I was talking with my brother-in-law a while back and we were talking shop. He is a manager within a large software corporation. Somehow the conversation lead him to discuss how their consumer software has changed over the last few years.

Over the course of time we just kept adding more and more features to the application. Then we started a program where we actually would go to the customer’s home and watch them use the software. We realized that they didn’t need more features. They needed things to be easier to use. At some point our features had stopped being useful and had started making things complicated.

That’s a great example of capes and kryptonite. You can take great ideas and turn them into something that cripples the customer. It might be new features, a new website design, a new phone system, or even a decision to move your location. You have to weigh these decisions from the eyes of the customer. “Is this going to help my customers soar, or is it just going to make them sour?”