Part of the reason there is so much interpersonal conflict in the workplace is because conversations quickly move from debating decisions to debating if one or the other person is right or wrong. The personification of an objective decision makes it unnecessarily subjective.

The good news is that it is easy to detect when this is happening. Usually you can see the tensions rise, and you might even see this in your own distinct physiological response (eg. heart rate rising, sweating, etc). Noticing this trigger can be empowering because you can predictably interrupt the conversation before it becomes toxic to ask — “what is the principle we will use to make this decision?”

This has worked pretty reliably in most situations for me for the past few years, and it occurred to me that I’ve offered it as a technique at least a dozen times this past year in 1:1 mentorship relationships as it seems to be a common occurrence and theme across most organizations.

1. Pick a domain that intrinsically motivates you to be proactive and driven
2. Align your own goals with making your manager successful

Products that compete for the same consumer demand go through periods of natural divergence (differentiation) and convergence (modularity) of solutions in the market.

During incubation, competing products pick unique attributes to compete on with the hope of resonating with specific groups of users that can start a new demand cycle. However, as innovation slows, for products to remain relevant they must offer more parity so they continue appealing to existing users evaluating other solutions based on other attributes. At this point, solutions in the market start to look a lot like each other, and the one that achieves more economies of scale and still sustains a higher profit margin dries out competitors to becomes the most popular commodity. Being largely modular at this point, demand from competitors shifts to this product at a more compelling price point.

Savvier incumbents who anticipate being disrupted will partner proactively to retain top-of-funnel demand, so they continue maintaining a relationship with their users. This is what’s happening with Waymo offering a modular solution on Uber’s marketplace after having already disrupted Uber’s own autonomous vehicle division.