How to Kill a Critical Platform

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I’ve been lucky enough to kill a few internal platform products that were seen as “business critical” (but in reality, caused more heartache than value). The challenges are usually not building a replacement, instead, it’s all about communication, understanding fears and concerns, and ultimately, building each other up to a common cause (helping your customers).

Here are some of the lessons I’ve learned:

• Understanding people’s domain view / language
  • People often cling to these platforms because they have an over-estimated view of what the platform does
  • You must listen, understand, and empathize with what they think the platform does, not what it actually does (you might be surprised at the gap!)
  • Sometimes people also cling to what they think a platform might do in the future
  • It’s not always worth challenging these assumptions
  • For technical folks, it will be necessary
  • Otherwise, you might be able to adjust your language to show respect to their assumptions
• One-on-one conversation
  • This is “shuttle diplomacy” at it’s most basic
  • Individually give people time to air out their fears and questions
  • This is where knowing their domain view comes in handy
  • Talking to a group with an incomplete domain view can be challenging
  • 1-1, you can tailor the conversation and address their concerns
• Build empathy towards customers
  • Many of your colleague’s fears about change will be directed at “how will this impact my work?”
  • That is a legitimate viewpoint! YOU must have empathy with with them
  • AND that empathy is your greatest tool to your ultimate goal: building empathy with your customers
• … using data
  • When helping them understand why this will help customers, give them something tangible
  • People often think of data as antithetical to empathy - in this case, use it to help scale their empathy!
  • (if you can’t link it back to some improved outcome for your customers, why bother?)

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• https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremiah-coleman-product
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• jeremiah.coleman@daasnerds.com
• https://github.com/colemanja91