I’ve been talking to a lot of product people recently, and something has come up again and again. I think a lot of people think about product development as a kind of puzzle. I need to figure out what people want, and then figure out the puzzle, and then when I have a solution, I’ll show people and they’ll love it, buy it, and step 3: profit.

My advice always seems to trend in the same direction, though. You need to get feedback early. You need to be able to change direction quickly, and make those changes not painful for your team. You need to discard ideas that aren’t working without a second thought, and know high-level what you’re doing so that you can keep your balance.

I’ve been thinking about how to describe this – at one point I thought the phrase “inertialess” was a good descriptor of what I was looking for. Because it’s about being able to change direction quickly and painlessly, and “subtracting weight” made a lot of sense. The less work you can do before you test, the faster you move. The less painful it is to throw it out when needed. The fewer plans you have, the fewer minds you need to change. But keeping a strong “north star” of what you’re doing allows everyone to understand where you’re all headed.

And it occurred to me this morning there’s a better metaphor for it. You and your audience?

It’s a dance.

You’re working with them, trying to develop a shared understanding of this thing you’re doing. You’re leading them, but you’re responsive to their movements and their needs. You don’t dance in heavy shoes, because you need to be able to change directions fluidly. You need to be able to take in information from everywhere, and your hands, feet, head, body all need to be paying attention and in sync with your partner. The more you understand what you’re doing, the more your body is able to “do the work” and the less you have to think about it.

It also frames some of what I think of as the inevitable “herky-jerky” changing of direction during the early stages of the process as a bit more elegant, and fluid. Yeah, at the start you lurch around as you learn the song and the moves. But as you get more skilled, you’re changing a lot, but you’re doing it in concert with your audience, not *against* them. The more fluid and harmonious you can be, and the less you think of it as an antagonistic process, the faster you’ll learn, and the more graceful you’ll be.

I’ve been trying to think of a reason to write my experience with this process down – and it’s been hard to come up with a framing that makes sense to others. Inertialess made sense to me, I have a mechanical engineering background. But I don’t think it made sense to others – at least not in an intuitive, friendly way.

Does this make sense to you? I know that’s a leading question at the end of this post, but I’m curious what you think.