Jessica Fain, current product leader at Webflow and former Chief of Staff to the CPO at Slack under Stewart Butterfield, argues that influence is the single most underleveraged skill in product, and that AI will make it more critical, not less. Her core claim: most people lose buy-in not because their ideas are bad, but because they misread how executives actually process information. Executive calendars operate like strobe lights, context resets between every meeting, and the first 30 seconds of your pitch determine the outcome.
The tactical detail worth reading for: Fain's framework distinguishes local optimization from global optimization. You are solving for your feature, your roadmap, your team. The executive is solving for the entire system. That mismatch kills proposals that are technically correct. She also identifies presenting a single option as a structural mistake, and offers a specific phrase for handling a leader who says something that seems wrong: 'That's so interesting. What led you to believe that?' The goal is to enter the room to learn, not to convince.
The original piece covers Fain's full reasoning on why great ideas fail to get traction, how to reframe the influence problem before you ever schedule the meeting, and why the skills required to navigate human decision-making hierarchies will not be automated away. The argument is more rigorous than the premise suggests. Read it.
[READ ORIGINAL →]