What makes us different?

Philosophy

In building products and working with product teams over decades, the same patterns begin to emerge. The winning products, while in different industries or using different development approaches, seem to have a few things in common. These keystone habits are where we focus - getting teams to 10x their results by doing the fundaments well.

Bold Vision, Small Steps

Product vision doesn’t just mean proclaiming a distant future - that’s dreaming. Yes, a good vision captures the imagination, but winning organizations also place a better today at the customer’s doorstep. Most often we see teams so heads down that they forget to tell a story that captivates. Do customers and employees to know what you stand for - do they care? Does that uniqueness come to life obviously in the product? If we slapped your logo on a competitor’s product, could prospects tell the difference? The proof is in the product.

Differentiation Included

Most organizations aren’t connecting the dots between sales, marketing, and product. Does your product bring to life what makes you special? Can your sales team tell the marketing story in their demo without being a gymnast? Does your trial require handholding from an expensive support team? Is product overwhelmed while everyone else is feeling neglected? Yeah, we’ve been there.

Experience First

History is littered with cool technology no one cared about. Avoid this fate and begin by understanding the state of the art and where you plan to improve it. Do you know how your customer’s get things done today? Can you articulate at each waypoint the pain they are feeling and how your innovation will change their life? If not, how can you expect your product to be something worth talking about?

Ground in Reality

Get outside. Offices are great for collaboration, but not so great for understanding. Product teams spend all their time talking to other employees on slack, email, and meetings. This is a failure mode to let the tyranny of the urgent steal time from what matters - getting into the world to learn and experience customer challenges first hand. Are your engineers, designers, and product leaders aren’t spending time visiting observing users? This practice can make the difference between designing a ho hum product and one your customer’s can’t live without.

Scenarios not Features

You’re not building for a user - you’re building for a person in a specific situation. Scenarios are a secret weapon for a team craving a uniqueness and velocity. Have you ever seen a product where the screens feel disjointed? Where the user has to jump around to get a job done or find what they are looking for? This is the result of feature lists.

If you were nodding along to the above, we’d love to talk to you about how we can help. Often, all it takes is some fresh eyes and a minor correction to unlock success. We’ve seen it happen in weeks, not months or years.