By Teresa Torres · producttalk.org · @ttorres on X · LinkedIn
Teresa Torres and community members address a common problem: a stakeholder, such as a CEO, brings a solution idea that is unconnected to the team's current outcome and discovery work. The article argues against simply rejecting the idea or rushing to validate it, since that invites confirmation bias. Instead, contributors recommend responding warmly and asking structured follow-up questions about target users, the risk of inaction, success metrics, and business impact. Teresa adds that story mapping and assumption generation with the stakeholder slow down premature judgment and often reveal gaps. The result is a shared evaluation of whether the idea is worth pursuing against current priorities.
01Key takeaways
- Acknowledge a stakeholder's idea warmly before evaluating it, to keep the conversation collaborative.
- Ask who the target user is, what they do today, and why current options fall short.
- Ask about the risk of not solving the problem to judge its importance against other opportunities.
- Agree on how success would be measured and which business outcome the idea would move.
- Story map and surface assumptions with the stakeholder so you evaluate the idea together.
- Make trade-offs explicit by showing what the stakeholder gives up in current priorities.
02Key sections
- The Problem
- A stakeholder brings a solution idea unrelated to the team's outcome or discovery work, creating tension with continuous discovery. Rachael Jones worried that validating the idea through interviews would invite confirmation bias.
- Ask Follow-up Questions
- Hope Gurion and Ahmed Osman suggest acknowledging the idea and then asking about target users, current alternatives, risk of not solving, and how success would be measured.
- Great Idea Collaboration
- Trevor Acy describes Ramsey Solutions' approach of acknowledging the idea, probing the problem and measures, and requesting permission to explore other solutions to the same outcome.
- Story Mapping Together
- Teresa recommends story mapping and generating assumptions with the stakeholder before judging the idea, since many ideas fall apart once their complexity is examined.
- Weighing Trade-offs
- If the idea survives, remind the stakeholder of the current outcome, opportunity, and solutions, and ask them to weigh it against that work so they understand the trade-off.
03From the post
“Let’s say you’ve got a good thing going with continuous discovery. You’re creating a regular habit of talking to customers, you’re identifying opportunities and assumptions and building out your opportunity solution tree and starting to run small tests to explore different ideas. Everything is going great”
04Frameworks mentioned
Summary and takeaways written by PM Atlas; quotes are short excerpts. © the original author.