What Are You Talking About?

What's the conversation at your board or conference room table?

A) Are you first talking about what's working before what's not?  Are you talking about customers, their needs, finding them, satisfying them, and holding onto them?  Are you talking about how to beat your competitors and what products your current and future customers need that you can make?

Or

B) Are you talking about widgets and manufacturing?  Product design initiatives and laborious process issues?

News is, both are equally important.  But make sure you spend equal time on both.  Our tendency is to fall in love with our products, plants, and processes.  But make sure you give your customers attention, as well as paying attention to your markets, the needs, the competitors, and all the stakeholders involved.

Seth Godin said it this way in a recent blog:

What (people) want

What do customers, friends, the socially networked, users, neighbors, classmates, servers, administrators, employees... maybe even brands... want?

notice me
like me
touch me
do what I say
miss me if I'm gone

Pay attention to what matters.