Dealing With The Product Discovery Hype (Pt. 1) – Starting Slowly

For a couple of weeks, I was angry. At the wrong person, about the wrong topic. The topic: Product Discovery, Continuous Product Discovery, however you want to call it. My frustration came from the hype surrounding the concept, promising a silver bullet for instant innovation success, growth, and general well-being. But having been through this journey multiple times, in multiple environments, I know how misleading these promises can be. This two-part blog post tries to provide a more down-to-earth perspective on product discovery. In Part 1, I will highlight the common problems and challenges teams face when starting with product discovery. In Part 2, I’ll share practical tips and starter projects to help you get started on the right foot.

When I say, I was angry, I was angry at Theresa Torres and the hype around her book and framework “Continuous Discovery Habits”. I had read the book in depth, but somehow thought she was promising the “everything will be fine now” recipe, the shortcut and hack towards instant innovation success, growth, and general well-being. However, re-reading the book, I realized she neutrally describes what she does and believes in. There’s even a video by her called “Why Opportunity Mapping Is So Hard”. Chris Mercury in his foreword says “If you study this book and practice the habits, product work will still be hard and you will still make plenty of mistakes.” So, everything is cool and I was wrong about my perception!

But the hype and perceived promises (absolutely not from Theresa) still need to be processed. The vibe around the topic often suggests effortless customer understanding, immediate insights, seamless processes, and instant success. These perceived promises paint an unrealistic picture.

After going through this journey a couple of times, let me tell you: entering this world is hard. And by that, I do not, by any means, discourage you from entering this world. I want to give you a realistic image of the dragons and wild animals you will meet. So after this ranty beginning, let’s dive into the facts.

The Promise

Here are some perceived promises:

• Effortless Customer Understanding: Instantly grasp every nuance of your customers’ needs and desires.
• Immediate Insights: Data-driven revelations that lead to quick, miraculous wins without any hard work. Discovering product flywheels is a piece of cake. And with that, Product-Led Growth is at your fingertip now.
• Seamless Processes: Smooth, hassle-free recruitment and research operations that run like a charm.
• Instant Innovation: Continuous stream of groundbreaking features that delight users, differentiate your offering, and smash your competition to smithereens.
• Perfect Market Fit: Every new feature perfectly matches market demand and customer expectations from day one.
• Unlimited Resources: Your discovery work effortlessly blends into your everyday work, no problem, and thus you don’t even need to ask your management about anything.
• 100% Team Alignment: Total harmony and alignment within the team, with everyone always on the same page.
• Customer Loyalty: Because you understand the customer so well and in no time, loyalty is on the rise and churn is no more of an issue.
• Market Leadership: Very soon, recognition as the market leader, with continuous product delivery propelling you to the top effortlessly. See also: differentiation.
• Effortless Scaling: Seamless scalability with no growing pains, as your product and processes expand without friction.
• Uninterrupted Productivity: Teams work at peak productivity constantly, with no burnout or downtime. Because now, you always work on the right things.
• Guaranteed and Instant Success: Every product and feature is a guaranteed success, with no risk of failure or missteps. The CFO’s dream of the features not only being delivered on time but also delivering revenue from day one has finally come true.

Of course, no one is really promising that. But a lot of people have a subset of that as part of their dreams when they start that wild journey.

Harsh Reality

So let me tell you a little about what I often met in reality. In my early days, when I insisted on customers on-site during innovation workshops, that often meant a couple of weeks or months delay of the workshop. When I asked who last talked to a customer, it was … Sales. So let me counter the list above with an incomplete but extensive list of impediments I observe when really motivated and engaged people start with the topic:

Lack of Education

Beginners often start with minimal knowledge of user research methods. Every problem gets resolved by “user interviews,” all of them being scripted. (If only you experienced the resistance of people in my courses against unscripted interviews!) The knowledge to differentiate between exploration and exploitation and vary the research methods to the context often doesn’t exist, resulting in mismatched methods and killed insights.

Over-Testing Everything

Teams new to this world tend to question everything, even the hard knowledge they have about the customer and their problem. They question their instincts and existing knowledge, leading to excessive testing and analysis paralysis. Rarely a great way to instill trust in this new Way Of Working. People outside of the team are raising eyebrows and asking themselves what’s going on.

