Every day, I challenge my teams to make one small, meaningful improvement—something so lightweight it’s impossible to ignore and easy to repeat. That tiny daily motion compounds, and over time it reshapes customer experience, operational quality, and team culture.
That’s the essence of Kaizen, the Japanese philosophy of continuous improvement. Developed in post-war Japan and popularized by companies like Toyota, Kaizen proves that small, steady changes lead to significant long-term results. In product management and customer support, this approach transforms big ambitions into daily behaviors that actually stick.
Crucially, Kaizen isn’t passive or unstructured. It thrives on three principles I reinforce across my org. First, small changes reduce resistance—when you lower the activation energy, teams move faster. Second, improvement is continuous, not occasional; instead of waiting for quarterly reviews or major releases, you ask: “What can we improve right now?” Third, everyone participates—the people closest to the work are best positioned to improve it. That’s how momentum spreads.
In practice, the cycle is simple: identify a small problem, test the change, measure the result, refine, and repeat. The point isn’t radical transformation in a single swing; it’s steady progress guided by data and observation—a rhythm that aligns beautifully with eval-driven development and continuous discovery.
At Intercom, we apply this same philosophy to how we manage our Agent Fin through a process we call the “Fin Flywheel”. Here’s how this works.
Train: Teach Fin how to handle and resolve the most complex customer queries.
Test: Run fully simulated customer conversations from start to finish to see exactly how Fin will behave before going live.
Deploy: Launch Fin across all channels so customers get consistent support wherever they reach out.
Analyze: Use AI-powered insights to review and improve Fin’s performance so it can deliver better customer experiences.
This isn’t a one-time setup; it’s a continuous loop where every interaction feeds ongoing improvement. Rather than deploying AI and assuming it will perform as expected, improvement is built into the system itself. The more Fin is used, the better it gets. That’s the hallmark of agentic AI done right—tight feedback loops, purposeful conversation design, and clear Agent Analytics that illuminate what to tune next.
But continuous improvement doesn’t stop with AI. Within our Human Support operations, I emphasize the same mindset that drives great LLMs for product managers: you instrument the experience, learn from real usage, and close gaps fast. We operate with a simple mindset: the first time that you solve a customer issue should be the last time it happens.
When a conversation reaches a human, we pause to diagnose and prevent recurrence. Why did this reach me? Why couldn’t Fin resolve it? How can we prevent this from happening again? Those questions anchor a culture of root-cause thinking and accelerate product-led growth by removing friction at the source.
To make this effortless, we’ve built a lightweight, AI-powered way to log suggestions in the moment—no long explanations or heavy admin required. Ideas are reviewed quickly and implemented by subject matter experts or by the team themselves. This keeps the flywheel spinning: insights flow in, fixes go out, and measurable outcomes improve.
The result is a frontline that evolves from reactive problem-solvers into a proactive improvement engine. The people closest to customers spot friction, suggest fixes, and see their insights shaped into meaningful change. It’s continuous discovery embedded in everyday work, not a side project.
Kaizen demonstrates that lasting progress doesn’t come from occasional transformation; it comes from intentional, everyday refinement. The “Fin Flywheel” applies that philosophy to AI. Our Human Support continuous improvement process applies it to human insights. Together, they create a shared system where both people and AI learn continuously from customer interactions.
When improvement is built into the mechanics of how you work, it stops being a one-off project and becomes an ingrained capability. Over time, those small daily improvements don’t just add up—they compound into a sustainable, data-driven advantage that elevates customer experience and differentiates your customer support ai strategy.
“Outcomes over outputs” is the right mantra—and one I’ve championed across product teams—but turning it into daily practice is where most teams stumble.
It’s simple in theory: focus on the impact of what we build, not just shipping features. In reality, it’s rarely black and white because most teams are asked to do both—hit outcomes and deliver specific outputs—at the same time.
In a benchmark survey, 20% of product teams claim to be outcome-focused, nearly half describe themselves as working in a mix of outcomes and outputs, and about 30% are still primarily working with outputs. I’ve seen versions of this in my own org: we aspire to outcomes, but our rituals, roadmaps, and reporting still reward shipping.
Here’s how I draw the line clearly, coach my teams to avoid common traps, and negotiate better, more actionable outcomes that unlock genuine product discovery and business results.
Simple definitions we live by
An output is something you build or produce—a feature, a project, an initiative. It’s something your team ships.
An outcome is the impact of that output—a change in customer behavior or a business result.
Josh Seiden puts it well in his book Outcomes Over Output: “An outcome is a change in human behavior that drives business results.”
Shift from shipping to shaping results. This graphic clarifies outputs vs outcomes, revealing that value emerges between deliverables and impact—when features change customer behavior and move business results.
I distinguish business outcomes from product outcomes. Business outcomes are typically financial metrics that measure the health of the business (e.g. increase revenue or reduce costs) while product outcomes measure a customer behavior in the product or a sentiment about the product.
Here’s a simple example I’ve used with platform teams. Many B2B companies support a number of integrations. Integrations are outputs. Having integrations alone doesn’t create value. Customers using and finding value in those integrations—that’s an outcome. If those customers retain their subscriptions longer because of the integrations—that’s also an outcome.
Building something isn’t the same as creating value. That’s the core of this distinction, and it’s what separates empowered product teams from feature factories.
Why this distinction matters for empowered product teams
When we task teams with delivering outputs, they’re done when the software ships. When we task teams with delivering outcomes, they aren’t done until the software ships and has the expected impact.
That small shift changes almost everything about how a team works: what we measure (impact, not just delivery), how we know we’re done (measurable behavior change, not release notes), the autonomy we grant (told what to achieve, not what to build), and the planning artifacts we use (an opportunity solution tree beats a feature roadmap when we’re exploring the best path to an outcome).
When I assign outcomes, I’m giving the team latitude—and responsibility—to figure out the best path to success. That’s what opens the door for real product discovery and continuous discovery habits.
Shift your lens from shipping features to achieving impact. This side-by-side visual explains how outcome-driven teams measure success, grant more autonomy, define 'done' by results, and plan with an opportunity solution tree.
Examples: spotting outputs disguised as outcomes
Clear-cut example: “Our outcome is to deliver an Android app.” An Android app is something we build and ship. It’s clearly an output.
To get to an outcome, I ask, “What’s the value of having an Android app?” or “How will we know the Android app is successful?”
We might answer: “Having an Android app will allow us to engage more users. We’ll know it’s successful when people engage with the app on a regular basis.”
This answer uncovers the hidden outcome: engage more people. Now we can set the right scope: increase the percentage of engaged users across any platform; increase the percentage of engaged mobile users; or increase the percentage of engaged Android users.
Any of these outcomes gives us more room to explore than a fixed output. Maybe we don’t need a native app at all. We could deliver the same engagement through a mobile web experience, notifications, or email. And we’re not done when we ship—we’re done when the right people are actually engaged.
Tricky example 1: measure the value creation moment (hires, not applicants)
Move beyond shipping features to the impact that matters. This visual maps the path from build an Android app to the real goal, increase engaged users, by asking why, defining value, and owning results.
When setting outcomes, it’s tempting to choose the easiest-to-measure metric. But a good outcome measures the customer’s value creation moment.
