connecting to what the company is. Just this idea of if the thing you’re pitching is not aligned with what is important to the company right now, it’s unlikely to be prioritized. It makes sense. This is why leaders choose, here’s what matters most. We got to do the things that are going to help us drive this thing right now, like retention or revenue. And so that’s just, I think, a sub tactic there is just whenever you’re pitching something, connect that to the goal of the person you’re pitching to so that they’re like, “Oh, I see how this is going to help me. That’s great. Let’s do it. Great advice.”
And I think this is something a lot of people run into. It’s just, “Why aren’t they listening to me? Why don’t they want… That’s such a good idea. They hate me.” It’s something, “Oh, I bet they hate me. They don’t trust me.” When it’s just like, okay, this isn’t a priority right now. Let’s come back to it another time. Okay. I’m going to get to a couple more tactics and then I’m going to shift directions to talk about managers and being manager. You have an awesome framework called MOO. What is MOO? What does it stand for and what is it all about?
Wes Kao: MOO stands for Most Obvious Objection. M-O-O. And the thought there is that a lot of times we’re surprised by the questions that we get, especially in meetings where we feel blindsided, that was unexpected, and then we’re on our back foot. When really, if you thought for even two minutes about what are obvious objections that I’m likely to get when I share this, you often immediately come up with what some of those things are. So are you going to be able to anticipate every single objection? No. But can you anticipate the obvious ones? Absolutely. And so this is where knowing your own argument in and out, including counterarguments becomes so important. So knowing your counterarguments as well as you know the arguments for doing the thing. When you do that, when you have prepared in that way, you’re less likely to feel caught off guard.
Lenny Rachitsky: When you hear you talk about this, it’s like, obviously I shouldn’t do this, but very few people actually do this, actually spend a couple minutes, ” Okay, here’s what I’m going to pitch.”
Wes Kao: Even a couple seconds, really. Really, even a couple seconds, your brain will think of something.
Lenny Rachitsky: Is there a story or an example of this that you share that highlights this idea of the power of MOO?
Wes Kao: I use MOO multiple times a day, every day, every single day. Literally whatever I’m about to say I think how might someone disagree with this or what might an objection be? So whatever it is I’m writing, saying, it’s a really good mental filter because it encourages you to think a couple steps ahead in kind of a structured way, right? If I’m about to say this, the person may then say this to me. Well, if I take that into account, I can volunteer that information upfront or I can frame it in a way where they’re less likely to think that that’s an issue.
And so it’s muscle memory for me at this point, and this might be something we include at the end is something to start with. But putting MOO on a post-it, Most Obvious Objection, what is someone likely to object about? And then just keeping that top of mind. It’s a great way to train yourself to empathize with your audience and with your recipient. We all say that and we all know we should do it, but for me this is a really tactical concrete way to do it.
Lenny Rachitsky: I think what’s great about a lot of the tactics you’re sharing is not only is it going to help you communicate it better, but it helps you actually think and crystallize it better for yourself because you may realize, oh, that’s a really good objection. Like, oh, the objection’s probably going to be this. Will it drive enough impact for the business? Oh, that’s a great point. Maybe I should not pitch this right now.
Wes Kao: Yeah. It definitely helps shape your own thinking. I think communication and thinking are so much more interrelated than we think. I think people think there’s a thinking as phase one and then communicating the thinking, and the reality is a lot more intertwined. And I loved your example there that thinking ahead to what might be the most obvious objection actually then prompts you to realize that maybe there was a gap in what you were planning to present and then you now have an opportunity to strengthen that pitch before you say it out loud.
Lenny Rachitsky: There’s a quote I have highlighted on this podcast a number of times that I love that is exactly along these lines by Joan Didion. “I don’t know what I think until I write it down.” I know exactly that feeling. Okay. So there’s a couple more things that people have shared that you are amazing at helping them get better at. One is just keeping your cool and staying calm during very high stakes, real-time conversations when things maybe aren’t going your way or if you disagree with someone, any advice on that, it feels like you’re really good at this.
Wes Kao: I think one thing that tends to throw people off is putting a lot of pressure on themselves to get the exact right answer. So if they are asked a question and they don’t know the answer, a lot of people will then kind of freak out. And I was taught early in my career that if you don’t know the answer, you should say, “Let me look into it, I’ll get back to you.” So that’s a fine approach. It’s definitely better than making something up, right? So definitely don’t make something up. But if you are more experienced and have some confidence in your subject matter area, just saying I’ll get back to you, is sometimes a missed opportunity. You can ask for a bit more information to be able to continue the conversation in that moment. So let’s say that your exec says what percentage of users came from mobile last month and you don’t have that number off the top of your head.
So person A says, “Let me look into it and I’ll get back to you.” Person B might say, “I don’t have that number off the top of my head, but in the last quarter the number has been 60 to 70% and it’s grown in the past year, so mobile is now a bigger part of our business, et cetera. Are you wondering if we are investing in mobile appropriately or where’s that commission coming from, basically? Right? And so being able to answer a similar question in the direction you think the person is asking about and then validating why they’re asking that question allows you to still continue that conversation in the moment. I call it the question behind the question, sometimes you get a question, but underneath there’s a deeper underlying concern.
And many times people don’t even know that it’s there, right? Subconscious. So it’s not nefarious, they’re not withholding anything from you. But when you are explaining something and you’re kind of getting multiple questions on the same thing, it’s a good sign that there might be a deeper question behind the question and it’s our responsibility to figure out what might that be. And so probing, asking for a bit more information, answering in that general direction and then validating these are all techniques you can use when you are in the moment without feeling like, oh, I must have every single thing prepared and the moment that I’m caught off guard, everything goes to shit.
Lenny Rachitsky: Another tactic along these lines that’s very similar to what you’re describing, but I’ll share that I learned that was really helpful is just if you’re not sure what to say, basically just reflecting back their question and just being like, let me just make sure I understand what you’re looking for. You want to understand monthly retention for, and then maybe clarify. And that one gives you time to think about it as you’re talking. Two, it helps the person recognize, “Oh, he hears me. Great. Okay, this is good. He’s thinking about this.” And then at the end of that you could be like, “Okay. I don’t actually have that specific number. Let me think about it.” Or, “I have the quarterly number. Okay. That’s what I know.” So there’s an interim step almost that I’ll add into your piece of advice of just reflect back their question, just better understand what they’re looking for.
Wes Kao: Yeah, I love that. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Lenny Rachitsky: Awesome. Okay, let’s go back to what I said we do. Let’s pick one tactic that you think people should try first, maybe one or two. So let me read the ones we’ve gone through and then see what you think would be a good first step. So one is starting with sales, before getting to logistics and giving people the why signposting using specific words to help people guide the doc and not get overwhelmed. Finding the right level of confidence, having a POV, that sort of thing. Getting better, being concise, MOO, not overusing formatting, something else you shared. And then this idea of when you don’t know the answer, not saying I’ll get back to you as the default, maybe giving them a different answer, maybe asking them more questions. Across those, which do you think someone should try to like, “Okay. Let me start here.”
Wes Kao: I would start with Most Obvious Objection and also framing your conversation up front. And that kind of relates to using signposting words if needed to help you frame that conversation.
Lenny Rachitsky: Sweet. That’s such an easy one to remember. Just MOO. Okay. So stick a post it somewhere when you’re about to share something in Slack and ask someone for something, present in a meeting, send a strategy, and just think about for a few seconds what might be the most obvious objection to what I’m trying to ask them to do. Great. Okay. So let’s talk about management. And there’s kind of two sides to it. Being a manager and being a person reporting to a manager, you have a bunch of really good advice here. One is there around managing up. One of my most popular posts in the early days was advice for managing up and just how important it is. What advice do you have for someone to get better at managing up? Why is that even so important? Why do you think people may be under appreciating how important it is to manage your manager, let’s say.
Wes Kao: One of the most common myths about managing up that I definitely felt early on in my career was that I would have to manage up if I were more junior, but eventually I would outgrow it, that I would get senior enough that I would no longer have to do it. And it was a rude awakening that no matter how senior I got, managing up, I not only had to manage up, it actually became more important. So I think managing up is one of those skills that if you invest in learning it, it serves you now and for the rest of your career. And I realize that many senior people are actually the best at managing up. That’s partially how they got to be so senior in the first place. But also, the more senior you get, the less likely that your manager is going to give you really well-defined tasks and problems on a silver platter and ask you to solve them.
You are going to be dealing with more ambiguity and you’re going to be dealing with sometimes a mandate like make this number go up or create this division, right? Where you need to manage up and make sure that your leader, your manager, is in the loop about what you are about to try and what you’re about to do and make sure that they’re aligned. And so for me, realizing that managing up is something that is ongoing and that it shifts and evolves and looks different as you go in your career, that was a big unlock for me.
Lenny Rachitsky: Just that even if you become even a VP, if you become a director and still something you want to invest in, any specific tactic or advice for how to manage up well.
Wes Kao: The biggest one is to share your point of view. So this some people are surprised by because they think I’m going to say do a weekly recap of the tasks that you worked on or what you contributed. And that is a good idea, if you want to do it, you can do it. But I think the more highly leveraged way to contribute and manage up is by being more vocal about sharing your point of view. When you just ask your manager, “Hey manager, what should we do?” You’re putting a lot of cognitive load on your manager to need to think about the problem, think about potential solutions, craft the solution, and then tell you what to do. Whereas if you instead said, “Hey manager, here’s what I think we should do. How does that sound? Where do you see gaps? Am I thinking in the right direction?” You give them something to build off of and that reduces the amount of mental lift that they have to put forth.
And so sharing your point of view more readily, backing it up with evidence, that’s a wonderful way of making your manager’s life easier. And also showing that you are an active rigorous thinker who is thinking strategically about the business. You’re not just waiting to be told what to do, you’re not expecting them to figure things out and then tell you you are actively looking around the corner trying to solve problems, forming hypotheses in your mind, observing and noticing things. And again, sharing your point of view doesn’t mean that you have the perfect answer. You can share that, “Hey, I’ve noticed this problem popping up in a couple of different places. Here’s what I think might be happening.”
Or when you share a report, don’t only share the report and expect your manager to come up with insights and takeaways. You should look at the report too and point out insights and takeaways. So it’s really changing that posture from more reactive and more waiting to be told what to do or kind of staying in this narrow box to being willing to share your recommendation, your point of view, share what you’re noticing, and this is something that even junior people could do.
Lenny Rachitsky: I was going to say exactly that. I think not only is it something junior people can do, this is a really good way to get promoted and to take on more leadership opportunities. You coming to your manager with, “Here’s something I think we should do. Here’s a perspective I have. Here’s an opportunity.” If you were in charge, you’re like, how awesome would it be for people to come to me with amazing ideas and have clear recommendations? That sounds great. Everyone wants that. So if you can do that, amazing. Who wouldn’t want that? But then what’s interesting is similar to how writing helps you crystallize your thinking, you coming in with a recommendation forces you to really think deeply about it because that’s putting your reputation on the line. So there’s a second order effect of it makes you actually spend more time on the thing and be clear about why you think this is a good idea and do more research. So a lot of wins here.
Wes Kao: There are a lot of situations where you might have the most visibility into a problem. You might have the most proximity into an issue. And so if you’re not speaking up about it and sharing what you’re observing, sharing what you’re noticing, your manager doesn’t necessarily have visibility into that. And so I’ve heard so many managers say that they want their junior people to speak up more because their junior people have often close contact with customers, with support tickets, with cleaning data, with a bunch of things where the manager would love to hear insights from that.
Lenny Rachitsky: If you’re not having success with this, if you’re hearing this and be like, but it never worked, my manager doesn’t listen to me, listen to the rest of this podcast we just did, which is basically advice on how to effectively convince someone of a thing. It’s like, tell them why this is a problem, be really concise about it, sign post words, all these things. That’s exactly what this whole conversation’s been about. Okay. Let’s see. We have a couple more really cool tactics that people have suggested we talk about. One is how to give feedback well, how to do better, how to be more effective at giving feedback. What’s your advice there?
Wes Kao: I have a framework called strategy, not self-expression. And so the idea here is that most of the time, by the time we are giving feedback to someone, we have been frustrated for a while. I used to be very conflict diverse, so I would wait and try to convince myself that I wasn’t bothered by something until I really couldn’t hold it in anymore. Then I would schedule a one-on-one with a coworker to tell them the feedback and it would inevitably turn into a venting session where I was in the name of sharing the impact of what they did would share all my frustrations and all the ways that they have basically harmed me and made my life difficult. And this would be very counterproductive because the person would either feel like and feel really demoralized or they’d get really defensive and they’d want to argue with me about how what they did actually was not that bad or it was partially my fault too or whatever.
And so I realized that a better way of giving feedback is thinking about motivating the person’s behavior change. The goal is behavior change. So if that’s the goal, trim everything else that you were about to say that does not actually contribute to that goal and only keep the part that will make the person want to change, help them understand the benefit to them as well as to the people around them. And so usually for me, that’s trimming 90% of the initial stuff that I want to say and really keeping only that 10%. And that’s made a really big difference. Whenever I am giving constructive feedback of any kind, I always keep that in mind. And when I don’t do it, I almost always regret it.
Lenny Rachitsky: Someone close to me in my life is working on the skill, which is there’s just, “I want people to know how they messed up. Justice. I need this to be fair.” And what I always recommend is just think about what you want to get out of this conversation, what do you want from them? And then, okay, what’s the best way to get that? Versus just making sure they hear you and making sure they understand how screwed up this was. And that’s basically what you’re saying is focus on the outcome you want to achieve, not something that’s useful, something that will make you just feel better.
Wes Kao: Yeah. I definitely think that having a space to vent and to share those frustrations is important. So you want to get that out before you go into the conversation with your counterpart. So whether it’s talking to your therapist or your partner or friend, you want to basically get all that energy out because otherwise you bring it into the conversation and it doesn’t take much to set you off. You might have a whole script, you’re controlled, you’re calm, and then you start talking and the other person raises an eyebrow and is acting a little incredulous at what you’re saying, and that’s all it takes for you to snap and be like, “You’re surprised? You’re incredulous? Why are you incredulous?” Right? And then you’re off, right? Yeah. Getting that energy out, I would say step one, so that you can go into the conversation clear, grounded, setting that emotional tone that is more positive and that allows you to stay focused on only the part that will get them to behave in the way you want them to behave.
Lenny Rachitsky: Such good advice. And I think we come back to are you getting the outcomes you want? If you’re not, this is another reason it might be the case is you just need them to hear your mind. I just need you to know. And I think a lesson here is that may not be the best path to getting what you want, but it may feel good. Maybe people are like, “Ah, but I really want them to know this.”
Wes Kao: There’s that great Einstein quote about insanity being repeating things that you’re doing expecting a different outcome. And I feel like that applies so much to the workplace and to communication. Most of us have certain patterns that we are used to and certain ways of responding, and if you believe that there is untapped upside that whatever you are at is kind of a local maximum and that there’s better out there, then that’s where switching things up could be useful and not just doing everything that you’ve been doing and getting the same result that you might be getting.
