GTM teams work their hardest, learning from everything they’ve done before but are fighting an uphill battle from the last flamewar a cofounder got into on twitter (yes I mention this twice)
Disproof
Evidence of a listening strategy
Consequences
Mostly an efficiency loss, but when margins are thin could be fatal
Damaging morale of teams that didn’t ‘do anything wrong’ and losing good people
If doubled down on or overcorrected for, can kick off a reputational deathspiral
Often comorbid with a similar approach in product design so worth being very cautious of; if you’re failing to understand customers at that level it’s just a matter of time
Causes
Almost always happens in cases where the company is more interested in speaking at, than listening to,the customer
Can either be a result of success through luck, or when some ‘visionary’ thinks they’re in a faster horses situtation
Some form of time pressure or resource misallocation prevents this happening bottom-up; these workflows aren't free and only work at scale with tooling
In sadder cases, some teams are very interested in listening to the customer - they just have no influence on the teams doing the talking
Approaches
Beyond beginning to care / ask what customers think about the product, approach will be highly industry-dependent
Identify and resolve sources of resistance, as time and effort is rarely the only issue