My new book (out today) contains more than 500 questions. Here are some to get you started:
- Who is this project for? Who is my smallest viable audience?
- What change do I seek to make with this project?
- What is my strategy to make this change happen? Can I articulate it clearly?
- What resources and assets do I have to dedicate to this project? Do I have enough kindling to burn this log?
- What is my timeline for this project? When does it ship and what is my deadline for calling it quits?
- What systems am I currently working within? Does the system want what I have to offer?
- What systems would need to change for my project to succeed? How can I create the conditions for that change?
- Where will I cause tension? What resistance should I anticipate from others (and myself)?
- What are the status roles and affiliations at play?
- How big is my circle of us and circle of now? What can I do to expand them? What about my audience’s circles?
- Why would someone talk about or recommend my project to others?
- How can I create the conditions for a network effect to develop around my project?
- Where are the feedback loops, and which ones move my work forward or slow it down?
- Which games are being played? Who sets the rules?
- Which games are winnable, which are oppositional? And which games don’t need to be won, simply played?
- What can I learn to increase my odds of success? Where can I gain that knowledge?
- Where is the smallest viable audience? How do they think about status and affiliation?
- Which false proxies are likely to distract me? What matters?
- Am I taking advantage of the shift being caused by a change agent? Or do I need to become one?
- What asset would transform my project? How do I acquire it?
- If an early adopter talks about my project, what will they say?
- Where is the empathy? Does my work align with the actual motivations and interests of the audience?
- What is the tension that I’m eagerly creating in the system by showing up with my change?
- Am I building the scaffolding people will need to adopt and move forward?
- Does this help the dominant forces in the system continue to achieve their goals or does it challenge their status quo?
- What’s my position? Are people who choose an alternative making a good choice based on their needs?
- What can I learn from comparable projects that have succeeded or failed?
- Is my strategy simple to describe and hard to stick to?
- What partnerships, alliances or collaborations could increase the scaffolding around this project?
- Am I tapping into an insatiable desire?
- What’s the process for altering the strategy based on what I learn?
- Is my strategy resilient enough that we can actually look forward to surprises?
- Is the network effect sufficient to insulate me from a race to the bottom? Can I create a network that is built on abundance, not scarcity?
- Is the change I’m making contagious? How can I alter the culture I’m creating to make it more so?
- How will early successes of my project make later successes more likely?
- What are the tropes and requirements of the genre I’ve chosen?
- How do we gain insight into the probability that our assertions will work out?
- Can I make it easier for others to decide?
- Where are the non-believers, and how do I avoid them?
- How does my project tap into existing social desires for status, affiliation, and/or security to help propel its adoption and spread?
- What frayed edges, anomalies, or contradictions in the current system could serve as leverage points for introducing my alternative?
- What metrics is the current system optimizing for? How could my strategy re-align incentives and feedback loops around different measures of success?
- How does my project seek to shift part of the culture from a scarcity mindset to an abundance mindset?
- What incumbents might perceive my project as a threat to their power or position? How does my strategy navigate those political dynamics?
- How can I design for network effects, enabling each new participant to create value for all the other participants?
- What sunk costs might prevent potential stakeholders from embracing my approach? How can I lower the perceived switching costs?
- What are the common scripts or objections I expect to encounter? How will I constructively respond to skepticism and resistance?
- How will engaging with my project help people become who they aspire to be? What identity and worldview does it invite them to step into?
- How can I lower the barrier to entry and make it feel easy and irresistible for people to take the first step with my offering? Where is the scaffolding?
- How do I shorten the delay in the relevant feedback loops (or learn to thrive with a longer delay)?
- How do we lower the decision-making barrier to invite participation? Can we make it easy for people to say, “I was right all along?”
- How can I avoid becoming trapped by sunk costs if my initial strategy proves ill-fated? When should I pivot vs. persist? Where’s the dip?
- Can I improve project hygiene? What are the standards and conversations I’m avoiding?
- How will I resist the social gravity and “pull to the center” over time as my project matures and faces pressure to conform?
