Company goals disguised as customer problems

​
Almost every roadmap item you touch will be justified with a user story. But plenty of those “needs” are fake. Some are wishful thinking. Some are assumptions. Some are just internal company objectives wearing a pair of fake glasses with a mustache.

If you don’t know how to sniff out the difference, you’ll end up building things that sound noble but land with a thud.

So why do so many Product Managers fail at this? They don’t push hard enough on the front end. They don’t ask who actually said this was a problem. They accept vague descriptions like “users are confused” without verifying it. They mistake stakeholder confidence for evidence.

So they build something, ship it, and then act surprised when it doesn't deliver the promised value.

The most dangerous product work is the kind that feels user-centered but isn’t

It sounds good in meetings, looks great in decks, and ends up doing nothing in the real world.

Let's talk about how to spot and manage these scenarios.

Takeaway 1: There is a difference between a customer problem and a business problem

The two are not always aligned. Sometimes the business wants to drive adoption of a new product line. Sometimes leadership wants to increase time-on-site. Sometimes the priority is lowering churn.

Those are all valid drivers of your work. They are good outcomes to pursue. But they are not customer problems. They're your company's problems.

Customer problems come from behavior. From friction. From actual humans trying to get something done and running into a wall.

They don’t come from OKRs. They don’t show up in quarterly revenue targets. They show up in interviews, session recordings, chat logs, and usage drop-offs.

There's nothing wrong with building features that solve business problems. But don’t pretend they’re user-driven unless you have the evidence to prove it.

Takeaway 2: A vague problem statement is a red flag

You’ll hear it all the time.

“Customers don’t understand the dashboard.”

“People are dropping off during onboarding.”

“Customers want more flexibility.”

These sound like insights. They’re not. They’re summaries. And until you unpack them, they’re useless.

When someone drops a vague problem into your lap, ask the same set of questions every time:

What specifically are they trying to do?

Where exactly do they get stuck?

How do you know?

Who are these customers?

If the answers rely on secondhand anecdotes, you’re flying blind. Go get the raw signal. Watch someone fail in real time. Read the actual chat transcript. Listen to the recorded call.

Because here's the secret. Most of the time, the vague feedback is the opinion of a stakeholder who doesn't want to admit out loud that they don't like or understand the product.

That's why you need to treat it with a healthy dose of skepticism until you find the real source.

And if you get to the real source, your insights gets sharper and your product gets better.

Takeaway 3: Stop taking feature requests at face value

A customer asking for something is not the same as having a real need. A stakeholder asking for filters does not mean filters are the answer. People describe what they want. Not why they want it.

You need to play translator. Take the request, strip away the specifics, and find the root.

“I need to download a CSV” might mean “I don’t trust your analytics.”

“I want an alert” might mean “I’m anxious about missing something.”

“I wish I could reorder this” might mean “This workflow doesn’t match how I think.”

If you don’t investigate, you’ll build the surface request. Then you’ll wonder why it doesn’t help anyone.

Takeaway 4: Most customer problems aren’t loud. You have to hunt for them.

The tricky thing about real customer needs is that they don’t always scream. The most painful moments are often quiet. The person who churned didn’t file a ticket. The one who abandoned the signup flow didn’t complain. The power user who switched to a competitor didn’t tweet about it.

So if you’re waiting for problems to be escalated to you, you’re already behind.

You have to go looking. Dig into metrics. Study customer behaviors. Interview people who ghosted your product. Run no-code prototypes to test behavior before you build. This is not extra credit. This is the job.

Product managers who treat discovery like a side quest will always be stuck in reactive mode. They’ll fix what gets surfaced instead of solving what actually matters.

In Conclusion

Product managers love to say they’re customer-centric. Most of them aren't at all. And it's even less likely Product leaders reflect this mentality to the team.

Unless you’re ruthless about verifying where that value comes from, you’ll spend a lot of time shipping solutions to problems that don’t exist. And no amount of polish, design, or process will save you from irrelevance.

So the next time you see a request, a story, or a roadmap item claiming to solve a user need, do yourself a favor.

Don’t ask how to build it.

Ask how do we know it matters.

Thanks for reading. See you next week.