Users don't know what they want - but they know something

How much, or little, should product designers and developers interact with potential users and customers of the products the designers and engineers are creating?

It seems like a simple question, but if you think about it some and recall some of the famous perspectives on customer input into product development you find that the answers to this question tend to land on one of two extremes.

On the one side, you have the Steve Jobs/Henry Ford take on customer needs and wants. Jobs more or less thought customers had no idea what they really wanted, and he (and Apple), had to create that want by building amazing products that met that need (that the users didn't know they had). Ford is famously quoted as saying that if he had asked customers what they wanted they would have replied 'faster horses', instead of reliable and affordable automobiles.Ford

The other extreme, and one seen traditionally in lots of workplace kinds of technologies, is for developers and designers to build just exactly what customers request. This approach is mostly an outgrowth and evolution of internal IT shop's tendency to build custom applications based on a list of documented requirements from the end users. If the feature was in the requirements doc, it made it into the product. If not, then the capability didn't get built in the delivered product. And the IT response to downstream complaints was always, 'Well, it wasn't in the requirements.' 

So what is the best, or most effective middle ground between Jobs/Ford (customers don't know anything) and the traditional IT (customers HAVE TO know exactly what they want) approaches?

Maybe the best approach is summed up in this recent piece from the O'Reilly Radar site, 7 User Research Myths and Mistakes:

The most common reason people give for not talking to users is that “users don’t know what they want.” While that’s sometimes true, it’s not a good reason for not talking to them. It’s just a good reason for not asking them to tell you exactly what they want.

Instead, ask people about their problems. Ask them to tell you stories about how they use other products and how they make buying decisions. Ask them when they use specific products. Is it on the train? In the car? At their desks? At work? Ask them about their lives.

Users might not be great at telling you what new product they’re definitely going to use, but they’re great at telling you about themselves, and that is a very good thing for you to understand if you’re making a product for them.

That seems right to me - describing that sweet spot or middle ground between not giving a rip about what users think and the other extreme of expecting the users to tell you exactly what you should build for them.

Keep this in mind the next time you sit down with some HR tech solution provider salesperson. How much do they ask you and your team about the problems you need to address? How much do they seem interested in what makes your organization work (and unique)?

And how much do they like to talk about exactly what their product does?

You are the user. You might not know everything. But you sure know something.

Why everything takes longer than we think it will

Think about the countless times that you've been wrong about estimating the length of time it would take to do something, to get somewhere, or complete some type of task or project.

Something always goes wrong along the way, some unforeseen circumstance puts you or the people and systems you are counting on behind schedule, or we simply, (and fairly consistently), are overconfident in our own ability to gets things done in a given amount of time.

Why is that the case so often, why do is seem like we are constantly explaining away missed deadlines, or alternatively, griping about the inconvenience that other people's missed deadlines have on us? Well, it turns out there might be a (sort of seems fake but I am going to pretend it is scientific), law that will help us to explain this all-too-frequent phenomenon.

It's a simple little observation that is called 'Hofstadter's Law', named after American professor and author Douglas Hofstadter and it reads as follows:

It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.

Even the more famous and fictional Hofstadter is in on the game:

Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.

— Leonard Hofstadter (@TheRealLeonardH) October 25, 2012

The 'law' tries to describe and help us understand just how difficult it is to accurately estimate the time it will take to complete tasks of any meaningful complexity. And the kicker is the law is recursive in nature - even taking the law into account doesn't prevent us from failing to underestimate the time needed to complete complex tasks.

It is a kind of cruel equation - we think task 'A' will take four hours - we take into account Hofstadter's Law and add a couple of hours to the estimate - but Hofstadter's Law itself kicks in AGAIN, to remind us it will STILL take longer than we estimate.

What can we do about this seemingly irrational but often true observation about our weakness in estimating the time required to complete tasks?

Maybe we should think first about the available time we have, and what realistically, and based on past experience we can reasonably expect to accomplish in that time. Rather than looking at a complex project, or even a series of tasks and trying to count up how much time they will take, (and inevitably underestimating), thinking about the available time first, will force us to think more critically and probably come up with more reasonable expectations of what can be accomplished. 'What can you get done in three hours?' is a much easier question to answer than 'How long will it take you to write this article?'

So the next time you are faced with the prospect of estimating how long it will take to complete a complex undertaking remember the wise words of our friend Hofstadter, and do your best to not fall into the trap of thinking 'This time it will be different', because it never is.

Forecast, Upside, Pipeline and Staying on Offense

I ended last week with a piece titled Playing Offense on Social Media, a story about how sometimes being aggressive, even snarky, but essentially leaning forward and playing offense in social media can be a good strategy for organizations, (and even individuals), that are active in social media and social networks.

To continue the 'offense' theme, I want to share another similar take, this one from the world of sales, (and even if you are not 'in' sales, let's face it, we are all selling something), titled 'Play Offense When Predicting Revenue', from the Feld Thoughts sales blog.  

In the piece, Brad Feld shares a simple way to change the way sales managers think about their sales pipeline, essentially instead of assigning a generic 'probable close rate' to every deal in the pipeline, e.g., 'We have 10 active deals, we think 75% will close this quarter', Feld recommends sales teams divide the pipeline into three buckets as follows:

Forecast - These are the deals we BELIEVE (in CAPS), will close this quarter. We are committed to them, and any deal in this group that does not close, will be subject to a detailed review and post-mortem

Upside - These are deals that MIGHT close this quarter. We are working them, but can't commit to a close this quarter.

Pipeline - These are deals that WILL NOT close this quarter, but are being worked. These should move into the Upside or Forecast buckets soon, or will fall out as lost opportunities.

