The product roadmap meeting runs three hours.
The founder presents the features. The team debates the specs. Everyone has opinions about what the customer needs.
The customer isn’t in the room.
Research from Bain & Company found that 80% of companies believe they deliver superior customer experience. Only 8% of their customers agree.
That gap isn’t incompetence. It’s insularity.
Organizations fall in love with their craft. The engineering. The process. The elegance of how they build things. And somewhere between the first prototype and the fifth iteration, the customer becomes a recipient rather than a partner.
Peter Drucker said the purpose of a business is to create a customer. Not satisfy one. Create one. That means understanding what they value before deciding what to build.
The best product isn’t the one your team is most proud of.
It’s the one the customer can’t imagine living without.
