Ask: Who is setting your standards—your industry, your ego, or your clients? – Selling the Invisible
You launch a new feature for your product. It uses a new technology stack that’s cutting edge. You spend hours working on the last few tweaks making sure the logo and the animations are perfect. Your colleagues applaud your work and compliment the new project. The only problem? Your customers prefer the old version.
It’s easy to fall into a trap of allowing your industry or your ego to set the standard for your work. The desire to impress colleagues and receive accolades pushes us to go the extra mile on projects but occasionally forget that customers might have preferred something else entirely.
The goal in shipping should be to solve the customer’s problem, not to get kudos. If the industry and ego are satisfied but the client is unhappy, that’s not success. It’s true that customers often aren’t sure exactly what they want. That’s not an excuse to ignore what they’re asking for altogether.
Let your client set the standard for your work. Ego and industry should come second.