Ryan Nisbet, who created Google AdSense, argues product managers rely too heavily on data to find problems. Talk to customers instead. Data's job is testing solutions you've already thought of, not discovering what's broken in the first place.
You cannot identify problems based on data. You have to identify problems based on customer feedback and talking to customers. Data helps you figure out whether your solutions to the problems are working. Data can never tell you the root cause. You have to talk to the customer to really understand what the root cause is and truly understand what the problem is. And then you have a few hypotheses to solve the problem. You test these hypotheses, then you get data by testing the hypothesis, and the data tells you whether the hypothesis— whether you're on the right path or not.
How do I beat bigger competitors? Michael Ovitz, co-founder of CAA and former President of Disney
How do I become the person I want to be? (with Emily McDonald aka emonthebrain)
