Written
Ten stories, and one piece that is not a case study. Each story says what the problem was treated as, and what it turned out to be.
We could have cut our way to a sale. We chose to grow into one
Treated as a support metric. Turned out to be a choice about which company to be.
We told our customers to stop choosing a winner
Treated as a better A/B test. Turned out to be the expert small companies could never hire.
We sold a search tool. Our customers needed a boot camp
Treated as a keyword research tool. Turned out to be a boot camp for businesses that cannot buy traffic.
Clients asked for data. They needed a decision
Treated as a services firm that discounted to survive. Turned out to be a product company waiting for its plumbing.
We stopped trying to join six products. We armed the salesperson
Treated as six products to integrate. Turned out to be one salesperson who needs the right story at the right moment.
We used a COVID test to put the first medical record in people's own hands
Treated as an encryption company looking for a use. Turned out to be the consumer end of medical records, which nobody owned.
We brought user experience into a game studio. The player had become a parent
Treated as a game. Turned out to be a player with two hours a week, and a path from the box nobody owned.
We built it to be put down after five minutes
Treated as a game. Turned out to be a place to make things, in small doses.
School is the only place where failing is free
Treated as a curriculum. Turned out to be an incubator, built one term at a time.
Every program saw itself in the same picture. The money went where the margin was
Treated as a new website. Turned out to be one picture of the school that leadership could decide from.
One page. If your company cannot fill it in, that is the finding.
The frame I use, empty. Four columns, three lanes, six rungs, and every rung answerable to the one above it. Fill it in as you read and pay attention to where you stall, because the blank cells are not gaps in a document. They are the argument nobody has had yet.