Lenny Rachitsky: This resonates with Toby Lutke when he is doing the podcast, talked about how… He had this quote that I love that just “No human in history has come anywhere near their potential and everyone is way, way, way better than they think are,” and these are really cool tactics and really effective ways to actually get closer to your potential. Okay. Two more things I want to talk about real quick. One is your advice on delegating, but also continuing to have high standards. This is something I spent a lot of time on because a lot of people don’t delegate because they’re afraid it’s not going to be as great. I just want this to be really good. I don’t trust that it’s going to go as well. If I did it my way, it’d be great. So just advice on how to delegate effectively while maintaining high standards.
Wes Kao: Yeah. I have a framework called CEDAF. C-E-D-A-F.
Lenny Rachitsky: Mm-hmm. I love all these acronyms.
Wes Kao: It’s kind of like Cedar, but with an F at the end. I need acronyms for myself. All of these are really reminders for myself because I need a short way to remind myself. So CEDAF stands for the C is comprehension. So have I given this person that I’m delegating to everything that they need to understand what it is that I want them to do. That includes more simple things like logins to all the right software tools that they need to look up, whatever you need to look up. And understanding what the end result should look like, right? So that’s all under C for comprehension. E is excitement. Am I explaining this in a way that is making this as exciting as it could be? There are a lot of tasks that aren’t inherently that exciting, but by explaining the why behind we’re doing this or why it’s important to the project we’re working on, that makes people more likely to understand and be excited about how this fits into everything.
So E is for excitement. D is for de-risk. Am I de-risking any obvious risks from delegating this? So usually when I ask clients this, they immediately think of something. They’re like, “Oh yeah, I wouldn’t want my direct report to spend a ton of time going in the wrong direction, filling out a hundred rows of the spreadsheet if actually it took longer than we expected.” Okay, great. If that’s a risk, then maybe you have them do 10 rows, see how long it takes, see if we need all the information that they’re actually gathering, and then regroup, right? So what’s an obvious risk? Another might be I can see this person misunderstanding and thinking I’m looking for this where I’m really looking for that. Okay, perfect. Just tell them, “When I explain this, you might think I mean this, but really I don’t want that. I actually want this,” right? So just vocalize it. The A is for align. So am I giving the other person a chance to-
The A is for align. So am I giving the other person a chance to speak up and make sure we are actually aligned, that they’re picking up what I’m putting down? Because you might be explaining a bunch of stuff, but how much are they actually absorbing? You won’t ever know if you wrap up your little spiel and then say, “Okay, go off. Come back to me when you’re done.” So give people a chance to ask questions to see what parts are resonating, what parts they might be a little bit confused on. Usually, when I do this, it’s amazing. Because my team member will say, “What did you mean by this part? How does this part fit in?” I’m like, “Oh my God, I totally forgot to mention this thing.” Or, “Oh yeah, I didn’t even really explain that well.” Okay, so let’s go into that.
And then F is feedback. How can you have the shortest feedback loop possible? I am a huge fan of shorting the feedback loop as much as possible and then shortening it again. So even within that initial conversation where I’m delegating something, instead of waiting a week, what if we waited a day and checked in on the initial direction that person was going? And let’s do it even more. What if after I finished explaining, at the end of that conversation, we brainstormed a couple things that, that person wants to do? So within this same conversation, I’m delegating, I’m already getting a sense of, where do you want to go with this? Once you start, do you see any bottlenecks?
And so just really keeping that feedback loop super tight. I found that when I run through the CDAP acronym, there’s usually one letter that I could amp up a little bit more like, oh, I didn’t really put much thought into making this exciting for the person. How can I connect this to their career goals or to the company’s priorities this quarter or to something else? So it’s a nice mental checklist.
Lenny Rachitsky: So much of your advice comes back to this idea that we’ve touched on a couple of times. We just spend a little bit more time upfront. Is that how you described it, a little more time upfront?
Wes Kao: Yeah, a little bit more time. A little bit more of an investment upfront.
Lenny Rachitsky: Upfront to save you tons of time later. Okay. So as you described this, I don’t know if you’re realizing this, but you’re basically just helping people work better with AI and agents. This framework is exactly I think what people need to effectively delegate to this future world of this agent world of society of agents doing work for us. Basically, you’re going to be delegating to these agents in the future, and this framework is a really cool way to frame it. So think about it. Am I communicating this well, comprehension? So CDAP. Comprehension is, again, can I make this clear? Is that the way to think about that?
Wes Kao: Yeah. Can I make this clear? Does this person have everything they need to be able to accomplish what I am asking them to do?
Lenny Rachitsky: Okay. And then it’s communicate why you’re excited about this, basically the why. And it’s interesting, there’s this funny prompt technique I’ve learned, prompting engineering technique of just telling the AI, “This is very important to my job.” Just using that sentence, it does it better.
Wes Kao: Oh, interesting, yeah.
Lenny Rachitsky: It takes it more seriously. It’s just so weird. I have a post about this, and that’s one of the pieces of advice, just tell me why this is important. I think people take it to the extreme as someone will die if you don’t get this right. That actually works.
Wes Kao: That is extreme. Cool.
Lenny Rachitsky: It’s wild. Okay, so CEDF, comprehension, excited, de-risk, think about ways you can de-risk, which is moot, basically. What’s the most? It’s a similar concept. Just think ahead to what might go wrong. Make sure you’re aligned, which is quite important in the AI space. Make sure you’re aligned. And feedback, get a quick feedback cycle. And it’s interesting with deep research on some of these AI tools now, it’s like, “I’m off for half an hour. See you.” And I imagine more and more of them will check in with you as it’s going and ask you questions. I used deep research recently and it’s really good at just like, okay, let me have five questions for you before I go off and do this work just to clarify what you want.
Wes Kao: Yeah, I found that AI will often shorten the feedback loop and align with you as well. When you prompt it, when it comes back, it will not do the entire task for me, sometimes. It’ll say, “I’ve done the first part of this. Does this sound right? Is this what you’re looking for? If so, I will complete the next section.” And then sometimes I’m like, “Do the whole thing. Just stop trying to conserve energy and just do. I want you to do the whole thing.” But that’s what it’s doing, it’s breaking it into smaller chunks to de-risk that it’s going to use all this bandwidth to process this thing and I’m going to say, “Oh, that’s not what I was looking for.”
Lenny Rachitsky: I’m going to come back to AI real quick, but before I do that, I have one more question for you, but let me just say, I feel like we’ve discovered an AI version of your course now. Basically, how to delegate well to AI agents that I think people are going to find really valuable, planting a seed. Okay. Before we get back to AI, you have this other concept that I love that I actually learned from you years ago when I was working on my course called the swipe file. Swipe file, what is a swipe file? What is that about? What can it help you with? Why should people be doing this?
Wes Kao: Yeah. So swipe files are really common for marketers, and I think other functions haven’t caught on as much, but I think it is really, really useful. And basically a swipe file is collecting inspiration that you can refer back to later on. So some marketers will collect examples of copy, landing pages, ads, et cetera. For me, I have a file, an Apple Notes, file called Smart Things People Have Said, where I will basically paste in phrases, words, things people have said that I thought were well articulated or sounded really intelligent or sounded strategic. And I don’t actually go back and look through my swipe file very often, I think other people do, but for me, even the act of adding it to my swipe file, I’ve already gotten value from it because it’s training me to be more alert to noticing when something is working well.
I think there’s so much happening around us all the time that your coworker says something smart and you’re like, “Oh, that was nice,” and then you keep moving on. But when you stop and pause and think, oh, that was really effective, let me add it to my file, and also think about, why was that effective and is that something I can borrow? So in my course, I encourage folks to create a work journal where they can jot down some of these observations, some of these phrases, and basically encourage yourself to be more alert to things you can borrow from other people all around you.
Lenny Rachitsky: Something else about the swipe file, you use quotes. It could be screenshots of cool designs. It could be strategy docs you found to be really effective. It could be conversion flows that are really cool. It could be just whatever you’re interested in.
Wes Kao: Yeah. And the great thing about that is you can then go back and analyze it and break down the structure, break down the argument, break down why was this so effective? Whereas if you’re not capturing it, it’s easy to just move on to the next thing.
Lenny Rachitsky: Yeah, cool. And I did this for a while. I stopped, to be honest, but I really want to be doing this. So this is maybe some homework or something, because I know a lot of people stick with it, is just start like a folder or a Notes, note, whatever you use for your note-taking, and just start throwing stuff in there. And it could be messy, right? It’s just like, throw it in.
Wes Kao: It can be super messy. I was going to say, my back end system is super messy and it’s fine. It’s not a problem I need to be solving. It works. I find things I need to find. So I like having as simple of a process as possible. So Apple Notes, I open it. It’s just on my home screen, I just add something. I’m not tagging anything, I’m not putting it in certain rows and filling information out. I’m just including it in a file, and if I want to go back and look at it, it served its purpose.
Lenny Rachitsky: Awesome. Okay, so last question. AI, I’m going to just come back to this briefly. We have this segment on the podcast called AI Corner, and we touched on this already, but I’m just curious how you have found AI to be useful in your work or your life, whether it’s helped you become a better communicator? Is there anything you can share that might be helpful to folks?
Wes Kao: Yeah. I love Claude. There are days when I talk to Claude for three or four hours prompting as a thought partner. So yeah, I think that AI is really helpful for an initial draft of something to bounce off of. Sometimes I’ll paste in an email that I am not quite sure how to respond to and ask Claude, “Tell me draft reply.” And I’ll usually give it some direction. So I found that sharing my point of view makes the output way better. If I just give it something and say, “What would you say?” It’s just not as good. Whereas if I say, “I am not sure about how to tell this person no, because I previously said yes and so I feel on the hook, but history has changed and so is there a nice way where I can be really respectful of our relationship and also make them feel seen and heard, but decline?”
So if I explain, “That’s the problem I’m dealing with and here’s what I would ideally like to be able to do,” Claude comes back to something that’s pretty good. And then from there I’ll edit it to my voice because usually it’s a little bit too formal sounding. And so I’ll make some edits and then I’ll share it back to Claude and say, “What do you think of this version? Would you make any improvements?” And then we go back and forth from there.
Lenny Rachitsky: Wes, this is the most useful thing I’ve ever heard.
Wes Kao: [inaudible 01:21:44].
Lenny Rachitsky: I need this and I need this immediately, just nice ways to say no to stuff. This needs to be an extension that I can have in my browser, just, “Help me say no to this, please.” Wow, such a great idea. Okay, good one. Okay, great. Wes, is there anything else? We’ve gone through a lot. I imagine the answer is no, but before we get to our very exciting lightning round, is there anything else that you wanted to share or leave listeners with?
Wes Kao: No, I feel like we covered a bunch of great frameworks, principles, so lots for folks to get started.
Lenny Rachitsky: All the things. And I love that so much of this will apply to being more effective with AI tools and I feel like people can go through this again and just through that lens of, how will this helped me get more out of Claude and ChatGPT? I bet so much of this will actually apply and I feel like there’s an interesting course there. With that, Wes, we’ve reached our very exciting lightning round.
Wes Kao: All right,
Lenny Rachitsky: Are you ready?
Wes Kao: Let’s do it.
Lenny Rachitsky: Okay. First question, what are a couple books that you recommend most to other people?
Wes Kao: One is High Output Management by Andy Grove, which is a classic. Another one is Your Brain At Work by Dr. David Rock. And that one is all about better understanding your own brain and attention span so that you can allocate your mental resources appropriately. So that one’s great. Ever since reading that, I hide my phone from view because there have been studies that show that even seeing your phone in the corner of your eye, it’s distracting. And I do the hardest things earlier in the day when you have more cognitive resources available. So that one’s really good. Yeah, those two.
Lenny Rachitsky: These are great. I completely get that phone thing. I’m just looking at my phone, I’m like, “Dang, get out of here. Just go away.”
Wes Kao: I will stick it under my pillow on the couch or hide it under a notebook. It’s huge. I’m always hiding my phone so it’s not in my line of sight.
Lenny Rachitsky: I think Arianna Huffington has a product you can buy that’s a little bed for your phone that you put to bed before you go to bed in a different room and it has a charger attached.
Wes Kao: Oh, that’s cute.
Lenny Rachitsky: So cute, so cute.
Wes Kao: I don’t know if I need a separate bed for my phone.
Lenny Rachitsky: But it’s like a ritual, I guess, and there’s some theory behind it. Okay, next question. Favorite recent movie or TV show you really enjoyed?
Wes Kao: I love Anything by Harlan Coben on Netflix. Basically, I don’t even remember any specific movies or a TV series, but anything he puts out, he’s an author and then they’ve turned a lot of his books into mystery thriller TV series, and anything he puts out becomes number one on Netflix. And I appreciate that he gives the people what they want, that he knows his craft, he knows his genre. And yeah, he just has so many bangers. And I don’t remember any specific one, but if it’s a Harlan Coben show, I know it’s going to be good.
Lenny Rachitsky: I’m looking at a list now I just Googled real quick. So it’s all scary stuff, right?
Wes Kao: Yeah, they’re mystery thrillers, and I think he does a good job playing with time and revealing information over time. It’s usually something about someone’s past that is now coming to haunt them, and so he’ll skip between present day to the past and then slowly reveal stuff. And there’s always a twist at the end.
Lenny Rachitsky: There’s a page, the Harlan Coben Collection on Netflix. That we’ll link to that has all this stuff. I’ve never heard of this, so this is great. Next question, do you have a favorite product you recently discovered that you really love?
Wes Kao: I recently started using an electric toothbrush and it’s been life-changing. So my husband got one and then a couple weeks later he gifted me one, and I was like, “Wow, this is actually really nice.”
Lenny Rachitsky: Are you a Sonicare person, Oral-B person, or something else?
Wes Kao: It’s Oral-B but I’ve not tried any other brand. That was one that our dentist gifted my husband this electric toothbrush because he did Invisalign. And I’m sure Invisalign is every dentist’s dream.
Lenny Rachitsky: Margins.
Wes Kao: I feel like every time I get a cleaning, the dentist is like, “So have you thought about, are you interested in Invisalign?” I’m like, “No.” And so when they get a yes, I’m sure they’re really excited, and then they lock you in, the brand locks you in with these replacement toothbrush heads that are way more expensive than they should be. So it’s a whole razor and blades, ink cartridge and printer model here. So I was horrified by how expensive these replacement heads were.
Lenny Rachitsky: But you got a free toothbrush. I think the Oral-B is what I use, but I think that’s what the Wirecutter recommended, but it’s so loud. I don’t know. One of them is just really loud. I think it’s the Oral-B, but it’s better, apparently. I went with Wirecutter, but it’s so loud. I feel like there needs to be a Wirecutter for good design and experience…
Wes Kao: Ooh.
Lenny Rachitsky: … versus just the optimal efficient version. Anyway, let’s keep going. Do you have a life motto that you often find useful in work or in life that you repeat yourself and share with folks?
