From Intuition to Evidence: Building Ruthless Focus (Final Part)
Building Ruthless Focus
A core part of ruthless focus is structuring every decision so the whole company pulls in one direction. By now you’ve separated stakeholder problem spaces and gathered clean evidence about what matters and when. Next, put the guides in place so the team can execute with clarity. Following Richard Rumelt’s approach in Good Strategy/Bad Strategy, align on three components: a Diagnosis, a Guiding Policy, and a set of Coherent Actions.
Primer: Defining a market using JTBD
In this playbook, a “market” is behaviour-based, not demographic. The more homogeneous the behaviour within a market, the easier it is to build a solution that reliably serves it. Using Jobs-to-Be-Done, we treat homogeneity as people trying to accomplish the same job, in a similar context, with similar success criteria. This is more predictive than age or gender.
Simple example: parents of toddlers who need to keep a child calm and occupied during a long flight. The context and constraints are shared, so the needs are coherent.
The official formula for creating a JTBD market definition is as follows:
An abstracted description of a group + The job they are trying to get done
Step 1: Diagnosis (make it explicit)
Formalize your research into a behavior-based market definition so every team knows exactly who they serve and in what context. Then state the situation clearly, for example:
JTBD Market Definition*:
Seed-stage PMs at PLG SaaS who need to validate a problem-solution bet in ≤6 weeks without a research team.
Diagnosis:
Symptoms: Shipping based on anecdotes; low activation; PMF unclear.
Root causes: Mixed segments in interviews; concept testing without behavior; no kill/continue rules.
Constraints: Small traffic; limited engineering cycles.
Why now: Runway pressure; next fundraise depends on traction signal.
Leverage point: Concierge + clickable prototypes + 5-10 clean interviews in one segment with pre-set thresholds.
Step 2: Guiding Policy (one sentence)
State how you will win this quarter for that market. This is the strategic filter for every decision.
Example: “Run a six-week evidence sprint: one segment, 5–10 clean interviews, one concierge + one clickable prototype, no engineering unless it moves a pre-set KR, and a commitment signal as the go/kill bar.”
Step 3 — Coherent Actions (make the moves align)
List the small set of actions that reinforce each other. Use a lightweight OKR to keep scope honest.
Objective: one company outcome in plain language.
Key Results (2–3): clear metrics with targets.
Initiatives (3–5): the work you will actually do now.
Non-goals (3): valuable things you will not do this cycle.
If an action does not advance the guiding policy, it waits.
Here's an outro that wraps up your article while setting expectations for future content:
Bringing It All Together
You now have a systematic approach to transform founder intuition into validated product decisions. The trifecta (Founder Intuition, Clean Evidence, and Ruthless Focus) isn't about replacing your instincts. It's about giving them structure and validation to the underlying problem that your product is solving so you can move forward with confidence.
Here's what to do next:
This week:
Map your stakeholders using the framework in Step 1 (15 minutes)
Document their problems using the Job-Problem-Value format (30 minutes)
Pick one problem cluster to validate (5 minutes)
Next sprint (4-6 weeks):
Run your evidence collection using the templates provided
Apply Richard Rummelt’s Diagnosis / Guiding Policy / Coherent Actions framework
Set clear kill/continue criteria before you start
Remember: It is extremely important to realise that the goal isn't to eliminate uncertainty. The goal is to identify and replace assumptions with evidence, one validated learning at a time. Your intuition got you started, but evidence and focus will get you to sustainable growth.
The journey from intuition to evidence is just the beginning. Once you've gathered clean signals and validated your problem space, the next challenge becomes converting that evidence into product-market fit, but that's a framework for another day.
