Customer Discovery Through the Out-of-Body Experience
Having an out-of-body experience helps entrepreneurs in the customer discovery process. It’s easy for people to get used to doing things they already do that they disregard the pain and suffering as a “fact-of-life”. You hear this often when folks recite, “it’s how we’ve always done it”. In this way, people have limited perspective on what is actually a painful or what can be done. People can be encouraged to have an “out-of-body” experience. They can envision watching themselves do work. See where’s pain. Where is there significant process?
In many cases, people “duck tape” solutions together. This is very common in the business world as people use spreadsheets as their silver bullet. Over time, they iterate on the spreadsheets to fit their needs until some threshold breaks. Then, there’s a need for a real solution.
The out-of-body experience is similar to the teaching from Timothy Gallwey’s Inner Game of Tennis. Gallwey talks about the revelation most folks have when they see themselves playing tennis. His tennis students quickly and correctly fix their forms – not by his coaching, but by seeing themselves swing their rackets in reflections.
The point of the out-of-body experience is to be a third-party to how one performs a task or lives the work day. It’s about separating the emotional element of being the person doing the work and the defense people build up. Then, being able to view one’s self as a bystander purely looking at the process. This is similar to what consultants do. They gather their insights from interviews and observations.
“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” Henry Ford famously depicted the very challenge he as an entrepreneur faced when people were not able to have that out-of-body experience. There’s equal parts having that out-of-body experience and the ability to think outside of the norm (dream up the automobile).
Do yourself a favor today, and have that out-of-body experience. Watch yourself as an observer. What do you notice?