Problem solving with a hammer

Nailed it >.<

Passionate product owners tend have a strong belief in the power and abilities of the products they look after – and that’s a good thing, usually the result of a lot of hard work, vision and a real understanding of challenges clients face.  But that belief can also be a weakness that produces poor outcomes if they start to view each clients problems as one nail after the other OR the approach to solving said problems, is the same each time, for each nail.

Working closely with some product owners recently, I was reminded of the ‘Law of the instrument‘ and Maslows quote.

Now I’m not sure which it is, whether its a case of starting to view their product as a hammer to seemingly solve every clients problems the same way or its the same approach taken to solving client challenges – a sub optimal outcome is the same.

Square peg syndrome

The other possibility of course, is simply suffering from square peg syndrome, where that belief in the product is so strong that regardless of the hole we’re trying to find a solution for, the answer is always the square!