Wes Kao: Yes. I actually have many, but I’ll share two. One is everything takes longer than you think. So this applies whether you are calling customer support for something or running an errand or building your career, building skills. I find it’s useful to add buffers for yourself. This applies for launches too. Just assume it will take longer than you think and you’ll be less stressed.
Lenny Rachitsky: That connects to everything we’ve been talking about. Just spend a little more time upfront to make it. And maybe if you spend more time front, it’ll take less time than you think.
Wes Kao: The other one is a riff on always be closing, like Glengarry Ross. “It’s always be selling.” This does not mean pawning your wares, but rather putting forth effort into convincing the other person of whatever your recommendation is.
Lenny Rachitsky: Love them. Okay, final question. So you’ve been a long time, I hate this word operator, but I guess that’s the way people describe this, where you’ve just been working at companies, building companies, and you recently left that just to become creative person. Started a course on Maven. You do executive coaching, things like that. Any just lessons or a lesson from that jump that might be helpful to folks that are maybe thinking about that?
Wes Kao: I think when you are an in-house operator, there’s a lot about your role that you have a little bit less control over, basically. There’s just certain things you have to do because it comes with the territory. Whereas when you are a solo operator running your own business, doing your own thing, you have a lot of freedom to craft your work around only your strengths, only the part that you are really good at, that adds a lot of value for other people where there’s market demand. And so, for me, there was a bit of a shift where when I realized that I could craft my business, my work around only the part that I’m best at, and that can be a narrow-ass slice, that’s actually really, really freeing.
And so I would encourage folks to think about, what is the thing that you are extremely good at that people find super valuable, the part that you love doing most, if you could not do all the other stuff you don’t want to do, and how can you think about doubling down on that?
Lenny Rachitsky: That’s such an important point. And the Claude tip you shared of how to say no well is such an important ingredient into that, because so many things come at you and are interesting and enticing that it’s hard to decline, that you realize, why the hell am I doing this? I can actually control where I spend time and why did I say yes to this?
Wes Kao: I actually credit you with helping me come to this realization. I mentioned you on a podcast the other day about this because, do you remember when Maven was launching an important feature, I think it was our marketplace or something, and I had asked you if you wanted to go on Clubhouse to be part of the launch?
Lenny Rachitsky: I remember that, but I am sure I said no.
Wes Kao: Okay, yeah. You said no. You said no. And I was like, “Wow. Out of curiosity, what’s the thought behind it?” And you said, I’m going to bastardize this, you could correct me, but you essentially said, “I don’t really like doing live public speaking type things and I’ve been fortunate enough to build a career where I can write, I do my podcasts, and work only on the part that I love doing. And so I’m okay saying no to these other really interesting opportunities.” And I remember at that time thinking it was so groundbreaking that you could say no to something that was legitimately a cool opportunity and be really confident about it because it wasn’t your core competency. It wasn’t the thing you are best at. And I’ve really kept that in mind when opportunities come my way of, am I excited about this? Is this what I’m really good at? Can I shine in this setting? Because when you are solo, you get to choose the settings that you want to be in.
Lenny Rachitsky: That’s such a cool story. I don’t exactly remember that, but I am zero surprised at what I said. And the way I put it now, when folks invite me to stuff like this is I just find the ROI on my time is so not worth doing a talk, doing a fireside thing, doing another podcast. It’s just like, if I can spend more time on this newsletter than the podcast, the leverage is so much higher than just doing a talk because that takes so much time. So I just have this template now that basically says what I sent you, that is, that it helps. But it’s tough. It’s so hard to say no. Sometimes these opportunities are so interesting and the person is like, “Wait, what?”
Because I don’t think the people asking you for stuff know that I’m getting 10 of them a day, and they’re like, “Oh, he said no to my talk. He doesn’t want to be on my podcast. What a jerk.” That’s what I think. I don’t know if that’s what they think. But anyway. Okay, that’s great. Yes, and I think I just had a post about reaching a million subscribers to the newsletter, and actually had this image of the Ikigai concept, which is exactly what you just described, which is you want to try to find the thing that you love doing, that people value, and that you can make money doing. That’s the dream. And that’s exactly what you have done as well. So thank you for being here, Wes. I actually think we delivered on what I thought we would. I think this is going to be one of the most highest leverage conversations we’ve had.
So two final questions. Where can folks find your course? I know you also do executive coaching. Where can folks learn more? And final question is just, how can folks be useful to you, Wes?
Wes Kao: You can find out more at weskao.com. I linked my course to my coaching from my main page. I also post on LinkedIn as well, so you can follow me there. And I’m always looking to meet fellow operators who out about communication. So if you put any of these principles into practice, I would love to hear about it.
Lenny Rachitsky: Awesome. We’ll do that in the comments. They can DM you. I don’t know, what’s the best way to reach you on the website or Twitter?
Wes Kao: Yeah, bunch of platforms.
Lenny Rachitsky: All the places. Okay, cool.
Wes Kao: Website, email, LinkedIn, DM me.
Lenny Rachitsky: There we go. There we go. Wes, thank you so much for being here.
Wes Kao: Yeah, thank you so much, Lenny.
Lenny Rachitsky: Very cool.
Wes Kao: This was fun.
Lenny Rachitsky: Thank you so much for listening. If you found this valuable, you can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Also, please consider giving us a rating or leaving a review as that really helps other listeners find the podcast. You can find all past episodes or learn more about the show at lennyspodcast.com. See you in the next episode.
Glossary
| English | 中文 |
|---|---|
| agent | 智能体 |
| align | 对齐 |
| altMBA | altMBA |
| always be closing | 永远在成交(always be closing) |
| cognitive load | 认知负荷 |
| comprehension | 理解 |
| de-risk | 降低风险 |
| excitement | 热情 |
| feedback | 反馈 |
| Jeff Bezos | 杰夫·贝索斯 |
| Joan Didion | Joan Didion |
| Lenny Rachitsky | Lenny Rachitsky |
| managing up | 向上管理 |
| Maven | Maven |
| microcopy | 微文案 |
| MOO | 最明显的异议 |
| Most Obvious Objection | 最明显的异议 |
| prompting | 提示(prompting) |
| second order effect | 二阶效应 |
| Section4 | Section4 |
| signposting | 路标指引 |
| single-minded martyr | single-minded martyr |
| Sol Stein | Sol Stein |
| Stephen King | Stephen King |
| strategy, not self-expression | 策略,而非自我表达 |
| swipe file | swipe file |
| Toby Lutke | Toby Lutke |
| Vlad | Vlad |
| Wes Kao | Wes Kao |
| William Zinsser | William Zinsser |
Reformatted by reformat_english.py
正如Meta CTO所言:“沟通就是工作本身。”在这场对谈中,资深沟通导师Wes Kao深入剖析了说服性沟通与向上管理的底层逻辑。她指出,许多人在面对受众的困惑与质疑时常感懊恼,却忽视了表达者自身的问题。优秀的沟通者懂得向内归因,利用“最明显异议(MOO)”等框架提前预判并消除信息差。Wes更强调,不要将最佳的沟通状态仅留给高管汇报,而应将每一次日常交流都视为高杠杆的实战演练。本文将为你拆解这些实用的沟通框架,助你告别低效的信息拉扯,通过精准表达真正释放专业影响力。
说服性沟通与向上管理(managing up) | Wes Kao (Maven, altMBA, Section4)
访谈实录
沟通不力的破坏与预判
Wes Kao: 我经常看到一些业务执行者把事情解释得很糟糕,然后在别人感到困惑、产生质疑或漠不关心时,他们又会感到震惊和惊恐。我非常推崇反问自己:如果没有得到我期望的反应,我自身可能有哪些问题?我怎样才能解释得更清楚?怎样才能更有说服力?怎样才能预判他们可能会提出的任何问题?
Lenny Rachitsky: 你是我见过的最优秀的沟通导师之一。我列了一份清单,收集了人们在书面表达中最喜欢的你教授的技巧、框架和方法。关于如何让表达更简洁,你有什么技巧可以分享吗?
Wes Kao: 我认为一份写得很差的备忘录,其破坏范围比大多数人想象的要大得多。如果你只是在一个有另外15个人的 Slack 频道里随手发了一条消息,而且消息让人困惑,或者遗漏了应该包含的信息,就会产生大量的来回沟通。而如果你只是再多看一眼,那15个人可能早就开始顺利推进工作了。
Lenny Rachitsky: 你有一个很棒的框架叫 MOO。
Wes Kao: MOO 代表最明显的异议(Most Obvious Objection)。很多时候,我们会对接到的问题感到惊讶,尤其是在会议中,感觉被打了个措手不及。但实际上,如果你哪怕只花两分钟思考一下“我可能会遇到哪些明显的异议”,你通常能立刻想出其中的一些内容。你能预判到每一个异议吗?不能。但你能预判到那些明显的吗?绝对可以。
嘉宾介绍与开场
Lenny Rachitsky: 今天的嘉宾是 Wes Kao。Wes 与 Seth Godin 共同创办了 altMBA 项目。她联合创立了一家名为 Maven 的公司,我经常与该公司合作,这家公司让用户能够轻松举办实时的 cohort-based 课程。她最近离开了 Maven,推出了自己的高管沟通与影响力课程。在与 Wes 结束这次对话的录音后,我想起了萧伯纳的一句名言:“沟通中最大的问题,就是以为沟通已经发生了。”
Lenny Rachitsky: Wes,非常感谢你来到这里,欢迎再次来到播客。
Wes Kao: 谢谢,Lenny。能作为第二次受邀的嘉宾,我感到非常荣幸。
沟通就是工作本身
Lenny Rachitsky: 这是极其罕见的荣幸。虽然不想给你压力,但我认为这将会是我做过的杠杆率最高的一期节目,让我告诉你为什么:在通讯和播客中,我经常谈到沟通技巧对产品领导者、对领导者、对所有人来说是多么重要,杠杆率有多高。Meta 的 CTO Boz 曾上过我的播客,他写过一篇著名的博文:“沟通就是工作本身。”我认为这对产品人来说是成立的,但基本上对任何领导角色、任何试图取得进步的人来说都是成立的。你是我见过的最优秀的沟通者之一,也是我遇到过的最优秀的沟通导师之一。你在 Maven 上有一门非常受欢迎的高管沟通课程,所以我真的很高兴你能来到这里,帮助人们成为更好的沟通者,更擅长发挥影响力等等。再次感谢你的到来。
Wes Kao: 当然。
Lenny Rachitsky: 好的。我通常会在播客中对嘉宾做一件事,不是经常,而是每次都会,我会联系与嘉宾共事过的人,问他们:“我应该问 Wes 什么?关于 Wes 我应该了解什么?”让我从曾与你共事的人中,读几句关于你沟通能力的评价。
Wes Kao: 好的。
Lenny Rachitsky: 这些评价来自三个不同的人。首先是:“Wes 凭一己之力将整个公司的写作质量全面提升了大约两倍。我总说,我上过的最好的写作课,就是和 Wes 共事的那一年。”
Wes Kao: 哇。
Lenny Rachitsky: 好的,这是第一条。
Wes Kao: 很好。
Lenny Rachitsky: “Wes 从不随口抛出观点,她用词精准,在将想法呈现给他人之前会一丝不苟地审视,并且知道如何以人们能够理解并认同的方式表达自己的观点。”好的,第三条:“Wes 在每个提案中都包含了理由,在所有建议背后都提供了背景信息,因此她周围的每个人学习速度都能快一个数量级。这也使她成为了一名出色的导师,因为她能清晰地定义什么是卓越,为什么某个东西是目标,然后拆解出相关的步骤和原则。”好的,有什么感想?
Wes Kao: 这些话真的很好。太棒了。是的,非常感谢。
Lenny Rachitsky: 而且这些评价来自不同公司的人。
Wes Kao: 酷。
Lenny Rachitsky: 好的,这只是为了强调你在这方面有多厉害。我们接下来要做的就是,梳理一系列你教授的技巧,这些技巧帮助人们成为了更好的沟通者、高管沟通者,也更擅长发挥影响力。在深入探讨具体技巧之前,关于成为一名更好的沟通者这项技能,你认为有没有什么宏观层面上需要人们理解的重要内容?
沟通的范畴
Wes Kao: 我经常看到一些业务负责人在解释事情时表达得很差,当人们感到困惑、产生质疑、表现冷漠或是提出许多本可避免的问题时,他们又会感到震惊和懊恼。我非常推崇问自己这样一个问题:“如果我没有得到预期的反应,我可能对此负有什么责任?”因此,与其责怪别人不理解我,我更会思考:我怎样才能解释得更清楚?怎样才能更有说服力?怎样才能预判他们可能会提出的问题?所以我非常推崇主观能动性(agency),并意识到我们只能控制自己的行为。因此,如果你没有得到预期的反应,最好的出发点就是反思:我怎样才能提升沟通这项技能?这绝对是一项技能。
Lenny Rachitsky: 所以我听到的意思是,如果你很难让别人认同你试图说服他们去做的事,或者你发现人们没有按照你要求的去做,这很可能是你沟通能力的问题,大概率不是他们的错。
Wes Kao: 是的,我想是这样。你无法仅靠提升沟通来解决所有问题,但你可以增加获得想要结果的概率。
Lenny Rachitsky: 酷。好的。在沟通、高管沟通这个广泛的领域内,还有其他类似的重要认知吗?
Wes Kao: 我认为另一个我在课程中教授且作为开篇重点的重要内容是,把练习当成正式比赛(game day),把表现当成正式比赛。我看到很多业务负责人只把最好的状态留给高管。他们想在对高层领导做汇报时大放异彩,但对其他人就有点敷衍了事。我认为,如果你只和高管进行高管沟通,你根本无法获得足够的练习次数来真正掌握它。因为我们大多数人每个月只向高管汇报一次,对吧?或者一个季度几次。这根本没有多少练习的机会。所以,真正把每一个利益相关者都当作重要的人来对待——因为他们确实重要——如果你不想浪费CEO的时间,你同样也不应该浪费跨部门团队成员的时间、你经理的时间或是你下属的时间。这是我要求大家牢记的另一件事。
Lenny Rachitsky: 在进入具体技巧之前,可能还有最后一个问题。当人们想到沟通时,他们会想到电子邮件、会议演示之类的东西。当你谈论高管沟通以及广义上的沟通时,你认为它包含的总体范畴是什么?
Wes Kao: 是的,广义上我会说有两种媒介:口头沟通和书面沟通。口头沟通包括会议、交谈、演示。书面沟通包括电子邮件、策略文档、Notion 文档、Slack 消息、短信,大致就是这两类。而且,我将沟通更多地视为达到目的的手段,这可能会让一些人觉得有趣,因为我教的就是一门关于沟通的课程。所以你可能会认为沟通本身就是目的,但我真的把它看作达到目的的手段,这个目的就是获得你想要的理想结果。因此,无论是获得认同、作为一个团队做出好的决策,还是推进到下一步,无论是什么,沟通真正服务于那个最终目标。
销售先行,后勤在后
Lenny Rachitsky: 太棒了。好的。我列了一份清单,包含了人们最喜欢的你教授的技巧、框架和方法,这是通过与你教过的人和你共事过的人交流得出的。所以我将过一遍其中的很多内容,让我们一起帮助人们在这些方面变得更好。
Wes Kao: 好的,开始吧。
Lenny Rachitsky: 好的。第一个是你称之为 sales, then logistics 的方法。这是关于什么的?
