Chapter Two: A Common Framework for Continuous Discovery

2016 was a tough year for the American bank Wells Fargo. Several regulatory organizations uncovered fraudulent activity at the bank. Bankers were opening checking, savings, and credit-card accounts on behalf of customers without their customers’ knowledge or prior approval. The news was picked up by newspapers across the country. It was a public-relations nightmare.

At first, Wells Fargo blamed individual branch employees, arguing the fraudulent activity was the result of isolated behavior. But under further scrutiny, it became clear that employees were under immense pressure from senior leadership to grow the average number of accounts held by each customer. For years, Wells Fargo was known for its cross-selling strategy, in which, once a customer opened one account with the firm, bankers would then work to grow that customer’s footprint. If the customer opened a checking and savings account, bankers would offer a credit card or a mortgage.

With time, however, this cross-selling strategy became more and more aggressive. Bankers were given quotas that were impossible to reach. Because these quotas were paired with lucrative incentives, bankers looked for ways to cheat the system. Under immense pressure from senior leadership, tempted by the lure of compelling incentives, many bankers opened fraudulent accounts on their customers’ behalf without their permission.

Wells Fargo was fined $185 million by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and faced lawsuits costing them billions of dollars as a result. The Wells Fargo story is a story of outcomes gone wrong. The company rightly started with a desired outcome: To increase the average number of accounts per customer. However, they didn’t pair this outcome mindset with a customer-centric mindset, that is critical for long-term product success.⁴

While Wells Fargo’s fraud is exceptional, the focus on outcomes at the cost of the customer is not uncommon. At many companies, there is a tension between business needs and customer needs. When you get bombarded with a handful of ads before you can start reading a newspaper article, it’s because the newspaper prioritized their need for ad revenue over the reader’s need for a pleasant reading experience. When you can’t watch your favorite sporting event because the broadcast rights didn’t allow it to be streamed in your region, the sports team prioritized their television revenue over their fans’ desire to watch the game. When hotels tack on a resort fee that isn’t visible at time of booking, the hotel is prioritizing their own short-term revenue needs over the traveler’s need for price transparency. Sadly, this conflict between business needs and customer needs is prevalent in every industry. But it doesn’t have to be this way.

Businesses do need to make a profit. That’s required for their survival. However, profit should not come at the cost of serving the customer. Renowned business consultant and author Peter Drucker, in the opening quote of this chapter, argues that the goal of a business is to “convert society’s needs into opportunities for a profitable business.” He argues that a company’s purpose is to serve the customer. Instead of framing business needs as at odds with customer needs, Drucker is aligning the two, by arguing that serving customers is how we generate profit. I couldn’t agree more. In this chapter, I’ll introduce a framework for continuous discovery that will ensure that you pursue business needs by addressing your customers’ needs.