The Mom Test

The book is about how to learn from your customer. I’m now working on an intern project building a internal debug tool for my team. This is similar with making a product and selling it, you want to make sure that what their pain points are during debugging, and why they are going to use your tool. So that’s why I read this book. Although it is a short book, it gives you concrete examples and steps to avoid fake promises and identify real needs. It is also a great book for everyone who wants to start a business.

The book helped me identify that when I propose my idea to my mentor and my manager, what I really want was emotional support instead of taking advice and making my idea better. I realized it because I found that when I started “pitch mode”, I became nervous and afraid of being judged. It shouldn’t be like this. What I should do in my meeting is to ask more about whether my work was aligned with plan and team’s goal, and speak less about my stuff. I can always bring them up when people are interested.

The book also helped me identify the real need of my colleague. Last week one of my colleague said that she wants a search function in the tool. After I applied the steps in the book, I discovered that her real need is to find the specific header location in the file, and searching is just a way to do that. My tool already supports finding the specific header, so I don’t need to spend time on adding that new search function.

Another thing I learned is to ask questions that make you scared. If it doesn’t scare you, it means that you’re not asking the question you really want to know. Write down the 3 big questions you want to ask. Don’t end the meeting before you get all the answers.

This book also reminds me of Give and Take. The idea of you want to “look good” or “do good” will lead to different actions during meeting, and finally affects the result.