Decompose the Strategy You Disagree With Into Hypotheses
Break a plan you doubt into assumptions, find the one you reject, and design the smallest test.
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 90%
Zhuo's method for the classic manager bind of having to execute a strategy you don't believe in: rather than carry a blanket 'this is bad' judgment (which makes you an ineffective, distrusted leader), engage in dialogue and decompose the proposal into its underlying hypotheses. You almost always find you agree with most of them and object to a specific one — then you can isolate it, propose a small, fast test to validate that single assumption, and genuinely commit to running it.
Origin
Julie Zhuo, offering a practical route to 'disagree and commit' without faking conviction.
Core principles
- 01Faking conviction you don't have makes you a terrible, distrusted manager — but so does openly refusing
- 02Engaging in dialogue surfaces new information and often shifts your view or the project
- 03A blanket good/bad verdict hides that you actually agree with most of the plan
- 04Isolating the one disputed assumption lets you commit to testing it rather than the whole plan
- 05The smallest possible test of that assumption is what everyone can genuinely commit to
How to run it
- 1
Get the disagreement out and into dialogue
Instead of silently resenting the plan, talk to your manager or the CEO about it to learn their reasoning.
Pro tip You'll often gain new information or assumptions and may even influence the project.
Watch out Pretending to agree while carrying a 'brave face' erodes trust when people sense you're just relaying orders.
- 2
Decompose the plan into hypotheses
Break the blanket 'good or bad' into a set of separate assumptions and check which ones you believe versus doubt.
Pro tip Name the specific assumption you reject (e.g., 'people don't like lemonade right now').
- 3
Isolate the one disputed assumption
Confirm with others which core assumption is the real point of disagreement, separating it from the many you accept.
Pro tip State what you do agree with alongside the piece you're unsure about.
- 4
Design the smallest test to validate it
Propose a quick, cheap test of just that assumption before committing the whole plan, then genuinely commit to running it.
Pro tip Test in one market before rolling out everywhere — e.g., one campus before all 50 states.
In the wild
Zhuo illustrates with a plan to put a lemonade stand on every block, where her core objection is the assumption 'people do not like lemonade.' Rather than reject the whole plan, the team isolates that assumption and asks 'can we just test it in one market' — e.g., whether 18-25 year-olds love lemonade on a few college campuses.
→ A specific, low-cost test everyone can commit to, turning a blanket disagreement into a validated learning step.
Common mistakes
Carrying a blanket good/bad verdict
Judging the whole strategy as simply bad — or faking belief in it — makes you ineffective and costs your team's trust, because you can't convey conviction you don't hold or hide that you're just relaying orders.
Committing to the entire plan instead of the disputed assumption
Betting the whole rollout when you only doubt one assumption wastes resources; isolating and cheaply testing that single hypothesis is faster and lower-risk.
Is it for you?
Best for
Middle managers who must execute a strategy they privately doubt
Not ideal for
Irreversible high-stakes decisions with no room for a small validating test
From the transcript
“you got to actually find a way to get it out and and engage in dialogue”
“you can probably decompose it and from a blanket it's good or bad to like okay there's this is a hypothesis”
“we can isolate the thing”
“Perhaps we should just test it in one market before we go and open up the lemonade stands across the entire 50 states”
“I'm not sure how I feel about it, but... we're just going to test it”
From the episode
From managing people to managing AI: The leadership skills everyone needs now
Julie Zhuo (Facebook VP, Sundial CEO, The Making of a Manage