Do You Have a Solution In Search of a Problem?
When working with product teams, I often find that they’re working in one of these modes:
They have a problem and are looking for a solution.
Or
They have a solution and are looking for a problem.
As product managers (PMs) we are supposed to be focused on customers and their problems. However, it’s not uncommon to find product teams that start with a solution and then look for problems that their solution solves.
That’s not a great place to be.
First of all, if you already have a solution in mind, that drives the discussion. There is a reason why “if all you have is a hammer, the whole world looks like a nail” is such a common phrase. It’s just human nature to try and make what you have work. In product management circles, we tend to use the term confirmation bias but it’s the same idea. If I go into a customer meeting with something specific to sell, I can usually find reasons why the customer needs that thing. Which is fine, if you’re in sales.
However, if you’re trying to decide what to build, that’s the worst thing possible. All you’re doing is selling the thing you already have. That may or may not mean that you have the thing the customer really needs.
On the other hand, if you walk into the meeting looking for problems, you are now open to whatever the customer has to tell you. I have spent the majority of my career working on enterprise-class software, so other areas may be different, but I can tell you that enterprise customers are more than happy to tell you their problems. However, most enterprise software companies are not really listening. What you see all the time is product teams trying to sell what they have on the truck instead of trying to figure out what the customer really needs.
And that’s a shame.
Here are some symptoms of solutions looking for problems:
Engineering builds a prototype that you didn’t ask for. It’s pretty common for high-performing engineering teams to come to you with great ideas. Sometimes those ideas are truly amazing and you learn things. However, most times, these solutions aren’t actually aligned to customer requirements. Now you have an amazing idea and you go around trying to figure out how to use it.
Leadership “vision” is divorced from customer reality. If senior leadership is driving the roadmap, it’s common for the roadmap to become divorced from customer requirements. Good leadership will listen to the field and adjust based on what they hear. Yes, you need to have a strong product vision. No, you should not ignore what customers are telling you.
New ideas for customer problems to be solved are automatically quashed. Yes, I admit I have done this. If you are leading a product team with very tough goals, you have to remain focused. Sometimes that means quashing or ignoring customer requirements. All I can say is, know you’re doing this and do it on purpose if you need to do it. You can get away with this for a while, but there are limits.
PMs are not meeting directly with customers. Several times in my career I’ve been told by sales that I don’t need to talk to the customer—that sales will tell me what the customer wants. With all due respect, that’s not acceptable. PM needs to speak to customers DIRECTLY and regularly. Without direct contact, PM will make poor decisions.
So, what is a PM leader to do about all this? How can you shift gears and move away from solutions and towards problems?
Prioritize quality customer time. I cannot emphasize enough how vital this is. Unless you are talking directly to customers in relatively unstructured settings, you simply do not know what they want. Spend the time. Focus on their needs. Ask questions.
Put customers first. When meeting with customers, always make time to discuss their issues and ask about their problems.. I have been in hundreds of customer meetings where I am expected to go over the roadmap in detail in just thirty minutes. That just isn’t enough time. I need at least fifteen minutes to ask questions. Therefore, my minimum customer meeting is an hour. More is better.
Focus on why. When sales (or anyone else) says that customers want X, always ask “why do they want X?” You need to dig down into the underlying customer needs to really understand the requirements and develop a solution to the actual problem.
Have strong opinions, loosely held. This phrase always stands out in my mind as the definition of PM. As a PM I have to be very firm in my opinion. I have to have a reason for it. I must be able to defend it. On the other hand, I have to be willing to abandon my position given evidence that it’s wrong. I can’t fall in love with my own plan.
As usual, when we get off track it’s because we forget why we are here. As a PM team, our only job is to make the product better by serving the customer. We don’t do that through surface interaction. When I joined Splunk many years ago, I adopted a huge (1000+ user stories) backlog of “customer requirements” that the team had been working on. The first thing I did is insist that I meet directly with customers who had these problems. Every time I talked to one of these customers, I learned something. The product got better as a result. The PM is not a feature vending machine where you put requirements in and get features out. The only true measure of a successful product is customer adoption. If the customer likes and uses the feature, it’s a good feature, full stop.
No comments:
Post a Comment