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Part 3 - Crossing The Threshold - The Hero's Journey for Product Discovery

This is the third of series where we are exploring how The ‘Hero’s Journey’ model used by the world’s greatest authors


To read an overview of the Hero's Journey format. Click Here


This model has a series of distinct steps that all great stories possess.


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The moment of no return has arrived.

In the hero's journey, crossing the threshold represents that pivotal moment when the hero commits fully to their quest, leaving behind the familiar world and stepping into the unknown.

For product managers, this threshold moment comes when you abandon the comfort of building features based on assumptions and enter the realm of continuous product discovery.


But here's the thing about crossing thresholds, it's not a single dramatic leap. It's built through daily habits that gradually transform how you approach product decisions. Let's explore what this transformation looks like and the specific practices that will carry you across.


Every journey starts with the first step: Recognising Your Threshold Moment

You'll know you're approaching the threshold when familiar approaches start feeling inadequate:

  • Stakeholder requests pile up faster than you can evaluate them

  • Your roadmap feels more like wishful thinking than strategic direction

  • You find yourself defending features rather than exploring problems

  • Customer feedback arrives too late to influence meaningful change

This discomfort isn't failure, it's the call to adventure that every product manager eventually faces.

 

The Threshold Guardian: Your Own Assumptions

Before crossing into continuous discovery, you must face the threshold guardian that protects the old way of working: your assumptions.


These aren't malicious, they've kept you safe in a world where "knowing" felt better than questioning. But assumptions about customer needs, market dynamics, and solution effectiveness become barriers to genuine discovery.


The key isn't to eliminate assumptions (impossible) but to transform your relationship with them. Instead of defending assumptions, you'll learn to test them.

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Discovery Habits: Your Daily Training Regimen

Great adventurers don't just rely on frameworks, they develop daily habits that keep their skills sharp. Similarly, product discovery isn't just a process you run occasionally; it's a mindset you cultivate through consistent practice.


The Discovery Mindset Shift

Traditional product thinking asks: "What should we build?" Discovery thinking asks: "What problem should we solve, and for whom?"


This shift from solution-first to problem-first thinking is the foundation of all effective discovery work.


Essential Discovery Habits to Start Today


The Weekly User Touch

Continuous discovery is a product development approach where teams consistently engage with customers to make better decisions about what to build. Commit to having at least one substantive user conversation every week. This isn't a formal research study, rather, it's an ongoing conversation that keeps you connected to real user needs.


The Assumption Journal

Start documenting your assumptions about users, problems, and solutions. Write them down, then actively seek evidence that confirms or contradicts them. Most product failures start with unexamined assumptions.


The Problem-First Planning

Before every feature kick-off, sprint planning, or roadmap discussion, start with the problem. What specific user problem does this solve? How do we know it's a real problem? How will we measure whether we've solved it?


The Evidence Wall

Create a shared space (physical or digital) where your team collects user feedback, research insights, and data that inform product decisions. Make evidence visible and accessible.


The Discovery Standup

Add a discovery check-in to your team rituals. What did we learn about users this week? What assumptions are we testing? What questions do we need to answer?

 

What Type of Product Adventurer Are You?

Before you embark on your discovery journey, it helps to understand your natural discovery style. Take this quick assessment to identify your product adventure archetype:


The Explorer

You're energised by: Talking to users, uncovering new insights, challenging assumptions

Your superpower: Natural curiosity and empathy for user needs

Your challenge: Sometimes getting lost in research without connecting to business outcomes Your discovery focus: User research, ethnographic studies, deep user empathy


The Strategist

You're energised by: Connecting user insights to business strategy, finding patterns in data

Your superpower: Seeing the big picture and making strategic connections

Your challenge: Sometimes staying too high-level without getting into user details

Your discovery focus: Market research, competitive analysis, strategic opportunity identification


The Builder

You're energised by: Rapid prototyping, testing ideas quickly, iterating based on feedback