Wes Kao: 是的。所以我看到的一个常见错误是,高估了你从受众那里获得的认同度。这表现为直接跳进去谈论后勤细节,即如何做某事的过程细节。而实际上,你的受众甚至还没有决定他们是否想做这件事。所以我看到业务负责人在回应时,会进一步深入到后勤和操作细节中,心想:“哦,如果我多解释一下,那个人就会想做了。”但实际上,销售笔记(sales note)和后勤笔记(logistics note)是不同的。销售笔记的目的是让人们对你想让他们做的事情感到兴奋,并同意去做。只有在他们认同之后,分享后勤细节才是合理的。所以这里有一个操作顺序。如果你颠倒了操作顺序,你很可能会得到缓慢的回应,或者根本没有任何回应,对吧?我们都在频道里发过 Slack 消息,然后面对死一般的寂静。因此,真正从向对方推销开始,确保他们知道我们为什么要做这件事,为什么这对公司很重要,为什么是现在,然后再分享后勤细节,往往会有效得多。
Lenny Rachitsky: 有没有什么例子可以帮助说明这一点或这种方法?
Wes Kao: 有的。我的一位客户是运营负责人,她试图让高管团队的其他成员(她也是其中一员)填写本周的一些胜利成果,以便他们可以将其分享给全公司。这本应是激励人心的,本可以让大家得到关注。但她一开始就讲后勤:发到哪个文档、把细节放在哪里、截止时间是什么、应该用什么格式填写这些胜利成果,结果并没有从领导团队那里得到太多回应,这是可以理解的,对吧?因为这听起来完全就像是那种你本来就有很多事情要做,现在又多了一个要打勾勾选的待办事项,这就是我们现在都要做的另一个流程,太棒了吧,对吧?所以她确实没有得到回应。这就是因为她直接扎进了后勤细节里。而她本可以做的,是先向大家推销,向其他高管推销我们为什么要做这件事。比如,我们这样做是因为这是一个机会,可以让大家看到你们团队中正在做出色工作的成员,让他们感到有动力,让他们觉得公司其他人都真正看到了他们并理解他们在做什么。而这一切都将激励你的团队,对吧?所以,分享为什么这有帮助、有用,以及这如何服务于你和你的团队,而不是像“哦,这是你在帮我个忙,填一下这个表格,用这种方式填,在这个日期前填好”等等。
Lenny Rachitsky: 我知道高管们通常想要相反的方式,他们就像,“好的,我知道了,直接告诉我你想做什么。就,好吧,直奔主题吧。我不想把时间花在所有这些背景和上下文上。”关于什么时候该在推销上花时间,你有什么建议吗?比如,有什么迹象表明,好吧,也许你还没有让他们买账,或者可能在什么情境下你大概还是应该先试着推销一下?
Wes Kao: 是的。所以我其实认为,即使是在人们已经基本买账的情况下,你也应该总是做一点推销。因为我们大多数人手头都有很多事情,而且我们并没有在主动思考你正在谈论的任何事情。所以即使我两周前同意了某件事,等到你再次向我提起它时,从那以后我已经想了十亿件其他事情了,对吧?
因此,提醒我我们为什么要在谈论这个?为什么这很重要?然后再进入正题,并在一开始就为对话定下基调,这会让我们更有可能避免陷入冷启动,不至于走两步退一步。另外,你可以在一开始非常简练地为对话定下基调并稍作推销。所以我说的不是在30分钟的会议中花15分钟去推销,我说的是一两分钟,甚至几句话,然后过渡到你想要谈论的主要内容。
所以我非常提倡这样做,基本上就是提醒人们,我们为什么要做这件事?我们今天为什么在这里?为什么这很重要?然后再进入核心内容。
Lenny Rachitsky: 我很喜欢这点。所以基本上你可以做得非常简短,不一定是半个小时的完整推销。它只是一个提醒,“这就是为什么我们认为这很重要。”我认为这是一个非常好的观点,因为很多时候,当一个领导者看着你要求他们做的事情时,他们会想,“我们到底为什么,我为什么要在这上面花时间?”而仅仅是这样一个提醒,就像,“好吧,我明白了,我忘了这将会是,这是我们战略的一部分,它有如此大的影响力潜力,或者这能如何帮助我们的团队提高效率。”
Wes Kao: 是的。而且你真的可以在大概30秒内做到这一点。
Lenny Rachitsky: 这有没有一个,我不知道,结构之类的?就是只说为什么吗?有没有你喜欢的模板或者你推荐的首发推销方式?比如像,“这就是为什么我们要做这件事。”像这样开头吗?类似这样的任何东西?
Wes Kao: 是的。我认为要解释为什么我们要做这件事,为什么这对业务有益,这解决了什么问题。再说一次,你可以在几句话里完成这些。然后我也喜欢在一开始就询问或说明我从对方那里需要什么。比如说,“嘿,我们今天在这里是因为两周前我们在审视产品流程时,发现有几点有点令人困惑。所以我尝试修复了这些部分,重写了微文案(microcopy),今天我想把它们展示给你,看看你是否同意这些修改,然后我们就会把它们推出。我需要从你那里得到的是对这些修改的反馈,以及你是否同意。”就像那样,大概就是15秒,对吧?超级快。
然后现在我们对于为什么在这里就达成了共识。并且你可以更专注地倾听,因为你知道我在寻找某种特定的反馈。
Lenny Rachitsky: 我很乐意听到那样的表达。我认为这里有一个可能值得分享的隐含意义,就是,这很多都是关于如何有效地与高管沟通,这将使你与大多数人的沟通变得更好。尤其是与层级更高的人。他们没有很多时间,他们脑子里有一百万件事。也许可以分享一下为什么这如此重要,比如你需要突破的领导者的心态究竟是什么样的。
突破高管的心态
Wes Kao: 是的。所以我称之为“对,对,对,下一个,下一个,下一个”的心态,当我听取直接下属向我展示东西时,我经常发现自己会想,“明白了。好吧,对,继续。”对吧?而在硬币的另一面,我经常向高管做展示,我有15页的幻灯片,而高管们就会这样做,然后我就会想,哇,哇,哇。就像我有一个完整的序列,我有一个完整的顺序,你知道吗?
而有时他们会在第四页就给我买账或者做出决定,你知道吗?然后我就会说,“好吧,你知道的,第13页,我想给你看我做的这张很棒的图表。”对吧?而对我真正有帮助的是意识到我应该接受这个胜利。好吧,如果他们五秒钟就已经同意了,接受这个胜利,继续前进,往下走。
Lenny Rachitsky: 是的。有句引言是怎么说的来着?“如果你已经把他们推销成功了,就别再说了。”
Wes Kao: 没错。是的,是的,你可能会说得他们不同意了。
Lenny Rachitsky: 是的。好的。你提到了简洁。我们来谈谈这个。关于如何有效地做到简洁而又不过于简洁,你有一些非常好的建议。你在这方面有什么建议?
简洁的真正含义
Wes Kao: 是的。我的一个最反感的情况是当人们过于简洁,并且把简洁等同于简短。而简洁不是关于绝对的字数,而是关于用词的经济性。它是关于你分享的见解的密度。因此,你可能会有一份300字的备忘录,它漫无边际且啰嗦冗长,也可能会有一份1000字的备忘录,它紧凑且简洁。所以不把简洁等同于简短,我认为是一个非常重要需要理解的概念。
第二点是,我认为很多关于简洁的建议都忽略了一个重要的点。所以我们都听过,“不要埋没导语,直奔主题。”主要观点,把主要观点放在最上面,结论先行,对吧?所有这些精辟的格言都假设你实际上知道你的核心观点是什么。
所以除非你知道这个主题是什么,否则你无法直奔主题。除非你知道导语是什么,否则你无法把导语从土里挖出来。所以我发现这才是做到简洁的瓶颈。其实是你没有真正清楚你在想什么,这才是导致啰嗦冗长的原因。
你可以稍微测试一下这个理论,因为我们大多数人都有一个讲过很多次的拿手故事,对吧?我们就像,你完全知道人们什么时候会笑,知道他们什么时候会倒吸一口凉气或屏住呼吸,对吧?而你为什么在讲那个故事时这么厉害,为什么能这么简洁?因为你讲过很多次,你掌握了所有的节拍。所以在会议中,在工作中,我们很少多次谈论同一件事,它总是一件新事物。
这很可能也是我们自己正在处理的事情,而且在我们快速周转、告诉别人、告诉我们的团队的时候,我们也正处于处理它的过程中。所以你基本上是在要求你的大脑同时进行许多不同的过程,尤其是在实时对话中。你在听对方说话,吸收,理解,处理,弄清楚你在想什么以及你会如何反应。然后试图说出一些连贯且有意义的话,对吧?然后再试图让它变得简洁。
这仅仅是许多不同的过程。所以我发现保持简洁的唯一可靠的解决方案就是准备。这绝不是什么迷人的解决方案,但我在进入一个会议、进入一段对话、进入一次推销时越清晰,我就越能做到简洁,越能把对话拉回最重要的点上,越能保持灵活但坚定,这一切都靠准备。我的意思不是花几个小时几个小时去准备一个每周例会,甚至几分钟真的就能产生巨大的影响。
我们大多数人会议排得如此密集,以至于我们做的准备工作是零。就像是会议已经开始了30秒,而你还在从刚才参加的最后一个Zoom通话中缓过神来,对吧?所以我们大多数人都处于那种精神状态。所以如果你甚至花30秒到一分钟的时间让自己沉下心来想一想,我为什么要参加这个会议?我想分享什么,并确保在我们有限的时间内把它传达出去,你将会带着更专注的状态进入会议,并且更加能够做到简洁。
写作中的简洁与自省
Lenny Rachitsky: 所以那里的建议,这主要是针对会议的,我也想聊聊写作,但对于会议来说,这里的建议是在进入会议之前,真正思考一下我为什么在这个会议里?我想从中得到什么?而不是在会议中边走边想,正如你所说,你只会漫无边际地说,然后变成“哦,好吧,这才是我真正想说的话。”
Wes Kao: 是的。还有我可能在会议中想分享什么?你要知道,尤其是对于更内向的人来说。有时候你需要提前决定你想发言,并且你要确保传达了某个观点。所以甚至只是提前做出这个决定,就会产生巨大的影响。
Lenny Rachitsky: 是的,我发现这非常有效,就在你进入会议前五分钟做这件事。而且这可以在一天中更早的时候做,对吧?不一定要在会议前做,或者最坏的情况是在会议前做。只是,“好吧,我想从中得到什么?我在这里是干什么的?我想说什么?”就像给你的大脑一点时间来准备。非常强大。在写作方面,你有没有什么战术可以分享,让人能更简洁一点?
Wes Kao: 我认为主要的战术就是提醒自己要简洁。通常当我这么做时,我最终至少会删减我所写内容的20%,收紧一些句子。我还会问自己,我是否在给我的表达增加了认知负担?所以有没有一种更紧凑、更清晰、更干净的方式来提出我的问题,或者呈现我正在呈现的信息,或者做出我正在做的建议?通常如果你甚至只是问自己这个问题,你的大脑就会自动想出一些东西。你只是用不同的眼光看待你写的东西,然后你会想,“哦,该死,我可以删掉这整个段落,因为那是次要的。”也许你在Slack里写主要信息,然后在跟帖里添加一些次要的东西,对吧?所以我发现对我们大多数人来说,就是提醒自己要简洁。一旦你想到这一点,你的大脑自然会看到你可以删减的地方。
发送前的检查习惯
Lenny Rachitsky: 在这之下还有一层你没有说而我要说的建议,那就是在分享之前,至少看一遍你写的东西。因为我以前在这方面做得很差。我就像,“好吧,我没时间了。我们写完了这个文档,发送,获取反馈。好的。发送这封邮件。我没时间读这封邮件了。”我发现只要强迫自己看一遍,就能解决很多这种问题。
Wes Kao: 哦,是的,是的,绝对。我之前默认你会先这样做,但你是对的,有些人可能不会。是的,绝对,先读一遍自己写的信息是非常关键的。是的,我发现即使只是这样做,你也经常能发现很多容易摘到的果实。
推荐的写作书籍
Lenny Rachitsky: 对的。你会发现错别字和语法问题,然后你会想,“哦,我不需要这个词。”顺着这个思路,让我分享两本书。人们总是问我,“你是怎么学会写作的?”我就像,“我不是作家,我不知道我在干什么。”但是有两本书真的帮我更有效地写作。其中一本专门帮助你写得更简洁,叫《On Writing Well》。我不知道你有没有读过。
Wes Kao: 是的。
Lenny Rachitsky: 好的。它基本上是一章接一章地告诉你,“这是你可以删掉的东西。你还可以删得更多。看看你还能多删掉什么,把这些东西删了。”他有学生在他的课上写的文章的截图,然后他会说,“看看你删掉的所有这些词,什么都没有改变。信息完全一样,甚至在你删掉40%的词之后变得更好了。”
Wes Kao: 这是 Sol Stein 写的还是其他作者?
Lenny Rachitsky: 我手头没有……它在我的书架上的某个地方。所以我们会查一下。
Wes Kao: 是的,Sol Stein 有一本关于写作的书我非常喜欢。我觉得它可能就叫《On Writing Well》,但我也觉得可能有多本书都叫《On Writing Well》。
Lenny Rachitsky: 我想 Stephen King 也有一本叫《Writing Well》的书,那是另一本人们很喜欢的书,但是《On Writing Well》是我真正喜欢的,因为它非常具有战术性。
糟糕写作的“爆炸半径”
Wes Kao: 回到你早些时候说的重读你写的东西,我认为写得糟糕的备忘录的爆炸半径比大多数人想象的要大得多。所以如果你只是在一个有另外15个人的 Slack 频道里发了一条信息,而它令人困惑,并且你没有包含你应该包含的信息,那么就会有一堆来回的讨论。这15个人都在读这条信息,心里想,“好吧,我该拿这个怎么办?”而如果你只是再看它一眼,这15个人就会直接开始行动。他们会读了你的信息,然后确切知道下一步该做什么,或者他们的部分是什么,或者你在寻找他们提供什么。所以我也会经常想这些。这不仅仅是我写了这个然后把它发出去。而是,“所有将会接触到这条信息、将会参考它并使用它的人是谁?如果我只花30多秒钟确保它是干净的,我能从他们的工作中解锁多少阻碍?”
