Stop loving the solution!!!!!
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If you’re an innovator or an entrepreneur, pretty much everything boils down to solving problems. (How can we get more customers? More publicity? Ideally, this is a two-step process:
- Define the problem.
- Solve the problem.
Seems pretty easy, but does it always happen like that? Not really. Most of the time, solving takes the spotlight.
When this happens, the solution suffers. Because at the heart of every human-centred problem there is a special set of desires, fears and importantly, jobs to be done and it’s our job to address the particular ones that will prompt them to respond. If we don’t spend enough time on the front-end guaranteeing solutions are tuned into the right concerns, the product will not take hold.
As Ash Maurya quotes
“Love the Problem” (Before You Start focusing on the Solution).
There’s a trap that all of us fall into at some time, falling in love with the solution. Captivated this, it can be tempting to halt the exploration process and skip right to the doing.
Don’t do it!!!
Instead, give as much love to the problem as you do the solution. Focus on the “Jobs to be done” and the forces that drive the customer.
Ash Maurya, founder of Leanstack developed an important tool for this exercise, the customer forces canvas.
Customer forces canvas
Before creating the perfect solution for customers, you must recognise and then understand the actual problem
The canvas should be used
-During problem interviews to comprehend the market’s current alternatives to your potential solution; that is to say, your competitors.
-Post new user-sign up so that you can reflect on how they were solving the problem before and how or why they decided to use your product instead.
-After having used your product in MVP stage to identify problems you need to get rid of.
Creating anything new starts with a problem. If more of us got a little better at focusing on this and being curious, we could also get better at providing value in other people’s lives and ultimately creating better products.
