The Delicate Balance Between Innovation and Customer Focus
When we reflect on some of the most groundbreaking products of the past decade, it’s striking how many of them seemed to defy conventional wisdom about customer needs. Did customers beg Elon Musk for an electric car? Did they clamor for Steve Jobs to create a touchscreen? In many cases, customers were skeptical about these innovations, yet they went on to revolutionize their respective industries. This raises an important question: are innovation and customer focus mutually exclusive?
The Misconception About Customer Focus
As product managers, it’s easy to get bogged down in feature requests from customers. These requests can be all-consuming, pushing back more ambitious projects that could drive real growth. However, this doesn’t mean that innovation and customer focus are at odds. True customer focus involves deeply understanding what customers want – both rationally and emotionally – and delivering a product that meets those needs. This might not always align with what customers explicitly ask for.
The Balancing Act
In reality, product managers often face a difficult trade-off between innovating and satisfying customer requests. Sometimes, customers need specific features or integrations that only they use. In these cases, it’s essential to weigh the importance of meeting these needs against the potential benefits of innovating. A framework can help guide this decision-making process.
A Weighted Portfolio Approach
One effective approach is to allocate resources across different priorities, much like a diversified investment portfolio. This ensures that you’re addressing important customer needs while still planning for the future. For example, you might dedicate one-third of your resources to core value proposition, one-third to differentiators, and one-third to customer requests. By spreading your investments, you can balance short-term needs with long-term innovation.
Evaluating Customer Requests
When evaluating customer requests, it’s essential to ask two critical questions: how important is it to do something right now, and what will happen if you don’t do something? The first question helps you assess the urgency and importance of the request, while the second question forces you to consider the risks of delaying or ignoring the request. By applying these questions, you can prioritize requests more effectively and avoid getting bogged down in non-essential features.
Building a Weighted Portfolio
To implement a weighted portfolio approach, you’ll need to define what each allocation looks like in terms of resources and time. One effective way to do this is by using t-shirt sizes (small, medium, large, extra large) to estimate the time required for each project. By counting the working weeks available across your engineering team, you can ensure that you’re committing to a reasonable amount of work and leaving room for bug fixing and technical debt.
The Path Forward
Ultimately, innovation and customer focus are intertwined. By taking a weighted portfolio approach, you can balance the need to satisfy customer requests with the need to drive innovation and growth. This requires a deep understanding of customer needs, a willingness to take calculated risks, and a framework for evaluating and prioritizing requests. By getting this balance right, you can create products that truly delight customers and drive business success.