Get out of the building
Customer empathy has a half-life of 30 days. The only way to truly recharge this is to meet your customers, in-person, in the place where they use your product.
The Playbook has been light on discovery plays, so here's the foundation that we all seem to neglect in post product-market-fit companies.
Context
A PM knows exactly what needs to be done. Their roadmap is full of features. But they’re complaining that sales and other stakeholders are constantly interrupting them with ‘random’ demands.
Play
Get your PMs of the building. Every 1-2 months, each PM goes and meet your customers where they are doing their thing, to observe and ask questions.
Discussion
Customer empathy has a half-life of 30 days. (This made-up science-y law means that if you have 100 units of customer empathy and go 3 months without visiting customers, you lose 87% of your customer empathy.) The only way to recharge this is to go see your customers, ideally in the place where they are using your product, and talk to them about what they are doing.