Recruitment Infrastructure

Without proper infrastructure, getting a constant stream of customers for interactions is a different beast from organizing the occasional quarterly interview with a customer. Often, simply getting access to customers will be the teams’ first barrier.

Misunderstanding Methods

Confusion between the need for exploratory versus exploitative testing leads to inappropriate use of scripted interviews. Erika Hall’s (a genius!) concept of “Four Types Of Research” in “Just Enough Research” (a genius book you should read!) differentiates between “Generative Research” (finding a valuable problem to solve) and Causal research on the ends of the spectrum (testing if the product still works). Most lean towards exploitation methods, which kills insights in exploration. (Btw, my blog post based on her consist is one of the most read on my site)

Misunderstanding Qualitative Data

The role of qualitative data is super important, especially in early phases and exploration. But understanding what qualitative data is and its purpose is not widespread. Ethnographic researchers have an in-depth understanding, but it’s challenging for the rest. Defending a fresh aha moment from a small set of qualitative insights against a critical group of colleagues or top-level management is tough.

Data Availability

Teams might lack the necessary qualitative or quantitative data to start with, hindering the ability to make informed decisions. Interesting questions will arise, like what customers do after finishing process X versus process Y, but that data might not exist. Also, automated user behavior observations from tools like FullStory or advanced analytics from Amplitude might be missing.

Resource Constraints

Limited time, budget, and manpower to invest in extensive product discovery activities. While you might think that “Continuous Discovery” also means “effortless Discovery”, nothing could be further from the truth. The work is the work and it needs to be done. Transitioning to more research-intensive methods takes time and is discussion-laden, making it less efficient.

Unrealistic Expectations

Even if you are careful, promises of quick and instant success, measurable in whatever KPI, will be heard. Outside of your team, the perception will be a team leading ethereal discussions, based on few data points, questioning itself, and being absorbed by a new method (while having a lot of fun) instead of producing the expected output. Where is that new killer feature?

Cultural Resistance

Like every model, starting with a new approach brings emotional friction. Although most models address what will be hard, when push comes to shove, it WILL BE HARD. The problem with hockey sticks, even if they ever appear, is that before it goes up, it WILL go down. And down there in this deep dark valley, the halting problem hits hard: when will this downward trend be over? Didn’t they promise progress? And one of those days in many orgs, someone will be responsible for the broken promise that actually no one gave.

Customer Want vs. Need – Missing Abstraction

While a lot of teams then start to talk to the customer much more often and while that is always a kind of progress, actual success lies in analyzing what the customer says they want into what they need. And while everyone knows that that is the point as much as everyone knows that validation bias is a huge danger, most teams step into both traps all of the time. It’s hard getting used to the dialectics of listening to the customer and empathizing with her and then to ignore what she says. But instead to analyze what was said and to abstract and condense it into a basic need that will be resolved by a new solution that comes from us. Because that is the task. Else it’s the often mentioned “Product Death Cycle” (Melissa Perri) and we just parrot opinions (don’t get me started on opinions) and there is no added value in the research we do. It’s the same as simply asking for a list of wishes from customer support or sales. It’s toxic to simply add stuff that the client wants. I could write ten pages on this, but that’s for another time.

Don’t Be Discouraged – Start Slowly, Promise Learning

OK, I get it – until here I wasn’t really productive and helpful and you might have the impression I want to talk you out of the whole thing. That could not be further from the truth, though: I went into depth in all of this in the years from 2013 to 2020 in my Lean Product Management classes, which nowadays would have a much more catchy name – something with Discovery, of course.

The hint is that the most probably outcome you can promise for a start is: Learning. Learning about the customer. And that’s the outcome you should promise. Or would you like to bet your right hand on economic outcome after six months?

Are you still, here? This was a lot, so part 2 will offer some cool starter projects and a taxonomy that helps you to find out, where and how you and your teams could get started. Same place, same time.

Disclaimer: Admittedly, this pots might sound a bit dark. BUT. If you are a team full of enthusiasm, go ahead and bang your head against the wall. I love it and I will love you for it. Things can be easy. If not, who cares. If you are responsible for a team that wants to bang their head against the wall: Cool! Encourage them and take care that the wall is soft enough. A little bit of “just do it” right. If on the other hand, your environment shows to many of the issues above, take care and set up enough modern “safety at work” protection measures. That’s all I want and the whole purpose of this post.

Foto by Dariusz Sankowski on Unsplash