Understanding is the path, not the goal

I find that some companies need to be more ambitious when setting their outcomes.??There are some companies, usually those located in Silicon Valley, that shoot for the moon every time.??But many companies that I work with set less audacious outcome goals.??And, if you set a less ambitious outcome goal, you will probably create less value for your customers, and hence for your businesses. ??

I was working with a B2B scale-up on their Product Vision recently.??My favorite technique for this is storyboarding, where we create a story, about three to five years in the future, that shows their customers successfully using their product to solve their problems and improve their life.??They took the assignment to heart and spent some time with post-it notes to craft a story where their clients could, three years in the future, get all the information on how their own businesses was performing with just a punch of a button on their dashboard.??And they would understand.

High fives.??End of story.??Victory lap.??Key customer outcome identified.??Product Vision done.

Well, maybe…

It’s great that they chose “understanding” as their target customer outcome and not just “a dashboard with seven indicators.”??As product people, we know we do not just want to release features, but we want to create an outcome, a change in behavior for our customers.??We want to help our customers get their job done better.??So we focus on the outcomes our customers can achieve by using our products, not which features we release.?

But what if “understanding”, while great, is not a strong enough outcome to be the basis for creating a blockbuster Unicorn company???What if not all outcomes are created equal?

I find Bloom’s Taxonomy a useful tool here.??Bloom’s taxonomy was created by Benjamin Bloom in 1956.??While it was originally created to help categorize educational goals, I also find it helpful with thinking about product outcomes.??Here is what it looks like:

A team that sets their outcomes based on “understanding” could increase the impact they have on their customers’ lives by moving further right.??For our B2B scale-up, wouldn’t it be great if their customers, with the simple push of a button customers could optimize their portfolio of products for sale in order to maximize their revenue???That outcome unleashes a lot more value than just “understanding.”

And this applies to all products.??Wouldn’t it be great if we could all get the desired outcome we wanted with just a push of a button????A patient could just push a button and have the best treatment for their medical condition. A farmer could just push a button and have the perfect crop grow.??A marketeer could push a button and have the perfect campaign created that delivers the targeted ROI.??

But we consumers?don’t live in that perfect world (yet!).??So we have to struggle and work and, heaven forbid, understand things to get the results we want.??As a patient, we have to search the internet for information, go visit doctors, get lab results, and more in order to understand what?might?help our medical condition.??Would you rather not have to learn all the details of a germinoma tumor and all the various treatment protocols and pros and cons of each one???Or would you rather just have the problem solved???

(And, just as AI is giving us blockbuster advances, I will have to add that it is good if some people out there understand all these things.??And I will add, that there are some things, just for the love of craft and pure pleasure, that I really do want to understand.??But the intricacies of, for example, the supply chain environmental costs is not one of them.??I just want it to be green).

As entrepreneurs and product people, we need to shoot for a higher bar than just “understanding” when crafting our products.??Yes, knowledge is power.??But can we create a product that helps people take better actions???Because action is where knowledge is converted into benefits, value, and gains.??While understanding is an integral part of creating, you don't want to stop there.??Yes, understanding is part of the process, but it is not where the journey stops.?

(And thanks Wes Kao and the Maven team for introducing me to Bloom's Taxonomy!)