When a company has revenue but is susceptible to the fatal afflictions above, I call it “brittle.” It’s a real business, but it’s easy to break. The pattern, which suggests a remedy, is: Brittleness manifests wherever there is “One Thing.”

Simple. Lovable. Complete.

Your customers don’t want to figure out some newfangled thing just to navigate a dialog box. In fact, your customers don’t want to think about you at all. They have their actual job to do. They’d like to be able to do it predictably and safely.

For the most important decisions, Maximizing is wise. For almost anything else, Satisficing is likely wiser.

Can’t make everybody happy, but you can make the happy users happier. I think there’s a possibility of developing tunnel vision with a process like this, but it does seem to work better than the bland approach.