Some Sculptures Need The Movement of People Around Them To Work
Customer centricity is a word that needs context in order to grasp its meaning, sort of the same way the word “Washington” does. When you hear the word “Washington”, context is the way you know whether someone is talking about DC or state, George or Irving. Even though the phrase “customer centricity” seems self-explanatory (aka to “put your customer at the center”) - what does that EVEN mean when you work in the belly of a company and aren’t even customer facing? Here is the thing, “customer centricity” means different things in different contexts and aligning on the language is key to avoid talking past each other when is on the table. As an innovator, my job is to peek around corners to help clients figure the next best step when all of the usual ways of making progress don’t seem to be working. Often, that means taking a tact on human centricity the way a builder uses the right tool for the right job. I read the context of my client’s needs and apply that tact accordingly. Here is a way to think about how I do that:
Human Centricity In The Context of Invention: Invention is the act of bringing together ideas of objects in a unique way so as to create something that did not exist before. I think of it as a “thing” looking for a customer because oftentimes the inventor is central to the plot and the customer is less so. Sometimes inventors give us things we never asked for but are the logical extensions of emerging technologies (Ex: self-driving cars). Other times inventors give us things we had no idea we needed and now can’t live without (Ex: Steve Jobs ‘nuff said). In terms of customer centricity, it is often the acumen of the inventor and not customers themselves that give rise to good inventions.
Human Centricity In The Context of Improvement: Improvement is all about making something that already exists better. Once waste has been eliminated and efficiency increased, the object of improvement is to keep your “thing” current through voice-of-the-customer. VoC is a form of customer centricity that assumes people know what they want and the art and science of their sharing that lies in how well we ask and confirm it. Oftentimes, what customers want is shaped by what is happening in the culture and so success is measured by how close or far we come to delivering what customers expect.
Human Centricity In The Context of Innovation: Innovation is about creating new value in the form of what people need. Like invention, innovation is about creating something new but here the customer is centered over the inventor. Like improvement, we talk with customers however rather than eliciting requirements from them, we discover insights with them. By having empathy for customers and believing what they say without judgement, we gain insights to challenges they have that in turn, provides us with opportunities to support them.
To be clear, this richer kind of human centricity can (and often does) conflict with deeply held beliefs assumed by an organization. Oftentimes these are assumptions that were formed in a different economy. Whether an organization can change in ways that allow them to hear new information, assimilate it and apply it to creating new value is a matter of culture and market pressure. And man … the pressure is on.
In my experience, the shift in context from “elicit from” to “discover with” is the most common cause of some confusion when “taking a human centric approach” is on the table. Organizations who are engaged in innovative projects actually require different human centric frameworks, roles/responsibilities, hard/soft human skills and metrics for success than those that are engaged in improvement projects. In other words, it’s not the pursuit of customer centricity where they struggle but instead it is in marshalling the right resources. Either way, whether the past is a good indication of future success (improvement) or whether there is very little relevant data to support decision making (innovation), putting the customer at the center of your decision making is a proven method for determining the next best step; context matters.
*Andy Goldsworthy || Sculptor
