Learning to Listen
Customers often do not say what they mean. A product manager's success depends on the ability to understand what customers really mean, and it's sometimes very different from what they're saying. Case in point: Microsoft customers frequently asked for easier ways to access and edit their Word documents, requesting numerous new Word features. Word was (and still is) a pretty complicated word processor, and overlaying a new set of features would have made it more so. But when product planners at Microsoft began to understand the actual problems that the customers were facing, it became clear that the solution wasn't at all what the customer were requesting. Instead, a new application tailored for quickly taking notes and organizing them was born: OneNote. It's been a big success among the customers who thought they wanted more Word features. I learned how to listen to customers while validating a product concept in meetings with groups of customers at 28 companie...