I worked at a company that helped new college grads find their first job. When I started working there, the primary outcome was “increase job applications.” This technically is an outcome—it measures a specific behavior in the product.
But it doesn’t measure the value creation moment. A job seeker doesn’t get value when they apply for a job. They only get value when they get the job. Similarly, employers don’t get value from any job applicant, they get value when the right job applicant applies.
Many job boards try to measure qualified applicants—instead of counting any applicant, they compare the credentials of the applicant to the job description and only count qualified applicants. This is better. But it still doesn’t measure the value creation moment. Both the job seeker and the employer get value when an open job is successfully filled. The right metric is hires.
Yes, “hires” can be hard to instrument because it happens off-platform and incentives misalign. Measure it anyway, even with proxies. The easy metric isn’t always the right outcome.
Tricky example 2: measure impact, not user-generated output (the course reviews trap)
I worked with a team that helped students choose university courses. They set their outcome as: “Increase the number of course reviews on our platform.”
Confusing activity with impact? This visual breaks down four common outcome traps—measuring at the wrong moment, mistaking outputs, chasing adoption, and relying on sentiment—so teams focus on real value.
Sounds like an outcome, right? It’s a metric. You can measure it. It’s an action users take on the site—writing a review. But it’s actually an output in disguise.
Reviews are valuable when they help a student evaluate a course. They don’t create any value if a student never sees them. More reviews aren’t always better, especially if they’re clustered where nobody looks.
A better outcome is “Increase the number of course views that include reviews.” Now we’re measuring impact on the decision moment, not just the production of content.
If you can hit your metric without helping customers, you’re tracking an output, not an outcome.
Tricky example 3: measure success, not just adoption (the traction metric trap)
“Increase the percentage of users who viewed the performance report.”
This looks like a good outcome. It measures a specific behavior in the product. It’s within the team’s control. But it’s what I call a traction metric—it measures adoption of a single feature, not value to the customer.
Why teams get trapped in shipping features: a vicious trust cycle fuels micromanagement, while performance-linked outcomes push safe targets. Break the loop and refocus on customer outcomes that truly move the needle.
Two problems arise. First, people can view the report and still not find what they need. Second, we might have perfectly happy customers who don’t need the report at all. Driving usage of an unneeded feature wastes time and erodes trust.
Measure the value creation moment, not just feature adoption.
Tricky example 4: pair sentiment with behavior
I define a product outcome as a metric that measures either 1. a specific behavior in the product or 2. a sentiment about the product. But sentiment metrics—like CSAT or NPS—can be tricky on their own.
Sentiment metrics are outcomes, but they aren’t directional. They don’t tell us where to explore or set guardrails for what to avoid. So I pair a behavior with a sentiment, for example: “Increase engagement without negatively impacting satisfaction.” I use sentiment as a counterweight.
Facebook and Instagram illustrate why this matters. Meta is exceptional at driving engagement—but to a fault. Many of us don’t like these addictive products. Pairing engagement with a satisfaction guardrail prevents “engagement at all costs.”
Why getting this right is hard (and how I counter it)
Ready to move from shipping features to creating impact? This visual playbook shares five practical moves—translate metrics, partner with teams, iterate, avoid traps, and dig deeper—to turn outputs into measurable outcomes.
The trust cycle. Managers don’t trust that teams can reach outcomes on their own. So managers micromanage the outputs. Teams, in turn, don’t communicate their progress toward outcomes—they communicate their progress on features. This reinforces the manager’s belief that they need to stay involved in the details. It’s a vicious cycle.
I break it by asking teams to show their work—share assumptions, research, opportunity solution trees, and evidence behind choices—and by giving feedback on the thinking, not just the solutions.
The accountability trap. When performance reviews are tied to hitting outcomes, teams play it safe. They sandbag their targets. They disguise outputs as outcomes to guarantee “success.”
I treat outcomes as learning opportunities first. When we start on a new outcome, I set a learning goal—“learn what moves the needle on this metric”—before a performance goal—“increase X by Y%.” This creates space to explore without fear.
How I get teams started with better outcomes
Translate business outcomes to product outcomes. Business outcomes like revenue, retention, and market share are lagging indicators—by the time you see them, it’s too late to act. Product outcomes measure behavior changes within the product that lead to those business results. They’re leading indicators within the team’s control.
Negotiate outcomes with your team. Outcome-setting should be a two-way conversation. Leadership brings the cross-company context. The team brings customer insight and technical realities. Neither side dictates; we co-own the target and the constraints.
Stop celebrating shipped features and start celebrating change. This visual contrasts a feature factory mindset with a true product team, urging teams to track impact, not output, and define success by outcomes.
Expect to iterate on your metrics. Your first outcome metric probably won’t be right. That’s normal. Sonja at tails.com went through four iterations—from 90-day retention to 30-day to 5-day to behavior-based metrics—before landing on something actionable. Thomas at Bluestone Analytics iterated three or four times before finding the right metric. Iteration is the work.
Watch for common mistakes. Outputs disguised as outcomes. Traction metrics masquerading as product outcomes. Sentiment metrics without direction. Business outcomes assigned directly to product teams without translating to behavior change.
Use the right artifacts. Replace feature roadmaps with an opportunity solution tree to explore multiple paths, test assumptions, and sequence bets explicitly against a clear outcome.
Align OKRs with outcomes. If your company uses OKRs, make sure the “KR”s are true product outcomes (behavior change and value creation), not a list of features to ship.
The bottom line
When we shift from an output-first mindset to an outcome-first mindset, it doesn’t mean that outputs stop mattering. Product teams will always ship features, and the ability to do so quickly and with quality still matters. This shift simply ensures those features achieve the intended impact. We aren’t done when we ship—we’re done when what we shipped has the intended impact.
Measure success by the impact of what you ship and you’ll build a product team that learns, adapts, and creates real value. Measure success by what you ship and you’ll get a feature factory.
Quick self-check: is your “outcome” really an outcome?
Ask yourself: 1) Does it measure a behavior change or a sentiment tied to value creation? 2) Could we hit it without helping customers? 3) Is it adoption of a single feature (a traction metric) or a result that customers and the business care about? 4) Do we have a counter-metric to prevent unintended harm? If you stumble on any of these, refine it before you commit.
The world can feel like it’s spinning, and as a product leader, I feel that pressure acutely—juggling customer needs, stakeholder expectations, and the relentless news cycle. I recently listened to a powerful conversation with Teresa Torres and Petra Wille about staying grounded when everything feels “bonkers,” and it offered a practical, human way to keep showing up without losing yourself.
What resonated most was the invitation to live my values through small, consistent actions. Rather than waiting for grand gestures or perfect solutions, I’m leaning into the mindset of “Something is better than nothing.” It’s the same spirit we bring to continuous improvement in product: make a change, evaluate impact, iterate.
“Create the world you want to live in” has become a daily prompt for me. I’m applying it to how I spend my attention, time, and platform—three scarce resources for any product management leader. I’m not going to do everything perfectly, but I can make better trade-offs this week than I did last week, and I can keep improving.
