Do you know what the biggest contributors to failure is?
It’s the distance to the frontline, the lack of contact with people using your product. Design your business to constantly reduce the distance to the frontline.
Require all your employees to periodically work in customer support for a day or two. Give each team member access to users in usability tests or customer interviews at least every six weeks. You want your team to find out what the users do with the product, and what pain they try to solve with it. What’s frustrations they’re coming up against.
It’s not enough to sit around open boardrooms and studios with fresh Sharpies and multicolored Post-it notes, ideating products and designs.
The further away from your customers the more likely you’ll be to misinterpret what’s not working. You’ll respond slower too.
The closer you are to your customers the faster you’ll see what needs to be improved.
And how.