The great business thinker Peter Drucker once observed that the purpose of a business is to get and keep a customer in a profitable way.
When a businesses loses track of its purpose, it is headed for failure.
Several years ago, our children went to daycare. Parking at the location was limited. One day, half of all parking spots had a new sign: ‘Reserved for employees only.’
As you can imagine, bringing and picking up our children became exponentially more difficult for us. In the end, we switched to a new daycare provider.
Increasing employee happiness is a good thing. Yet, when this happens at the expense of your customers, you walk a slippery slope.
A useful approach is therefore to frame every project and initiative with a simple question: “How can we do this project, while at the same time improve the condition of the customer?”
This is the difference between falling in love with your customer and falling in love with your product.