Lenny Rachitsky: 这是一个非常好的观点。我喜欢这个,我太喜欢爆炸半径这个词了。这个观点太好了。就像在低效和不简洁地写作中,有如此多的负面杠杆。如果你花了……不简洁?我不知道有没有这个词,但如果你只是花三分钟多一点时间让它更清晰,就像它产生的影响和杠杆作用一样,这是一个非常好的观点。我查了一下那些书,太搞笑了。好的,所以有一本 William Zinsser 写的《On Writing Well》。有一本 Sol Stein 写的《Stein On Writing》,这就是你说的你在谈论的那本。然后 Stephen King 有一本叫《On Writing》的书。大家的书名都一样。
Wes Kao: 是的。常见的标题。
Lenny Rachitsky: 对 SEO 来说不理想,但 William Zinsser 写的《On Writing Well》是我喜欢的那本。如果你没看过的话,还有一本叫《A Series Of Short Sentences》。它的评价也很高。它就是关于如何写短句,以及保持句子简短的威力,而这正是我挣扎的地方。
Wes Kao: 是的。是的,我喜欢那个。
Lenny Rachitsky: 好的。回到我们的议程。我听到你推荐的另一个框架/战术。它叫路标指引(signposting)。什么是路标指引?
路标指引(Signposting)
Wes Kao: 路标指引是在你的写作中使用特定的词语、短语、格式和整体结构,来帮助引导你的读者,并信号化文章其余部分即将出现的内容。所以,如果你有一份很长的备忘录,这特别有帮助。它为我们要走向哪里以及某些段落部分是关于什么的增加了结构。所以我最喜欢的一些路标指引词是,“for example”,表明你即将展示一个例子;“because”表明你即将分享你背后某件事的逻辑和理由。“As a next step”是一个很好的词。人们的眼睛会自动聚焦到“as a next step”上。甚至“第一,第二,第三”,用这个来开始一个段落,你就不需要依赖粗体、斜体、下划线和所有那些花哨的富文本格式了。如果你用路标指引词开始句子,你通常可以发出信号,“这就是我在这段话中即将谈论的内容。”
Lenny Rachitsky: 这些是为了清晰度的强力词汇。有这样一个关于强力词汇的整个概念,比如“免费”。
Wes Kao: 是的。“一个礼物”。
Lenny Rachitsky: “礼物。”是的。对于文案写作来说,这些基本上都是强力词汇,能帮助你的大脑看清结构,并直接找到你想关注的内容。所以我来复述一下你刚才用的词。“for example”,“because”,“as a next step”,然后还有,“第一,第二,第三”。
Wes Kao: 是的,没错。你可以在写作中使用路标指引,在口头表达中也可以。所以如果你在做产品演示,你可能会说类似这样的话,“最需要关注的部分是,空白。”或者,“让我们最惊讶的部分是,空白。”或者,“客户的部分是”等等,对吧?所以这其实是在发出信号,表明在这个词之后的内容是你可能想要关注的。因此,这不仅是增加结构的好方法,也是在听众或读者的注意力走偏时,把他们的注意力拉回来的极佳方式。
格式化的边界
Lenny Rachitsky: 顺着这个思路,我发现格式化在这里真的很有帮助,就是加粗和项目符号。我知道你对过度格式化很反感。多少算过度格式化?
Wes Kao: 我真的很讨厌过度格式化。我曾看到过一些备忘录,30%的内容都被加粗了。这完全违背了加粗的初衷,因为如果所有东西都加粗,就等于没有突出任何东西,对吧?所以我认为,总体上比你觉得必要的程度更克制地使用格式,可能是一个很好的经验法则。我也不喜欢人们过度使用项目符号和句子碎片,当应该使用完整的句子来真正展示思想之间的连接组织、展示你所表达内容的逻辑流时,却在项目符号里塞进短语。
用项目符号和碎片化表达感觉上会更快、更简洁,但很多时候,在另一端的读者却需要去破译、解释和猜测你到底想表达什么。所以算下来反而花费的时间更长。而且我认为这可能有点像拐杖,可能有点偷懒,因为你告诉自己你很简洁,但实际上,如果你必须把句子碎片变成一个完整的句子,很多时候这比你想象的要困难,因为你意识到你其实并不完全清楚你的意思。所以当你试图把它变成一个完整的句子时,你实际上需要消耗脑力。
所以我认为这是一个很好的试金石:“这个想法是否经过了充分思考?”因为如果思考充分了,你应该能够很快把它变成一个完整的句子。但很多时候,你其实并没有。所以我看到人们基本上会想,“哦,我想让这更容易阅读,更容易扫读。我就直接加一堆格式和项目符号,把所有东西都变成项目符号。”但这并不是一个那么简单的解决方案。
如何练习与提升沟通技能
Lenny Rachitsky: 这非常符合亚马逊六页备忘录的思路,杰夫·贝索斯当时意识到,“如果你不能把它写成一份长篇备忘录并用散文式的语言解释清楚,你实际上并不知道你在说什么。”这是一个非常好的过滤器,能帮助人们真正理清思路并认清自己,“好的,我明白了。我其实并不知道我在这里在做什么。”我很喜欢这个观点,它算是那个理念的一个缩影。你能不能直接把一个项目符号变成一个真正的句子,而不是一个句子碎片?
作为听众,我就在想,“好吧,我到底如何才能在这方面变得更好?”所以也许我们可以稍微岔开一下话题。我知道你教了一整门课程,你亲力亲为地帮助人们真正建立这些技能。对于没有上过你的课或不在上课的人来说,开始练习这些技能并知道自己写的东西是否在变好、是否足够好,有什么好方法吗?是找一位导师,还是找一位你认为很棒的写作者让他们帮你审阅东西?有什么建议吗?
Wes Kao: 是的。对此我有一个相当基于第一性原理的方法,就是思考现在我要从接收者那里得到我想要的反应需要多长时间?如果需要大量的来回沟通和摩擦,那就是我的基准线。一旦你开始练习其中一些沟通技巧,这个速度是如何加快的?如果你原本需要七个不同的来回触点,它会不会缩减到两到三个?
并不是每一个摩擦点都可以避免,但如果你提高了沟通能力,很多是可以避免的。所以我喜欢观察反应,以及我能多快、多热情地得到那个反应。对于有效的方法,多做那些。对于无效的方法,调整你的执行,因为可能不是策略不起作用,而是你的执行不够好。基本上就是不断尝试。
Lenny Rachitsky: 所以这里的建议就是看看你的写作、会议或建议进行得如何,效果怎样。如果结果不是那种理想的立刻回应,“好的,我们来做吧。”然后又是那种,“我不太明白。”这里有一个回应的光谱。我听到的是,只需关注获得你想要的东西的速度是否在总体上增加。
建立习惯与保持耐心
Wes Kao: 是的,是的。除了这个,我不认为在如何变好这件事上有什么单一的捷径。我确实认为,对一个话题着迷并为之感到兴奋,会让你更有可能觉得尝试所有这些不同的东西、尝试不同的方式来让别人听懂是一种乐趣。所以,我会以一种假设驱动的实验心态来处理它,几乎就像玩游戏一样。比如,“当我这样做时,另一个人会有什么反应?如果我这样构架,我会得到不同的反应吗?当我尝试这个时,我能更好地穿透噪音吗?”
是的。所以我真的认为这关乎练习。我要说的是,错误的做法是试图同时融入30种不同的策略,然后在记不住时痛打自己。当你学习一个新领域、新职能或新技能时,很容易感到不知所措。而建立一个习惯的方法通常不是一次改变这么多不同的事情。而是选择一个你想尝试的东西,把它放在心上,在不同的环境中以不同的方式尝试它。在转向下一件事之前,先把你在这件事上做得更好。
所以这就像我在课程中看到的一个非常普遍的现象,人们感到不知所措。我总是提醒大家,“你在这里是在建立一个新的习惯。对自己耐心一点,一步一步来。”
微小细节带来的职业飞跃
Lenny Rachitsky: 我们在这里谈论的很多事情,很多人可能会觉得,“这太次要了吧。什么?我只是把句子列成项目符号,稍微……在开头告诉他们为什么。”
我只想根据我的经验分享一点,我职业生涯中最大的飞跃实际上就是在这项非常具体的技能上变得更好。我曾有一位经理叫 Vlad,他上过这个播客,我也经常提到他,他对良好的沟通、清晰和简明扼要、思考以及只是在文档、电子邮件和战略文档上花更多时间有着极其严格的要求。就像,“不,这还没准备好。多花点时间,这里有些东西不清楚。”仅仅是这样做就对我产生了巨大的加速作用。
而且都是这些小事情。这就是它的有趣之处。似乎每件事都非常微小,但它们累积起来会产生巨大的影响,因为正如你所说,人们看到它,“好的,很酷,我懂了,我们开始吧。”而不是,“我不喜欢这个想法。”然后一切都土崩瓦解。所以我想知道你对此有什么反应?
Wes Kao: 是的。所有这些微小的事情都会产生复利,带来巨大的差异。我经常听到人们觉得,“嗯,这单独的一次情况、这单独的一封邮件、这条 Slack 消息,不值得多花几分钟。这只是一封邮件或者一条 Slack 消息而已。”这种思维模式的问题在于,没有任何单独的一次事情会让人觉得重要到值得多花点时间。但是,当你退后一步纵观全局时,就会发现,“好吧,那就是你的全部工作了。这字面意义上就是你接触过的所有东西。那就是你的全部工作产出。”因为在这个过程的任何一个环节中,如果你觉得不值得花时间,那么现在这就成了你工作质量的体现,而且它没有达到它本可以达到的水平。
所以是的,这些事看起来可能很次要,但第一,它们会产生复利。第二,所有“大事”,其他人也都在做。所以,这里面没有多少超额收益。而如果你去关注那些人们觉得无聊或太基础的技能,并意识到那是一个你可以拉动的杠杆,别人会觉得,“哦,我们在那上面已经遇到边际收益递减了。我不会在那上面再花时间了。”但你意识到那里其实还有剩下的汁水可以挤,并且你决定去挤。那么现在,你就拥有了别人没有的额外汁水。
所以是的,根据我的经验,我发现人们宣称达到边际收益递减点的时间实在太早了。这不仅仅适用于沟通,也适用于策略、战术等等。他们会尝试一次某件事,一次平庸的尝试,然后就说,“这个渠道不行。这个战术不行。”这就好比,“真的吗?因为有很多其他在这方面发挥创造力的人,这个战术对他们很有效。”我并不是说所有事情都必须对你有效,但是你宣称“这件事就是不行”,感觉在智力上有点不诚实。更有可能的是,你的技能水平、你的创造力、你的执行能力还不够好。这没关系。让我们向自己承认这一点,因为如果我们承认了,我们就可以在这些事情上付出努力去变得更好。
Lenny Rachitsky: 感觉如果你真的把这一切归结起来,所有的建议都归结为:在你发布的所有这些东西上多花一点时间。
Wes Kao: 我喜欢把它看作是一点更多的前期投资。它确实是一种投资。它不仅仅是时间。它是一种投资,因为是的,让一条 Slack 消息变得好一点确实需要多花一点时间,但净收益是,如果你节省了一堆问题和来回沟通,节省了别人问你那些你觉得他们不该问的问题,那么通过投入一点前期努力,你已经阻止了所有这些情况的发生。所以是的,这在当下是多花了一点时间,但在后续会产生很多收益。
Lenny Rachitsky: 你提到了 Slack。我这里还有一句关于你的很好的评价,我之前没念,现在就念一下,这是和你共事过的人说的。她说她当时在公司 Slack 频道里搜索 Wes 以前的帖子,为了找点灵感来问你问题。她说你那里没有半成品的想法,100% 都是完整的句子,标点符号完美,每条消息顶部都有清晰的结论。这种事情孤立来看你不会注意到,但一旦你在一个以远程为主的公司里看到其他所有人的消息时,对比就非常鲜明。
Wes Kao: 是的,谢谢。我还要说,作为一个努力说到做到的人,我觉得对于我提出的要求、我给出的建议,我总能相当快地得到很好的回应率。这不是即时的,也不是 100%,但随着时间的推移,我意识到改善我的沟通让其他人更好地接受了我的想法。那些过去被锁在我脑子里、我会因为没人理解而感到沮丧的想法,现在人们能够理解了,这感觉真的很好。这非常、非常令人兴奋,这让我想做得更多,并对此投入更多关注。所以这又回到了我之前说的关于留意什么是有效的。这种势头真的很鼓舞人心。
Lenny Rachitsky: 我完全能感受到。如果你开始得到你想要的东西,感觉棒极了。我会觉得,“好的,太酷了。”“我们多做点这个吧。”是的,再说一次,这就像是微小的事情。就像是在 Slack 消息上多花几分钟,在电子邮件上多花几分钟。
Wes Kao: 完全可行。
Lenny Rachitsky: 是的,每个人都能做到。这里没有什么魔法,只是多花一点时间,使用一些我们正在谈论的这些战术。说到这里,让我再谈谈另一个战术。显然,在找到你所说的话的合适自信度方面,你有一些非常好的建议。总会有这样的问题,“我来到这位领导者面前。对于‘这就是答案’,相对于‘这里有一堆想法’,我到底该有多自信?”你怎么看?你在这方面有什么建议?
把握观点表达的确信度
Wes Kao: 我发现人们往往在基准线上自然而然地处于光谱的两端:要么过于自信,要么不够自信。所以那些过于自信的人可能会把假设当作事实来陈述。这真的很困扰我。这是我的另一个痛点,如果你说“这就是 X”,或者“这会导致 X”,那跟说“这可能导致 X”,或者“这也许会 X”,或者“这会增加 X 的可能性”是完全不同的。
所以我非常提倡准确表达。如果你能准确表达你的确信程度,以及你为某件事拥有的实际证据量,你就可以避免很多问题。某件事是一个初步的直觉,这没关系。就说,“这是一个初步的直觉。”不要表现得好像你对这件事非常确定。你已经证明了事情绝对是这样,因为你的团队其他成员是在按字面意思听你说话的。你们可能会花费真金白银和实际人力去追求某件事,而你倡导这件事时,在自信度上越界了。
避免偏见与表达观点
Wes Kao: 所以,这是针对那些过于自信的人。如果你不够自信,这同样是个问题。我有一些客户,他们的 CEO 让他们与另一个团队分享一些建议,因为他们之前做过类似的项目,所以他们分享了所有这些令人惊叹的信息,但在最后他们会说:“哦,但你可以忽略我刚才说的一切。显然,你可以自己做决定。做你认为最好的事情。如果你想完全忽略这些,那也完全没关系。”这就像你其实根本没必要这么说。你可以说,“自己做决定,把这些都考虑进去”,但你不必贬低到那种程度。
所以再说回准确表达,如果你有非常充分的理由向跨职能团队推荐某事,却表现得好像你不太确定,这只是一个随意的想法,“嘿,想试就试试吧”,这几乎是不负责任的。如果我们不采纳这个想法,我们可能会损失大量的金钱和时间,对吧?所以再说一次,准确表达非常、非常重要。
Lenny Rachitsky: 那么,思考正确平衡的一个简单方法是否就是:要有观点,要有建议,呈现准确的事实,并在你不确定时保持清晰?“这实际上并非百分之百真实,但这是我的直觉,或者这是我们的一个理论。”
Wes Kao: 是的,我认为分享观点、分享建议,然后用证据、逻辑、第一性原理、例子和数据进行支持,如果你有的话。并不是每种情况你都能拥有数据,尤其是当你正在构建新东西时。所以这就是第一性原理发挥作用的地方。甚至只是解释你是如何得出结论的,以及你为什么认为这会奏效,这一切都给了你的团队、你的经理一些可以反驳、可以挑刺或可以达成一致的地方,然后他们可以说,“是的,我同意这里,但我不同意这部分。”因此,当你分享你的思考过程时,你可以更具体地讨论想法。你可以在开头这样设定框架:“我最初的想法是,”或者,“基于我们所知,我的直觉是,某事。”所以准确表达,然后仍然提出那些事实,这样我们就可以根据已知信息做出尽可能明智的决定。
Lenny Rachitsky: 我在这里得到的一个对我很有帮助的建议是,尽量不要在构建一切框架时带有偏见。你对如何做某事有自己的建议。很容易将所有数据都偏向那个方向。如果人们注意到了这一点,他们就会想,“哦,好吧。我其实无法相信这个,因为我知道你就像,你显然有私心。”所以这有点像是既要有私心又要有观点,但要清楚什么是真实的。要准确。
Wes Kao: 是的。我认为任何时候人们因为你有这种偏见而不得不对你所说的话打折扣,这都是不好的。
Lenny Rachitsky: 有没有一个例子能突出你在这里描述的情况?
