In my years decades in the product game, dozens of companies have approached me to redesign their website. Consumer tech, ad-supported media, native-mobile apps, SAAS, ecommerce, two-sided marketplace—whatever it was, it was deemed somehow insufficient by someone with sway.

They’d say: “It’s ugly!” or “We’re bored of it!” or “My wife hates it!”

The more informed would say: “It’s got bad UX!” or “It’s not intuitive!” or “It doesn’t have product-market fit!”

But it was all the same thing: people too close to the product were projecting their personal thoughts and feelings on the product. What should they have been doing instead? Well, read on…

Early in my career, so young(ish) and eager to help, I jumped at the word “redesign.” I supported many companies through a full redesign (and several “re-platforms”) that cost thousands or millions of dollars of human capital, and months or years of time.

Sometimes, the resulting design would remain just that: a beautiful but static artifact that never made it to the web. Broken hearts abound, but each time, curiously, the company survived.

Which made a fella wonder: was a redesign really necessary?

So I started asking that question up front, and in doing so, I heard something else: it wasn’t that the product wasn’t working, but the Product Team wasn’t working.

Mid-career, I leapt at that: doing the messy work of reorganizing teams, replacing people, hiring new PMs and designers, and coaching whole companies on the Cult of Agile. Though in hindsight I can still defend a great many of these decisions and actions, there was no doubt a lot of unnecessary and expensive churn in this doing—and on occasion, the end result was still an expensive redesign.

That forced me to step back and listen to what was being said between the demands. The website was almost never the problem, the process occasionally, and the people rarely—these were just symptoms of a larger issue. What I started to see lacking almost everywhere was the purpose that drove the whole machine.

Purpose comes in many forms. As a former speechwriter, I choked on company mission-and-vision statements that were buzzy and vapid. And as a product veteran, I saw a gaping hole where there should be high-level goals—particularly predictable, measurable, and transparent ones.

But the ultimate purpose—the one, enduring truth about making things in this world—is addressing the real, human need of the real, human people who use (and benefit from the use of) your product. And this is what I see missing almost every time.

So when I hear “redesign,” my first step is to work with a product’s benefactors to understand its beneficiaries. From there, we define what that user is lacking and how the company is best-suited to meet their needs. Then comes people, then the processes, and only then does it make sense to address the product.

This may come as no shock to you, dear reader and prospective client. And if that’s true, then I would be delighted to jump feet-first with you into the right part of a redesign, wherever you need me most: defining user needs, articulating goals, empowering people with purpose, perfecting the process, improving product.

But if you’re sitting there thinking, “Who does this jabroni think he is, telling me I don’t need a redesign!?” Well, first, nice use of “jabroni.” But more importantly, let’s talk. You might be about to make a very expensive mistake—one that I would love to swap out for a cheaper, faster, better solution that may not give you the redesign you want, but will give your customers (and bottom line) what they need.