Practically, that looks like reconsidering which speaking invites I accept, especially when representation is skewed. If a stage is heavily male, I now ask organizers about their plan for balance before committing. I also question travel expectations for short talks when a high-quality virtual experience is possible—good for sustainability, budgets, and energy. These choices compound, just like product roadmapping and sprint planning decisions.
Petra’s “under-complexity” lens was a wake-up call. In product, oversimplified narratives—whether a single KPI, a vanity metric, or a forced binary—usually increase fear and bad decisions. The same is true in civic discourse. To counter that, I’m seeking more nuance on purpose: reading multiple sources on the same story, listening for who’s not in the room, and noticing how the same facts can carry different meanings depending on who’s telling it.
One simple habit helps: I’ll read The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal on a headline, then follow up with Tangle by Isaac Saul, which lays out “what the left says / what the right says / editor’s take,” sometimes including perspectives from affected communities. It’s a lightweight form of personal knowledge management that improves my product judgment and my citizenship.
Another idea that stuck with me is swapping media proxies for human connection. In product, we don’t ship based on secondhand opinions—we run customer interviews, co-create with users, and build empowered product teams. The same principle applies in community: talk to someone directly affected, ask real questions, and stay curious. When conversations get heated, I try to build bridges, reduce proxies, and look people in the eye.
I’m also reflecting on platform responsibility. Even a “small” platform can snowball through weak ties inside a company or community. I’m asking: When should I speak up? Where should I draw lines? And when is “staying in your lane” actually a way to avoid necessary leadership? These are the same stakeholder management questions we navigate in product strategy—assess impact, clarify intent, and act with integrity.
Local grounding matters, too. I’ve found energy and clarity in community-level action: voting, attending public protests when it feels right, mentoring, and supporting nonprofits like World Pulse. I love the framing of “don’t mess with my neighbors”—it keeps me focused on tangible care when the internet starts to feel like reality. I’ve also seen leaders use angel investing in agriculture-related efforts as a counterbalance to “internet reality,” channeling resources into durable, real-world outcomes.
If you want to experiment this week, pick one small lever you control: where you spend money, time, attention, or your platform. Add nuance by reading at least two different perspectives before reacting. Replace proxies with people by talking to someone with lived experience. Reduce polarization by asking, “what shaped that view?” before judging it. And go local—connect with neighbors or a community group and let small actions compound.
If you’d like to hear the full conversation that inspired these reflections, you can listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Here are the direct links: Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/1sxEFquu73ZB9fL9gGk6Om and Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/kh/podcast/staying-sane/id1794203808?i=1000755696295
Resources I’m exploring and recommend: World Pulse (https://www.worldpulse.org/), The New York Times (https://www.nytimes.com/), The Wall Street Journal (https://www.wsj.com/), and Tangle by Isaac Saul (https://www.readtangle.com/ and https://www.readtangle.com/author/isaac-saul/). For builders and writers, I also appreciate Ghost (https://ghost.org/) as an open-source publishing platform. If you work in or with the MENA ecosystem, take a look at MENA Product Summit ’26 (https://www.prdkt.plus/summit26). Colleagues like Jeff Merrell (https://jeffdmerrell.com/) and grassroots efforts such as No Kings Protest (https://www.nokings.org/) offer additional perspectives and ways to get involved.
If this resonates, share it with a teammate who’s been feeling the weight of the world. I’d love to hear one small, values-aligned action you’re taking this month—what “something” will you try next?
I build products with a simple mantra: launch, learn, repeat. Shipping fast is necessary, but shipping smart is what compounds. To do that, I keep analytics close to the work—inside the builder—so every decision is tied to real user behavior, not assumptions.
Connect Amplitude MCP to Lovable to understand user behavior, spot frictions, and ship better updates without leaving your builder.
In practice, this integration lets me bring Amplitude analytics and behavioral analytics directly into the creative flow. I can explore funnels, cohorts, and drop‑offs the moment I’m crafting an experience, then translate those insights into concrete changes without context switching. The result is tighter feedback loops and more confident iteration.
My typical loop looks like this: identify a friction point from funnel analysis, design two or three variants in the builder, and run A/B testing to validate the improvement. I focus on user activation and retention analysis as leading signals, because sustained engagement is the clearest indicator that we’ve solved a real problem. When the data confirms it, we promote the winning experience and move to the next opportunity.
Keeping the work inside the builder also supports continuous discovery. I can pair quantitative insights with qualitative observations, refine journey mapping, and document learnings while the context is fresh. That makes prioritization and product discovery more reliable, and it turns each iteration into a teachable moment for the team.
Strategically, this builder‑first approach enables product-led growth. With fewer handoffs and a unified analytics platform, we compress time from insight to impact. It helps me defend roadmap decisions with evidence, communicate trade‑offs clearly, and keep the team focused on outcomes that matter to customers and the business.
If your goal is to iterate with speed and precision, bring analytics to where you build. Keep the loop tight, measure what moves the needle, and let the data guide your next best update.
Inspired by this post on Amplitude – Best Practices.
I’m often asked how to translate early-stage experience into outsized product impact at scale. In my own practice, I study real career arcs that crystallize the habits of high-leverage product managers—especially those operating at the intersection of analytics and AI strategy.
Consider this path: Lucas is a Product Manager at Amplitude. Previously, he was employee #1 at Command AI, acquired by Amplitude in October 2024. Lucas studied computer science at Princeton.
What stands out to me is the compounding effect of being an early builder. When you are employee #1, you live close to the user problem, own outcomes end-to-end, and develop a bias toward focused, continuous discovery. That foundation creates durable instincts around product strategy, sharp prioritization, and empowered product teams—skills that transfer directly to later-stage environments where clarity and speed become competitive advantages.
Acquisition integration is where those instincts meet enterprise rigor. Folding Command AI into a unified analytics platform like Amplitude requires disciplined product roadmapping and sprint planning, precise stakeholder management, and a strong POV on where AI augments core “Amplitude analytics” versus where it creates net-new value. The north star remains unchanged: deliver measurable customer outcomes that strengthen product-led growth and reduce time-to-value.
On the AI front, I’ve seen the most successful PMs treat gen ai and LLMs for product managers as means, not ends. They anchor use cases to concrete analytics workflows—accelerating insight generation, surfacing anomaly detection, improving retention analysis, and driving user activation—while validating each step through continuous discovery and rigorous experiment design. This balance of ambition and evidence protects teams from shiny-object drift and keeps investment tethered to business impact.
Execution-wise, the playbook is straightforward but unforgiving: clarify the problem through customer interviews; define crisp outcomes vs output OKRs; map the journey end-to-end; ship in thin slices; and iterate with observability baked into every release. Along the way, keep your cross-functional partners close—solutions engineering, customer success, and GTM—so that your learning loops extend beyond the product surface and into real adoption dynamics.
If you’re building analytics or AI-powered experiences today, borrow these lessons: translate early-stage builder energy into enterprise-scale focus; make AI serve the product, not the other way around; and use Amplitude analytics to close the loop from idea to impact. That is how PMs compound credibility, accelerate careers, and, most importantly, create products customers can’t live without.
Inspired by this post on Amplitude – Best Practices.
