“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses” — Henry Ford, allegedly
Quote Investigator has a great article pointing out that there’s no evidence Ford ever uttered such words and that instead it was first suggested he did in 1999. This, of course, is often used by designers and product managers as lofty justification for why they don’t need to talk to customers. Underneath that attitude is perhaps a fear of imposter syndrome and that’s what I want to address.
Where is this flawed thinking coming from?
Everyone has an opinion. Everyone has a justification for why the button has to be blue instead of green and on the left rather than the right.
Go-to market success is often overly dependent on the length of the features list to close deals, with a heavy focus on adding more and more features to a given product.
More features means more differentiation right? Obviously not.
More features means more defensible, right? No.
More features means it’s more likely I can say yes and get the deal, right? I think there’s more to it than that.
Rather than the tired analogy of the faster horse, I actually prefer the humble water cooler to illustrate my point. Those days of yore where it was only Jim who was confident and strong enough to heft that big plastic jug and tip it upside down without spilling water, before standing back to receive the admiration of colleagues for the next week. This was not an optimal user experience. The advent of water coolers that were directly connected to a water source — making the big plastic jugs obsolete — was a welcome one. Optimal user experience unlocked.
But that’s not what happened. More features were needed.
It’s got buttons. Several of them. The distance between the buttons and the water faucet became greater. These are seemingly innocuous changes, but they are significant and hopefully illustrate my point. I can no longer rush up to the water cooler between meetings, mug in hand with laptop under my arm, and use my thumb to flip the leaver, depositing a rush of cool water into my mug. I have to stop, put everything down, hold my mug in one hand and figure out which button to push, then lament how slowly the water comes out.
Don’t worry though, these new devices have a light on them. That’s a vast improvement, obviously.
Product Managers respond to this by establishing their value to the business as a subject matter expert. They hold tightly to the cards, acting overly dramatic or forceful. Hence the Ford quote. On the other end of the spectrum, other product managers defend investments by stating boldly, “The customer said so”, or worse, just throwing up their hands and taking orders from customers on what feature to develop next.
Although we should always listen to customers, we should also avoid just listening, writing down, and following through with what customers want. They are relying on us to make sound decisions in the pursuit of value. We have to do much more than deliver what they ask for, but for that to happen, the whole business must align around that discipline. The reality is that everyone contributes to it.
Here’s where I stand. Our job as product managers is to observe and understand what people using our products are doing and how they get value from it in order to make decisions. Our job as product managers is to reconcile the mission of the business with how people are using our products to ensure alignment between business growth and customer value. That includes noting down what customers ask for, but customer suggestions should not be the only source of information that contributes to decision making.
Here are some examples of fact sources product managers should be relying upon, which come from every part of the business:
• Customer support history
• Professional Services project retrospectives
• Usage data
• Performance, reliability and security data
• RFI/RFP questions
• Win/Loss analysis
• Industry analyst materials
• Survey responses
• UX design studies (You’re presenting more than one design, right? Please tell me you haven’t just shown up with one and asked if it was good?)
Side note: an astute reader might point out that there’s nothing in this piece about technical debt. I’ve omitted it because I feel it’s a topic unto itself and a bit more nuanced than simply using “we need to retire technical debt” as a source for what to do next. I’m actually more interested in what’s creating that debt in the first place.
Here are some examples of fact sources product managers should avoid (controversially, perhaps, but lets talk about it):
• That sales guy who can close another 342 deals in the next 17 minutes if they just had that one feature
• That feature a competitor has been talking about to great success, allegedly according to that person in marketing
• The executive with a vision that suddenly requires a whole new experience
I recognize that last point is stated at risk of coming across as disgruntled. In my defense, I’ve been both an employee in that exact situation and I’ve been a co-founder and executive who is guilty of doing exactly that. Looking at the issue from both sides, I’m here to say this. A successful product that users love can only come from a place of integrity. I’m grateful to say that I have learned and am continuing to learn from my mistakes.
Trust the process. Trust the facts. Make informed decisions based upon data. We’ve got lots of it these days. We’ve got all sorts of tools available to help us parse that data. Use those tools. More importantly, trust the product managers that are paid to gather and present these facts.