Are You Talking to Your Customer Enough? Probably Not.

A reflection from Management 3.0 by Jurgen Appelo

Hej! It’s William!

This is part of the "Meller Highlights" series with reflections and learnings from my personal book highlights. As mentioned here, this series is now something I’m keeping special for the people who support this channel as paid subscribers.

If you’ve been following along and enjoying the ideas I share, I’d love to have you join them. Becoming a subscriber not only gives you full access, but it also helps me keep creating and going deeper with the work I do.

How do these highlights work? Every day I pick one idea from my reading and think about how to apply it in real life. Most stay as private notes, but once a week, I choose one that feels special.

That’s the one I share here, a highlight that turns into a deeper reflection on how it can change the way we do something.

Today’s highlight: Management 3.0 by Jurgen Appelo

“Agile understands that the best products are created when customers are directly involved with the teams creating them. A team collaborates with the customer (or a customer representative) to maintain and continually reprioritize an ever-changing backlog of features. These features are described in a concise format, or “inch-deep,” and more extensive exploration and documentation start only as soon as they are selected for immediate implementation by the team. Simplicity is the key to a good design of each feature, and after its implementation, the usefulness of features is immediately verified by the customer.”

Let’s reflect on that…

The heart of Agile, as Jurgen Appelo describes it, is not about some big, complicated system.

It is actually very simple: if you want to build something valuable, you have to stay close to the people you are building it for, so you can iterate and increment the “thing”.

But people are great at making simple things become very complex, right?

We should have more certifications for that, actually.

CCM® - Complexity Creator Master

Work with the customer.
Talk to them.
Let them guide you along the way.

It sounds almost too obvious, right?

But somehow, a lot of companies still forget this. They start building big plans, long documents, huge backlogs filled with features that nobody even asked for anymore. Agile will turn that old way of working on its head.

And the magic is that this list (the backlog) keeps changing.

You meet with the customer or their voice inside the team and ask real questions:

“What matters now?”
“Has anything changed?”
“What should we do next?”

It’s the same common sense we use in real life, but somehow forget at work.

Plans are guesses. Reality moves.

Another thing here is the focus on simplicity.

When the team picks something to work on, they do not dive into weeks of writing, meetings, or fancy presentations.

They get to the point. What is the simplest version of this feature that could deliver value?

And simplicity is not being lazy. It’s about being precise.

It’s about trusting that if something turns out to need more, you will discover it naturally, not by predicting everything, but by building and learning.

Then comes the part that really brings it all together: feedback.

You do not build in silence for months and hope for the best on launch day.

You build a small piece, you show it immediately, and you listen.

If it works, good. If not, you adjust early, when changes are still easy to make.

Stay simple. Stay connected. Adjust often. And trust the people you are working with enough to really listen.

Management (here) is about creating an environment where feedback is fast, learning is constant, and plans are always a little flexible.

Repeating… Is about creating or enabling, or facilitating the environment! Because reality will always have the final word.

Maybe what we really need is not a better plan. Maybe we just need a fresh conversation, a simpler next step, and the courage to adjust as we go.

Because once you start working like this - simpler, closer, more human - it becomes really hard to imagine going back.

Have you ever seen this happen in your own experience?

I’d love to hear what you think.

This is your tip today, inspired by one of my highlights from Management 3.0 by Jurgen Appelo.

PS: Jurgen Appelo is on Substack, you can check his profile and his great content here.

If you want to keep getting reflections like this one in your inbox, subscribe to Meller Notes.

Let’s keep growing together, one small habit at a time.