Beyond the Dashboard | Principle 5: Focus on Adoption, Not Just Delivery
Shipping is overhead; adoption is the asset. In B2B, features stick and removal is costly, so prevent bloat. In B2C, unused features fuel silent churn. AI can surface adoption signals, not define value. Lead by asking: what delivers outcomes, not what shipped. Treat non-adoption as debt. Measure it.
TL;DR (For Leaders Reading This Between Two Strategy Calls)
- Shipping is overhead. Adoption is the asset.
- In B2B SaaS, removing features is rarely easily feasible. Prevention might be your only scalable strategy.
- In B2C SaaS, unused features lead to silent churn. Users remove themselves.
- AI won’t tell you what success looks like. It can help surface adoption signals but not define value for your customers.
- Your product is a system for driving outcomes, not a catalogue of releases.
- Shift the conversation from: “What did we ship?” to “What is delivering value?”
Principle 4 was about how stacking frameworks creates noise and why leadership must enforce clarity by choosing one dominant lens per decision.
Now, in Principle 5, we confront a deeper trap: mistaking shipping for success. Because features aren’t value. Adoption is.