Can an AI agent actually run a credible content audit end to end? I put that to the test. In my role leading product at a high-growth SaaS and as a hands-on content strategist, I’m constantly balancing depth with reach. During a recent office-hours discussion, someone asked me to zoom out and explain when to use Claude Code. That prompt inspired me to launch a running series—Conversations with Claude—showing exactly how I apply it to real product management and SEO problems.
I’m a heavy user and share what works for me. I receive no compensation from Anthropic for this series; if that ever changes, I’ll disclose it. With that out of the way, let’s dive into how I had Claude conduct a full content audit—and why the results exceeded my expectations.
For the first installment, I chose a fairly complex use case: a comprehensive content audit of my site. I expected this to be a slog. Instead, it was refreshingly fast and rigorous once I set Claude up with the right scaffolding.
I kicked off with a simple directive: start by asking clarifying questions, proceed step by step, and capture notes in a shared task file. I also provided deep context—specifically, the CDH Book (15 chapters + intro) and my entire blog archive in markdown—so the model could reason with my actual corpus rather than guessing from sparse prompts.
Claude began with smart clarifying questions that framed the analysis well. Scope of keywords: Should it focus strictly on concepts unique to or heavily associated with my work like "opportunity solution tree" and "continuous discovery," or also include broader product management terms such as "product outcomes," "assumption testing," and "customer interviewing"? Keyword geography: Start with US-only or include UK/global? Blog coverage assessment: What counts as "well covered"—dedicated deep dives or credible coverage within broader posts? Output format: Add findings to the task file or create a separate deliverable?
Peek inside a Notion-style page that turns content strategy into action: a content-audit task with due date and tags, plus clear steps for keyword research, blog gap analysis, and SEO improvements.
I replied: 1. both 2. us only is a good place to start 3. evaluate this based on how well we rank for the keyword, if we rank reasonably well, you might suggest content improvements to rank better, if we don't rank at all, then you might suggest a whole new article 4. add to the task file
From there, Claude read the CDH Book, extracted roughly 100 keywords, ran them through Keywords Everywhere in two batches of 50 to capture search volume, and pulled current domain rankings and traffic metrics. Within minutes, I had a high-signal view of what’s working, where we’re invisible, and how to prioritize fixes.
The good news came first: we own our branded terms—#1 for "product discovery," "opportunity solution tree," "continuous discovery," and "product trio." That brand equity is doing real work for us.
The biggest gaps were in broad topics the CDH Book covers but where there’s no targeted content. "Outcomes vs outputs" (1,300/mo) — Arguably THE central thesis of CDH, and no ranking. This is the single biggest gap. "Product roadmap" (4,400/mo) — I have a strong anti-roadmap POV but no content targeting this. "Product strategy" (1,900/mo) — Ch 7 argues strategy = opportunity selection. Strong differentiator, no ranking. "Story mapping" (5,400/mo) — I use story maps uniquely (for surfacing assumptions). Huge volume. "Stakeholder management" (2,900/mo) — Ch 13 is entirely about this. No ranking. "Pre-mortem" (4,400/mo) — I cover this as a product discovery technique. No ranking.
Inside a dark-themed writing workspace, a long-form chapter is open while a tidy folder tree catalogs pages and chapters. The scene invites readers to think like auditors—inventory content, track structure, and surface gaps with AI assistance.
The trojan horse opportunity: High-volume generic terms like story mapping, pre-mortem, and usability testing could bring in readers who don't know about CDH yet. Write about these broadly-searched topics with my specific product-discovery angle.
In just a few minutes, Claude generated an analysis of what keywords we ranked for and at what position, a ranked set of high-, medium-, and lower-volume (but strategic) keywords where we didn’t rank yet had relevant content, concrete net-new topics to close the gaps, and a list of existing articles to update to lift their SERP positions. It worked far better than I expected.
Here’s how I set it up so the model could deliver: I didn’t simply ask Claude.ai to "audit my site" and hope for the best. I supplied rich, relevant context (my book and all blog posts as markdown) so it could anchor on my language, frameworks, and mental models. I paired that with live data via APIs like Keywords Everywhere to ground recommendations in actual search volume and competitive rankings. With the right inputs, Claude Code behaved like a capable research analyst and an SEO strategist—able to reason, prioritize, and suggest high-leverage actions.
Next, I went deeper and used the findings to draft a long-form article that addresses the biggest gap—"Outcomes vs outputs"—and ties it directly to product roadmapping and sprint planning. I wove in continuous discovery practices, opportunity solution tree techniques, and product trios collaboration to make it actionable for empowered product teams. I’ll share the end-to-end workflow—including files, prompts, and the editorial QA checklist—in a follow-up.
If you’re new to Claude Code and want a practical starting point, replicate the setup above: assemble your canonical sources in markdown, define a clear evaluation rubric, and ground keyword research with reliable volume data. If you want my exact task file, clarifying-question template, and step-by-step audit rubric, tell me which content gap you’d prioritize first and why—I’ll tailor the walkthrough to the highest-interest topic.
There’s a moment in every product leader’s career when the bravest decision isn’t to build—it’s to stop. That’s why the “Kill Your Darlings” theme resonated so strongly with me. In this episode of All Things Product, Teresa Torres and Petra Wille dig into the courage and craft it takes to sunset products that look successful on the surface yet quietly block your path to meaningful growth. As someone accountable for portfolio outcomes, I’ve learned that disciplined endings are often the catalyst for exceptional beginnings.
Listen to this episode on: Spotify | Apple Podcasts
The heart of the conversation is that uncomfortable middle ground between obvious failure and runaway success: products that are profitable, loved by customers, but fundamentally flatlining. Teresa shares candid stories from her own business, including a decision to cut 40% of revenue on purpose. I’ve been there—choosing to retire a “working… kind of” product to free up discovery capacity felt risky in the moment, but it created the focus we needed for durable growth.
Here’s the trap: some traction can be more dangerous than no traction at all. Early fans are not the same as durable product–market fit, and “stable but not growing” can lull leaders into maintaining instead of learning. Every hour of design, engineering, and go-to-market attention that props up a flatlining product is an hour not invested in the next breakthrough—an opportunity cost that rarely shows up on a dashboard, yet compounds month after month.
From a portfolio perspective, this is continuous discovery in action. If we want empowered product teams to tackle meaningful outcomes, we have to protect their capacity from zombie work. That means setting clear thresholds for when we double down, shift strategies, or sunset—before attachment and inertia take over. When I’ve institutionalized this discipline, our throughput of high-quality bets increased, and our confidence in what not to do became a strategic advantage.
Organization design can make sunsetting harder than it needs to be. Dedicated, long-lived teams are fantastic for compounding capability, but they also create emotional and structural ties to specific products. Petra’s point lands: leaders need explicit sunsetting conversations and a portfolio decision-making cadence that sits one level above teams. In my org, we treat sunsetting as a strategic reallocation—not a verdict on a team’s talent—so people are celebrated for learning, not punished for outcomes outside their control.
Killing profitable products can be the right strategic move when the growth ceiling is clear and the opportunity cost is high. I’ve chosen to “burn the ships (on purpose)” more than once—retiring add-ons that generated reliable revenue but diluted our value proposition and spread discovery thin. Yes, it stings in the quarter you do it. But it’s astonishing how quickly focus restores momentum when you create intentional space for what’s next.