Wes Kao: 有的,所以在我的课程中我谈到了不要做一个 single-minded martyr。Single-minded martyr 是指那种非常执着于推进自己议程、想要让建议被通过,并展示了一堆证据来支持那个方向的人。然后当其他人没有看到这一点或表示怀疑时,他们会变得非常沮丧。所以我的一位客户在她提出的一个建议中就是一个 single-minded martyr。她在公司的增长获取部门工作。她很难让跨职能团队成员把人员编制借给她的项目。所以每个人都会说,“哦,是的,我们相信这个,这很重要”,但不想真正把他们的工程师分给她两周时间。
我们在讨论这件事,在讨论过程中,她透露说 CEO 在年初曾说过,公司今年的全公司目标是留存。他们最大的挑战和机会领域在于留存,而不一定是增长。一旦她跳出局限并意识到这一点,她就能把她的建议放在具体背景中来看。并意识到这不仅仅是“我是唯一关心这家公司的人。每个人都是伪君子。他们说他们相信这个,但实际上并不想在这个上面工作。”之前这有点像她的说辞,但一旦她跳出局限并意识到她正在变得一意孤行,她就能更好地将她的提案契合到组织正在发生的其他事情的背景中。我认为实际上这是比较初级的人和比较资深的人之间的一个很大区别。比较初级的人就像,“我需要赢。我需要为这个提案得到一个同意,而且我会一直倡导它,直到我得到一个同意。”然而实际上,有时对公司来说最好的决定就是现在不做。这实际上并不符合我们现在的优先事项,对吧?
或者也许可以,但让我们把投资规模调整到合适的程度。所以它可能看起来只是那个建议实际规模的一半,而拥有成熟的心智去意识到这一点,把你的想法放入背景中考虑是至关重要的。这花了我很长时间才学到,我认为这属于“始终做对公司最有利的事,而不一定是对我、我的职业、我的团队、我的胜利最有利的事”这个大框架之下。如果你优先考虑对公司最有利的事情,这有助于你用一种更加适度的方式来倡导你的想法,但同时带着更多的平常心去做。
Lenny Rachitsky: 而且还要与公司的状况联系起来。这个想法就是,如果你推销的东西与公司现在重要的事情不一致,它就不太可能被优先考虑。这是有道理的。这就是为什么领导者会选择,这是最重要的事情。我们必须做那些现在能帮助我们推动这件事的事情,比如留存或收入。所以我认为这只是其中的一个子策略,就是每当你推销某样东西时,把它与你推销对象的 goal(目标)联系起来,这样他们就会觉得,“哦,我明白这将如何帮助我了。太好了。我们做吧。很好的建议。”我认为这是很多人都会遇到的情况。那就是,“为什么他们不听我的?为什么他们不想……这是一个多么好的主意啊。他们讨厌我。”就会想,“哦,我敢打赌他们讨厌我。他们不信任我。”而实际上情况只是,好吧,这现在不是优先事项。我们改天再回到这个话题上。好的。我还要讲几个策略,然后我要转换方向谈谈管理者和成为管理者。你有一个很棒的框架叫 MOO。什么是 MOO?它代表什么,到底是关于什么的?
最明显的异议(MOO)
Wes Kao: MOO 代表最明显的异议(Most Obvious Objection)。M-O-O。其背后的想法是,很多时候我们会对自己收到的感到惊讶,尤其是在会议上,我们感觉被突袭了,那是意想不到的,然后我们就处于被动地位。而实际上,如果你甚至只花两分钟思考一下“我在分享这个时可能会遇到哪些明显的异议”,你通常能立刻想出其中一些是什么。那么你能预见每一个单一的异议吗?不能。但你能预见那些明显的吗?绝对能。所以这就是为什么彻底了解你自己的论点,包括反方论点,变得如此重要。所以要像了解做这件事的论点一样了解你的反方论点。当你这样做时,当你以那种方式做好准备时,你就不太可能感到猝不及防。
Lenny Rachitsky: 当你听你谈论这个时,感觉就像,很明显我不该那样做(指被问到时答不上来),但实际上很少有人真正做到这一点,真正花几分钟说,“好的,这就是我要推销的内容(并预想异议)。”
Wes Kao: 其实哪怕几秒钟也行。真的,哪怕只是几秒钟,你的大脑就会想到些什么。
Lenny Rachitsky: 有没有什么你分享过的故事或例子,能突出最明显的异议(MOO)的这种力量?
Wes Kao: 我每天多次使用最明显的异议(MOO),每一天,每一天都在用。真的,无论我准备说什么,我都会想,别人可能会怎么不同意这一点,或者异议可能是什么?所以无论我是在写还是在说,它都是一个非常好的心理过滤器,因为它鼓励你以一种结构化的方式提前想几步,对吧?如果我准备说这个,对方可能会接着对我说那个。好吧,如果我把那一点考虑进去,我就可以提前主动提供那个信息,或者我可以用一种让他们不太可能认为那是个问题的方式来构建它。到现在这对我来说已经是肌肉记忆了,这可能也是我们最后会包含进去的一个起点。但是把最明显的异议写在便利贴上,别人可能会反对什么?然后把它保持在脑海中最首要的位置。这是训练自己与受众和接收者产生共情的一个极好方法。我们都会这么说,也都知道我们应该这么做,但对我来说,这是一种非常战术性、具体的方法来做到这一点。
沟通与思考的交织
Lenny Rachitsky: 我觉得你分享的很多策略很棒的一点在于,它不仅会帮助你更好地沟通,还能帮助你实际上为自己更好地思考和理清思路。因为你可能会意识到,哦,那是一个非常好的异议。比如,哦,异议可能就是这个:它能为业务带来足够的影响力吗?哦,那是个好观点。也许我现在不应该推销这个。
Wes Kao: 是的。它绝对有助于塑造你自己的思考。我认为沟通和思考之间的相互关联程度比我们想象的要深得多。人们认为思考是第一阶段,然后才是沟通这些思考,而现实情况则是交织得多的多。我很喜欢你刚才的例子,提前思考什么可能是最明显的异议,实际上会促使你意识到你计划展示的内容中可能存在一个漏洞,然后你现在就有机会在把它说出口之前加强那个推销。
高压对话中保持冷静
Lenny Rachitsky: Joan Didion 有一句我在这档播客中强调过很多次的话,我非常喜欢,正好符合这个道理:“在写下来之前,我不知道我在想什么。”我完全能体会那种感觉。好吧。所以还有几件事,大家分享说你非常擅长帮助他们提升。其中之一就是在非常高风险的实时对话中保持冷静和镇定,当时的情况可能对你不利,或者你与某人意见不合,对此你有什么建议吗,感觉你在这方面真的很厉害。
Wes Kao: 我认为容易让人慌乱的一件事是,他们给自己施加了很大的压力去得到完全正确的答案。所以如果他们被问到一个问题而他们不知道答案,很多人就会有点崩溃。在我的职业生涯早期,我学到了如果你不知道答案,你应该说:“让我查一下,我回头回复你。”所以这是一个不错的方法。它绝对比编造要好,对吧?所以绝对不要编造。但是如果你更有经验,并且对你的专业领域有信心,仅仅说我会回复你,有时是一个错失的机会。你可以询问多一点信息,以便在那个时刻继续对话。假设你的高管问,上个月有多少比例的用户来自移动端,而你的脑海中并没有那个数字。所以A会说:“让我查一下,我回头回复你。”B可能会说:“我脑海中没有那个确切的数字,但在上个季度这个数字一直是60%到70%,而且在过去一年里还在增长,所以移动端现在是我们业务中更大的一部分,等等。您是在想我们是否在移动端进行了适当的投资,或者基本上这个佣金是从哪里来的,对吧?”因此,能够在你认为对方询问的方向上回答一个类似的问题,然后验证他们为什么问这个问题,能让你仍然在那个时刻继续对话。我称之为问题背后的问题,有时你会得到一个问题,但在表面之下有一个更深层的潜在担忧。而且很多时候人们甚至不知道它的存在,对吧?是潜意识里的。所以这并不是恶意的,他们并没有对你隐瞒什么。但是当你解释某件事时,你对同一件事不断收到多个问题,这是一个好迹象,表明问题背后可能有一个更深层的问题,而我们的责任是弄清楚那可能是什么。因此,探究、询问多一点信息、在那个大致方向上回答,然后进行验证,这些都是你在当下可以使用的技巧,而不会觉得,哦,我必须把每一件单一的事情都准备好,一旦我猝不及防,一切就全砸了。
Lenny Rachitsky: 沿着这个思路的另一个策略与你描述的非常相似,但我分享一个我学到的非常有用的方法,就是如果你不确定说什么,基本上就是复述他们的问题,就像,让我确认一下我理解你在寻找什么。你想了解的是……的月度留存,然后可能再澄清一下。这样做首先给了你说话时思考的时间。其次,它帮助对方认识到,“哦,他听懂我了。太好了。好的,这很好。他在思考这件事。”然后在那结束时你可以说,“好的。我实际上没有那个具体数字。让我想一想。”或者,“我有季度数字。好的。这就是我知道的。”所以几乎有一个中间步骤我可以加到你的建议中,就是复述他们的问题,只是更好地理解他们在寻找什么。
Wes Kao: 是的,我很喜欢这个。嗯。嗯。
建议的起点
Lenny Rachitsky: 太棒了。好吧,让我们回到我说的我们要做的事。让我们挑选一个你认为人们应该首先尝试的策略,也许一两个。所以让我读一下我们讨论过的那些,然后看看你认为什么是好的第一步。一个是先从销售开始,在进入具体细节之前,先告诉人们“为什么”,使用路标指引等特定词语来帮助人们梳理文档而不至于感到信息过载。找到合适的自信程度,拥有一个观点,诸如此类。变得更好,做到简洁,最明显的异议,不要过度使用格式化,还有你分享的其他东西。然后是这个想法,当你不知道答案时,不要把“我回头回复你”作为默认选项,也许给他们一个不同的答案,也许问他们更多问题。在这些之中,你认为有人应该尝试哪个,比如,“好的。让我从这里开始。”
Wes Kao: 我会从最明显的异议开始,以及在一开始就构建好你的对话。这在某种程度上与在需要时使用路标指引的词语来帮助你构建对话有关。
Lenny Rachitsky: 太棒了。这个很容易记住,就是最明显的异议(MOO)。所以当你要在 Slack 上分享内容并请求别人帮忙、在会议上做演示或是发送策略时,可以在某处贴个便利贴提醒自己,花几秒钟想一想,对于我试图让他们做的事,最明显的异议可能是什么。很好。那我们接着来聊聊管理。管理大概有两面,做管理者和做向管理者汇报的人。你在这方面有很多很好的建议,其中一点是关于向上管理的。我早期最受欢迎的帖子之一就是关于向上管理的建议,以及它的重要性。对于想要在向上管理方面做得更好的人,你有什么建议?为什么它如此重要?比方说,为什么你认为人们可能会低估向上管理的重要性?
向上管理
Wes Kao: 关于向上管理,最常见的一个迷思是我早期职业生涯中深有体会的,那就是如果资历较浅才需要向上管理,但最终我会不再需要它,以为只要资历够深就不用再做这件事了。而一个残酷的现实是,无论我有多资深,不仅仍然需要向上管理,它实际上变得更重要了。所以我认为向上管理就是这样一种技能,如果你投入精力去学习,它不仅现在有用,而且会贯穿你接下来的整个职业生涯。我也意识到,许多资深人士其实是向上管理的高手。这部分也是他们一开始能晋升到如此资深的原因。而且,你的资历越深,你的管理者就越不可能把定义明确的任务和问题直接端到你面前让你去解决。
你将面临更多的模糊性,有时还会面临诸如“把这个数字提上去”或“建立这个部门”之类的硬性指令,对吧?在这种情况下,你需要向上管理,确保你的领导者、你的管理者了解你准备尝试和准备做的事情,并确保彼此保持一致。因此对我来说,意识到向上管理是一件持续进行的事情,并且它会随着你的职业发展而转变、演变,呈现出不同的形式,这对我来说是一个巨大的突破。
Lenny Rachitsky: 就是说即使你成为了副总裁,成为了总监,这仍然是你想要投入精力的事情。关于如何做好向上管理,有什么具体的策略或建议吗?
