On Products and a Resilient Future

A little more than a year ago after my company was forced to shut down because of COVID (see Time, Freedom, and Purpose), I began facilitating executive education courses for Cornell University and helping other entrepreneurs at the local Women Business Center. In both cases, I’ve worked closely with individuals desiring to improve existing products and services or launch new ones. More than 900 students have gone through the courses I facilitate, and more than 250 entrepreneurs have joined me in discussing their businesses and product ideas. The number one question and concern among executives and entrepreneurs is how to make their products and services successful.

Achieving that success is quite elusive most of the time, but there are things we can do that will take us closer. In all cases, my conversations take us to discuss product-market-fit, a new concept in the field of product management that has emerged over the last five years. Simply explained, product-market-fit is achieved when customers take the product off your hands. It is not a result, but it is a dynamic process. I have spent the last decade talking to prospective clients and believe me when I say understanding what a customer wants is pure art. All the science in the world cannot establish it clearly as a mathematical equation. Product-market-fit is a state when a product is established over time, and in consequence can stay there for some time, or go to an area of irrelevance.

How do you know?

It is a simple exercise that begins with asking your clients how they would feel if the product or service would not be available anymore. If they convey emotions around cataclysmic scenarios, the product is in the product-market-fit zone. If customers or clients are more lukewarm or clearly demonstrate apathy for a world where the product doesn’t exist, then that is a clear indication of the lack of product-market fit. Briefly, let’s acknowledge that some products go even further and fall into the category of being abhorred by the vast majority of a market --think tobacco-- but that is a subject for another article.

My students and fellow entrepreneurs have different reactions to asking such questions to their clients and customers. Some find it self-evident that if a client has bought the product for decades, it means the product is loved and unavoidable. In these cases, I discuss mass transportation and Uber. Ask mass transportation administrators if they’d have thought in 2005 that their industry could be disrupted or ask a thousand taxi drivers in NYC, Rome, or Paris. All consumers follow habits with their purchases, but it doesn’t mean they are happy with the outcomes of the process (see Focus, Purpose, and Habits).

Learning from Failure

Other conversations focus more on how to interpret and apply the outcome of having customers who express lukewarm feelings about a future without a product. Those conversations are pure gold. Having conducted thousands of interviews with prospective customers over the last decade, I know the process too well to discount the effort that it takes. At the core, there needs to be a deep desire to learn from rejection and failure, a skill that builds resilience over time. And resilience has to be developed inside of the organization --the famous embracing of failure culture-- and also at the individual level.

Over the months I have been able to observe the beginning of some important changes --reported by students and entrepreneurs alike-- indicating that they have made progress developing that resilience in their work-life, demonstrating they have embraced the desire to go through those failures, absorb the lessons, learn, try, fail, and do it all once more. It is a privilege to witness the change and improvement, I wish I could have filmed the sessions to edit them into a documentary, or podcast.

It has been said many times, the most important step in a journey is the first one. So, I challenge you to think about that question, think about it in terms of products and services you use, and think about it in terms of products or services you design and sell. Would you ask the question to your customers or clients? Would you dare to envision a world with better products, better services? Products of careful and focused thinking, services designed to improve the life we live, and experiences that help us live better. What do you think?