Karl Popper asked—I think it was in a footnote in Conjectures and Refutations if I remember correctly— ”What came first, the chicken or the egg?” to which he responds, “a smaller egg.” That’s from my ancient memory, so don’t quote me on it.
Popper makes a good and a subtle point: how do you do something huge? First, do something big. How do you do something big? First, do something small. How do you do something small? First, something tiny. How do you do something tiny? First, do something minuscule.
This observation has important ramifications in making your manager love working with you.
One is that if you want to convince him of something big, first convince him of a smaller version of the same. And to convince him of a smaller version, first convince him of a tiny little version. Don’t completely change all the company’s branding. Let’s start with a tiny little low-risk test of different branding, okay?
That example is another implication: anything you want to propose that’s bigger or risky, start with a smaller test of it. And define the objectives and success criteria behind the test. Your boss will love that!
Another is that if you want to build something complex, start by building a simple version. Your boss asks you to do a mockup of some really, really complex piece of software with dozens of pages? Start with the core—maybe just the front page, or the page of core interaction—and get feedback on that before moving ahead.
Yet another is that this applies to relationship building. You just start working at a new company and you want to befriend the boss or the team. You can’t make something big (a real friendship) overnight, start with something small and before that something tiny. A coffee comes before a night out, and a night out comes before heart-to-heart conversations. Usually, at least.
But what about initiatives and objectives that are by definition big? Like the famous “big, hairy, audacious goal” (BHAG) so many often talk about? Well, that’s no exception at all. Take the big one and break it up into smaller pieces. And each of those into progressively smaller pieces, until you have a piece so tiny, you know exactly what to do as your next step.