Wes Kao: 最重要的一点是分享你的观点。这一点有时会让人感到惊讶,因为他们以为我会说要对你完成的任务或贡献做每周总结。这也是个好主意,如果你想这么做,完全可以。但我认为,更高杠杆的贡献和向上管理方式,是更主动地分享你的观点。当你只是问你的管理者“嘿,老板,我们该怎么办?”时,你给管理者增加了很大的认知负荷(cognitive load),他们需要去思考问题、思考潜在的解决方案、制定解决方案,然后再告诉你该怎么做。而如果你换种说法,“嘿,老板,我认为我们该这么做。听起来怎么样?你觉得哪里有漏洞?我的方向对吗?”你给了他们一个可以在此基础上构建的东西,这就减少了他们需要付出的脑力。
因此,更乐于分享你的观点,并用证据加以支持,这是让管理者工作变得更轻松的绝佳方式。同时也表明你是一个积极且严谨的思考者,在战略层面上思考业务。你不只是在等待别人告诉你该做什么,不是指望他们把事情想清楚再告诉你,而是在主动预判、试图解决问题,在脑海中形成假设,观察并留意各种事物。需要再次强调的是,分享你的观点并不意味着你必须有完美的答案。你可以这样分享:“嘿,我注意到这个问题在几个不同的地方出现了。我认为可能是这样的原因。”
或者当你要分享一份报告时,不要只丢出报告,就指望管理者自己去得出洞察和结论。你自己也应该看看这份报告,并指出其中的洞察和结论。所以这本质上是一种姿态的转变,从更被动、更等待指令,或者说是局限于某种狭隘的职责范围,转变为愿意分享你的建议、你的观点,分享你所留意到的事情,这一点即使是初级员工也能做到。
Lenny Rachitsky: 我正想这么说。我认为这不仅是初级员工可以做到的事,这更是获得晋升和承担更多领导机会的绝佳途径。当你带着“这是我认为我们该做的事,这是我的一个视角,这是一个机会”去找你的管理者时。换位思考一下,如果你是老板,如果人们带着绝妙的想法和清晰的建议来找你,那该有多棒?听起来很完美。每个人都渴望这样。所以如果你能做到,那太好了,谁会不想要呢?但有趣的是,就像写作能帮你理清思路一样,你带着建议去找管理者,会迫使你对这件事进行真正深入的思考,因为这就把你的声誉押上了。所以它还有一个二阶效应(second order effect),那就是让你真正在这件事上花更多的时间,弄清楚为什么你认为这是个好主意,并做更多的研究。这里面的好处太多了。
Wes Kao: 在很多情况下,你可能对某个问题看得最清楚。你可能对某个议题有最切身的接触。所以如果你不就此发声,不分享你观察到的、留意到的东西,你的管理者未必能了解到这些。所以我听过很多管理者说,他们希望初级员工能多发声,因为初级员工通常与客户、支持工单、数据清洗等一系列事情有着密切接触,而管理者非常希望能从这些接触中获得洞察。
Lenny Rachitsky: 如果你在这方面没有取得成功,如果你听到这里心里想的是“但这从来没起过作用,我的管理者不听我的”,那就去听听我们这期播客前面的内容,那基本上就是关于如何有效地说服别人接受某件事的建议。比如,告诉他们为什么这是个问题,表达要非常简洁,使用路标指引,所有这些方法。这正是我们整个对话所围绕的内容。好的。让我们看看。还有几个大家建议我们聊的非常棒的策略。其中一个是如何有效地给予反馈,如何做得更好,如何提高给予反馈的效率。你在这方面有什么建议?
有效给予反馈
Wes Kao: 我有一个框架叫做“策略,而非自我表达”(strategy, not self-expression)。这里的核心理念是,大多数时候,当我们终于要给别人反馈时,其实我们已经为此沮丧了一段时间。我过去非常害怕冲突,所以我会一直等,试图说服自己某件事并没有困扰我,直到我真的再也忍不住了。然后我会和同事约一次一对一会议来给出反馈,而这就不可避免地会变成一场发泄大会,我打着告诉对方其行为造成影响的名义,倾倒我所有的沮丧,以及他们基本上是如何伤害我、让我的生活变得困难的。这其实是极其适得其反的,因为对方要么会感到非常气馁,要么会变得非常防备,想要和我争论他们做的事其实没那么糟,或者这事儿也有部分是我的错之类的。
Wes Kao: 因此我意识到,给出反馈的更好方式是思考如何促使对方改变行为。目标就是行为改变。所以如果这是目标,就删掉你原本想说但实际上对达成目标毫无贡献的所有其他内容,只保留能让对方产生改变意愿的部分,帮助他们理解这对自己以及周围人的好处。所以对我来说,这通常意味着删掉我最初想说的话中的90%,真正只保留那10%。这产生了非常大的改变。每当我给出任何形式的建设性反馈时,我总会牢记这一点。而当我没有做到时,我几乎总会后悔。
Lenny Rachitsky: 我生活中一位亲近的人正在练习这项技能,他的想法是“我想让人们知道他们搞砸了。公平。我需要这事是公平的。”而我总是建议他,只去想你想从这次对话中得到什么,你想从他们那里得到什么?然后,好吧,得到那个结果的最好方式是什么?而不是仅仅确保他们听到了你的话,确保他们明白这事搞得有多糟。这基本上就是你所说的,专注于你想要实现的结果,而不是一些有用的东西,或者仅仅让你感觉好一点的东西。
Wes Kao: 是的。我绝对认为,拥有一个发泄和分享这些沮丧情绪的空间是很重要的。所以你希望在去和对方交谈之前就把这些情绪排解掉。所以无论是和你的治疗师、伴侣还是朋友交谈,你基本上要把所有那些能量都排解出去,否则你把它带入了对话中,一点小事就能激怒你。你可能有一整套腹稿,你很克制,很平静,然后你开始说话,对方挑了挑眉,对你所说的话表现出一点难以置信,这就足以让你突然发火,说:“你很惊讶?你觉得难以置信?你为什么觉得难以置信?”对吧?然后你就失控了,对吧?是的。把那种能量排解掉,我会说是第一步,这样你就能以清醒、踏实的状态进入对话,设定一种更积极的情感基调,这能让你保持专注,只说那些能促使他们按你期望的方式行动的内容。
Lenny Rachitsky: 非常好的建议。我认为我们又回到了那个问题:你得到你想要的结果了吗?如果没有,这可能就是另一个原因,你只是需要他们听到你的想法。我只是需要你知道。而我认为这里的一个教训是,这可能并不是得到你想要的东西的最佳途径,但它可能会让你感觉很好。也许人们会说,“啊,但我真的很想让他们知道这件事。”
Wes Kao: 爱因斯坦有一句关于疯狂的名言,说疯狂就是重复做同样的事却期望不同的结果。我觉得这非常适用于职场和沟通。我们大多数人都有某些我们习惯的模式和特定的回应方式,如果你相信还有未开发的潜力,认为你现在所处的状态只是一个局部最大值,外面还有更好的可能,那么这就是改变做事方式可能有用之处,而不是仅仅做你一直以来的事,得到你可能一直在得到的同样结果。
Lenny Rachitsky: 这让我很有共鸣,Toby Lutke 在做播客时谈到过……他有一句我很喜欢的话,“历史上没有任何一个人接近过他们的潜力,每个人都比他们自己认为的要好得多得多”,而这些真的是非常酷的战术,也是非常有效的方法,能让你真正更接近你的潜力。好的。还有两件事我想快速聊一下。一件是你关于授权的建议,但同时还要保持高标准。这是我一直花很多时间研究的事情,因为很多人不授权是因为他们害怕结果不会那么好。我只是希望这事能非常出色。我不相信它能进行得很顺利。如果按我的方式来做,会很棒的。所以想听听关于如何有效授权同时保持高标准的建议。
CEDAF 授权框架
Wes Kao: 好的。我有一个框架叫做 CEDAF。C-E-D-A-F。
Lenny Rachitsky: 嗯。我喜欢所有这些首字母缩写。
Wes Kao: 有点像 Cedar(雪松),但末尾加了个 F。我需要为自己创造一些首字母缩写。所有这些都是给我的提醒,因为我需要一种简短的方式来提醒自己。所以 CEDAF 代表 C 是 comprehension(理解)。我是不是把对方完成我想要他们做的事所需理解的一切都交代清楚了。这包括一些更简单的东西,比如登录所有他们需要查阅的正确软件工具的权限,无论需要查阅什么。以及理解最终结果应该是什么样子的,对吧?所以这些都归在代表理解的 C 下面。E 是 excitement(热情)。我解释这件事的方式是否让它变得尽可能令人兴奋?有很多任务本身并没有那么令人兴奋,但通过解释我们做这件事背后的原因,或者为什么它对我们正在做的项目很重要,这会让人们更有可能理解并对其如何融入全局感到兴奋。
所以 E 代表热情。D 是 de-risk(降低风险)。我是否降低了授权这件事带来的任何明显风险?所以通常当我问客户这个问题时,他们立刻就会想到一些东西。他们会说:“哦,是的,我不希望我的直接下属花大量时间走错方向,在电子表格里填了一百行,结果发现实际花费的时间比我们预期的要长。”好的,很好。如果这是一个风险,那么也许你可以让他们先做10行,看看需要多长时间,看看我们是否真的需要他们收集的所有信息,然后再重新评估,对吧?所以明显的风险是什么?另一个可能是,我能预见到这个人会产生误解,以为我在找这个,但其实我在找那个。好的,完美。只要告诉他们:“当我解释这个时,你可能会以为我指的是这个,但其实我不想要那个。我实际上想要这个,”对吧?所以直接说出来。A 是 align(对齐)。我是不是给了对方机会发声,并确保我们实际上是对齐的,他们领会了我的意思?因为你可能在解释一堆东西,但他们实际吸收了多少?如果你结束了你的长篇大论,然后说:“好的,去吧。做完再来找我。”你永远不会知道。所以要给人们机会提问,看看哪些部分引起了共鸣,哪些部分他们可能有点困惑。通常,当我这样做时,效果惊人。因为我的团队成员会说:“你这部分是什么意思?这部分是怎么融入进来的?”我会说:“天哪,我完全忘了提这件事。”或者,“哦对,我甚至没有真正解释清楚。”好的,那我们就深入谈谈那个。
然后 F 是 feedback(反馈)。你怎样才能拥有尽可能短的反馈循环?我是缩短反馈循环的超级粉丝,能缩短多少就缩短多少,然后再进一步缩短。所以即使在我授权某件事的最初对话中,与其等上一周,不如我们等一天,检查一下那个人最初的走向?让我们做得更极致一点。如果在我解释完之后,在那次对话的尾声,我们就头脑风暴一些那个人想做的事情会怎样?所以在同一次对话中,我在授权,我已经在了解,你想拿这个往哪个方向走?一旦你开始做,你看到任何瓶颈了吗?
所以就是要真正保持反馈循环极其紧密。我发现当我过一遍 CEDAF 首字母缩写时,通常会有一个字母是我可以稍微加强一点的,比如,哦,我并没有真正花太多心思让这件事对这个人来说充满热情。我怎样才能把它和他们的职业目标,或者公司本季度的优先事项,或者其他什么东西联系起来?所以这是一个很好的心理检查清单。
Lenny Rachitsky: 你的很多建议都回到了我们接触过几次的这个理念上。我们只是在前期多花一点时间。你是这么描述的吗,在前期多花一点时间?
Wes Kao: 是的,多一点时间。在前期多一点投入。
Lenny Rachitsky: 在前期投入以在后期为你节省大量时间。好的。所以当你描述这些时,我不知道你是否意识到了这一点,但你基本上就是在帮助人们更好地与 AI 和智能体协作。我认为这个框架正是人们在这个智能体世界、这个由智能体为我们工作的未来社会中进行有效授权所需要的。基本上,你在未来将会向这些智能体授权,而这个框架是一个构建它的非常酷的方式。所以想一想。我是否把这件事沟通清楚了,理解?所以 CEDAF。理解再次意味着,我能把它说清楚吗?是这样思考它的方式吗?
Wes Kao: 是的。我能把它说清楚吗?这个人是否拥有完成我要求他们做的事所需的一切?
Lenny Rachitsky: 好的。然后就是传达你为什么对此充满热情,基本上就是为什么。有趣的是,我学到了一个搞笑的提示词技巧,一种提示词工程技巧,就是直接告诉 AI:“这对我的工作非常重要。”仅仅使用这句话,它就做得更好。
Wes Kao: 哦,有意思,是的。
Lenny Rachitsky: 它会更认真地对待它。这太奇怪了。我有一篇关于这个的帖子,这就是其中的一条建议,直接告诉我为什么这很重要。我认为人们把它推向了极端,说如果你搞错了就会有人死掉。这确实有效。
Wes Kao: 真是极端。很酷。
Lenny Rachitsky: 太疯狂了。好的,所以 CEDAF,理解,热情,降低风险,思考你可以降低风险的方法,这基本上是多余的。什么是最大的?这是一个相似的概念。只要提前思考可能会出什么问题。确保你是对齐的,这在 AI 领域相当重要。确保你是对齐的。然后是反馈,获得一个快速的反馈循环。有趣的是,现在这些 AI 工具中的一些深度研究功能,就像是,“我要离开半小时了。回见。”我想象越来越多的工具会在过程中与你确认并向你提问。我最近使用了深度研究,它非常擅长就像,好的,在我离开去做这项工作之前让我问你五个问题,只是为了澄清你想要什么。
Wes Kao: 是的,我发现 AI 通常也会缩短反馈循环并与你对齐。当你给它提示词,当它返回结果时,有时它不会为我完成整个任务。它会说:“我已经完成了这部分。这听起来对吗?这是你在找的吗?如果是这样,我将完成下一部分。”然后有时我会说:“做整个事情。别再试图节省能量了,直接做。我想让你做整个事情。”但这就是它在做的,它把它分解成更小的块来降低风险,以免它消耗了所有这些带宽来处理这个东西,然后我却说:“哦,那不是我要找的。”
Lenny Rachitsky: 我要很快回到 AI,但在此之前,我还有一个问题要问你,但我只想说,我觉得我们现在已经发现了你的课程的一个 AI 版本。基本上,如何向 AI 智能体进行良好的授权,我认为人们会觉得这非常有价值,先种下一颗种子。好的。在我们回到 AI 之前,你有另一个我非常喜欢的概念,实际上这是几年前我在做我的课程时从你那里学到的,叫做 swipe file。Swipe file,什么是 swipe file?那是关于什么的?它能帮你做什么?为什么人们应该这么做?
Swipe File 灵感库
Wes Kao: 是的。所以 swipe file 对营销人员来说非常普遍,我认为其他职能还没有那么跟上,但我认为它真的非常有用。基本上,swipe file 就是收集你以后可以回过头来参考的灵感。所以一些营销人员会收集文案、着陆页、广告等的例子。对我来说,我有一个文件,一个 Apple Notes 文件,叫做 Smart Things People Have Said,我基本上会把短语、词语、人们说过的话粘贴进去,我认为这些东西表达得很好,或者听起来非常有智慧,或者听起来很有策略性。我实际上并不经常回过头去看我的 swipe file,我认为其他人会,但对我来说,即使是把它添加到我的 swipe file 的这个行为,我已经从中获得了价值,因为它在训练我更加敏锐地注意到什么时候某件事做得很好。我认为我们周围一直发生着太多事情,以至于你的同事说了一些聪明的话,你会觉得,“哦,那很好”,然后你继续前进。但是当你停下来暂停并思考,哦,那真的很有效,让我把它加到我的文件里,同时还要思考,为什么它那么有效,那是我可以借用的东西吗?所以在我的课程中,我鼓励人们创建一个工作日志,他们可以在其中记下一些观察结果,一些短语,基本上就是鼓励自己更加敏锐地发现你可以从周围人那里借用的东西。
Lenny Rachitsky: 关于 swipe file 的另一件事,你可以使用引言。它可以是酷炫设计的截图。它可以是你发现非常有效的策略文档。它可以是非常酷的转化流程。它可以只是任何你感兴趣的东西。
Wes Kao: 是的。这样做的好处是你可以然后回过头去分析它,拆解结构,拆解论点,拆解为什么这如此有效?而如果你没有捕捉到它,你很容易就直接转移到下一件事上。
Lenny Rachitsky: 是的,很酷。我这样做过一段时间。说实话,我停下来了,但我真的很想继续这样做。所以这可能是一些作业什么的,因为我知道很多人坚持下来了,就是开始建一个文件夹或者一个 Notes 笔记,无论你用什么做笔记,只是开始把东西扔进去。它可以是凌乱的,对吧?就像,直接扔进去。
Wes Kao: 它可以超级乱。我正想说,我的后端系统超级乱,但这没关系。这不是我需要解决的问题。它有效。我能找到我需要找到的东西。所以我喜欢尽可能简单地保持流程。所以 Apple Notes,我打开它。它就在我的主屏幕上,我只是添加一些东西。我没有给任何东西打标签,我没有把它放在某些行里并填写信息。我只是把它包含在一个文件里,如果我想回过头去看它,它就实现了它的目的。
AI Corner:AI 在工作与生活中的应用
Lenny Rachitsky: 太棒了。好的,所以最后一个问题。AI,我要简短地回到这个话题。我们在播客上有一个叫做 AI Corner 的环节,我们已经接触过这个了,但我只是很好奇你发现 AI 在你的工作或生活中有什么用处,它是否帮助你成为了一个更好的沟通者?你有什么可以分享的可能会对人们有帮助的东西吗?
