The HiPPO Effect: A dangerous animal in growth

The below is an excerpt from the book How Google Works:

"Hippopotamuses are among the deadliest animals, faster than you think and capable of crushing (or biting in half) any enemy in their path. Hippos are dangerous in companies too, where they take the form of the Highest-Paid Person’s Opinion.

When it comes to the quality of decision-making, pay level is intrinsically irrelevant and experience is valuable only if it is used to frame a winning argument. Unfortunately, in most companies experience is the winning argument. We call these places “tenurocracies,” because power derives from tenure, not merit. It reminds us of our favorite quote from Jim Barksdale, erstwhile CEO of Netscape: “If we have data, let’s look at data. If all we have are opinions, let’s go with mine."

Who is the HiPPO?

1. noun, plural hip·pos. Informal.

According to Wikipedia, the hippopotamus, also called the hippo, common hippopotamus or river hippopotamus, is a large, mostly herbivorous, semiaquatic mammal and ungulate native to sub-Saharan Africa.

2. noun, singular, Informal.

HiPPO in a business context refers to the highest paid persons opinion (often shortened to HiPPO). Decisions in companies with a HiPPO culture are made based on seniority and authority, rather than using data-driven decision making. For a deeper dive into the concept, see What is the highest paid person's opinion?.

The Highest Paid Person's Opinion

The HiPPO is an old management style where the most senior person in the room is seen as the expert. The HiPPO is assumed to have the best understanding of the situation and so their opinion is prioritised over others.

Image Source

This may be the result of the HiPPO having more conviction, organisational knowledge, or working longer hours. Regardless of the cause, it results in one individual's opinions carrying considerably more weight than others.

Jonathan Rosenberg, a former Senior Vice President at Google, believed that relying on a single “Highest Paid Person’s Opinion” (HIPPO) could stifle creativity and slow progress. Instead, he encouraged teams to focus on data and experimentation to uncover the strongest ideas. By letting facts guide decisions instead of deferring to senior titles, Rosenberg felt organisations could create a more open culture, drive innovation, and ensure the best solutions succeed.

The problem with the HiPPO effect

Companies need to find the ideas that are likely to have the biggest positive impact on team objectives and KPIs. It doesn’t matter where ideas come from (a designer, an engineer, the CEO or the office cleaner), all ideas should be considered and prioritised equally and considered purely based on their ability to influence team objectives.

No member of a growth team, no matter how senior or experienced, can predict which ideas will work and which won’t – there are just too many unknowns.

In short, the HiPPO is a dangerous animal in the world of growth.

Without data, you're just another person with an opinion

W. Edwards Deming

A HiPPO mentality introduces gut feelings and emotion into this process and reduces the likelihood of the team working on the most impactful opportunities. Where companies have traditionally used opinions and archaic decision-making processes to place bets on a handful of unproven ideas, growth marketers are now adopting more quantitative scoring models.

Antidote to the HiPPO effect

Good growth marketers, and growth marketing teams, default to using data rather than intuition and opinion where possible.

Prioritisation frameworks ensure growth marketing teams avoid the HiPPO culture and are more intentional and intelligent about their efforts. The common scoring language removes subjectivity when evaluating marketing ideas. The end result is an unambiguous, prioritised to-do list for your marketing or growth team.

In addition to preventing HiPPO culture, using a prioritisation framework forces the growth team to be honest, and avoid human nature where people tend to:

1. Overestimate the probability of success

2. Inflate the impact of recent work

3. Underestimate the amount of effort required to implement something

It also encourages the team to think about ideas ahead of time, and removes gut feelings and emotion from the process.

Here are a list of common prioritisation frameworks:

• RICE – Developed by Sean McBride at Intercom. Scoring factors: Reach, Impact, Confidence, Effort.

• ICE – Developed by Sean Ellis at GrowthHackers. Scoring factors: Impact, Confidence, Effort.

• PIE – Developed by Chris Goward at WiderFunnel. Scoring factors: Potential, Importance, Ease.

• HiPPO – No specific developer. Scoring factor: Highest paid person’s opinion.

• BRASS – Developed by David Arnoux at Growth Tribe. Scoring factors: Blink, Relevance, Availability, Scalability, Score.

• HIPE – Developed by Jeff Chang at Pinterest. Scoring factors: Hypothesis, Investment, Precedent, Experience.

• DICET – Developed by Jeff Mignon at Pentalog. Scoring factors: Dollars (or revenue) generated, Impact, Confidence, Ease, Time-to-money.

• PXL – Developed by Peep Laja at CXL. Scoring factors: Above the fold, noticeable within 5 sec, high traffic pages, ease of implementation, and more.