Saielle Montgomery (Head of UX, Cazoo) - How To Thrive In Conditions Of Uncertainty
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The document outlines strategies for thriving in uncertain conditions. It discusses embracing uncertainty by asking "dangerous questions" to challenge assumptions, taking risks in a controlled way, and creating a culture of continuous learning. Key strategies include clarifying knowns vs assumptions, evaluating different types of risk, gathering diverse perspectives to build shared understanding, measuring outcomes that matter, focusing on decision quality over outcomes, and cultivating a vulnerability that supports organizational learning. The overall message is that uncertainty need not be scary but an opportunity to improve through questioning norms and an openness to learn.
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Saielle Montgomery (Head of UX, Cazoo) - How To Thrive In Conditions Of Uncertainty
- 1. How to Thrive in Conditions of Uncertainty: A Field Guide By Eli Montgomery Business of Software Conference – Online, 2020
- 2. Uncertainty is Scary Section One
- 3. Photo by Kamil Feczko on Unsplash @intentionaut
- 4. Photo by Joshua Lee on Unsplash @intentionaut@intentionaut
- 6. @intentionaut Photo by Jackson Hendry on Unsplash @intentionaut Why this talk? Questions matter.
- 9. The Dangerous Questions List ● What is the next most important thing we could learn about this? ● What are we currently learning about the last thing we shipped? How are we acting on those learnings? ● How are we holding ourselves accountable for learning from customer data? ● What could we be doing to have a bigger impact right now? Why aren’t we doing that? ● What data do we have to inform this decision? Where did we get that from? ● And many more! @intentionaut@intentionaut http://shorturl.at/zHMRT
- 10. The Play: Clarify what you know vs. what you assume @intentionaut
- 11. Dangerous Question: Why is this so urgent? Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash @intentionaut
- 12. Dangerous Question: How else could we solve this problem? Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash @intentionaut
- 13. Dangerous Question: If you had to choose between X and Y, which is more important? Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash @intentionaut
- 14. The Play: Get comfortable with risk @intentionaut
- 15. [You] have to get comfortable with risk. You simply can’t innovate the way you need to if you don’t. ― Marty Cagan “ “ @intentionaut
- 16. Value Risk Would users choose this over what they currently do/don’t do? 01 @intentionaut
- 17. Value Risk Would users choose this over what they currently do/don’t do? 01 Usability Risk Can customers use it? Do they enjoy using it? 02 @intentionaut
- 18. Value Risk Would users choose this over what they currently do/don’t do? 01 Usability Risk Can customers use it? Do they enjoy using it? 02 Feasibility Risk Can we make a reasonable investment to build what we need to address the problem? 03 @intentionaut
- 19. Value Risk Would users choose this over what they currently do/don’t do? 01 Usability Risk Can customers use it? Do they enjoy using it? 02 Feasibility Risk Can we make a reasonable investment to build what we need to address the problem? 03 Business Viability Can we support and own this as a business? Security, sales, marketing, brand, customer support, etc. 04 @intentionaut
- 20. Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash Dangerous Question: Are there any risks we could be better paying attention to? @intentionaut
- 21. The Play: Create Shared Understanding @intentionaut
- 22. Photo by Ivana Cajina on Unsplash @intentionaut
- 23. Dangerous Question: Are we spending time or effort on the right things? How do we know that? Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash @intentionaut
- 24. ...[Everything] you know, and everything everyone knows, is only a model. Get your model out there where it can be viewed. Invite others to challenge your assumptions and add their own. ― Donella H. Meadows, Thinking in Systems: A Primer “ “ @intentionaut
- 25. Learning as Culture Section Three
- 26. The Play: Measure what matters @intentionaut
- 27. Photo by Luke Chesser on Unsplash @intentionaut
- 28. You can optimize everything and still fail, because you have to optimize for the right things. That's where reflection and qualitative approaches come in. ― Erika Hall, Just Enough Research “ “ @intentionaut
- 29. @intentionaut
- 30. Dangerous Question: Are we measuring the right things? How might this be gamed or abused? Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash @intentionaut
- 31. The Play: Improve Decision Quality @intentionaut
- 32. @intentionaut Photo by Paul Skoupskas on Unsplash
- 33. Dangerous Question: What does a good decision look like? Photo by Greta Farnedi on Unsplash @intentionaut
- 35. What makes a decision great is not that it has a great outcome. A great decision is the result of a good process, and that process must include an attempt to accurately represent our own state of knowledge ― Annie Duke, Thinking in Bets “ “ @intentionaut
- 36. @intentionaut Bad Process Bad Outcome Good Outcome Good Process Gambling and losing. Bad luck meets poor skill. Gambling and winning. Leaves decision process unchecked. We’re not omniscient. Build the courage and resilience to weather and own these. Conscious competence. This is what we’re aiming for.