Practically speaking, I make sunsetting easier and less traumatic by operationalizing it: Regular portfolio reviews focused on outcomes and opportunity cost; a visible “sunsetting” column so everyone sees what’s on the table; the Horizon (H1 / H2 / H3) model to balance core, adjacent, and transformational bets; and making portfolio decisions one level above teams to avoid local optimizations. Add explicit exit criteria and success metrics for endings, the same way we set entry criteria for new bets.
Another theme I appreciated is designing for the right customers. Teresa highlights intentionally limiting access and pricing to work with customers who show agency and commitment. I’ve applied the same principle: when we’re clear about who we serve and who we don’t, our product–market signal sharpens, churn narratives simplify, and roadmaps get crisper. Focus is a growth strategy.
If you’re leading a product portfolio, running discovery, or wrestling with a product that “works… kind of,” this conversation is permission to act. Product–market fit isn’t binary, and mediocre success can be the most dangerous place to stay. Sunsetting is a portfolio decision, not a team failure; teams shouldn’t be punished for reaching the end of a product’s natural lifecycle. If experimentation isn’t in your DNA, killing products will always feel traumatic—so make space for it intentionally, not passively.
Key moments and themes worth bookmarking: 00:00 – Why “kill your darlings” matters; 04:30 – The dangerous middle ground; 09:30 – The opportunity cost of “okay” products; 14:30 – Sunsetting in product organizations; 19:00 – Real examples of killing revenue streams; 28:00 – Designing for the right customers; 33:30 – Burn the ships (on purpose); 38:00 – Making sunsetting easier with Regular portfolio reviews, a visible “sunsetting” column, the Horizon (H1 / H2 / H3) model, and making portfolio decisions one level above teams; 46:00 – Normalizing product lifecycles.
Resources & Links:
Follow Teresa Torres: https://ProductTalk.org
Follow Petra Wille: https://Petra-Wille.com
Mentioned in this episode:
Ways to Work with Petra Wille
Product at Heart
CDH Membership by Teresa Torres
Product Talk by Teresa
Product Talk Academy by Teresa
Enduring Ideas: The three horizons of growth
Join the Conversation:
Have thoughts on this episode? Leave a comment below.
Full Transcript
Full transcripts are only available for paid subscribers.
Most MVPs take too long, cost too much, and still miss the mark. Over the past year, I’ve shifted my team to a prototyping prompts approach that lets us validate problem-solution fit in days, not months. The result is faster learning loops, clearer tradeoffs, and a dramatically higher hit rate on features that actually move the needle.
When I say prototyping prompts, I mean structured, layered instructions that guide gen ai systems to produce the right artifacts at the right fidelity. Instead of jumping straight to code, we generate concise problem briefs, user stories, interaction flows, low-fidelity UI descriptions, and test plans. Each pass is constrained by acceptance criteria and business outcomes, which keeps the work grounded in value rather than output.
Here’s the playbook my product trios use to go from idea to a testable MVP in 48–72 hours. First, we anchor on outcomes vs output OKRs and clarify the customer job-to-be-done using evidence from customer interviews and support data. This is classic continuous discovery, but we compress it by focusing on the single riskiest assumption to de-risk this week.
Second, we build a prompt scaffold. We specify the role, constraints, target users, success metrics, and the exact output format we expect. We also define evaluation upfront, borrowing from eval-driven development. For example, before any generation, we list the acceptance tests that a good solution must pass, including edge cases and compliance considerations. This discipline keeps hallucinations in check and improves repeatability.
Third, we spin up multiple prototypes in parallel. One prompt generates a lean product brief; another outlines user flows; a third proposes UI states and error handling. If we’re exploring voice, we add prompt engineering for voice to script dialogs and repair strategies. For data-heavy features, we call out retrieval-first pipeline patterns so the model references source-of-truth data rather than guessing.
Fourth, we validate with real users using the lightest-weight experiment possible. Fake-door tests, concierge workflows, and guided click-throughs let us measure intent before we invest. Where we can, we run quick A/B testing and size the effort using minimum detectable effect (MDE) so we don’t over- or under-sample. The point isn’t perfection; it’s fast, directional signal to inform the next iteration.
Fifth, we instrument and ship behind feature flags. We track activation, task completion, and time-to-value from day one. On the delivery side, we watch DORA metrics and deployment frequency to ensure we’re learning continuously rather than batching big bets. This bridges discovery and delivery so roadmaps reflect real-world feedback, not assumptions.
One recent example: we needed to evaluate a voice AI agent for appointment scheduling. In 72 hours, prompts produced the problem brief, dialog flows, error recovery strategies, and a sandbox to simulate inbound requests across three user personas. We exposed a thin slice to a pilot cohort, captured call outcomes, and iterated the repair prompts twice before writing any production code. The pilot converted at a higher rate than our control flow and gave us the confidence to invest in full integration.
This approach only works if we treat governance as a first-class concern. We bake in privacy-by-design, clear data governance boundaries, and AI risk management from the start. Prompts include guardrails on personally identifiable information, explicit constraints on data use, and links to approved sources. We also maintain a prompt repository with versioning and automated evaluations so changes are observable and reversible.
Practically, strong prompt scaffolds share three traits. They’re specific about context and constraints, they define success in measurable terms, and they separate concerns by artifact type. I’ll often ask for three variants with different tradeoffs, then run a quick synthesis prompt that highlights points of parity and differentiation. This gives the team structured options rather than a single, brittle path.
If you’re starting from zero, begin with one high-leverage workflow. Write a crisp outcome statement, draft your acceptance tests, and create a prompt that outputs a one-page brief, three user flows, and the top five risks with mitigations. Validate with five users in 48 hours, then decide: double down, pivot, or park. Rinse and repeat, and your product roadmapping and sprint planning will shift from speculation to evidence.
The bottom line is simple. Prototyping prompts won’t replace product judgment, but they will accelerate it. By turning ideas into testable artifacts in hours, you minimize waste, maximize learning, and ship better MVPs—fast.
"What if an AI could spot the moment two product teams start pulling in opposite directions — before it derails a quarter?" That question hooked me, because I’ve lived through the costly fallout of subtle misalignments that only surface at the end of a sprint—or worse, during quarterly business reviews.
I recently dug into an episode of Just Now Possible featuring Matthias and Charlotte Kleverud, co-founders of Momental. Their vision for "GitHub for product management" hits a nerve in the best possible way: find "merge conflicts" in strategy, not code, and do it early enough to save execution time, trust, and outcomes.
Here’s the core: Momental ingests documents, meeting transcripts, and voice recordings across an organization, then uses AI agents to map them into a structured context layer—a set of interconnected trees covering goals, decisions, learnings, and who's doing what. When it finds a conflict—say, one team betting on retention while another is prioritizing conversion—it surfaces the misalignment for humans to resolve, just like a merge conflict in code. That framing is both familiar (for anyone who’s shipped software) and powerful (for anyone who’s scaled product strategy across multiple teams).
