While a graduate student, I didn't think too hard about customers. As an economist, I believed the market worked and the customers were just one side of that. They were the people who bought stuff from producers. It was a naive (and not very useful) view of the world.
Since I've been working at the Foundation, I've been fascinated how nuanced and profound the idea of a customer can be. I would find myself in reading discussions with Associates where they were wrestling with the question of who their customers are. There's always a sense that donors are customers, but there's also discomfort with that as well. I did not have a good answer for them.
Then, one day a wise man named Paul heard a few of us talking about customers in a non-profit world. He looked a little stunned, and then said, "Read the Principle. Really read it." Here's the Foundation's Guiding Principle of Customer Focus: Understand and develop relationships with those who can most effectively advance the Science of LibertyTM.
It was at that point that my mental model of a customer changed. I'd spent months as a new employee in a non-profit searching for an end user. Meanwhile, my customers were all around me, and I didn't realize it.
I'm always looking for ways that I can help others learn and internalize the Guiding Principles. Has "really reading" a Guiding Principle helped you? What have you done to help internalize the Guiding Principles?
I have found a key with guiding principles is to read--and re-read--them, pulling them apart word-by-word if necessary. This is even more necessary when terms that need explanation are used; for example, "economic means" in Value Creation. Without understanding the concept(s) of economic (and political) means, the principle is basically just "work harder." But differentiating economic and political means give a better picture of the responsibility (and real value) of a company that eschews the political for the economical.
And, as you found, you can "live" with a principle for a very long time without figuring out how it fits in the puzzle of a business system. But when it does finally fit, understanding can radiate out and touch other principles, mental models, etc. A key is often having a good guide, as you had with Paul. Our MBM at a plant level would benefit greatly by having "wise ones" handy to push us along in our understanding and implementation.
Posted by: Pat Peterson | 24 May 2010 at 01:04 PM