As product managers,
many time we encounter this question: should we give the customer what he
currently wants or should we give him what we know he needs?
Henry Ford once said "If I had asked people what they wanted they would have said faster horses",
in other words – should
we work hard to improve the wagon or should we work hard to invent the first
car?
Reading these lines you
are probably thinking, but that is obvious right? It is obvious we want product
managers to be creative and come with the invention of the new car. But – does
creativity alone does the trick?
Reality is, that you
need to be a very brave product manager to tell your customer – “hold your
horses, I understand that this is what you want, but let me tell you what you
actually need.” You need to be brave because they think they know better.
Because many times they have many ideas on how to make their life easier. You
need to be brave because they know what they want and you have to say no! You
need to filter the noise from the field, take a big step back and try to map
the world of the problem and find the creative solution for it. It might be a
long shot, and might fail, but it can also be that one feature that will change
your customer life forever.
You should also be a
sells man. You need to know how you take your cool idea and prioritize it
against bugs/feature requests from the field, because as we all know – business
won’t make it easy on you. Actually, most chances are they will throw your cool
idea to the bottom of the list and won’t give it a second look. You need to be creative,
brave, and you need to know how to sell your idea. Best way would be to gather
some data. Go out there, talk to customers, run surveys, create some mockups
(better if users can interact with it), adjust your idea according to some of
the feedback you got and then come with this data to the management and
customers and convince them you have the cool new idea that will change your
customer’s life.