Their journey tracks with what many of us have learned the hard way. "Starting in 2022 with DaVinci 002 and learning that the market wasn't ready for AI-assisted product thinking" pushed them toward experiments with agent teams. "The origin story: building a team of AI agents in 2024, only to discover agents hit the same alignment problems as humans" is exactly the kind of meta-lesson I’d expect when you scale autonomy without shared context. The breakthrough was an "OODA-loop-driven document processing agent" that continuously curates a living knowledge graph rather than relying on static prompts or brittle pipelines.
One model that stood out was "The product chain: signals → learnings → decisions → principles, and how AI maps it." That is the backbone of healthy product thinking. When this chain is explicit and inspectable, you can trace why a team chose Path A over Path B—and detect when new signals should invalidate old decisions. I’ve seen this accelerate continuous discovery and improve executive decision hygiene.
I also appreciated the organizational modeling: "Three trees that model an organization: the product tree (OKRs to epics), the wisdom tree (decisions and their reasoning), and the people/time tree." This maps cleanly to how we run quarterly planning at scale—tying outcomes to work, preserving rationale, and grounding ownership and timelines. With that structure, "How conflicts are detected, auto-resolved, or escalated to humans with merge options" becomes a pragmatic workflow, not a theoretical AI demo.
On the technical front, they’re blunt about limits: "Why traditional chunking and RAG breaks down at scale and what Momental does instead." Anyone who’s tried to stitch strategy from ad hoc notes knows that naive retrieval won’t cut it. You need durable context boundaries, rich metadata, and graph-aware reasoning. Which brings me to one of my non-negotiables: "Why metadata—who said it, when, and in what context—is critical to preventing hallucinations." In my world, we treat provenance like test coverage—you can’t ship without it.
Process-wise, the product philosophy resonated: "How a document processing agent uses OODA-loop thinking to extract and connect context across documents" reinforces the need for short feedback cycles, explicit hypotheses, and continuous refactoring of knowledge. Pair that with "The self-improving agent: collecting user feedback weekly and rewriting its own prompts" and you’ve got a blueprint for eval-driven development that keeps the system honest over time.
Their UI choices also mirror a pattern I’ve adopted: "Moving from chat-first to UI-first to proactive agents as an AI product design pattern." Chat can feel magical, but alignment work benefits from concrete artifacts—trees, timelines, driver trees, and opportunity solution trees—so people can reason together. Then, let proactive agents watch for drift and nudge teams before the cost of change spikes.
Two broader themes are worth calling out. First, "Specialized tools win" when the problem is deep, cross-functional context like product strategy. General-purpose chatbots struggle here; domain-specific models with strong information architecture have the edge. Second, product culture matters: "Discovery Versus Vibe Coding" is not just a catchy contrast—it’s a reminder that disciplined discovery beats intuition theater when stakes are high.
As for the roadmap, I’m encouraged by their "Design partner strategy and what's next for Momental's public launch." Early design partners are where you validate signal quality, precision of conflict detection, and the ergonomics of human-in-the-loop resolution. I’m especially curious how this intersects with LLMs for product managers, outcomes vs output OKRs, and product roadmapping and sprint planning in large portfolios.
Finally, a nod to the broader ecosystem. The conversation touched on "Claude Code" and a shift "Beyond documents and vectors" that many of us are living through—toward retrieval-first pipelines that respect context windows, stronger governance, and measurable improvements in decision quality. If you care about AI Strategy for empowered product teams, this is a space to watch—and to pilot.
Bottom line: If you’ve ever wished you could prevent strategy drift before it shows up in your dashboards, this "GitHub for product management" approach is worth your attention. Make the chain of signals, learnings, decisions, and principles explicit. Keep humans in the loop for the hard calls. And let proactive, agentic AI do what it does best: flag misalignments early, so your teams can move fast together.
I’m seeing the same pattern in product orgs everywhere—inside HighLevel and across my network: everyone is racing to add AI to the roadmap, and every stakeholder has a strong opinion about what to build next. Delivery has never been faster, which makes it dangerously easy to confuse speed with progress.
When we chase features without grounding in continuous discovery, we drift back into a feature factory. We ship more, but we ship the wrong things faster. The antidote is simple and hard at the same time: recommit to product discovery, validate with assumption testing, and let the evidence steer our AI Strategy—not the hype.
Of course, that only works if we can bring our stakeholders along. In the AI moment, it’s deceptively easy to get to a slick prototype and painfully hard to harden it for production. Early demos make almost any idea look promising. That’s precisely why stakeholder management must evolve from pitching solutions to showing our work.
In practice, stakeholder management is about alignment with the people who influence our product decisions—executives, sales, marketing, customer success, engineering leadership, and sometimes legal or finance. Some have veto power; others have input. Knowing who can block versus who can shape is crucial for where we spend our time. Even in empowered product trios, the best discovery can derail if we reveal only conclusions at the end.
I’ve tried every mapping framework—power-interest grids, RACI matrices—and they help. But the real challenge isn’t identifying stakeholders. It’s figuring out how to bring them along so that our product roadmapping and sprint planning decisions stick.
Identify who shapes your product decisions. This visual groups stakeholders into three tiers—those with veto power, key influencers, and audiences to inform—so teams can align, communicate, and reduce delivery risk.
Here’s the most common trap I see (and have fallen into): focusing stakeholder reviews on the roadmap, release plan, or prioritized backlog. That invites an opinion battle. And stakeholders have their own conclusions—usually shaped by the last customer call, a board meeting, or a market headline.
This is how the HiPPO dynamic gets created. HiPPO stands for the “Highest Paid Person’s Opinion,” and the saying goes, “The HiPPO always wins.” When we present conclusions without the journey, we set ourselves up to lose. In the gen ai rush, the chorus of “everyone is doing AI” makes that opinion even harder to counter.
So I don’t try to win opinion battles. I bring new information—fresh customer interviews, clear opportunity mapping, and results from assumption tests. The gap between what the market hypes and what customers actually need is often enormous. Our edge is evidence.
The strategy that consistently works for me is simple: show your work. If you’re practicing continuous discovery, your opportunity solution tree isn’t just a thinking tool—it’s your strongest stakeholder management asset. It helps you build confidence in your decisions, and it can help your stakeholders build the same confidence.
Avoid the stakeholder trap of selling conclusions. This visual shows how anchoring on solutions invites HiPPO battles—and how to shift the conversation by sharing discovery evidence, insights, and data.
Step 1 — Start with the outcome. I open every conversation by restating the shared goal and asking whether anything has changed. Anchoring on outcomes vs output OKRs reframes hot-button solution debates (like “we need an AI feature”) back to what will move the needle on the outcome we agreed to pursue.
Step 2 — Share the opportunity space. I show how we mapped customer needs, pain points, and desires. Then I ask, “What did we miss?” Stakeholders often surface opportunities we haven’t seen yet—signals from the field, market shifts, or partner feedback. I capture their input and commit to validating it in upcoming customer interviews.
Step 3 — Walk through prioritization. Using the tree’s structure, I explain why we prioritized one branch over another. Then I ask where they might have chosen differently. This turns debate into collaboration and lets me leverage their expertise without ceding the discovery framework.
Step 4 — Go deep on the target opportunity. Before we talk solutions, I make the customer’s problem vivid and real. Interview snapshots help stakeholders empathize and see what matters most. Once the opportunity is crisp, solution discussions become dramatically more objective.
