Influence by Robert Cialdini

Know the levers behind every yes, use them honestly, and notice when they work on you.

Three takeaways for AI PMs

• Get a small commitment before the big ask: Consistency is the cheapest lever you have.
• Manufacture honest social proof: Launch adoption follows visible peers, not announcements.
• Audit where your product borrows authority: Confident tone, citations, percentages and polished formatting all trigger deference.

Do this Monday

• Before the next launch, list which of the six principles the rollout plan actually uses and add one it does not, usually a visible early adopter.
• In your next eval conversation with engineering, replace the request to adopt evals with a request to label 20 traces together by Friday.
• Before the next design review, mark every authority cue in your AI feature's output and strike the ones the evals do not back.