How can the Forces Diagram help PMs navigate change for their users?
This week, I got a chance to listen to Chris Speak's webinar on Jobs to be Done. While most of the stuff was repeat information for me, what caught my attention was an illustration that Chris called The Forces Diagram. This tool was created by Bob Moesta and Chris Spiek, both of whom are deeply involved in Jobs To Be Done movement.
The illustration immediately caught my attention and I began to relate it to the challenge we were facing in one of our primary features at TeamViewer.
After nine years of its existence, we completely overhauled our desktop client. We not just introduced icon and design makeover, but we integrated our client interface instead of the usual split interface before. This was done to be aligned to our long term vision to convert the client into a platform that would enable us to offer others services and products in the future.
Old interface
New Interface
However, most of our very loyal customers who have been using our products for years did not take the change on their stride. We faced a lot of stiff resistance from large swathes of our customers who have been using the old interface comfortably for years.
It always is a huge business risk to make such a radical change to your product that forces all your customers to a new way of doing things. That is why the wisest thing to do is introduce change progressively, bit by bit. But many a times, as in our case, you need to introduce a big change in your product because of a new product strategy and you face a lot of customer resistance. History is replete with cases where radical product redesign have failed or succeeded -- be it introducing Ribbons to Microsoft Office, or Linkedin's redesign to match Facebook.
To manage such a big change, I think Bob and Chris' Forces diagram shared above could be of a lot of help.
The tool highlights two opposing forces in the adoption of new value propositions:
What motivates people to switch to a new solution?
What holds people back from switching to a new solution?
A) Motivators to Switch
Motivating forces have two drivers:
Push: Investigate what motivates people to even look for a different solution? It could be problems with the existing solutions or unhappy experiences. Think of these motivators as the pains associated with using a current product or service.
Pull: This is what Bob and Chris call the “Magnetism of the New” solution; It is what attracts customers to a new product or service. In our Customer Profile in the Value Proposition Canvas, these are the gain creators of a new value proposition that connect strongly with the gains customers are looking for. These are the most attractive benefits of the new solution.
B) Blockers to Switch
Blocking forces have two drivers that block or inhibit change:
Inertia: What is it about an existing solution that prevents people from switching? What makes it difficult for someone to switch? One example that comes to mind is the Nespresso coffee system. Typically you were locked into the system once you bought the machine (coffee pods only worked with the Nespresso machine). If you wanted to switch, you had to buy an entirely new machine. There may simply also be habits of the present that prevent customers from switching.
Anxiety: Here you highlight a customer’s worries about the new solution. Will it be a difficult service or product to adopt? Does this new product or service even work as promised? Is it reliable? These types of questions can make a person anxious and block the ability to adopt a new product.
If you invest well in your discovery efforts towards addressing these four dimensions (Push, Pull, Inertia and Anxiety), you will increase your chances to successfully navigate the change for your customers.
If you invest well in your product discovery efforts towards addressing these four dimensions (Push, Pull, Inertia and Anxiety), you will increase your chances to successfully navigate the change for your customers.
The way I imagine it to be is that the product team could add weights/scores for each of the forces in a brainstorming exercise and keep iterating till the scores of Push and Pull forces far exceed the scores of Inertia and Anxiety forces.
The 9X Effect
Writing about the Forces diagram also reminded me of what John T. Gourville calls “The 9x Effect” in Eager Sellers and Stony Buyers: Understanding the Psychology of New-Product Adoption (you have to register for a free HBR account to view the article):
There’s a fundamental problem for companies that want consumers to embrace innovations: While developers are already sold on their products and see them as essential, consumers are reluctant to part with what they have. This conflict results in a mismatch of nine to one between what innovators believe consumers want and what consumers truly desire.
This image from the article explains the concept well:
Image courtesy: Intercom
It is the genesis of the idea that any new products or features needs to be 10 times better to get mainstream adoption from their existing counterparts. It’s only at that point that switching actually becomes a no-brainer. That’s where you want to be.
Equipped with the above two models, we settled on a realization that we ought to add more value (new features that were unavailable on the old client) to our refurbished TeamViewer client that is 9x times better than the old client to enable our customers to switch.
Build a Bridge
I am also reminded of the concept of 'building a bridge' for your customers. I remember hearing about it from one of the episodes in a16z podcast ( a must for all PMs). I do not remember which episode was that but the concept stayed in me because of the impact it left on me. So the conversation was around why Google glasses failed and why Snapchat spectacles might succeed. The guy in the podcast made a point that if the extent of change demanded of a user is way too radical, mass adoption of the new product will always suffer. Google glasses suffered that fate. It made the wearers look obtrusive, which not make all wearers comfortable out on the streets. Hence, the demand for change in behaviour way too steep. Snapchat spectacles on the other hand looked like any regular sunglasses. Hence, they betted on its traction more than Google glasses. 'Building a bridge' is making it easy for the users to navigate the change easily without demanding a lot from them.
It is precisely for the same reason the new home assistants are designed to blend in the living room furnishing instead of standing out as an odd electronic device.
Google Home Mini is designed to blend with the living room upholstery fabric.
P.S.: If you have successfully introduced radical changes in your products, please share your examples in the comments below.