Even roles far from the customer, like engineering, make countless micro-decisions. Without an intuitive understanding of customer pull—what they're trying to achieve and why they're blocked—these decisions will likely miss the mark, even when just following a requirements document.

Instead of a traditional product roadmap, give engineers ownership of a broad "problem space." This high-agency model pushes them to get "forward deployed" with customers, uncover real needs, and build solutions directly. This ensures product development is tied to actual pain points and fosters a strong sense of ownership.

The "Owner's Delusion" is the inability to see your own product from the perspective of a new user who lacks context. You forget they are busy, distracted, and have minimal intent. This leads to confusing UIs. The antidote is to consciously step back, "pretend you're a regular human being," and see if it still makes sense.

Engineering often defaults to a 'project mindset,' focusing on churning out features and measuring velocity. True alignment with product requires a 'product mindset,' which prioritizes understanding the customer and tracking the value being delivered, not just the output.

Instead of siloing roles, encourage engineers to design and designers to code. This cross-functional approach breaks down artificial barriers and helps the entire team think more holistically about the end-to-end user experience, as a real user does not see these internal divisions.

When handed a specific solution to build, don't just execute. Reverse-engineer the intended customer behavior and outcome. This creates an opportunity to define better success metrics, pressure-test the underlying problem, and potentially propose more effective solutions in the future.

The most effective product reviews eliminate all abstractions. Forbid presentations, pre-reads, and storytelling. Instead, force the entire review to occur within the actual prototype or live code. This removes narrative bias and forces an assessment of the work as the customer will actually experience it.

Dogfooding isn't enough. Founders should use every feature of their product weekly to develop a subjective feel for quality. Combine this with objective metrics like the percentage of unhappy customers and the engineering velocity for adding new features.

To prevent engineers from focusing internally on technical purity (e.g., unnecessary refactoring), leaders must consistently frame all work in terms of its value to the customer. Even tech debt should be justified by its external impact, such as improving security or enabling future features.