Overcoming 8 limiting beliefs that separate product teams and customers.

You’ve got a problem if you know your backlog better than you know your customer

“97% of product teams know their backlog and ticketing system better than their customer.”

I posted this statement across Reddit, LinkedIn, and Twitter last week.

It sparked a fire of regret from many.

Regretting the widespread truth of the statement.
Regretting a tool has become their focus, not their customer.
Regretting the backlog is as close as they can get to customers.
Regretting their team is not seen as capable of customer interaction.

But a few said they know their customer and the joy it brings:

Empathy for the exact struggles the customer faces.
Less pressure to deliver more features than are necessary.
Better insight into surgical ways to solve the root cause of pain.
The rush of knowing they have made their customers’ lives better.

We need to turn the table and place customers and teams together.

Can we get to 97% of product teams knowing their customer and 3% being in love with their backlog? Heck, can we make it 100%? This sounds amazing, but it’s far from easy in today’s broken system.

Many companies have long-held beliefs, behaviors, and structures that prevent the customer-team connection.

But it’s not hopeless.

I’ve worked to help many teams (yet, not enough) make this switch over the last 20+ years. While not a cakewalk, it’s a liberating journey for teams, stakeholders, and customers. It’s a battle worth fighting.

Let’s dive in and see what it takes to build a direct customer-team connection.

This year, I’ve committed my focus to a concept called Lean Leverage, as described in my inaugural 2024 post. Each article I craft this year, including this one (the 13th in the series), will focus on an aspect of Lean Leverage. Enjoy and stay tuned for many ways to do more with less.

8 Limiting Beliefs Wise Organizations Overcome to Help Product Teams Know Their Customer

I’ve seen 8 common limiting beliefs stand in the way of the customer-team connection.

And I’ve also had success helping organizations overcome them.

You can find both outlined below. Many of these limiting beliefs will likely be familiar to you (they are to me). Here’s the good news: in less than 5 minutes, you can steal from my 20 years of experience. And then, you can immediately put the methods to overcome them in use for your teams.

And be sure to stick around to the end.

I conclude with one drastic measure you can take to expedite your shift, so you don’t want to miss out on that.

Let’s go.

Limiting Belief 1: Product team members couldn’t care less about the customer.

“Developers have no interest in the customer.”

I’m sure you’ve heard this uttered in the halls of corporations across the world. Developers just want to code. Give them the requirements, and send them to the darkly lit basement to get back to work.

A line from Office Space comes to mind: “Where’s my Swingline stapler?”

This belief is dead wrong from my experience.

I’ve seen developers (and their teams) fall in love with the customer-team connection.

They make a seismic shift toward better outcomes when they know their customer.

Overcome by seeing the results of connecting teams and customers.

Seeing is believing.

I can’t convince you of this one with any logic or any story. Like any long-held belief, you will only change it if you try it. You must see the results for yourself.

But if you do try it, here is what to look out for from my experience:

Developers knowing customers by name.
Developers cutting scope that does not fit the need.
Developers adding the element of feasibility to solution ideation.
Developers speaking directly to the issues customers are facing.
Developers growing pride of ownership over the solutions they build.
Developers generating innovative ideas not considered by anyone else.

Don’t knock it until you try it.

Limiting Belief 2: Product teams need to stay focused on the work.

Keeping people busy is a real concern among the output-hungry.

This belief is common with some managers. They mistakenly think hands-typing-on-keyboards is the most beautiful sound on earth. To them, this is the sound of getting value for the good salaries they are paying. But product value does not equal the number of keystrokes.

Truth is, more output will not get you better user outcomes, but knowing your customer will.

Overcome by making space for customer engagement to reach your goals sooner.

Here’s the reality: there’s always too much work and not enough time to do it.

But when a team has space to engage with its customer, something magical happens: they get time back. How? Your team figures out exactly what the customer needs. Then, they build a solution with surgical precision. No excess, no fluff.

I find it ironic that reaching your goals sooner often takes fewer keystrokes.

And you get this by more customer, not less.

Realize this: talking to the customer is the work, too.

Limiting Belief 3: Only the product manager should perform discovery with the customer.

A proxy between the team and its customer is standard fare.

Many would blame the Scrum framework for making the Product Owner the proxy for the customer.

But truth be known, this practice has been around for decades in the product management field. And it is not isolated to product managers. Strategy, advertising, and marketing teams have owned the customer for a while. Just recall the show, Mad Men.

This is an old, slow, hand-off that can’t keep pace with today’s need for speed.

Overcome with product manager matchmakers.

I’ve always gravitated to the notion of a product manager as a matchmaker.

The product manager knows the market, target customer, and stakeholders. They know the team. Product managers have the perfect vantage point to make powerful connections. They can help make the perfect match.

I’m not saying the product manager can’t come along for the ride; they should.

The product manager, team, and customer are the right match to get to the right product, in the right way, at the right time.

It’s a match made in heaven, not a house divided.

Limiting Belief 4: The product team can’t connect from a different time zone.

Timezone misalignments between team and customer are here to stay.

