Companies That Drift Off Course Often Begin by Facing the Wrong Direction

I have a friend who's a senior network engineer. He spent many years as the top network troubleshooter for a major U.S. bank.

Yesterday he and I were discussing the NetFlow analysis features of a particular network management product. (NetFlow is a protocol for measuring network activity—top applications in use, amount of traffic flowing through a router, etc.) He was disappointed that this particular product's NetFlow capabilities were so minimal. Other NetFlow analysis products could access the same raw data and present more more useful analysis to network engineers.

The problem, he said, is that the engineering manager who built the product didn't believe that you had to know a lot about the market or technology you were working with; instead, you simply had to be smart.

My friend and I agreed: It's always a mistake to base your products and services merely on what you know, instead of what customers need. The customer should always be your primary focus. And if you need to understand customer needs in a mature market like the network management market, you'd better learn a lot about network management fast, if you're going to start building products.

So don't ask, "What can I build with what I know?"

Instead ask, "What does the customer need, and how can I build it?" If you need to learn something new along the way or hire industry experts in order to build that new thing, so be it.

Otherwise, you'll end up making a half-hearted attempt, come up with a half-baked product, and reap so-so results.

Lesson: To avoid drifting off course, pay attention to the direction you're facing when you start. Don't face inward, toward your own team. Face outward toward the customer. And stay focused there. Your steadfastness will pay off.