What jury duty taught me about product management
Below is a peek at today’s paid subscriber-only post. Subscribe today and get access to this issue—and every issue. What jury duty taught me about product managementUnexpected parallels and hidden lessons about leadership and product management from my experience on a jury👋 Hey, I’m Lenny and welcome to a 🔒 subscriber-only edition 🔒 of my weekly newsletter. Each week I tackle reader questions about building product, driving growth, and accelerating your career. So, I had jury duty last week. Like everyone ever, I expected to get dismissed at some point in the process—until I was juror #1 on a weeklong criminal case. The experience was equal parts disruptive, rewarding, and fascinating. Being the product nerd that I am (and because we had a lot of time to sit around and think), I started to notice parallels and hidden lessons about leadership and product management. Trials, I realized, are a great lens for studying important soft skills. In both litigation and PM, you’re trying to convince a group of people to do what you believe needs to be done. And facing decades in prison is much higher-stakes than getting button copy wrong 😵💫 Here are five lessons I took away from my jury duty experience: 1. Be super-selective about who’s in the roomThe trial lasted a total of three days, including one whole day for jury selection. A third of the trial was picking the jury! Think about all the time attorneys put into laying out their case, interviewing witnesses, cross-examining witnesses, opening and closing statements, etc. The prosecution and the defense spent as much time picking who they were pitching as doing the actual pitching. I know this timeline isn’t the case for every trial, but from my research, it’s typical. What’s the product lesson?
2. Tell them what you’ll tell them → tell them → tell them what you told themHere’s how a trial unfolds:
What surprised me most was how impactful the opening arguments were on my mindset throughout the trial. Each side started by telling us exactly what their case was going to be—including who we’d hear from, what each person would tell us, and what evidence we’d see. There was no mystery. As a result, as the prosecution (who went first) laid out their case, I always had in the back of my mind, “This sounds damn convincing, but I know the defense will have someone later tell me this wasn’t how it happened at all.” Knowing the key points up front helped me avoid jumping to conclusions too early. What’s the product lesson? The effectiveness of this simple presentation flow when trying to make an argument to an executive:
This framework is often referred to as the Aristotelian triptych (though it’s not clear whether it actually came from Aristotle), and it connects nicely with the Minto pyramid principle, which teaches us to start a presentation with your conclusion, instead of saving it for the end. Here’s Daymond John (from Shark Tank) sharing this lesson in 30 seconds—using the actual technique within the video: 3. Don’t go into important meetings not knowing what key stakeholders will sayMost people imagine a trial going like this: When they’re really mostly like this: Subscribe to Lenny's Newsletter to read the rest.Become a paying subscriber of Lenny's Newsletter to get access to this post and other subscriber-only content. A subscription gets you:
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