{"id":428,"date":"2011-02-17T00:25:36","date_gmt":"2011-02-17T08:25:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/?p=428"},"modified":"2011-02-17T00:25:36","modified_gmt":"2011-02-17T08:25:36","slug":"formula-for-convincing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/2011\/02\/17\/formula-for-convincing\/","title":{"rendered":"Is there a formula for convincing?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>They don&#8217;t teach you the formula for convincing people of things in school.<\/p>\n<p>In school, I had to take a public speaking course, and I&#8217;ll be 100% honest&#8230; it was awesome! I had a fantastic professor, and a great, great, great group of classmates with whom I worked. The glass taught me a lot about communicating, but nothing about convincing.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s amazing how difficult it is to convince someone that you&#8217;ve thought something through to the point that you&#8217;ve actually solved it. There are a few major hurdles you&#8217;re always forced to overcome:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The idea that you have any idea what you&#8217;re talking about<\/li>\n<li>The idea that what you&#8217;re solving is actually relevant in any way<\/li>\n<li>The idea that your solution, recommendation or general direction is valid<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The situation is exasperated by a need to educate at the same time that you&#8217;re convincing. I think the best at this must be folks with kids aged 4-7 years old because your life is constantly getting that kid to do what you want for the reasons that you want them to.<\/p>\n<p>That said, I&#8217;m starting to see a pattern emerge.<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li><strong>Start with the background<\/strong><br \/>There&#8217;s always a need to establish the problem being solved. The problem may be one specific thing, or it may be a collection of things that have come together. Present the most general problem as your background information. Talk about motives; talk about concerns; talk about what customers are saying; talk about what customers aren&#8217;t saying.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Build out a set of credible solutions<\/strong><br \/>For some reason, folks generally don&#8217;t like that you give them an answer. Instead, they want to work through the problem with you. So give people a family of solutions. Talk about the pros and the cons of each. Discuss the monetization strategy behind each. Identify the tactical hurdles, marketing hurdles and other challenges. Be honest about the fact that you did your homework, and that you did it well<\/li>\n<li><strong>Provide a thesis<\/strong><br \/>Given that you&#8217;ve got a family of solutions, provide a strong thesis around which to build a framework. The thesis should act as a slogan for your solution. It should be something that&#8217;s easy for everyone to understand, and should also become how others sell your idea to the company at large. A very strong thesis built on the data points provided in the previous step goes a long way towards establishing buy-in into the solution you&#8217;ve chosen.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Stop and listen<\/strong><br \/>At this point you&#8217;ve dumped a lot of information on people who have been, at best, tangentially thinking about the problem that you&#8217;re solving. The best thing you can do now is to stop, and get feedback. People&#8217;s gut reactions are probably their best insights into your solution. Do they buy into the thesis? Do they buy into the homework that you&#8217;ve done? Do they buy into the problem that you&#8217;re solving? You should know the answer to all of these things after this point. To know the answers, you have to stop and listen.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>After that&#8230; I don&#8217;t know yet. It&#8217;s some part execution, some part investigation, some part re-doing the whole thing.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ll figure it out as it comes to me I guess \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>They don&#8217;t teach you the formula for convincing people of things in school. In school, I had to take a public speaking course, and I&#8217;ll be 100% honest&#8230; it was awesome! I had a fantastic professor, and a great, great, great group of classmates with whom I worked. The glass taught me a lot about [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[62,1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pQyAq-6U","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1450,"url":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/2014\/11\/19\/1-day-til-30\/","url_meta":{"origin":428,"position":0},"title":"1 day til 30","date":"November 19, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"The good\u00c2\u00a0moments\/learnings\/thoughts\/regrets of the decade in no particular order: Meeting Micky\u00c2\u00a0&\u00c2\u00a0marrying Micky Moving to California Learning how to build a product Luka Amelia Getting OpenTok built, and convincing Ian it was a good idea Birthday break up Growing up, and building a team at TokBox Building a product that got\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;just thinking out loud&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1597,"url":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/2015\/05\/25\/congratulations-saket-chrissy\/","url_meta":{"origin":428,"position":1},"title":"Congratulations Saket &amp; Chrissy","date":"May 25, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Congratulations to my dear, dear friend Saket who married an absolutely lovely lady this past weekend. It took a lot of convincing to get Micky comfortable with me going, and I'm so glad I pulled it off. \u00c2\u00a0You see, Micky and I lay claim to convincing Saket to ask Chrissy\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;just thinking out loud&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":411,"url":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/2010\/11\/16\/understanding-motivation-part-3\/","url_meta":{"origin":428,"position":2},"title":"Understanding motivation \u00e2\u20ac\u201c part 3","date":"November 16, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"So the proverbial tomorrow of blog writing has finally arrived, and here is the last of my three part series on motivation. I can finally speak to the final piece, the keystone as it were, of the motivation puzzle in my mind. Simply put, it comes down to validation. From\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;just thinking out loud&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1696,"url":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/2016\/04\/08\/when-youre-young-you-start-revolutions\/","url_meta":{"origin":428,"position":3},"title":"When you're young, you start revolutions","date":"April 8, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"You're probably familiar with the kid who sits in class and makes comments like, \"Java isn't a real programming language, you can't overload operators.\" Well that isn't me. You're probably also familiar with the kid who answers all of the easy questions to make it look like they really know\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;just thinking out loud&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":278,"url":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/2010\/02\/23\/it-all-starts-with-an-earthquake-or-something-similar\/","url_meta":{"origin":428,"position":4},"title":"It all starts with an earthquake... or something similar","date":"February 23, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"I have not yet announced on this platform the biggest news of 2010 for me... which is that I got engaged to the one and only Micky O'Brien one month ago today (assuming the today that you read this is February 23rd). If you have not yet met Micky, then\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Melih gets married&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/02\/MG_6555-300x200.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":84,"url":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/2008\/02\/04\/software-engineer-for-hire\/","url_meta":{"origin":428,"position":5},"title":"Software Engineer for Hire","date":"February 4, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Here is my cover letter to the world:==========You're probably familiar with the kid who sits in class and makes comments like, \"Java isn't a real programming language, you can't overload operators.\"Well that isn't me.You're probably also familiar with the kid who answers all of the easy questions to make it\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;School Year 07-08&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=428"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}