Teams spend months — sometimes years — building features that users barely touch.

The engineering is good. The design is polished. The team ships fast. Adoption flatlines.

This is not an execution problem. It is a framing problem. The team optimized feature output instead of understanding what progress the customer was trying to make.

In an era where AI can generate features in hours, understanding what to build is the only advantage that matters.

The core idea

Customers do not buy your product because it exists. They hire it to make progress in a specific moment.

That progress has three parts:

Functional. The practical outcome. “I need to close this quarter.” “I need to communicate with my team without losing context.”

Emotional. How the customer wants to feel. “I want to feel confident I am making the right call.” “I want to feel in control of my schedule.”

Social. How the customer wants to be seen. “I want my team to see me as organized.” “I want my clients to see me as responsive.”

Ignore any one of these and your strategy breaks. A functionally perfect product that makes users feel stupid fails. A beautiful product that does not solve the functional job fails.

This reframes who you compete with

When you define competition by product category, you miss substitutes.

When you define competition by job, you see the full picture:

  • Direct competitors in your category
  • Indirect competitors in different categories hired for the same job
  • Non-consumption — people doing nothing because current options do not fit

Non-consumption is where the biggest opportunities hide. When people are hiring a bad solution or no solution at all, there is an underserved market.

Fast-food example: a chain found morning milkshake customers were not buying a treat. They were hiring the milkshake as a commuter companion — something to make a boring drive less boring. The real competition was bananas, bagels, and boredom.

The four forces

For your top product, understand four forces:

Push. What dissatisfaction makes customers leave their current solution?

Pull. What attracts them to yours?

Habit. What existing behavior keeps them stuck?

Anxiety. What fears hold them back from switching?

If your roadmap does not address all four, growth stalls. Most teams focus on pull (marketing, features) while ignoring habit and anxiety, which are often the real blockers.

Build a “resume” for the job

Your product is applying for a job in your customer’s life. Like any candidate, it needs a resume.

That resume includes:

  • Messaging that names the job clearly
  • Onboarding that proves competence in the first five minutes
  • Product behavior that delivers on the promise
  • Support that builds confidence when things go wrong

Align every touchpoint around one clear promise of progress.

Try this this week

For your top product or feature:

  1. What push makes users leave their current solution?
  2. What pull attracts them to yours?
  3. What habit keeps them from switching?
  4. What anxiety blocks adoption?

If your roadmap does not answer all four, growth will stall.

Stop asking “what can we build?” Ask “what progress are we being hired to create?”