Why work placements for leaders encourage customer focus

Why work placements for leaders encourage customer focus

Who remembers Juicero’s rise and fall? This Silicon Valley start-up raised more than €120 million to revolutionise juice drinking, developing a $400 press for specially prepared fruit and vegetable pouches. A YouTube video soon revealed that squeezing the pouches by hand worked even better. There was widespread mockery, and the company’s fate was sealed. The example clearly shows how easily a business can lose touch with customer needs.

This is a warning for established companies as well as start-ups. The larger a company becomes, the greater the risk that internal and external customer needs become so fragmented across departments that time and energy go into things nobody needs.

Fredmund Malik once warned of the fine line between specialist expertise and arrogance. The latter shows itself in overemphasising one’s own solutions and ignoring market needs.

In large organisations dominated by specialisation, every employee needs to understand not only their direct contribution to the end product but also how that contribution serves all customers, internal and external.

Avoiding silo thinking requires a culture that thinks and acts across departmental boundaries. Simply proclaiming “customer centricity” sounds good but often has little effect. So how does it work?

One idea is to repeat placements or rotations regularly, as trainees typically do. This teaches how the company works as a whole. Why should it be a one-off rather than a recurring event, including for long-serving specialists and leaders?

Through regular learning cycles, companies could ensure that employees always retain the customer perspective. This encourages understanding of customer needs and a culture of continuous improvement and adaptability. Such a culture of learning and customer focus is the key to lasting success, preventing mistakes like Juicero’s from arising in the first place.