Show your work, not just your conclusions. This infographic guides product teams through seven steps to build stakeholder confidence—align on outcomes, map opportunities, prioritize, test assumptions, and repeat.
Step 5 — Share solutions and invite theirs. I present our solution set and explicitly ask for additional ideas. If their suggestions diversify our set, we include them. Solution ideas are cheap; the opportunity is what matters. This is where product trios can benefit from leadership’s pattern recognition and industry context.
Step 6 — Share your assumption tests and results. I walk through our story maps, high-risk assumptions, and what we’ve learned so far. I invite stakeholders to add assumptions—this is where their knowledge shines. If we have data, we share it; if we’re pre-data, we share the plan to get it and ask for feedback.
Step 7 — Repeat. I don’t batch this into a big reveal. I keep a steady cadence and tailor depth to each audience: weekly for my manager, monthly highlights for marketing, and concise updates for executives. Continuous discovery pairs with continuous stakeholder management.
Showing your work doesn’t mean drowning people in detail. It means tailoring the signal to the audience. My rule of thumb is outcome, opportunity, solution, evidence—walk the lines of the tree at the right altitude for each stakeholder.
Show your work the right way for each stakeholder. Use a smart filter to turn discovery noise into clear signals—weekly journeys for your manager, focused monthly highlights for marketing, and a 30-second CEO pitch.
In a 30-second update with a CEO, it might sound like this:
“Our goal is to reduce time-to-first-value for new users. We’ve been interviewing customers and learned that onboarding is where most people get stuck—specifically, they don’t know which features to try first. We explored a few approaches and tested them. The most promising one is a guided setup flow that adapts based on the user’s role. In early tests, new users completed onboarding 40% faster.”
That pattern works across channels—Slack updates, monthly reviews, or quarterly planning. The format flexes, the structure doesn’t: outcome, opportunity, solution, evidence.
As you adopt this approach, watch for four anti-patterns that quietly erode trust.
Avoid the traps that erode stakeholder trust. This infographic guides product teams to show their work, welcome ideas, provide frequent updates, and prioritize results over ideology to build alignment and credibility.
Anti-pattern 1 — Telling instead of showing. The curse of knowledge makes our conclusions feel obvious to us and opaque to others. The fix: slow down, start at the top of the tree, walk the decisions, and let stakeholders reach the conclusion with you.
Anti-pattern 2 — Shooting down stakeholder ideas. As you build a library of validated assumptions, it’s easy to spot flaws in a suggestion and say “no” too quickly. Instead, place their idea within your discovery framework. If it maps to a different opportunity, say, “That idea has promise—we’ll consider it when we address that opportunity.” If it rests on risky assumptions, story map the idea together, list the assumptions, and share what you’ve already learned. People accept the evidence they help generate.
Anti-pattern 3 — Saving everything for a big reveal. Infrequent, comprehensive updates invite opinion battles because stakeholders have formed their own conclusions in the dark. Short, frequent updates build alignment as the work unfolds.
Anti-pattern 4 — Fighting the ideological war. Sometimes a more senior stakeholder will overrule you. Don’t turn it into a debate about how product decisions “should” be made. Focus on the decision at hand, do the best work within constraints, and let results—not ideology—prove the value of discovery over time.
Shift from selling to showing. This co-creation guide invites stakeholders into discovery, taps their expertise, and turns relationships from obstacles into partnerships for smarter product decisions.
Here’s the mindset shift that changes everything: stakeholder management is a co-creation opportunity. When we show our work with artifacts like an opportunity solution tree, experience maps, and interview snapshots, we’re not just communicating—we’re inviting collaboration. We’re leveraging stakeholders’ expertise, context, and connections to make better product decisions.
When stakeholders have walked the path with us, they don’t need to be sold on the destination. They become allies. Engagement stops being a status ritual and starts being real partnership—the kind that moves outcomes and builds durable trust.
Try this in your next review: don’t start with your roadmap. Start at the top of the tree. Reaffirm the outcome. Share the opportunity space. Explain your prioritization. Show what you’re learning. Invite contribution. You might be surprised how quickly alignment—and confidence—follow when you stop selling conclusions and start showing your work.
Ever feel like your product team is “lost in the woods”? I’ve certainly been there—when strategy gets fuzzy, outcomes drift, or constraints aren’t clear. What helped me reframe the chaos was borrowing “lost person” patterns from search-and-rescue and mapping them to product strategy, product discovery, and team behaviors. The result is a practical playbook for product management leadership that keeps empowered product teams moving toward outcomes—not just outputs.
Listen to this episode on: Spotify | Apple Podcasts
Here are the five patterns I see most often—and how I turn each one into forward motion: settle in place (freeze), chase shortcuts, follow the first visible path, use your own navigation (intuition/taste), and retrace your steps. Each of these has a smart, minimal move that helps teams reorient fast without abandoning continuous discovery or product strategy discipline.
Settle in place (freeze). Sometimes the smartest move is to stop. When my team lacks context or authority, I pause delivery work and escalate instead of improvising fixes. This prevents thrash, protects focus, and creates the air cover we need to realign outcomes vs output OKRs.
Chase shortcuts. Shortcuts can be brilliant—or overconfident. I’ve learned to pressure-test whether the “road” is where we think it is before we commit. That means lightweight experiments, clear exit criteria, and the humility to pivot. Think about big bets like Spotify podcasts: compelling vision, but you still have to validate assumptions step by step.
Follow the first visible path. The obvious option isn’t always the best one. My job as a product leader is to make multiple paths visible before we choose. I lean on opportunity solution trees and KPI trees (or driver trees) to surface alternatives, align stakeholders, and keep empowered product teams focused on customer impact and product-market fit—not just the loudest idea.
Use your own navigation (intuition/taste). Judgment matters, especially for product trios making fast calls—but it’s not a replacement for evidence. When my “compass” conflicts with what we observe, I anchor back to customer interviews, rapid tests, and discovery loops. Intuition should guide where we look, while data validates how we proceed.
Retrace your steps. When we’re drifting, I go back to what used to work: principles, quality practices, and discovery habits as feedback loops. Returning to fundamentals—clear problem statements, crisp value propositions, and disciplined outcomes—rebuilds momentum fast.
Team prompt to try: If your team is “lost” right now, which pattern are you defaulting to—and what’s the smallest move you can make this week to get oriented (escalate, test a shortcut, map options, validate intuition with evidence, or retrace to a principle)? I use this question in weekly reviews to keep us grounded in continuous discovery and product strategy.
Resources & Links:
Follow Teresa Torres: https://ProductTalk.org
Follow Petra Wille: https://Petra-Wille.com
Mentioned in the episode:
Lost Person Behavior: A Search and Rescue Guide on Where to Look – for Land, Air and Water
Robert J. Koester
Examples referenced: Xerox, Nokia, Kodak, Volkswagen emissions scandal, Spotify podcasts, large-org tooling contexts like Oracle and SAP
Opportunity Solution Trees: Visualize Your Discovery to Stay Aligned and Drive Outcomes
KPI Trees: How to Bridge the Gap Between Customer Behavior, Product Metrics, and Company Goals
Let's Read Continuous Discovery Habits Together (January 2026) for Continuous Discovery Habits (and the idea of habits as feedback loops)
Shifting from Outputs to Outcomes: Why It Matters and How to Get Started
I’d love to hear how your team navigates these patterns. Which small move will you try this week? Leave a comment below and let’s compare notes on product discovery, stakeholder management, and product roadmapping that actually drives outcomes.
