As a software developer, I used to think “This new library (or pattern/architecture/framework) is so cool. Let’s try that at work.” And tried to fit that stuff to the system I was working on. “It’s cool because the solution is cool. I am cool because it’s cool.”

More often than not, this kind of solution-first approach ends up adding stress to the system because it was simply an over-fitting. Somewhat later, somebody realizes the solution introduced to the system turns out to slow down the progress the organization needs to make.

Similar things happen to product organizations, too. “Let’s add this screen that does that cool stuff,” Jane, a product person says without knowing how the screen fits in the lives of users. Soon after shipping the shiny new screen, somebody (hopefully Jane herself) realizes users didn’t value the screen in the way Jane felt people would. The screen didn’t fit people’s lives. Jane moves on to another shiny screen idea, that would say “Look at me. I am so beautiful.”

There is one thing in common. The solution they introduced didn’t fit in the  empirical world to be valuable, because they skipped a step to carefully examine the circumstances in which people or organizations are in, and possible improved situations. They missed what progress people/organizations would want to make.

I recently started to call these as “I-am-so-beautiful syndrome.”

An antidote is to frame products as functions. Ryan Singer wrote a  piece on this very concisely. It is a must-read for product professionals. If you haven’t read it, you should soon.

I’ve seen so many product professionals struggling with designing products because they start with their solutions, but not with figuring out the progress people wish they could make. Sometimes, it’s hard because they are people pleasers who want to say yes to “This is what I want.” Sometimes it’s challenging because they are creative and dying to create something new. Sometimes it's next to impossible because they are somewhere on the narcissistic spectrum. Whichever the case may be, we need to train ourselves to become humble, detaching ourselves from solutions so we can understand the progress people want to make. Bob Moesta calls it “Empathetic Perspective”.

At the end of the day, the job of product professionals is to build products that help people make progress. It's an undeniable fact. We should hold our creative mindset until we understand what the progress is in the people's narratives.