According to Feld, the positioning of deals into these discrete categories, most particularly the 'committed' portion of the forecast bucket, creates more accountability in the organization, and provides a better mechanism for inderstanding the sales process, the customer decision cycle, and the skill and capability of the sales team.

Then the sales team and managers revisit this list each week. Sometimes deals  fall out of Forecast into Upside based on new information. Last week you thought there was a 100% it was going to close (forecast), now you no longer have certainty but there's still a chance. And, if there's no way it'll close this quarter, it should go in Pipeline.

This discrete planning helps allocation your efforts - most of your short term energy should be on Forecast deals, some of your short and some of your long term energy on Upside deals, and the balance of your long term energy on the Pipeline.

I kind of dig it, simple, keeps the team focused, and as we like to say around here, keeps you playing offense, not just sitting back and wiating for (hopefully) good things to happen.

Forecast, Upside, Pipeline - what other parts of your business could benefit from this simple breakdown?

Have a Great Weekend!

Onboarding for the rest of us

Editor’s Note: Today’s post is brought to you by Allied Van Lines, proud sponsor of the “2012 Workforce Mobility Survey”, designed to capture the voice of HR on topics related to workforce mobility. Allied has more than 75 years of experience in corporate, household and international relocation.)

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It's kind of fun at times, particularly if you are like most of us and are grinding it out in one of the thousands of mainstream, solid, and mostly anonymous organizations that quite honestly are most organizations, to read about the wild people practices and processes from Silicon Valley, or startup land, or any company that is young enough or successful enough to just do things differently. You know what I mean, famous places like Google or Zappos, or even less famous but still interesting places like the video game development company Valve, whose recent, irreverent employee handbook was leaked to the internet. If you missed the story about Valve it is worth a quick look, it is a written testament of sorts to that wild, loose, carefree, and unstructured work environment that most of us only dream of inhabiting.Onboarding at Valve

But we know that most of us can't act like Zappos or Valve, even if we wanted to. We have more history, more culture, more of a need or requirement, (for better or worse), to have more structure, rules, and process around our people management practices. We, and most of our employees and new hires, would fail if we simply set them loose in the organization and told them to figure it out for themselves.

But instead of looking at that reality as a negative, I think there are opportunities to leverage more formal and expected processes as a strength. Take new employee onboarding for example, an area typically well-defined and with a structured process, but also one that may not be producing the desired results in driving faster time to productivity, cementing the relationship between employer and employee, and ensuring a continuing supply of fresh talent in the organization. If you are like most employers, you say you already 'do' onboarding, i.e., collect the requisite forms, conduct an intake or orientation, offer some opportunity for the new hires to acclimate to culture, process, and work styles. 

But like any long-term, long-time, been-doing-it-so-long that you think you know how to handle it, there are probably some opportunities for you to improve your game. Thanks to the Workforce Mobility Survey (details here) sponsored by Allied, we've got some actual data about the state of onboarding, and some insights into what the companies that are best in class are doing, (and notably not doing), in the more important than we like to think area of onboarding.

The chart on the right gives the rundown of what survey respondents are employing in onboarding, andSouce - Allied Workforce Mobility Survey since you are probably like most, and already handling the essentials, it is probably a better idea to take a look deeper into the chart, (and certainly at the complete survey results here), to look for areas where you can raise your game. Maybe it is more social events where new hires get to mix with veterans and company leaders or perhaps setting more concrete goals for the program, or it might be getting more senior level management stake in the game.

Either way I think the lesson to take away is that you can still add value and make an important impact in the success of the organization while still being your boring, traditional self. Sort of. The key is doing what makes sense for your organization, resonates with the people you are bringing in to the team, and connects them with their peers, managers, and the mission of the organization overall.

And sure, making it a little bit fun probably won't hurt.

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If you would like to learn more about Allied Van Lines, please check out their website or blog. And if you would like to get more information from the Workforce Mobility Survey, you can click here. It’s definitely worth checking out.

Failure to plan?

Everybody has one, that one management or business maxim that while you admit is probably sort of true at its core, you are still pretty sick of.

Some candidates for the 'I am so sick of hearing that' distinction are these beauties:Subdivision - Maricopa County, AZ

'What can't be measured, can't be managed'

Blah, blah, blah, anything at all really, leading up to the '80-20' rule being cited.

Or any initiative that involves 'moving needles', 'shifting paradigms', or 'pushing envelopes'.

But my number one in the 'Not again' category is 'Begin with the end in mind'.

I know, it is probably a reasonable assertion that you should have some idea where you want to go before you set off on the journey. Otherwise, you'd wander around foolishly, right?  You'd just be a hopeless, clueless, aimless idiot until you either collapsed in a ditch at the side of the road, or if you're lucky, managed to retrace your steps to make it home.  Tired, dirty, defeated, but at least potentially smarter from the experience. No way you are doing that again, is the lesson learned.

I can't stand 'Begin with the end in mind' because too often people and organizations translate 'in mind' to 'completely and totally figured out, with any deviation from the end, to be considered unacceptable, and quite possibly an abject failure.'

When you think about how many projects or initiatives in the organization, both ones that are successful and complete positively, and ones that crash and burn,  don't end up looking much at all like how you thought they would when you set out, it seems to me that worrying so much about precisely defining 'the end', is often wasted effort.

How much of 'the end' did you have in mind when you set out on your career path, went on your first date with your spouse or significant other (man, what a lame phrase), or reached in to the giant box of Legos for the first piece of your last masterpiece?

Is what you are doing right now, right as you are reading this, what you had 'in mind' a few hours ago? Last week? Last year?

That's why I hate 'Begin with the end in mind'.  I much prefer, 'Just begin'.