I’m thrilled to invite you to our March session of the CDH Book Club. Continuous Discovery Habits turns five this year. And to celebrate we are reading the book together. I’ve seen firsthand—leading product trios and empowered product teams—that sharpening our discovery habits is the fastest way to better outcomes vs output OKRs, tighter team alignment, and more confident product strategy.
Each month, I am releasing an in-depth reading guide that includes:
The chapters we will be reading
A preview of the most important concepts we'll be learning about
Short videos you can share with friends and colleagues to help spread the ideas
Individual and team discussion questions to help you absorb and engage with the reading
Team exercises to help you put the ideas into practice
Additional reading to help you go deeper on the core ideas
We’ll be discussing each month’s reading in the comment section and we’ll gather quarterly to discuss on a live call. I’ll be there to trade notes, compare experience maps, and share what’s working across product discovery practices.
Joining late? No problem. I monitor the comments on each reading guide throughout the year. Start with the current month or go back to January—whatever works for you. You can ask for help, share what’s working, and connect with other readers at any point.
If you want to participate, grab a copy of the book (or dig up your old copy), share the "Spread the Love" videos, reserve some time to do the team exercises, and register for the community sessions. Let’s do this!
This Month’s Reading
Chapters:
Chapter 4: Visualizing What You Already Know
Estimated reading time: ~14 minutes
This chapter will introduce you to:
Why starting individually—rather than as a group—is the fastest path to unlocking your team’s collective intelligence
How drawing (even badly) forces you to get specific in ways that words never will
The strategic choice of setting your experience map’s scope—too narrow and you miss opportunities, too broad and you lose focus
How diverse perspectives become your team’s secret weapon when you know how to synthesize them
Why your first experience map isn’t truth—it’s a hypothesis you’ll test and evolve with every customer conversation
Need a copy? Grab the book.
Share the Love with Friends and Colleagues
We learn best in community. Use the following short videos to share the key concepts from this chapter with friends and colleagues. Invite them to participate in the book club with you. In my teams, these quick hits help us align faster before we co-create an experience map or opportunity solution tree.
Visualize your thinking – To bring others along
Unlock team alignment – With visualizations
Reflect & Discuss What You Read
When we reflect and discuss what we read, we absorb more of the material. It helps us put what we learn into practice. Don’t skip this step. In my own practice, the real unlock came when I treated mapping as a living artifact that shapes customer interviews, not a one-off deliverable.
Most of us believe we work collaboratively, but we’ve never truly experienced what it means to build shared understanding from diverse perspectives. This chapter challenges you to get uncomfortable—to draw when you’d rather talk, to work alone before working together, and to see your maps as living documents rather than one-time deliverables.
Individual Reflection
Think about the last time your team tried to align on what you know about your customers. Did everyone start by creating their own perspective first, or did you jump straight into a group discussion? What happened as a result?
When was the last time you drew something at work? What stops you from using drawing as a thinking tool—is it discomfort with your drawing skills, lack of time, or something else?
Look at your current work. If you were to create an experience map right now, what scope would you choose? How does your desired outcome help you determine what to include and what to leave out?
Team Discussion
As a trio, each person should identify one unique perspective they bring to your team’s understanding of your customer. How might these different viewpoints create blind spots if you only relied on one person’s view?
When your team disagrees about what customers need or want, how do you typically resolve it? Do you debate until someone wins, defer to the most senior person, or test your different hypotheses?
Does your team have a current experience map? If so, when was the last time you updated it based on what you’re learning from customers? If not, what’s preventing you from creating one?
Put It Into Practice
Understanding why experience maps matter is different from actually creating one that drives your discovery work. These exercises will help you practice the discipline of starting individually, synthesizing diverse perspectives, and using your map to guide customer conversations. My suggestion: timebox, embrace imperfect drawings, and let the artifact lead your next interview script.
Exercise: Create Your Individual Experience Maps
Time: 20 minutes individually, 45–60 minutes with your team
Do this: Individually first, then share with your trio
Start by agreeing on the scope of your experience map based on your current outcome. Each member of your trio should then independently create their own experience map using pen and paper (or your favorite digital drawing tool).
Focus on drawing the customer’s experience, not your product’s features. Where do they get stuck? What goes wrong? How do they work around problems? Don’t worry about drawing well—boxes, arrows, and stick figures are perfectly fine.
Once everyone has created their individual maps, schedule time to share them with each other. As you explore each person’s perspective, ask questions to understand their thinking. Pay particular attention to the differences between maps—this is where the richest insights emerge.
Exercise: Co-Create Your Shared Experience Map
Time: 30 minutes with your team
Do this: With your product trio
Bring your individual experience maps together and work to synthesize them into a single shared map. Start by identifying all the unique nodes (distinct moments, actions, or events) across all three maps. Arrange them in a comprehensive flow.
Collapse similar nodes, but be careful not to overgeneralize. Add links to show relationships and flow between nodes—including loops, error cases, and abandonment points. Finally, add context about what customers are thinking, feeling, and doing at each step.
As you work, avoid getting bogged down in endless debate. If you disagree about details, draw out the difference rather than debating it. This often reveals you already agree or helps you pinpoint exactly where your understanding differs.
Remember: This map is your current hypothesis about your customer’s experience. Use it to guide your upcoming customer interviews and plan to evolve it based on what you learn.
Go Deeper: Additional Reading
If you prefer an audio summary of this month’s reading, including the book chapters and the following resources, I’ve included an audio version for paid subscribers at the bottom of this post.
Supplementary Reading
Why Drawing Maps Sharpens Your Thinking
Core Concept: Collaborative Decision-Making in a Product Trio
Other Voices
To Draw or Not to Draw: Is Traditional Sketching Still Relevant in the Digital Design Era? by Julia Ku
Journey-Mapping Approaches: 2 Critical Decisions to Make Before You Begin by Kate Kaplan
The Visual Language of Comic Books Can Improve Brain Health by Mary Widdicks
Mapping Your User’s Day with the User Clock Sketch by Ben Crothers
Our Live Discussion Schedule
Our live discussion sessions are for paid subscribers. Sessions are not recorded. Invitations will go out to Supporting Members and CDH Members two weeks before the scheduled event. But reserve the time on your calendar now.
Wednesday, March 18, 2026: 9am–10am PDT and 4pm–5pm PDT
Tuesday, June 16, 2026: 9am–10am PDT and 4pm–5pm PDT
Thursday, September 17, 2026: 9am–10am PDT and 4pm–5pm PDT
Wednesday, December 16, 2026: 9am–10am PST and 4pm–5pm PST
Audio Summary
This summary was produced by NotebookLM. The sources supplied were the book chapters as well as all of the additional reading.
Listen here: March — Draw the User Clock to Build Empathy (audio)
This article is part of the CDH Book Club celebrating the five-year anniversary of Continuous Discovery Habits. See all book club posts.
