Why Do Hypotheticals Beat a Ready-made Process?

Julie Zhuo believes people learn product development far more when they create the process themselves and then reflect on whether they believe it is the best idea. Naming the success outcome and asking a group to figure out the right way to build the product teaches more than handing them a method and telling them to implement it.

When a team lands on an approach she has tried before and thinks will probably fail, saying so outright teaches less than letting them try it, see why it fails, and run a retrospective together. She used to shut the idea down and tell people not to build it that way. A story from one context rarely convinces anyone, because people ask how she knows the same failure will show up in a new context, and one story cannot carry the nuance. A stronger move, at least sometimes, is to stop and pose a hypothetical: if they start on the path, it fails, and two weeks are gone, what then? Usually someone suggests trying the risky idea earlier so the group will know in a day or two. She can add that, in her experience, the failure comes up a lot, and share what people do then. The team is still designing the entire way. Prescribing a ready-made solution skips the creation and the reflection.