Season 3 - Episode 10: Find Data to Find Consensus
Picture this: It’s 9:45am on a Monday morning. You’re gathered with your senior team, including your co-founder. You’ve got a big decision ahead of you and unfortunately you and your co-founder are at odds as to the best path forward. What do you do? Because you’re a different leader, you lead your company by consensus, meaning that you need to convince your co-founder. No strong-arming, no voting and no name-calling; instead, you need to find and utilize data effectively to help show them the light. On today’s episode, we go at how Chris and I would break our deadlocks by introducing data.
Background Story
Earlier on in the business Chris and I would fight. I wouldn’t say it was bitter, but it was definitely tense and usually heated. As Chris said on a previous show “don’t start a business with your brother” - brother or not these business discussions are going to get personal pretty quick.
We decided that we needed a data-driven approach to our disagreements. Data was a reasonably fair, quasi third-party that could help us out of the biggest pickles.
While we’d still fight on creative stuff, like making a powerpoint or design decisions in photoshop (we still fight about this) data gave us an avenue to be convinced while still saving face.
And these weren’t trivial decisions either. We’re talking big, strategic calls for the business. Going out and finding data was key to one person convincing the other of the company’s path forward.
Outline
Data as a argument deflating tool
Forms of Data
Little Data and Little Bets
Busted Myths
Myth: You can convince your co-founder of anything
Myth: You should vote to settle disagreements with your team
Learnings
Data as a argument deflating tool
When you go gut vs gut, you fight. As we’ve alluded to earlier in this season, it’s textbook haggling: single issue negotiation. The stakes feel high too, particularly in the early days. There’s a lot of intensity in the emotional argument. Ironically you both want the same thing but your vision’s differ.
To that end, we need a way to manage our “debates”. We found a solution in the pursuit (and possible discovery of data). That is, we’d go out there and find something that we could use to compel the other.
We’d also have to be some level of open minded. We’d be willing to entertain opposing viewpoints, something we take for granted now.
Oh, and yeah, we’d probably sleep on it.
Forms of Data
Data takes many forms. Sometimes, it was literally an article or a blog post. That’s straightforward enough. We’d tend to look for other entrepreneurs or SMEs online and read their take. Think 37 signals.
Then there were our stakeholders. This varies - an internal decision’s stakeholders would be our staff, whereas a product decision’s stakeholders are our customers. Going out and talking to them could give us insight into the viability of our ideas, which was often what Chris and I fought over. He would think an idea could go the distance in the market or improve the company, I’d be more skeptical.
And it wasn’t just about going to our favourites. Ideally we could get a handful of “different” stakeholders - the super loyal “friendlies”, the newbies, and those who we felt we could most help with the solution. Diversity of opinion was crucial.
If you don’t have many customers or staff, then consider mentors, professors - and if you’re desperate - family.
But in many cases, it was about getting our hands dirty. We learned (and convinced) by doing. For example, if we were thinking about a new feature for our software, Chris would often try to build a mockup or proof of concept. We could then more clearly see the path forward. We tried Google Glass, tinkered with drones, and had a “petting zoo” of devices.
Turns out we were actually following a quasi-best practice. When You Have to Make a Strategic Decision Without Much Data, a piece by Scott D. Anthony a professor at Dartmouth College’s Tuck School of Business, and author of a couple of books on innovation, suggests that spending time with a diversity of customers is crucial. Further, exposing yourself to new tech like we had been doing, helps to better inform your decision making (as opposed to simply reading about the tech).
Little Data and Little Bets Make Big Wins
Our data looked like this: we’d have a gut feel, we’d have an opinion from customers, and maybe a shallow proof of concept. We’d then make a final little bet - we try to build a barebones MVP or introduce a policy document for something internal and put that in front of our stakeholders. It’s a combination of the two last points.
This minimized costs and risks. We could also gather initial feedback and then make a decision and move forward. We were also implicitly getting some degree of buy in from stakeholders - further reducing risk.
Sometimes the data would show that neither or us was actually “right”. We needed to split the difference - but we learned that through the pursuit of data. We were both wrong!
Assuming feedback was generally positive, then we’d make a bigger bet. We’d build the product or implement a full policy, or whatever! We then get into that feedback loop.
Summary
Data can be a powerful tool to help resolve business conflict.
Data takes many forms: don’t be turned off because it’s not literally a spreadsheet.
Once you have some insight, get your hands dirty.
Make small bets with small data. They can lead to big wins.
Data And References
When You Have To Make A Strategic Decision Without Much Data, Harvard Business Review by Scott D. Anthony, March 2024
https://hbr.org/2024/03/when-you-have-to-make-a-strategic-decision-without-much-data