How Founders & Product Leaders Can Reframe Product Development

Startups often struggle to gain user traction while struggling to maintain early growth. The most common and most ignored culprit?

Founders and leaders jumping straight to solutions without spending enough time in the problem space and not allowing their teams to do so either.

A successful business needs Product and engineering teams that are empowered by the Big Hairy Audacious Questions or BHAQ and then are given space to solve them via product solutions.

This empowers PMs and engineers to actively participate and at times, even create magic!

All this to say that if you're a founder or a Product leader who can't resist the urge to jump in and be the idea machine...resist the urge.

Below are some examples of how you can reframe conversations with your teams and I promise you, the results will surprise you.

Instead of Saying : "We need a loyalty program to compete with competition"

Try Asking : "Our customers aren't re-purchasing as often as we'd like. What are some ways to incentivise repeat purchases and build strong customer loyalty?"

Instead of Saying : "We need a chat feature to increase user engagement"

Try Asking : "User drop-off rates during onboarding are high. How can we improve user retention and engagement?"

Instead of Saying : "Let's do some quick user research"

Try Asking : "How can we conduct in-depth, high confidence user research to really understand what our users want and not what we think they want?"

Instead of Saying : "Build an iOS app to capture affluent audiences in India"

Try Asking : "We need higher sales and AOV. How can we reach more customers who are also likely to buy high end products?"