Great article. I especially enjoyed the product section.
Substack is doing a great use of it to drive the recommendations engine, but defaulting you to subscribe to 3 recommendations.
As you mentioned with the ‘use my data for GenAI’ training example, there is a fine line between ethical defaults and dark patterns. I think it can get very addicting.
Substack is a great example. I was actually considering including it, but couldn't make up my mind on how to rate it. On the one hand, it's driving a ton of subscribers for authors (incl. myself), so it's clear the default is working (and I'm 100% sure the numbers would be much lower if it were an opt-in instead of an opt-out).
On the other hand, I do find it fairly aggressive to default people to subscribe to 3 newsletters plus follow a bunch of people considering most people tend to rush through confirmation flows like that. You can see the occasional angry email from someone who suddenly finds new newsletters in their inbox and doesn't understand where that comes from (and they assume lists were shared, sold etc.).
Great article, Torsten and I especially love (and apply) this one:
> What if you flipped that default, though? In my experience, you can often unblock yourself by setting the expectation that you’ll move forward with your plan by a certain date unless stakeholders give you reasons not to. In other words, it’s “sign-off by default”.
People are so busy that if you wait until everyone signs off, it'll take forever to finally get everyone and some people will delay, delay, delay saying they couldn't get to reviewing.
Much easier when you say that you're planning to move forward by <x> date so please get any feedback in before then so it's incorporated into the plan
For sure. I was nervous when I did it the first time at Uber years ago, but I'm glad I got comfortable with it over time.
Occasionally, these things would "blow up" (e.g. someone complains weeks later that they are not aligned with a metric definition), but you can always point to the fact that you gave ample time and proactively communicated that folks need to get their feedback in, and they missed their chance. So now it's time to disagree and commit.
Nice article Torsten. Defaults is definitely one of those things that tend to lie in our subconsciousness and this article brings it to light. I loved the examples presented and a similarish tip came during a 1:1 with a mentor relating to promotions and identity shift. The default for leadership and manager would be "we can't promote you" but if you set your default to "I'm at the next level and going for a promo to next level + 1" it can change your mindset gradually.
Ah, great example. Yeah, most people tend to treat promotions as "not gonna happen this cycle by default" and that can lead to never feeling ready. But if you make it your default expectation to get promoted on an accelerated timeline, and then work backwards from that to make sure you're performing at that level and collect all the necessary evidence etc., it can make a huge difference.
Great article. I especially enjoyed the product section.
Substack is doing a great use of it to drive the recommendations engine, but defaulting you to subscribe to 3 recommendations.
As you mentioned with the ‘use my data for GenAI’ training example, there is a fine line between ethical defaults and dark patterns. I think it can get very addicting.
Substack is a great example. I was actually considering including it, but couldn't make up my mind on how to rate it. On the one hand, it's driving a ton of subscribers for authors (incl. myself), so it's clear the default is working (and I'm 100% sure the numbers would be much lower if it were an opt-in instead of an opt-out).
On the other hand, I do find it fairly aggressive to default people to subscribe to 3 newsletters plus follow a bunch of people considering most people tend to rush through confirmation flows like that. You can see the occasional angry email from someone who suddenly finds new newsletters in their inbox and doesn't understand where that comes from (and they assume lists were shared, sold etc.).
So yeah, it's a fine line for sure.
Great article, Torsten and I especially love (and apply) this one:
> What if you flipped that default, though? In my experience, you can often unblock yourself by setting the expectation that you’ll move forward with your plan by a certain date unless stakeholders give you reasons not to. In other words, it’s “sign-off by default”.
People are so busy that if you wait until everyone signs off, it'll take forever to finally get everyone and some people will delay, delay, delay saying they couldn't get to reviewing.
Much easier when you say that you're planning to move forward by <x> date so please get any feedback in before then so it's incorporated into the plan
For sure. I was nervous when I did it the first time at Uber years ago, but I'm glad I got comfortable with it over time.
Occasionally, these things would "blow up" (e.g. someone complains weeks later that they are not aligned with a metric definition), but you can always point to the fact that you gave ample time and proactively communicated that folks need to get their feedback in, and they missed their chance. So now it's time to disagree and commit.
Nice article Torsten. Defaults is definitely one of those things that tend to lie in our subconsciousness and this article brings it to light. I loved the examples presented and a similarish tip came during a 1:1 with a mentor relating to promotions and identity shift. The default for leadership and manager would be "we can't promote you" but if you set your default to "I'm at the next level and going for a promo to next level + 1" it can change your mindset gradually.
Ah, great example. Yeah, most people tend to treat promotions as "not gonna happen this cycle by default" and that can lead to never feeling ready. But if you make it your default expectation to get promoted on an accelerated timeline, and then work backwards from that to make sure you're performing at that level and collect all the necessary evidence etc., it can make a huge difference.