Reduce Perceived Commitment

Pithy text message at the end of a grueling workout: "Experiment: I'm opening a Clubhouse room about our class at Stanford to see if anybody wants to talk about it. Hop on for a few?" And with that paltry provisioning, a co-instructor got me to jump into a new app, talking to a "room" full of strangers, right after I'd finished a workout and was still covered with sweat, with absolutely zero notice - something I would never have agreed to in advance.

As I reflected on this experience, a realization dawned: he reduced the level of commitment so much that my curiosity was piqued. "What's the worst that could happen? If it's boring, I'll just leave. I only have 15 minutes anyway..."

That word "experiment" is a powerful signal. It's not permanent. It's not going to be perfect. 

But even the brevity of the message is critical. Have you ever toiled over an email request only to have it ignored, or your proposal rejected? Perhaps the problem is, you worked too hard on it. Or you didn't work hard enough at making it seem like it's no big deal.

I've noticed the response rate to my outbound requests is inversely proportional to their length. A short note gets a "yes" much more reliably than a long note, regardless of the actual underlying commitment! I've got a few hunches as to why this is the case, but I wanted to mention the tactic because it has profound implications for how to interact with teams, solicit feedback from customers, and spin up new partners. 

The challenge is, when a topic feels "important," or when an idea feels "special," we are prone to pour a lot more into it -- explanation, support, background, thought process, etc. But that consideration -- unless pointed at making the request pointed -- has the exact effect than the one we intend.

Keep it short. You can explain later, once they commit. 

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