To Build Better Products, Let Go of Your Emotional Attachments

One of the chapters in my new book is, “Don’t Marry Your Product: It’s Illegal in Most States.” While the chapter title is, of course, meant to add humor, I do believe the concept of marrying your product should be illegal in product management. Yet most of us do it. I have been guilty many times myself.

What do I mean by this? As product managers, we obsess about our product. We spend every moment paying attention to how to improve it, what will be the new features we add in the coming months, how often are people using it and so on.

We intimately get to know this product on every level, including design, technical requirements, user experience and more. And all this investment often causes us to become “married” to it. If anyone criticizes your marriage (or product), you might respond with something such as: “She’s perfect. Nothing needs to change. Everyone else is wrong, because I know her best.”

There are many problems with this sentiment. For starters, we are rarely the user of the product on a regular basis, if at all. More often than not, we are not the super-users for the products we build. Which is why one of the most important — yet most difficult — things is letting go of emotional attachments.

Embarrassing story ahead …

I am sharing this perspective, as I have been a victim of this product management blunder. In one instance, my team and I were tasked with building a new digital financial experience. We had teams of experts in the financial space, and we built a beautiful interface, packed with financial education on assets, liabilities, retirement strategies and more. But do you know what all these terms mean? Neither did our end users.

The feedback we received was to make it simpler and easier to digest, and to provide more insights that are relevant to them. I felt offended. I didn’t realize at the time that I was married to my product. I ignored the feedback altogether. But those who would be using this, day in and day out, abhorred the experience. Too much jargon and complex reports. Our launch fell flat on its face. The satisfaction rate was embarrassingly low. I had built a product I liked and I understood, but I would not be using it myself.

I caught myself in a state of delusion because of marriage. I ignored the signals and red flags. Love played with my logic once again.

Stay in your lane

When building products, it’s important to stay in your lane. Your role, though important, is not the only role that gets you to a winning product.

If you take nothing else from this article, remember this:
You are rarely the user.
You are rarely the builder.
You are rarely the designer.
You are the product manager.

Though it sounds pretty basic, let your team know what your role is. In many cases, it’s the product manager’s job to lay out the playbook. As the product manager, your role is to get the team organized and pumped up to build the product. Defining everyone’s role also helps you and the team have diverse perspectives; it allows you to stop one person from becoming too married to the product and having full authority on the development decisions.

You need to decide:

• Who will be responsible for reaching out to customers?
• Who will be conducting research?
• How often will the team meet?
• Who are the people we need to engage with internally?
• Why do we care about this product?
• Why is the product important?

Remind everyone on your team that they are not the customer — something we regularly forget. Instead, we need to spend time understanding the customer. While some of us may think we understand them, in many cases, product managers forget to define the end users in a real, authentic way beyond made-up personas. In each phase of the product, it’s important to define who is the real-life person who is going to use this. After you define that person, you must become this person to see the product from their POV.

Be OK with being imperfect

My parents have been married for more than 35 years, and they actually like each other. I asked them what the secret is to a happy marriage after all these years. My dad’s response: “Fail over and over again.”

Although a bit surprising coming from my dad, it was great advice on how to build products, as well. If you are too married to your product, you won’t take criticism of your product well. If you don’t respond well to criticism and constructive feedback about your product, it will never be a good product. I can almost guarantee it.

The biggest problem with being guarded in this way is you’ll only find out your product failed at the very end, after spending time and resources, when no one wants to use it.

It’s important to remain unbiased throughout the whole process. Let it take a few hits along the way, so the final version is one with which one’s customers are satisfied. Show sketches to customers early on, and get their feedback on each iteration along the way. Let them be as candid as possible.

Going back to my parents: My dad explained they were not perfect, but they continued to figure out what worked for them as a couple. They needed to go through a few struggles and hiccups and become better collectively. They tried, failed, got feedback, failed some more, learned, made improvements, and kept on doing that over and over. They are the definition of product managers.

What I have learned is nothing in life is perfect. Marriage isn’t perfect. Your product won’t be perfect. What distinguishes a great product, however, is one that learned a lot of lessons in its lifecycle to become the success it is today.

It’s important to take a step back, and let go of your emotional attachments, because your product is being designed for all the people who engage with it day in and day out, share personal information with it, and trust and rely on it. Keep that in mind next time you find yourself getting defensive or feeling offended, like I did. It’s a much bigger hit to see low satisfaction and adoption rates post-launch than to hear customers tell you during development that this is a miss when there is still room to change course.

For more lessons on product management, check out my book, You: The Product — The Real Skills You Need to Be an Effective Product Manager. You can submit some of your product management stories and tips and tricks to be included in the next version of the book, as I continue to iterate and improve it for readers with each release.