The past several posts were focused on Seth Godin’s quote: “You decide, not your customers, where you want to go. Lead, don’t follow.” Yesterday I asked “Does that sound right?” I hope you read Seth’s post “Listening to the Loud People” prior to forming an opinion.
Seth is an advocate of customer feedback. My guess is he views a company’s effectiveness at listening to its customers and understanding the feedback as among the most important success factors for all businesses. Seth’s point, as I interpret it, is that the job of leadership is to triangulate between what you believe about your business and what you are hearing from your customers. If you simply do what they tell you to do, you might fail to understand the true opportunity to create value for your customers. You have an advantage over any one of your customers. You have the opportunity to listen to all your customers. Moreover, you have other resources available to you. You live, breathe, and sleep your company. You have engineers and IT gurus who understand what is possible. You see what your competitors are doing, etc.
To lead, you must determine the path your company should traverse. If the path fails to anticipate customers’ true needs, it will be a bad one. Likewise, if all you ever do is what your customers tell you to do, you will likely fail to innovate. Your competitors will out-maneuver you and they, not you, will be rewarded by your customers.
Seth—if you are still listening in, am I on the right track?
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