- 37. Dangerous Question: Is this a one-way decision or a two-way decision? Photo by Greta Farnedi on Unsplash @intentionaut
- 39. The Opposite of Uncertainty is Learning Wrap Up:
- 40. The Play: Build a Culture of Learning @intentionaut
- 42. @intentionaut Photo by Michel Andrade on Unsplash
- 43. @intentionaut Photo by Kimberly Farmer on Unsplash
- 44. Vulnerability is not about winning or losing. It’s having the courage to show up even when you can’t control the outcome. ― Brene Brown “ “ @intentionaut
Editor's Notes
- We do lots of things to avoid what we don’t know.
- For thousands of years, we evolved a fear of the unknown because it kept us safe.
- For thousands of years, we evolved a fear of the unknown because it kept us safe.
- What we know is actually very, very small. Every time we learn something new, we’re only increasing the amount of ignorance we have. “We live on an island surrounded by a sea of ignorance. As our island of knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance” - John Archibald Wheeler “Knowledge is a big subject. Ignorance is bigger. And it is more interesting.” ― Stuart Firestein, Ignorance: How It Drives Science Stuart Firestein: Ignorance https://www.ted.com/talks/stuart_firestein_the_pursuit_of_ignorance?language=en#t-1065431
- Jared Spool has been talking about unconscious incompetence in his talk about the UX tipping point, and it’s a great model for thinking about decision making as well. The Learning Model by Noel Burch – https://medium.com/@anhminhdo/4-levels-of-competence-fb1bbddd945d
- Jared Spool has been talking about unconscious incompetence in his talk about the UX tipping point, and it’s a great model for thinking about decision making as well. The Learning Model by Noel Burch – https://medium.com/@anhminhdo/4-levels-of-competence-fb1bbddd945d
- Cool to be able to share as a standalone doc. Prep this, make a link to the list. Sticking it out and having a public doc that people can add to anonymously. (Google Doc) JOKE: We will offer a therapy session to the person with the best question.
- Explain how to – Keep an open mind. Ask big questions. Don’t commit to one narrative. See multiple possible solutions.
- Explain how to – Keep an open mind. Ask big questions. Don’t commit to one narrative. See multiple possible solutions.
- Explain how to – Keep an open mind. Ask big questions. Don’t commit to one narrative. See multiple possible solutions.
- Every decision we make represents a risk. In a very real sense, everyone in this room is in the business of risk management. Source: https://svpg.com/product-management-risk/
- Explain how to – Keep an open mind. Ask big questions. Don’t commit to one narrative. See multiple possible solutions.
- Don’t forget to take others with you when you start to go on that journey. Tell the story of reading every 1 Star Review we’d gotten. I had to make it social.
- Explain how to – Keep an open mind. Ask big questions. Don’t commit to one narrative. See multiple possible solutions.
- We turn to data a lot. It’s good to have data. But data can only tell half-the story at most. Data & Metrics Roadmaps with dates on them Number of pageviews Engagement metrics
- Just because you have the data doesn’t mean you have the story
- The way the government measures carrier quality for airlines is to track the number of flights run.
- Explain how to – Keep an open mind. Ask big questions. Don’t commit to one narrative. See multiple possible solutions.
- Bad things happen to good decisions.
- As you start to clarify problems and understand them together, inevitably your focus will change. You’ll begin to realize just how much you don’t know. That’s a good thing.
- We often think of decisions as a zero-sum game where we have to get the right answer the first time. When faced with decisions, we often think we need to get it right the first time. Most decisions in life do not need this kind of thinking. Photo by Greta Farnedi on Unsplash
- Jared Spool has been talking about unconscious incompetence in his talk about the UX tipping point, and it’s a great model for thinking about decision making as well. The Learning Model by Noel Burch – https://medium.com/@anhminhdo/4-levels-of-competence-fb1bbddd945d
- Source: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B074DG9LQF/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
- The Decision Outcome Matrix
- We often think of decisions as a zero-sum game where we have to get the right answer the first time. When faced with decisions, we often think we need to get it right the first time. Most decisions in life do not need this kind of thinking. Photo by Greta Farnedi on Unsplash
- Jared Spool has been talking about unconscious incompetence in his talk about the UX tipping point, and it’s a great model for thinking about decision making as well. The Learning Model by Noel Burch – https://medium.com/@anhminhdo/4-levels-of-competence-fb1bbddd945d
- What got you here won’t get you there. Even if you made lots of good decisions, there’s always room to be asking about where we need to go next. Joke about a knuckle tattoo.
- Reward learning with time. Time ultimately makes a critical difference in how we think about problems. There’s no substitute for giving people TIME to make informed decisions. This is no excuse for taking away accountability, but you should work to set timelines that allow people learning time. It’s not unreasonable for research to take 1-8 weeks, depending on the size of the problem.
- You’re going to have to lead by example and share the value of learning with others. Bring up articles, books, videos and other resources. Bring it up in your 1-1’s. Show you work.