(36) What is your opinion?

“What is your opinion, Ravi?”, asked a fellow colleague during a Sprint review over a design decision. The answer that my brain is trained to send back when asked such a question is this:

“My/Your opinion, although interesting, is irrelevant.”

I have also trained my mind not to ask for opinions for product related decisions. I might ask opinions on other areas of life but not on product related decisions. This is because I have learnt from the best of the lot in the product space that an opinion is just that — an opinion. The best product leaders that I have spoken to have told me that they don’t rely on their opinions. That doesn’t mean they don’t have an opinion. In fact you ought to be strongly opinionated to be a good product leader. The difference however is that you don’t rely on that opinion. The best product guys have the humility to admit that their opinion could be wrong. And it’s often the less experienced and less aware of the lot who are supremely confident of their own opinions.

So what do you do when asked for an opinion?

You reply exactly this: “My/Your opinion, although interesting, is irrelevant.”

You repeat it again and again loudly in every possible situation so that it becomes a cultural norm in your work environment.

HIPPO trap and how to avoid it?

There is another danger of seeking opinion in a room — the danger of falling into the HIPPO trap. HIPPO stands for the Highest Paid Person’s Opinion in the room. If all there is available are opinions, then the opinion of the HIPPO in the room becomes the final word. And would that be the best opinion still? No one knows.

But then someone needs to take a call, isn’t it? Of course yes. You evaluate the pros and cons in hand and arrive at the best guess. And once you arrive at a decision, you admit it publicly that it still is a guess and you could be wrong. In fact you want to be proven wrong. That should be the default state of your mind — to be proven wrong. But doesn’t it mean shirking responsibility and ownership? Of course not. You take complete ownership of your decision and go ahead with it to seek validation in a controlled experiment from the market and customers.

Confirmation Bias Trap

If the default state of your mind is not to be proven wrong, you would be looking out to see for signs that supports your opinion. That is what confirmation bias is. You don’t want to do that because you are seeking the truth. That is why you look out for signals that prove your initial hypothesis wrong. That prevents you from falling into the confirmation bias trap.

This post is not about how to validate your ideas and run experiments for validation. For this post, I only wanted to let my thoughts out on opinions.

Right to an opinion doesn’t make an opinion right.