#6 – Why Discovery Needs More Than Customer Interviews
- Simone Pinto
- 6 days ago
- 3 min read
This post is part of my series From Vision to Value, exploring how systems-led discovery helps any idea become a reality with clarity, direction, and momentum. Each post compares a popular product approach to the systems lens that changed how we work at Product 101.
The Lean Obsession with Talking to Customers
Talk to your customers
It’s the first commandment of Lean.
From The Lean Startup to The Lean Entrepreneur, every modern playbook preaches the same mantra:
Get out of the building.
Run interviews.
Validate assumptions.
And they’re right — to a point.
Customer interviews are invaluable.
But here’s the trap:
talking to users isn’t the same as understanding the system they live in.
At best, interviews reveal a fragment of reality, at worst, they give teams false confidence that they’ve found “the truth.”
The Promise and Blind Spot of Lean
Lean was designed to fix the “build first, regret later” problem.
Instead of hiding away for 18 months building something nobody wants, you talk to people early, test small, pivot fast.
This mindset has saved countless teams from burning through budgets and morale.
It keeps organisations nimble and customer-aware.
But speed has a shadow side.
Interviews often bias toward whoever is easiest to reach.
Feedback reflects personal preference, not systemic pressure.
Pivots are driven by the loudest voice, not the deepest truth.
According to research by the Nielsen Norman Group,
more than 60 percent of product teams admit their interview samples don’t represent real customers.¹
And CB Insights found that
42 percent of startups fail because there was “no market need” — a signal that teams often “validated” the wrong thing.²
When Lean discovery ignores system dynamics, you risk building something that sounds validated but collapses once it meets the messy real world.
Listening Beyond the Obvious
This is where Peter Checkland’s Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) reshapes discovery.
SSM reminds us that human systems are not neat markets — they’re living networks of incentives, politics, and power.
Systems-led discovery widens the lens beyond the customer
to include:
Worldviews: How do different stakeholders interpret the same situation? (Spoiler: it’s rarely the same.)
Blockers: Who holds veto power even if users say yes?
Processes: Which routines or workflows will clash with your innovation?
Regulators & influencers: What external forces could accelerate or constrain adoption?
Unintended consequences: What might break if this succeeds?
Customer interviews give you a slice. Systems-led discovery shows you the ecosystem.
Case in Point
Years ago, at a media startup riding the high of an Olympic MVP success, the team launched a follow-up platform for low-cost media bookings.
The logic was flawless on paper: users loved the prototype, agencies nodded along, and early demos impressed investors.
Then launch day came — and nothing happened.
We hadn’t misjudged the users.
We’d misjudged the system: the politics between agencies, the unspoken incentives, the under-the-table deals no one mentioned in interviews.
We validated the product.
We failed to validate the ecosystem.
Lean had told us to move fast - the system told us to slow down and listen differently.
Why This Matters for Product Teams
Every team is told to “listen to the customer,” but not every voice is equal, and not every user understands the forces shaping adoption.
Systems-led discovery helps translate interviews into insight by asking:
Who benefits — and who might lose?
How does this connect to business goals or OKRs?
What tensions sit underneath each “requirement”?
When you map the system, you stop translating interviews into feature lists and start turning them into strategy.
Why This Matters for Innovation Leaders
Innovation labs often move fast, show progress, and celebrate MVP launches — yet many die on arrival.
They validated interest, not adoption.
Systems-led discovery doesn’t slow you down.
It gives your speed a steering wheel.
It turns motion into direction and direction into measurable value.
Lean + Systems = Resilient Innovation
Both methods are powerful on their own. Together, they’re transformative.
Lean Thinking | Systems Thinking | What You Get Together |
Customer interviews | Stakeholder & worldview mapping | Broader discovery, fewer blind spots |
MVPs & experiments | MAPs (Minimum Aligned Prototypes) | Quick tests that are context-aware |
Pivot fast | Learn deeply | Smarter pivots, not just faster ones |
When Lean and Systems thinking converge, you
build products validated by people and sustained by the systems they inhabit.
Final Word
Customer interviews are a start — but without mapping the system they belong to, you’re building on sand.
Lean talks to people.
Systems-led discovery listens to contexts.
One without the other is incomplete. Together, they turn discovery into clarity — and clarity into momentum.
Ready to listen beyond the obvious?
Book a Systems Discovery Call and let’s map the ecosystem your idea needs to thrive.
¹ Nielsen Norman Group, “UX Research Practices Survey,” 2023.
² CB Insights, “The Top 12 Reasons Startups Fail,” 2023.