Stop Haggling Over Features

Discover gold using force field analysis.

If you’ve ever hosted a customer session at a user conference, you know the dreaded “let’s make a feature wish list” breakout. It starts as a brainstorming exercise but quickly devolves into a complaint session, everyone piling it on with “the airing of grievances.”

It’s not strategic, it’s not useful, and it usually ends with you promising yourself a stiff drink and vowing never to do it again.

There’s a better way. Instead of haggling over features, try force field analysis. It’s a dead-simple framework that turns a painful exercise into powerful feedback. With it, you’ll learn:

• What customers believe has contributed to their success (and how you helped—or didn’t).

• What’s holding them back, including the friction your product or services might be adding.

• What their real priorities are—not just about your stuff, but about their business.

• What “big ideas” they’re thinking about next.

It’s not just another workshop gimmick. Done right, this method can uncover the deeper forces driving (or blocking) customer success, giving you the kind of feedback roadmaps are supposed to be based on.

What is Force Field Analysis?

The concept isn’t new. Kurt Lewin, a pioneer in social sciences, developed it decades ago. The idea is simple: for any situation, there are driving forces (what pushes you forward) and restraining forces (what holds you back). You weigh both sides to understand where the balance sits—and what needs to change.

For products and services, this means asking:

• What’s helping? These are your driving forces: a feature that delights, a support process that works smoothly, a sales channel that “gets it,” or even just your reputation for solving a particular kind of problem.

• What’s hurting? These are your restraining forces: complexity, lack of integration, confusing implementation, clunky support, or the dreaded “we don’t know who to call when something breaks.”

Start with the positive. When working with people, start by addressing what is really working and defusing their frustrations before addressing what is not working.

The beauty of force field analysis is its versatility. It works with a small advisory board of five or six, or a larger group broken into round tables of 8–10. Try it with more than 150 people and you’ll probably end up in chaos, unless you’re running a political convention.

A Word of Caution

If your customer base is mostly unhappy, this isn’t going to magically fix things.

When you ask about restraining forces, you’ll just get an open mic night for vendor-bashing. In that case, deal with your core problems first.

But if you’ve got a reasonable mix of satisfied and critical customers, this technique is gold.

Setting It Up

Before you even get in the room, be clear about what you’re trying to learn. Are you looking for feedback on the next release? Or are you aiming at long-range strategic insights? Don’t blur the two. If you’re vague, you’ll get unfocused feedback you can’t use.

Also, set expectations: this is input, not a decision-making session. If participants walk away thinking they’ve just set your roadmap, you’ll have a mutiny later. And for the love of all things product, if you’re not going to act on the input, don’t collect it. Nothing kills trust faster than asking people to share their priorities and then ignoring them.

How It Works

Here’s the basic flow at each table:

1. Assign roles. Each table has a facilitator (who keeps things moving and reports out) and a scribe (who takes notes).

2. List the forces. Start with driving forces. Go around the table and have each person name one. Write them down. Do a few rounds until you’ve captured the top three per person.

3. Vote. Everyone gets three votes for the most important items. The scribe tallies.

4. Report out. The facilitator shares the top three with the larger group.

Repeat the same process for restraining forces.

If you have multiple tables, collect the outputs talk-show host style: have a moderator walk the room with a microphone, pulling one force from each table at a time. Capture them in a shared spreadsheet projected on a screen. Once everything is listed, let the whole room vote on their top three. Sort by votes to see the overall priorities.

The whole exercise—done well—gives you a ranked list of what’s helping and what’s hurting your customers most.

Try Small Before Going Big

Run this process with a small group before attempting it with a larger crowd. That way, you iron out the logistics: timing, how to tally votes, and how to handle repeated ideas. Once you’ve got the rhythm, it scales beautifully.

And don’t just use it externally. This method works just as well with internal teams—engineering, sales, support—anywhere you want to identify friction and accelerators.

Don’t Stop at Listening

The biggest failure mode in exercises like this isn’t messy facilitation. It’s inaction. Customers don’t just want to be heard; they want to see that what they said mattered.

So after the session:

• Report back. Share what you learned, both the good and the bad.

• Fold the positives into your story. Driving forces often make great case studies or proof points for positioning.

• Address the negatives visibly. If restraining forces point to weak onboarding, commit to fixing it—and tell customers when you’ve delivered.

This is the cycle: listen, act, close the loop. Without it, force field analysis is just another sticky-note exercise that makes customers roll their eyes.

Why Bother?

Because at its heart, product management is about solving real problems, not building longer feature lists. Force field analysis helps you step out of the feature haggle trap and into real strategic dialogue.

It shifts the conversation from “add this button” to “help me succeed.” And that’s a conversation worth having.