How to build winning products?

Several critical issues that plague product development processes, especially in large organizations where layers of complexity, rigid frameworks, and a focus on metrics over vision stifle innovation. Here’s a breakdown of how these factors contribute to the challenge of building winning products:

1. Data-Driven Decision-Making: While A/B testing and data analysis are valuable tools, an overreliance on them can stifle creativity. Data often reflects the status quo and incremental improvements, making it harder to innovate or take bold risks. The most transformative products often arise from intuition and deep market insight rather than just data. When product managers (PMs) are glued to metrics, they can miss the larger vision or the user’s evolving emotional needs.
2. Engineers and Designers Not Being Heard: Engineers and designers are often the ones closest to the product’s technical and user-facing aspects. When their insights aren’t considered, teams miss opportunities for innovation and optimization. Their exclusion can result in a product that is functional but lacks intuitive design or technical depth—key elements of winning products.
3. Incentivizing Metric-Driven Success: When teams are rewarded primarily based on short-term gains (like "y metric go up"), the focus shifts from building a meaningful, long-lasting product to delivering incremental improvements. This environment discourages long-term visionaries and often results in feature creep or superficial changes aimed at moving the needle rather than improving the product holistically.
4. Challenges in Hiring for Quality: As you’ve noted, it’s easier to quantify metrics like “2% increase in engagement” than to assess a candidate’s capacity for long-term strategic vision or product quality. This creates a hiring bias towards individuals who can show quick wins, not necessarily those who think deeply about user experience, innovation, or the future direction of the product.
5. Diluted Vision with Large Teams: In big organizations with multiple layers of management, the original vision can get watered down as it passes through different levels. More stakeholders, more opinions, and larger teams lead to misalignment, confusion, and often a lack of ownership over the final product. Decision-making slows, and the risk appetite dwindles.
6. Overly Complex Product Development Processes: Framework-driven environments (e.g., strict adherence to Scrum, SAFe, or other methodologies) can lead to a situation where more energy is spent on managing the process rather than building the product. While frameworks provide structure, they should serve the product—not the other way around. Too many meetings, excessive documentation, and bureaucratic processes take attention away from actual product innovation.
7. Focus on Timelines and Launches over Quality: Executives and founders are often pressured to meet deadlines and show progress to investors or stakeholders. In such environments, the emphasis shifts to launching on time, even if the product isn’t ready or lacks polish. Quality becomes secondary, and teams scramble to meet dates rather than focusing on crafting a product that genuinely delights users.

The Core Problem: Measuring Greatness is Hard

As you’ve pointed out, greatness is intangible and difficult to measure with conventional metrics. When organizations can’t easily quantify something, they tend to deprioritize it. Instead, they default to things they can measure—KPIs, timelines, engagement rates, etc.—which are often proxies for success but not the essence of it. The result is that the pursuit of greatness is replaced by the appearance of productivity: hitting metrics, running processes, and launching products that meet internal criteria but fail to make a lasting impact.

How to Refocus on Great Product Building?

• Balance Data with Intuition: Use data to inform decisions but also create space for intuition, user empathy, and visionary thinking. Foster an environment where PMs, engineers, and designers can contribute to the product’s broader direction based on their experiences and creativity, not just numbers.
• Flatten Structures: Minimize the layers of management and create direct lines of communication between leadership, product teams, and users. This keeps the original vision intact and allows for faster, more focused decision-making.
• Reward Visionaries, Not Just Metrics: Redefine success to include long-term vision and user impact, not just short-term metric gains. In hiring, place more value on those who have demonstrated the ability to think deeply about the product, not just incrementally improve it.
• Simplify Processes: Streamline the product development process so that teams can spend less time in meetings and more time building. Ensure that frameworks serve the product and not the other way around.
• Focus on Quality, Not Just Timelines: Prioritize product excellence over launch dates. Encourage teams to take the time needed to ensure that the product is truly ready, even if it means missing an arbitrary deadline.

At the heart of it, building winning products requires a balance between creativity and discipline, metrics and vision, and short-term performance with long-term impact. Organizations that manage to strike this balance are the ones that create truly great products.