Belief, Bias, and Beyond Big
Product manager perspective
This post is all from the leanings working in Product Space. This is part of a multi-post series with the current focus of the Product’s source of ideas.
Focus on the right users, understand their needs, and align product value or market fit— a thought coming directly from one of my favorite books — “A Playbook for Achieving Product-Market Fit” by Dan Olsen. It sounds simple as the framework is part of almost all product manager conversations. If you have not heard that, then you surely would have heard this: Identify the problem, define user persona, understand how these users are solving this problem currently, what vision we have for these users and what value we can bring, what’s the total addressable market, serviceable obtainable market and Serviceable addressable market and some brilliant set of ideas, which goes through grooming, leading to the final product. In simple words, some input, some process, and some output.
But there has always been input, process, and output. Before going further, let me mention why I chose the above image. Research has shown that children use the first principle thinking better than any other age group[1]. Why??. A simple answer — They make things for themselves. They put themselves at the center of everything and create things loved by them. You cannot bribe/ pressurize a child, who does not understand the dollar, to create things your way. Hope you understand what I am hinting at in the Product world. :)
So, focusing on the Input side, what has changed from the past is the ingredients. That child thought process is now extended to product, with everything else remaining the same (technology evolves as human needs evolve). And since no one is sure if they have the right input ingredients to create the right products, the role of Product Manager has come into the picture. Product Managers are tasked to unlearn what they have learned as a user of products not made for them. Also, they have to get rid of all kinds of biases, which they have developed and solidified with age/ experience. For example, GameStop's share price of $5 is justified based on its interstice value. But in reality, price is nothing more than a myth taught to us from time unknown. Hopefully, my finance professor won’t kill me for saying this, but beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder, and share price is nothing more than perceived value. The share price is always justified using different models, and the most common method is multiples based on the market, which is nothing more than people think these kinds of stocks follow x times y multiple, so this stock should be worth xx $. Everything in my previous statement is the result of the bias we have formed. Same is the bias Product Manager has when they present their product to market, with value the product offer. They try playing safe. Don’t want to the concept of value right now, which is another dimension of some other post. The same goes for companies, which look for conventional Product Managers (PM), who talk about incremental change. Counter-Intuitive right!. With one bias out of the way, let start talking about ideas gathering pain points.
A Source of pain points: We are not living in a world where people die with a problem. There is always a way out. It may involve few extra steps. For example, if there are no self-driving cars, people learn to drive. And experience people from their bias will say — why should one be dependent on self-drive. Everyone should be independent. I always wonder, independent of what?. A Car is a product. Can I be independent of my car and how can dependency on my car be a good thing, but depending on self-driving is bad?. Also, if there are cars, people may use bikes or some other means. Today’s problems are more related to how we currently do things and not how our parents use to do things. Any improvement should also be related to the same. I have seen many startups solving problems of yesterday. Yet many others solving problems in the future. Some may counter me here saying future use cases are required for the roadmap, but how can there be any kind of product-market fit if the product does not belong to today’s market and its problems. In other words, for traction of current users, most new products are conceptualized. If it is that simple wherein one has to look at current users, why do Product managers from big companies find it difficult to empathize? Why startups understand the problem better. Being part of a big company in the healthcare insurance space, I repeatedly ask myself the same question as US healthcare is currently going through a big change. The only answer I have found is the distance between the user and product manager, which increases as the company gets bigger. Some would say it is not distance but new features not getting traction because of management risk-averse nature or slow development and PM heeds to this behavior. To me, If the Product Manager remains in direct touch with the end-user and empathizes with them, she will have the conviction to convince everyone and get the product developed. But lack of conviction leads to focus on features preferred by a set of biased people or people with less risk-taking ability.
With everything coming down to the conviction of a Product Manager, why can’t represent their users to everyone in the company, even when they talk about it all the time? The below image perfectly says it. Conviction at heart level matters.
There are many ways Product Managers today get in touch with end-users directly or indirectly. Surveys, focus group, one on one interviews, historical data and internal teams are a few sources I can think of right away.
Surveys: Why survey doesn’t work for PM and are more beneficial to Marketing. Many a time, to follow the statistics and remove bias, a random set of people is selected. However, are the users surveyed the ones who actually are facing the issue? Are the survey takers able to convey the message to the PM? From my personal experience, for a decent running product, there are never more than 0.5% of users who ask for change or complain, and even the biggest survey sample size never cover more than 5% of users, so the confidence level of having 0.5% in the selected sample is low, and even if some of the needed input is obtained, it is removed during analytics as outliers. My Learning: Outliers are the most important part of any survey. Never filter them out.
One-on-one Interview: It has to be the right person and with no leading questions. Trust me, that never happens. People, from their inquisitive nature, usually guess what PM would be asking them before starting the interview and provide a planned answer. Also, even though PM questions do not lead, their facial expressions do lead the users. Making the poker face is the biggest skill PM can have done any kind of design thinking, obviously along with empathizing and facilitating.
Community: For the users who actually want to share their input with PM, there is generally no direct link. I see FAANG league companies creating forums for providing ideas. That happens because there is a passionate community of users who not only share ideas but also encourage others to do that. But for most products, the community either does not exist or is not passionate enough. Also, the communication platforms are not well defined. So, users reach out to people who they are in contact with i.e. Sales, Marketing, Channel Partners, Customer Success, and Customer support team. But are the interest aligned between users and internal team members. The answer obviously is no in most cases and will elaborate on it in my next blog.
Key Takeaway: Think Big, remove bias and have conviction.
Thanks for sticking till the end!