The distributed, global workforce has been around for a while. And it became widespread during the recent pandemic. Let’s face it, teams no longer have the luxury of being in the same time zone as their customer.

But this is no excuse for having no customer-team connection; it’s simply a bit harder.

Overcome by getting creative on remote customer interactions across time zones.

The recent lockdown proved that remote, globally distributed workforces can find a way.

We have the technology to get creative. It’s easier today than ever before. For example, below is an effective technique I have seen teams trying:

Team members in a compatible time zone meet with the customer.
The sessions are recorded.
The team reviews recorded sessions to gather findings and glean insights.
They collaborate as a team on a game plan and form next steps.
Follow-up sessions are performed as needed in the same fashion.

With a little ingenuity, time zone differences are no problem.

Limiting Belief 5: Product team members are incapable.

“Our developers can’t get out of the weeds enough to talk to customers.”

This sentiment may be true in some cases. After years of isolation from customers, skills for talking to customers will atrophy. But this does not mean they can’t be reawakened.

I’ve found this is not a big deal to change; certainly, it is not as difficult as we might presume.

Overcome by awakening conversational capability in your product team.

Building customer conversational capability is part rehearsal, part execution, and part feedback.

As with learning any skill, you can pair the learner with a mentor and follow a typical progression.

Before a customer session, the team rehearses with the mentor.
The team attends the session where the mentor leads the discussion.
The team debriefs with the mentor.
As the team is ready, the mentor moves the team through the stages of “I do,” “We do,” and “You do,” in customer sessions.

In no time, the team will be capable and flying solo with the customer.

Limiting Belief 6: There are too many customers for the team to cover.

I’ve seen many companies get wrapped around the axle on this one.

The fear: a small product team can’t possibly talk to every customer. Well, sure, but it doesn’t need to talk to every customer. The organization does not need this either.

So, yes, there are too many customers for the team to cover, but they can still engage with a core few.

Overcome by forming a small customer cohort.

If you have hundreds or thousands of customers, you only need to engage with a few of them to get insights.

Often a small cohort of about five key end-users is the right size. The product team then engages this small cohort before, during, and after delivery.

Rich findings and insights can emerge from a close group of about five customers. The cohort should be legitimate end users with active needs you can solve. And they must be motivated to partner with you.

A small set of users connected to the team has a big impact.

Limiting Belief 7: This will bother customers.

”Customers don’t have time to be constantly interrupted.”

I hear this a lot. But the truth is, it’s rarely the case. If a product team serves the needs of customers, my experience shows they will go out of their way to meet with the team. They may even offer more time than the team actually needs.

This being said, teams can make it easier on the customer and be less disruptive.

Overcome by creating a stable, periodic cadence.

Nothing beats a dependable, repeating meeting cadence to plan for collaboration.

The same is true with customer-team engagement. Scheduling a set time and day can make all the difference. It respects the customer’s focus time and the team’s.

The simplicity of this fix makes you wonder why it is a limiting belief at all, but it is.

Limiting Belief 8: The backlog is much easier to follow than a customer’s whims.

Some seek control in the complex uncertainty of product.

As the thinking goes, if we can document the requirement in a backlog, we have wrangled the complexity. We have tamed the uncertainty.

This is the illusion of control.

Overcome by realizing real-time, ongoing communication leads to better understanding.

Customer needs are not “whims,” and solving them is rarely a slam dunk.

Reading a backlog to understand a customer’s need is like reading a map with no care to the actual terrain. If you keep your nose in the map, you might fall off a cliff.

There is nuance in product you can only notice when engaged with your customer.

You are much more likely to take the right path if your customer is with you.

Bonus tip to expedite the customer-team connection.

It’s easy to grasp how to overcome these limiting beliefs on the customer-team connection.

But the methods are often difficult to execute.

Many times, the backlog gets in the way when it has become a fixation for the product team. The team becomes addicted to it. Because they spend so much time with it, it’s difficult to give up for higher levels of customer engagement.

In these cases, a trick I’ve seen teams use is temporarily to remove the catalyst for the bad habit.

Getting rid of the backlog removes the temptation of past behavior. It’s a forcing function to propel the team toward their customer. With no documentation, direct conversation becomes an approachable (and necessary) option.

So, if you want to speed up the customer-team connection and are open to a radical move, remove the backlog crutch.

That’s it. Those are my 8 ways to bring customers and teams together for better outcomes.

I hope this helps you to do more with less while respecting people and delighting customers.

Ditch the backlog for your customer.

TL;DR

I’ve seen 8 common limiting beliefs stand in the way of the customer-team connection. And I’ve also had success helping organizations overcome them. Here they are.

Limiting Belief 1: Product team members couldn’t care less about the customer.

Overcome by trying the customer-team connection; be amazed.

Limiting Belief 2: Product teams need to stay focused on the work.

Overcome by making space for customer engagement to reach goals sooner.

Limiting Belief 3: A product manager should perform discovery.

Overcome with product manager matchmakers.

Limiting Belief 4: The product team can’t connect from a different time zone.

Overcome by getting creative on remote customer interactions across time-zones.