This week I’ve been thinking again about the principle that “Form follows Function” and how it still one of the most challenging concepts to integrate.
A completely hypothetical conversation comes to mind:
Customer: I want to do X easily and quickly
Product: Guess what, our product can help you with that!
Customer: Awesome! So using your tool, I can do X easily and quickly?
Product: We can help with that and we have this cool feature.
Customer: So that’s a yes on doing X easily and quickly?
Product: Did we mention that we also have this other cool feature! And you can take the way you do X to the next level!
Customer: Ok cool, so that’s a yes?
Product: Oh and by the way, you can now also do Y!
Customer: Can I do X? That’s all I want
Product: …
And the same logic is applied to various topics and how many organisations are functioning.
The truth is that we keep chasing the pretty lights without making sure the fundamentals of what our product does actually solves the intended need.
Even when thinking about the people and roles that exist in organisations and how organisations scale, this is still applicable.
Don’t get distracted by form
I now that things that are visually appealing or new and shiny seem so exciting. It’s also something that you can see the results for really quickly.
The big problem is that focus will almost definitely come back and bite us in the ass.
One of my favourite principles is First Principles and it’s a very practical way to approach most situations.
Keeping it simple
Phase 1:
What is the need/problem I want to solve?
Why is it a need/problem I should solve?
Phase 2:
Ideate a solution
Does it solve for questions in Phase 1?
Yes! Cool, keep moving forward
No. Ok, go back to Phase 1 and review
Does it solve the challenge well?
Yes! Cool, keep moving forward
No. Ok, go back to Phase 1 and review
The same can be applied to hiring and growing your teams and org.
I know, it’s not easy
Stakeholders, Investors and peers will pressure us to keep evolving and innovating because the flashy is easy to showcase.
The problem is, our product and teams are built on very unstable scaffolding and adding to that will just add complexity without adding any stability.
Again, keeping it simple:
We want to make money and grow
Customers who use our product find it works really well
That generates revenue and loyal customers
Customers churn to try another tool because it has more features
But the tool doesn’t do what it’s meant to do well, they will come back in most cases
Customers pressure us to build new features.
Makes sense in your baseline vision strategy? Build it
Doesn’t make sense? Don’t build it. Potentially you can plugin to a tool that does that well enough or that can power that feature, but still, go back to the previous question
Final Thoughts
You’re going to get pushback and be pressured and you’re going to want to fold, but in almost every case I’ve seen, trying to juggle too much and constant pivoting is a sure fire way to build shoddy, unstable products and organisations.
At the end of the day if we don’t solve the functional part, the form will be pointless.
Form should amplify the function, not the other way around.
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