Wes Kao: 是的。我很喜欢 Claude。有时候我会和 Claude 聊上三四个小时,把它当作思考伙伴来提示(prompting)。所以,我觉得 AI 在生成一些可以用来碰撞思想的初稿时非常有帮助。有时我会把一封不知道怎么回复的邮件粘贴进去,让 Claude “告诉我草稿回复”。我通常会给它一些方向。我发现分享我的观点会让输出结果好得多。
如果我只是给它点东西然后问“你会怎么说?”效果就没那么好。而如果我说,“我不确定该如何拒绝这个人,因为我之前答应了,所以我觉得有义务,但情况已经变了,那么有没有一种很好的方式,既能非常尊重我们的关系,又能让对方觉得被看见和被倾听,但同时拒绝呢?”所以如果我解释说,“这就是我面临的问题,而这是我最理想中希望能做到的,”Claude 返回的东西就相当不错。然后我会从那里开始把它编辑成我的语气,因为它通常听起来有点太正式了。所以我做一些修改,然后再把它分享回给 Claude,说,“你觉得这个版本怎么样?你会做些改进吗?”然后我们就在这基础上来回探讨。
Lenny Rachitsky: Wes,这是我听过的最有用的东西。我需要这个,我立刻就需要它,就是一些体面拒绝事情的好方法。这应该成为我浏览器里的一个扩展插件,只要说,“请帮我拒绝这个”。哇,真是个好主意。好的,太棒了。
Wes,还有什么其他的吗?我们已经聊了很多。我想答案是没有,但在我们进入非常激动人心的闪电问答之前,你还有什么想分享或留给听众的吗?
Wes Kao: 没有了,我觉得我们已经涵盖了很多很棒的框架、原则,所以大家有很多可以开始着手的东西。
Lenny Rachitsky: 所有的东西。而且我很喜欢这其中很大一部分将适用于更有效地使用 AI 工具,我觉得人们可以再过一遍这些内容,仅仅是透过这样一个视角:这将如何帮助我从 Claude 和 ChatGPT 中获得更多?我敢打赌这其中很多内容确实适用,而且我觉得那会是一门有趣的课程。说到这里,Wes,我们已经到了非常激动人心的闪电问答环节。
闪电问答
Wes Kao: 好的,
Lenny Rachitsky: 准备好了吗?
Wes Kao: 开始吧。
Lenny Rachitsky: 好的。第一个问题,你最向别人推荐哪几本书?
Wes Kao: 一本是 Andy Grove 的《High Output Management》,这是一本经典之作。另一本是 Dr. David Rock 的《Your Brain At Work》。那本书全是关于更好地了解你自己的大脑和注意力持续时间,这样你就能适当地分配你的心理资源。所以那本很棒。自从读了那本书以后,我就会把手机藏起来看不见,因为有研究表明,即使是在眼角余光中看到你的手机,也会让人分心。而且我会在一天中早些时候做最难的事情,那时你有更多的认知资源可用。所以那本真的很好。是的,就这两本。
Lenny Rachitsky: 这些都很棒。我完全理解那个关于手机的说法。我只是看着我的手机,心里就想,“该死,滚开。快走开。”
Wes Kao: 我会把它塞在沙发上的枕头底下,或者藏在笔记本下面。这影响巨大。我总是把我的手机藏起来,这样它就不在我的视线范围内。
Lenny Rachitsky: 我想 Arianna Huffington 有一个你可以买的产品,那是给你的手机准备的一张小床,你在去另一个房间睡觉前把手机放在里面安顿好,上面还连着一个充电器。
Wes Kao: 哦,那很可爱。
Lenny Rachitsky: 太可爱了,太可爱了。
Wes Kao: 我不知道我是不是需要给我的手机单独准备一张床。
Lenny Rachitsky: 但我想这就像一种仪式,而且它背后有一些理论依据。好的,下一个问题。最近你最喜欢的一部电影或电视剧是什么?
Wes Kao: 我喜欢 Netflix 上 Harlan Coben 的任何作品。基本上,我甚至不记得有什么具体的电影或电视剧,但他推出的任何东西,他是一位作家,然后他们把他的很多书都改编成了悬疑惊悚电视剧,而且他推出的任何东西都会成为 Netflix 上的第一名。我很欣赏他能给人们想要的东西,他了解他的手艺,他了解他的题材。而且是的,他有很多神作。我不记得具体是哪一部,但如果是 Harlan Coben 的剧,我知道它一定会很好看。
Lenny Rachitsky: 我现在正在看我刚快速谷歌出来的一份列表。所以都是些吓人的东西,对吧?
Wes Kao: 是的,它们是悬疑惊悚片,我觉得他很擅长玩转时间线和随着时间的推移揭露信息。通常是关于某人的过去现在回来困扰他们,所以他会跳转于现在和过去之间,然后慢慢揭露一些东西。而且最后总是有一个反转。
Lenny Rachitsky: 有一个页面,Netflix 上的 Harlan Coben 合集。我们会把链接放上去,里面有所有这些东西。我以前从没听说过这个,所以这太棒了。下一个问题,你有没有最近发现的、你非常喜欢的最爱产品?
Wes Kao: 我最近开始使用电动牙刷,这改变了我的生活。所以我丈夫买了一个,然后几周后他送了我一个,我就觉得,“哇,这实际上真的很好用。”
Lenny Rachitsky: 你是 Sonicare 派,Oral-B 派,还是其他什么派?
Wes Kao: 是 Oral-B,但我没有尝试过其他品牌。那是我们的牙医送给我丈夫这把电动牙刷的,因为他做了 Invisalign。而且我确信 Invisalign 是每个牙医的梦想。
Lenny Rachitsky: 利润空间。
Wes Kao: 我觉得每次我去洗牙,牙医都会说,“那么你有没有考虑过,你对 Invisalign 感兴趣吗?”我就会说,“没有。”所以当他们得到一个肯定的答复时,我确信他们非常兴奋,然后他们会把你锁定,品牌用这些比原本应该贵得多的替换刷头把你锁定。所以这完全是一个剃须刀与刀片、墨盒与打印机的模式。所以我对这些替换刷头有多贵感到震惊。
Lenny Rachitsky: 但你得到了一把免费的牙刷。我想我用的是 Oral-B,我想那是 Wirecutter 推荐的,但它太吵了。我不知道。其中有一个就是非常吵。我想是 Oral-B,但显然它更好用。我选择了 Wirecutter 的推荐,但它太吵了。我觉得需要有一个专门针对优秀设计和体验的 Wirecutter……
Wes Kao: 噢。
Lenny Rachitsky: ……而不是仅仅针对最优的高效版本。不管怎样,我们继续。你有没有什么人生座右铭,是你在工作或生活中经常觉得有用,并且会反复对自己说和分享给别人的?
Wes Kao: 有。其实我有很多,但我会分享两个。一个是凡事都比你想的要花更长时间。所以无论你是打电话给某个东西的客服,还是去跑个腿,或者建立你的职业生涯、培养技能,这都适用。我发现给自己留出缓冲时间很有用。这也适用于产品发布。只要假设它会比你想象的要花更长时间,你就会少一些压力。
Lenny Rachitsky: 这和我们一直在谈论的所有事情都联系在一起。就是在一开始多花点时间把它做好。而且也许如果你在前期花更多时间,它花费的时间可能会比你想象的要少。
Wes Kao: 另一个是化用自“永远在成交(always be closing)”,就像《Glengarry Ross》里那样。“永远在销售”。这并不意味着兜售你的货物,而是付出努力去说服对方接受你的任何建议。
Lenny Rachitsky: 很喜欢这两个建议。好,最后一个问题。你很长一段时间里,我一直很讨厌“operator”这个词,但我想大家就是这么形容的,你一直在公司工作、创办公司,而你最近离开了这些,成为了一个创意工作者。你在Maven上开设了课程,也做高管辅导之类的事情。从这次转变中,有没有什么经验或教训,是对可能正在考虑这样做的人有帮助的?
独立创作者的专注与自由
Wes Kao: 我认为当你是公司内部的operator时,你的角色中有很多东西基本上是你无法控制的。有些事情你不得不做,因为这是工作性质决定的。而当你是一个独立operator,经营自己的业务,做自己的事情时,你就有很大的自由,可以只围绕你的优势来塑造你的工作,只围绕你真正擅长的、对他人有很大价值且有市场需求的部分。所以,对我来说,有一点转变是,当我意识到我可以只围绕我最擅长的部分来塑造我的业务和工作,而且这个部分可以极其狭窄时,这实际上真的非常让人解脱。因此,我鼓励大家思考一下,什么是你极其擅长且人们觉得非常有价值的事情,什么是你最喜欢做的部分,如果你可以不做所有其他你不想做的事情,你该如何考虑在这个部分上加倍投入?
Lenny Rachitsky: 这是一个非常重要的观点。而你分享的关于如何优雅拒绝的Claude提示(prompting)技巧,是其中的一个重要要素,因为有很多事情向你涌来,既有趣又诱人,很难拒绝,然后你意识到,我到底在干嘛?我其实可以控制时间花在哪里,我为什么要答应这个?
学会拒绝与把握杠杆
Wes Kao: 其实我要把帮我产生这种觉悟的功劳归功于你。前几天我在一个播客上提到了你关于这件事,因为,你还记得Maven发布一个重要功能的时候吗,我想是我们的市场之类的,我问过你想不想去Clubhouse作为发布的一部分?
Lenny Rachitsky: 我记得那件事,但我肯定拒绝了。
Wes Kao: 好的,是的。你拒绝了。你拒绝了。我当时就想,“哇。出于好奇,背后的想法是什么?”然后你说,我可能会曲解你的意思,你可以纠正我,但你基本上是说:“我不太喜欢做现场公开演讲之类的事情,而且我有幸建立了一份我可以写作、做播客,并且只做我喜欢做的事情的职业生涯。所以我很乐意对这些其他非常有趣的机会说不。”我记得那时我觉得这太具有突破性了,你竟然可以对一个确实是绝佳机会的事情说不,并且对此非常自信,因为那不是你的核心能力。不是你最擅长的。而当机会摆在我面前时,我真的把这点记在了心里:我对这个感到兴奋吗?这是我真的擅长的吗?我能在这种场合发光吗?因为当你独立时,你可以选择你想处于的场合。
Lenny Rachitsky: 真是个很酷的故事。我不完全记得了,但我对我所说的话毫不惊讶。而现在当人们邀请我参加这类活动时,我的表达方式是,我只是觉得我时间的投资回报率非常不划算,不值得去做演讲、做炉边谈话、或者再上另一个播客。就像是,如果我能把比做播客更多的时间花在这份简报上,杠杆率要比仅仅做一场演讲高得多,因为演讲太花时间了。所以我现在有了一个基本上像我发给你那样的模板,就是说,这很有帮助。但这很难。说不真的很难。有时候这些机会太有趣了,对方就会觉得,“等一下,什么?”因为我认为找你做事的人不知道我每天收到十个这样的请求,他们就会想,“哦,他拒绝了我的演讲。他不想上我的播客。真是个混蛋。”我是这么想的。我不知道他们是不是这么想的。但不管怎样。好的,那太棒了。是的,我想我刚刚发了一篇关于简报达到一百万订阅者的帖子,实际上用了一张Ikigai概念的图,这恰好就是你刚刚描述的,也就是你想努力找到你热爱做、人们看重、并且你能靠它赚钱的事情。这就是梦想。而这正是你也已经做到的事情。所以谢谢你来到这里,Wes。实际上我觉得我们做到了我期望的效果。我认为这将是我们做过的杠杆率最高的对话之一。
结尾与联系方式
Lenny Rachitsky: 所以最后两个问题。大家在哪里可以找到你的课程?我知道你也做高管辅导。大家可以在哪里了解更多?最后一个问题是,大家怎样才能帮到你,Wes?
Wes Kao: 你可以在weskao.com了解更多。我在主页上链接了我的课程和我的辅导。我也会在LinkedIn上发帖,所以你可以在那里关注我。我一直希望能遇到关注沟通的同行operator。所以如果你把这些原则中的任何一个付诸实践,我很乐意听听。
Lenny Rachitsky: 太棒了。我们可以在评论区做这件事。他们可以私信你。我不知道,在网站还是Twitter上联系你最好?
Wes Kao: 是的,一堆平台。
Lenny Rachitsky: 所有地方。好的,酷。
Wes Kao: 网站,邮件,LinkedIn,私信我。
Lenny Rachitsky: 这就对了。这就对了。Wes,非常感谢你来到这里。
Wes Kao: 是的,非常感谢你,Lenny。
Lenny Rachitsky: 非常棒。
Wes Kao: 这很有趣。
Lenny Rachitsky: 非常感谢大家的收听。如果你觉得这很有价值,你可以在Apple Podcasts、Spotify或你最喜欢的播客应用上订阅本节目。另外,请考虑给我们打分或留下评论,因为这真的能帮助其他听众找到这个播客。你可以在lennyspodcast.com找到所有往期节目或了解更多关于本节目的信息。下期见。
术语表
| 原文 | 中文 |
|---|---|
| agent | 智能体 |
| align | 对齐 |
| altMBA | altMBA |
| always be closing | 永远在成交(always be closing) |
| cognitive load | 认知负荷 |
| comprehension | 理解 |
| de-risk | 降低风险 |
| excitement | 热情 |
| feedback | 反馈 |
| Jeff Bezos | 杰夫·贝索斯 |
| Joan Didion | Joan Didion |
| Lenny Rachitsky | Lenny Rachitsky |
| managing up | 向上管理 |
| Maven | Maven |
| microcopy | 微文案 |
| MOO | 最明显的异议 |
| Most Obvious Objection | 最明显的异议 |
| prompting | 提示(prompting) |
| second order effect | 二阶效应 |
| Section4 | Section4 |
| signposting | 路标指引 |
| single-minded martyr | single-minded martyr |
| Sol Stein | Sol Stein |
| Stephen King | Stephen King |
| strategy, not self-expression | 策略,而非自我表达 |
| swipe file | swipe file |
| Toby Lutke | Toby Lutke |
| Vlad | Vlad |
| Wes Kao | Wes Kao |
| William Zinsser | William Zinsser |
此文档由 AI 分片翻译(translate_long_document)