Users & customers are just as likely to distract or lead you astray as they are to lead you to the promised land.
This doesn't mean you don't listen to them often and take them seriously; it doesn't mean they're dumb, you’re smart, and that you can make all kinds of assertions on their behalf. It means that your promised land is not their responsibility. You can't do this without users and yet if you just rely on users to guide your decision making, there’s a good chance of distraction away from the goal.
It means that it’s up to you and your team to manage the many factors and tensions that pull on a business — users & customers being only a few of them. It means their interests are not always your interests. Your interests are most likely a very narrow sliver of their interests. You need to understand their context and your context so that you can evaluate the multi-faceted tradeoffs of each major decision. You need to find & follow the overlap between what you’ve set out to do and what they need.
