Empathy: The New Engine of Innovation
I recently had the chance to host three exceptional product leaders on the Breakthrough Builders podcast: Alex Hood, Head of Product at Asana, Scott Belsky, Chief Product Officer at Adobe, and Jeetu Patel, SVP and GM of Security and Collaboration at Cisco.
Each of these builders took a unique path. But one thing their stories had in common was that customer and employee empathy guides what and how they build. And by finding new ways to cultivate and incorporate empathy at scale, they’re leading the design and development of experiences that are revolutionizing how we work, create, and collaborate.
In this essay, I’ve identified three universal themes from the conversations with Alex, Scott, and Jeetu – new rules for how empathy can guide product design. And I’ve pulled excerpts from each conversation for a look at how these builders are specifically approaching their roles and responsibilities in the era of experience.
Three New Rules for Building Products with Empathy
1. Never lose sight of customer pain
It’s not a new idea to start the product design process with an understanding of the essential problem you’re trying to solve. But these product leaders emphasized that this can’t be a “one and done” exercise. For example, Scott Belsky discussed how the tendency for well-meaning product teams to add as many seemingly useful features and options as possible can create all-new problems for customers.
This is why it’s so important to build in safeguards to ensure that empathy for the customer’s pain is built into every phase of development and every decision. At Adobe, Scott and team have tapped loyal groups of engaged customers to help prioritize development of new options and features. And at Asana, Alex’s team has the ability and encouragement to seek out relevant, robust customer insights.
2. Obsess over continuous improvement, not perfection
Businesses often get stuck in the trap of believing that products have to be perfect before they hit the market. But the reality is that this is an outmoded approach. Jeetu Patel described how constantly making progress in the eyes of customers can tip the advantage from entrenched leaders to hungry upstarts. And Alex talked about how Asana improves at a faster pace than competitors by not being reluctant to ship updates that are easily reversible.
It’s easy to get caught up in pursuing perfection, but by showing that you’re obsessed with continuously improving your products, your brand can become more human in the eyes of customers, and easier to love.
3. Empathy must first reverberate inside, then radiate out
Increasingly, the environment and culture in which you build products determines the quality of what you’re able to build. And that means that you must demonstrate empathy for employees at every level of the organization.
What does that look like? For Cisco, it means recognizing that the front lines – not the few at the top – are the greatest source of truth for the organization. For Adobe, it means acknowledging that to do great work, creators need to have more than one way to advance within the company. Universally, if you want to deliver empathy at scale, you have to create fertile ground for it to grow. And that starts with culture.
Alex Hood, Head of Product, Asana
Alex was formerly a VP of Product Management at Intuit.
“Our first innovation that we ship isn’t even customer-facing. It’s a core insight.”
On starting the design process with empathy
“Before you go brainstorming and building, you need to really get a sense of the underlying pain that you're trying to solve. And you get that sense of pain by developing deep empathy for customers. By watching, interacting, and ideating with them. You’re not really working toward a solution yet, but you're using different methods to get them to articulate or display the issues that they care about.”
On making customer insights available to everyone
“Each of our teams can ask really deep questions, and they have all the different DIY tools to get in touch with customers, so that the first innovation we ship is not even a customer-facing innovation. It usually is a core insight. It is an a-ha, or a pattern, or a unique way of thinking about the world. That comes from deep user research and synthesis––really smart minds getting around the problem. Once we get that insight, then we move to the second diamond. But it all comes from the foundation of having an amazing set of insights to capitalize on.”
On the impact of what Asana’s building
“The problem that we're solving is where people spend their time at work. 60% of the time people spend at work is on work about work, not the true strategic content or craft elements of their job. Filling in status spreadsheets, getting together to talk about status updates, getting pinged for notifications on the latest point of record––all that stuff is a 60% tax on progress. Our customers tell us that when they use Asana, they get about a day per week back.”
Scott Belsky, Chief Product Officer and EVP of Creative Cloud, Adobe
Scott is also the founder of Behance and the author of the books Making Ideas Happen and The Messy Middle.
“As a mentor, I ask, ‘Are you doing the greatest work you’ve ever done? And if not, why? What’s getting in the way?”
