Incentives reliably predict human behavior. Following the classic “Don’t ask a barber if you need a haircut”, what incentives shape our work in product development?

• Don’t ask a product team if they need to build a new feature.
• Don’t ask a PM if a metric needs to move
• Don’t ask a developer if you need more coding time
• Don’t ask a sales rep if you need more features
• Don’t ask a designer if you need more time on polish

Where else do our incentives go wrong?

The product does something of value for the user. Otherwise they wouldn’t use it. We should avoid anything that makes that worse. We should remove things that distract or compete with that. We should only add things that feel organic to the value created.

As developers, we should be avoiding adding technology that doesn’t support that value. Any frameworks or tools that make it slower, harder, less stable are a bad idea. Even if it helps u.

As designers, we should avoid adding any complexity or flair that gets in the way of that value, or that takes the product in a new direction away from that value. Even if it’s interesting or exciting.

As PMs, we should avoid making a metric the goal, tracking the wrong things, and making business goals into product goals.