The Table in the Room

In a famous scene from Men in Black, military candidates squeeze into tiny classroom chairs, struggling with oversized test papers.

All except one: a candidate who simply drags a conference table across the room to create a proper writing surface.

This moment captures a fundamental truth about modern business: we're so focused on measuring progress that we forget to help customers actually make it.

We track engagement rates, conversion metrics, and customer satisfaction scores with precision:

• We optimize everything
• We celebrate improving numbers
• We create beautiful dashboards

Meanwhile, our customers still struggle with the same basic problems they came to us to solve.

The other candidates were so focused on following the test's rules that they missed the actual problem…

…Not being able to write comfortably.

The next time you review your metrics, ask yourself:

Are we measuring customer progress, or are we just getting better at measuring?