Why your top-ranked problem might be the wrong one to solve

Most validation methods ask customers to rank problems by importance. Mental Mapping is different. You have participants sort and rank jobs, pains, and gains and then map their current workarounds and solutions. When someone shows you five hacked together solutions for one problem, that's behavioural evidence worth acting on.

It's powerful validation because workarounds show you the desperation that surveys usually hide.

What's a Mental Mapping Test?

You create cards representing customer jobs (what they're trying to accomplish), pains (what blocks them), and gains (outcomes they want). Participants sort these into categories, rank by importance, then add cards showing their current solutions and workarounds.

Success means finding problems with multiple workaround attempts attached.

How a procurement platform discovered the real problem worth solving

A venture team at a global consultancy we work with was building AI-powered procurement software. After 6 months of development, they had sophisticated spend analysis, predictive pricing, and automated vendor scoring. But adoption in pilots was terrible.

Rather than adding more features, we ran Mental Mapping sessions with them to understand what procurement teams actually struggled with daily.

Together we:

• Recruited 25 procurement managers from target segment (companies with £50-200M spend)

• Created cards for assumed jobs ("reduce costs," "manage suppliers," "ensure compliance")

• Created cards for assumed pains ("no visibility," "manual processes," "data quality issues")

• Created cards for desired gains ("save time," "reduce risk," "improve negotiations")

• Ran 60-minute virtual sessions asking participants to sort, rank, and add their workarounds

• Probed specifically: "For your top 3 pains, show me exactly what you do today to solve them"

The results:

• Top ranked pain: "Getting stakeholders to actually use the official procurement process" (23 of 25 participants)

• This pain had 19 different workaround cards attached

• Workarounds included: shadow IT purchases, retrospective POs, personal credit cards, "ask forgiveness not permission"

• Original assumption (need better analytics) ranked 14th with zero workarounds

• Real problem: adoption and compliance, not intelligence

What they learnt beyond the ranking:

The experiment demonstrated they'd built the wrong thing entirely. Procurement teams didn't need better spend analysis; they needed to make the official process so easy that stakeholders would actually use it instead of going rogue.

This insight completely pivoted their product. Instead of AI analytics, they built a simple browser extension that made compliant purchasing (almost) as easy as buying on Amazon. Adoption went from 12% to 87% in pilot companies.

Why Mental Mapping works differently than other validation

Mental Mapping tests something surveys can't: the effort people already invest in solving problems. Rankings show what people claim matters but workarounds show what actually drives behaviour.

The card sorting format also removes leading questions. You're not asking "would you use X?", instead, you're observing how they naturally organise problems and solutions. The patterns that emerge are more honest than direct answers.

You also get language validation. The words participants write on their blank cards become your marketing copy; it's how customers actually describe their problems, not how you think they should.

What Mental Mapping actually tests

• Problem validation: Which problems have active workarounds (real pain) versus passive complaints (nice to solve)

• Solution commitment: The complexity of current workarounds shows how much friction people will accept for better solutions

• Priority clarity: Combined ranking + workaround frequency shows you what to solve first

• Market gaps: Problems with many bad solutions indicate opportunity

• Positioning language: The exact words customers use to describe problems and desired outcomes

When Mental Mapping makes strategic sense

• Before building anything: When you have assumptions about problems but no behavioural evidence of which matter most

• After feature development fails: When adoption is low despite solving the "right" problem, Mental Mapping shows you what you missed

• Before major pivots: Final validation of new direction using behavioural evidence not opinions

• Finding product-market fit: When you need to understand which specific problem unlocks adoption

What success really means

Hitting your validation criteria means finding at least one problem that meets three conditions: ranks in top 3 for importance, has 3+ different workarounds attached, and affects 70%+ of your target segment.

The strongest signal isn't the ranking alone; it's the creativity and effort invested in workarounds. When people build elaborate Excel macros, hire temporary staff, or create shadow processes, they're showing deep levels of pain.

One team we worked with found zero workarounds for their top-ranked problem. That killed the project and saved them £2M. Another found 15 workarounds for their 7th-ranked problem. That pivot made them profitable in 4 months.

Try this next week

Pick your biggest assumption about the customer problems you're trying to solve. Run Mental Mapping with 15-20 target customers to validate which problems drive real behaviour.

Monday - Setup (2 hours):

• Create 30-40 problem cards based on your assumptions

• Create 20-30 job/outcome cards

• Set up virtual whiteboard with sorting zones

• Create blank cards for participant additions

Tuesday - Recruit (1 hour):

• Email 50 target customers

• Offer £50 incentive for 60-minute session

• Use Calendly for automated scheduling

Wednesday-Thursday - Facilitate (8 hours):

• Run 45-60 minute sessions

• Sort cards into "daily problem," "occasional annoyance," "not my problem"

• Rank within each category

• Critical: Add workaround cards for each "daily problem"

• Probe: "Walk me through exactly how you solve this today"

Friday - Analyse (2 hours):

• Count workaround frequency per problem

• Calculate problem rankings across all sessions

• Identify problems with ranking/workaround alignment

• Update Value Proposition with validated insights

Watch what happens when you see the difference between what customers say matters and what they actually try to solve.