Whether you’re trying to plan your day or trying to get stakeholders to prioritize features, the temptation to say, “It’s all important,” is strong.
Prioritization triggers loss aversion.
When we’re looking at a list of work that might happen, it somehow feels like all of it is possible. To decide what’s most important is also, implicitly, to decide what’s not. And we know intuitively those lower priority items may not fit.
Of course, prioritizing the work didn’t make the work bigger. Something wouldn’t have fit. Once we name that something, though, it feels more real.
And our brains don’t like giving things up.
So, our favorite prioritization question is one that takes loss aversion off the table…
Here’s the question:
“If you had a magic wand that would guarantee one of these gets done (and the others still might), how would you use your magic wand?”
The stakeholder who was frozen with indecision when asked to prioritize their five feature requests (”they’re all top priority!”) can answer this question in a flash and can even explain why that one feature is actually top priority. It’s amazing to watch.
What’s even more amazing is that you can repeat the same question for what’s left. And it still works. At some point, it becomes silly, but you can definitely use this to get the top 3-5 priority items.
Now, you may be thinking this feels like a trick. It may be. But it’s a trick in service of the stakeholder who’s stuck, whose brain is getting in their own way.
And there are a lot of things like that, a lot of places where cognitive biases get in the way of making decisions and creating good outcomes. Good leaders, coaches, product managers, and facilitators use well-crafted questions, visuals, and thinking tools to help people get out of their own way.
Want to learn more about how to do this with your stakeholders and teams to create great products? Join Richard for a 3-day Product Management workshop next month. More info and register here.
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