Imagine a family of four where one person decides to adopt a vegan lifestyle. When you want to go out for dinner and have to pick a restaurant, you need to pick an option that is suitable for the vegan person.
Even though they are the minority, their needs make them less flexible. We can extrapolate this to extended family dinners. When instead of four people you have sixteen, the need of this person will still have a greater effect on the restaurant decision. Even though there is only one vegan person in the group.
Visualising this hidden rule can help us understand the power of inflexible minorities in society. It can also be an insight we can use to make product decisions in a strategic way.
<img src="https://github.com/malikpiara/moonwith/assets/6923650/2d11aa66-8620-42aa-8eef-588e3be09931" alt="2023-05-12 13 26 59">
<img src="https://github.com/malikpiara/moonwith/assets/6923650/c653b577-396c-40d7-bbd3-baeab2c78d6d" alt="2023-05-12 13 26 51">
When most people don't have a strong opinion or preference, appealing to the ones that do, may be a good tactic to increase user acquisition and consolidate a market.
I have found this to be particularly true in products and companies operating in existing markets. There is direct competition and good substitutes.
Take messaging apps like iMessage or Signal. Or money sharing products like Paypal or Revolut. Even though most people use many, some only use one. We all have that privacy-aware friend. We need to use the same app they are using if we want to reach them.
One lesson from this story is that attempting to copy features a bigger competitor has (feature-parity) or making decisions based on how many people will use a feature may be a flawed tactic.
There may be overlooked opportunities hiding in our smallest customer segment. Go listen.

The minority rule

Sometimes building a solution in the right way is not enough. We also need to consider if we’re building the right one. This is a mistake I see brilliant teams making every day. They might be aware of their customer needs, know to test and iterate frequently and know to prioritise making data informed decisions. They might build outstanding user experiences and yet, fail to deliver the most impactful solution.
<img src="https://i.imgur.com/ML0tcYz.jpg" alt="This is an image">
When we decide to climb a hill without considering the neighbours, we risk spending time and energy building and iterating on low altitude. That’s the problem of the local maxima: When the peak of the hill we choose is way lower than the global maximum. — The impact of our solution is as great as the height of the hill.
<h3>How to avoid this mistake?</h3>
<ol>
<li>Write down what is the main outcome you’re trying to achieve before thinking about ideas for any given challenge.</li>
<li>Make coming up with at least 3 different ideas a requirement for how your team operates. These shouldn’t be iterations but divergent.</li>
<li>Don’t commit to one direction right away. Think about how to measure the outcome of a given improvement without actually implementing it. Build many prototypes that enable your team to test and compare their merit.</li>
<li>Group the ideas and the learnings derived from testing them in one place so it’s easier to compare and talk about them before proceeding.</li>
</ol>

The problem of the local maxima

The reason I call myself Product Enabler instead of Product Manager is because the latter fails to capture the essence of the job.
Some misconceptions about the role of product managers is that their job is to manage people. Or to manage projects. Although both can be part of the job description, product management is essentially about decision making and an ability to collect and connect multiple insights to build something people want.
Bad product management is applying tools and methods for the sake of them. Product enablement is about leading with empathy. Seeking understanding and empowering everyone around us to do their best work by providing them context, listening and being of service.
Job titles matter because they inform our behaviour. And what other people expect of us. It might be time to move on from product management towards product enablement.

Towards Product Enablement

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Other essays you may like

The minority rule

The problem of the local maxima