Your superpower: Turning insights into tangible experiments and solutions

Your challenge: Sometimes jumping to solutions before fully understanding problems

Your discovery focus: Solution testing, prototyping, validation experiments


The Connector

You're energised by: Aligning teams around user insights, translating research into action

Your superpower: Communication and stakeholder alignment around discovery findings

Your challenge: Sometimes avoiding difficult conversations about changing direction

Your discovery focus: Stakeholder interviews, cross-functional alignment, discovery evangelism


Understanding Your Type

Each type brings unique strengths to discovery work. The most effective discovery happens when you leverage your natural strengths while developing skills in other areas. Consider partnering with team members who complement your style.



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The Urgent Call You Can't Ignore

As I write this, somewhere a product manager is sitting in a meeting, defending why a carefully built feature has zero adoption. Another is watching competitors gain market share with solutions that seem obvious in hindsight. A third is explaining to leadership why the roadmap needs to change again because user feedback contradicted all their assumptions.

These aren't isolated incidents, they're symptoms of an approach to product management that worked in a simpler time but fails in today's complex, fast-moving market.


Your users are sending distress signals through support tickets, churn data, and the deafening silence of features that no one uses. They're telling you what they need, but are you listening?


Your stakeholders are demanding impossible quests asking for guaranteed outcomes while forbidding the research that would make those outcomes possible. They want you to hit targets in the dark.


Your roadmap feels like a treasure map drawn by someone who's never seen the territory. It is beautiful to look at, full of promising destinations, but ultimately useless for navigation because it's based on wishful thinking rather than reality.


The call to adventure isn't just about improving your product development process. It's about fundamentally changing your relationship with uncertainty, embracing learning as a core product skill, and building products that create genuine value rather than just completing requirements.

 

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Your Quest Begins Now

The choice is yours. You can stay in the comfortable world of the Feature Factory, where busy feels like progress and velocity charts trend upward even as real impact remains elusive. It's a world where you can always explain why things didn't work out the way you planned.

Or you can step across the threshold into the world of Product Discovery, where assumptions are questioned, users guide your decisions, and every day brings new learning about the people you serve. It's a world where uncertainty becomes excitement, where pivots are victories, and where the products you build actually matter to the people who use them.


The adventure starts with a single step

One user conversation, one assumption challenged, one question asked with genuine curiosity rather than confirmation bias.


Your first quest

In the next seven days, have one unstructured conversation with someone who uses (or could use) your product. Don't sell, don't validate, don't confirm. Just listen. Ask about their goals, their frustrations, their current solutions. Take notes. Share what you learn with your team.


This single conversation won't transform your product overnight, but it will begin to transform you. You'll start to see the difference between what users say they want and what they actually need. You'll begin to develop the most crucial product skill of all: the ability to discover truth rather than defend assumptions.



What Changes When You Cross the Threshold

Once you've established these habits and committed to the discovery journey, several fundamental shifts occur:


Your relationship with uncertainty changes. 

Instead of fearing what you don't know, you become energised by opportunities to learn. Uncertainty transforms from obstacle to fuel.


Your conversations shift focus. 

Team discussions move from debating opinions to sharing insights. "I think customers want this" becomes "Here's what we learned from customers about this."


Your roadmap becomes dynamic. 

Rather than a static plan to execute, your roadmap becomes a living document that evolves based on continuous learning.


Your stakeholder relationships improve. 

When decisions are grounded in customer evidence rather than personal preferences, stakeholder debates become collaborative problem-solving sessions.

 

The Point of No Return

Here's what makes crossing the threshold irreversible: once you experience the clarity that comes from making decisions based on customer evidence rather than assumptions, you can't un-know that feeling. The old way of working, building features based on hunches and hoping for the best, loses its appeal.


You realise that continuous discovery isn't just a methodology; it's a more honest and effective way to build products that actually matter to the people you serve.

 
 
 

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