Jen Dante, Head of Product for Payroll at Square, opens her talk at #mtpcon Singapore by telling us that humans are terrible at making predictions. This is unfortunate for product managers, given that at its core, our job is all about making predictions. We predict that making a change in our product will have a given outcome for our users or our business, and we’re wrong more than half the time. But there is something you can do that will slightly increase your chances of being right more often: you can stop behaving like a hedgehog, and start behaving like a fox.
The Fox and the Hedgehog
The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing. Archilochus, Greek Philosopher
Jen compares this famous quote with the challenges of product management. The hedgehog, knowing one big thing, only has one framework of how they understand the world. Because of their limited view, “hedg…