On how Behance was founded out of deep empathy for creators
“I started to really be humbled by the skillset of the creative world, and how everything that tells us to take action, in anything, is touched by the hands of a creative. Marketing, political movements, changing behaviors, the products that we pay more than the cost of materials for – it can all be attributed to what's added by a creative. And yet, these people often live their careers at the mercy of circumstance. They seldom get attribution for the work that they've done and they’re often taken advantage of by middlemen. And so, all of that compelled me to say, ‘I want to help organize the creative world.’”
On being able to sideline things you’ve created
“There's a saying amongst writers, which is called “killing your darlings.” All the little nuggets and plot points and characters, you fall in love with all of these things as a writer, and then you have to kill a lot of them in order to let any particular ones succeed. And I think it's the exact same with product. A tendency of an inexperienced product builder is to try to put things in to try and catch all customer wants and needs, and hedge yourself with many different parts of a product. And I think what you learn is that every additional option gets essentially 50% less usage and 20% more noise across the product – which then translates to less successful onboardings and first-mile experiences. And people don't even know how to define your product, so you have less viral growth. Everything just starts to go in decline. And when you actually start leaving things out, you start to get more traction on the things that matter most.”
On giving creators more than one path to success
“First of all, organizations shouldn't reward and try to retain talent by giving them more people to manage. People should be able to get paid more and given more opportunity and more responsibility and more influence, without having to adopt a skillset that they may not even want to develop. That’s number one. And number two, it's always back to the question of how do you make sure that each person is doing the greatest work of their life? That's the question I ask people when I'm trying to mentor them in our organization: Are you doing the greatest work you've ever done? And if not, why? What's getting in the way? And if it's a matter of resources, that might lead to them having a bigger team, or it might lead to them focusing on fewer things so they can make a greater impact. I think it all stems from asking those questions and really listening.”
Jeetu Patel, SVP & GM of Security and Collaboration, Cisco
Jeetu was formerly Chief Product Officer and Chief Strategy Officer at Box.
“Most customers don’t expect perfection. What they expect is someone who is willing to go out and constantly improve.”
On prioritizing improvement over perfection
“I’ve found that most customers don't expect perfection. What they expect is someone who is willing to go out and constantly improve. And so, as long as you are saying to customers, ‘We’re going to build products that your users are going to love, and we're always going to be listening to you, and we’ll never give up on our quest to improve,’ I think most people will give you more of a shot than you think they will – regardless of whether you’re the market leader. Customers find progress far more appealing than the absolute position you’re in.”
On building a culture of empowerment
“The farther down in an organization you are, the closer you are to the truth. And so if you are able to create that safe environment where people can come in and know that the best idea should win, rather than the person with the highest rank, and if that becomes part of the culture, then I think something magical happens where people feel safe. They feel like they can rely on each other. The entirety of the culture changes because it's coming from the top, and before you know it, you've got this really great environment.
On one customer pain point Cisco is addressing through product
“I'll give you an example of a feature in WebEx, which is called Round Table. Say you have six people in the room. They just interviewed a candidate, and they want to debate whether or not to hire them. And they all come into the room together. Right now, the extroverts would take over the room. And if an introvert had a different opinion, and especially if they were outranked by the extroverts on title, they might just say, ‘Yeah, I'm not going to pick this battle.’ With Round Table, everyone gets to speak once before anyone speaks twice. And so everyone gets time on the clock to speak their truth. We built this because calling on the people who are quiet in the room and asking them for their opinion is so important. There's no point in diversity if the people that are different aren't allowed to speak.
About the Breakthrough Builders Podcast
Breakthrough Builders is a show about people whose passions, perspectives, instincts, and ideas fuel some of the world’s most amazing products, brands, and experiences. It’s a tribute to those who have the audacity to imagine - and the persistence to build - breakthroughs. Join me as I host engaging and open conversations with accomplished builders, makers, and doers, revealing the personal influences and professional experiences that shape the way they imagine, innovate, and invent - so you can get the inspiration and insight you’re looking for as you build your own breakthroughs.