Highly task-oriented leaders and workers focus only on getting the job done. They define the work and the activities required, put structures in place, plan, organize, and monitor. For them, completion of particular tasks becomes their measure of success.

This type of person is very capable of carrying out transactions with customers. However, the dilemma is that he or she feels that these encounters are sufficient to deliver customer satisfaction. They cannot see that there is much more available. A musician does not simply play the notes on a sheet of music. He or she puts his energy and emotion behind it. Otherwise, the effort is flat and lifeless. The same concept applies when connecting with customers.

How do you get these people past transactional thinking? Show them a new, higher-level category of success. Educate task-oriented employees as a group by demonstrating what a customer-centered culture would do. After showing them the new way, measure the progress of the organization and its subgroups. Knowing what you should be measuring—proactive ideas for customer, reduction in silo behaviors within the organization—is fundamental.

Customer-centricity will never happen unless there is a measure of the new behavior that the culture is trying to achieve.

In the commercial, of course, McEnroe is prepared for a confrontation with the National salesperson because other car rental companies typically assign a car to him without his input. Like most customers, he has been negatively conditioned from years of encounters with supplier-centric companies, which have established policies that are best for them. Unexpectedly, John is told that he can choose “any car in the aisle.” Surprised, he responds with his signature line — “Any car…??? You cannot be serious!”

There is a subtle concept revealed in the McEnroe commercial. John’s being ‘wowed’ was not caused by a courteous National employee, although the employee was, in fact, very courteous and upbeat. McEnroe’s delight was delivered because the organization recognized an opportunity to make customers’ lives easier and changed its policy.

Customer-centered organizations create positive customer conditioning. But this positive feeling must develop through a system that delivers great company-wide ideas, not through transactional courtesy on the part of individual employees. Every organization’s goal should be to design a culture that imagines itself on the receiving end of encounters and automatically thinks like its customers.

The employees know it. They hear it all the time from customers and they put up with it themselves. I recently spoke with one employee who told me that:

1. The bank invested a lot of money developing the system and doesn’t want to spend more (or admit its mistake).

2. Customers tolerate it. Apparently customers, in other words, don’t complain enough to warrant a change.

Fortunately, the front-line employees at this bank are difference-makers in their organization. The hospitality of these employees is fantastic. However, if these employees generally know how irritating the online banking system is, then why don’t the executives know it, as well? Are they using their system for their own financial transactions? If the investment in the computer system was hefty, it is undoubtedly embarrassing to admit the mistake and make an additional investment. Nevertheless, it needs to be done to stay competitive.

“Because customers tolerate it” is no longer an acceptable reason in any forward-thinking organization. Every dynamic company that cares about its customers must have a system to discover customer frustrations and to develop solutions to improve their processes proactively. It is one thing to talk about customer care; it is a completely different approach to share the journey with those customers by providing them with what they need and expect.

There are two ways to innovate:

Level 2 customer-centricity is built around incremental changes on behalf of customers. It represents designing logical improvements to what already exists. It might be thought of as inside-the-box (Rushkoff, Get Back in the Box) because it nudges the current state forward to become a better version of the product or process. It delivers higher value to the customer, but the customer is still carrying out the same action. For example, the E-ZPass RFID system pays drivers’ tolls for them electronically, reduces waiting times at toll booths, and produces a monthly statement of activity. Drivers are still paying their tolls, of course, but the process is more user-friendly.

Incremental change is fine. Most innovations, in fact, fall into this category because they are easier to envision. We can readily visualize the “what-if” results of a new feature being added to an existing product or service. Level 2 is built on the premise that every product or service has a potential that will be better in the future. The secret is the conviction that customers will value the change, even if they do not all choose to participate. Not all payers of tolls choose to use E-ZPass, for example, but the benefit for the ones who do sign up is worth it.

There is an even bigger way to develop new ideas by making the exception the rule. Level 3 customer-centricity represents breakthrough performance, creating concepts that did not exist before, rather than tweaking an existing product or service. It, therefore, has to be iconic; big ideas and deployment strategies are necessary. Alan Webber, in Rules of Thumb, tells a great story about Rosanne Haggerty’s approach to helping the chronic homeless in New York City. With a high-impact idea and some corporate financial help, her organization, Common Ground, renovated the Times Square Hotel into a model for change for hundreds of homeless New Yorkers and transformed the neighborhood. The effort proved that not only would the project work, but that a not-for-profit organization could help the homeless for one-third the expenses (per person) being spent at the time by city services.

The Common Ground prototype demonstrated to naysayers that the idea was doable, with a high chance of success. Webber writes, “The job of an iconic project is to make change believable.” The lesson is that big ideas can start with a demonstration model that proves the viability of a strategy. “Once people can see it, feel it, and benefit from it, then change isn’t an abstraction. It’s real.”

Innovation happens when organizations think like their customers. The decision to choose incremental change versus transformational change depends largely on the investment and degree of difficulty involved. But in both categories, the undertaking should be grounded in a belief that it’s okay to make the exception the rule. Organizations should constantly be looking for a better way to accomplish what they are doing. And it should always be based on the real-world needs of the customer.

The transformation to customer-centricity will happen more quickly if you are a good storyteller.

One of the best examples of change management is the Gloves on the Boardroom Table story, told by John P. Kotter in The Heart of Change and, more recently, shared by Chip and Dan Heath in Switch. A global corporation learned that its factories were purchasing 424 different kinds of work gloves because every factory had their own supplier and their own negotiated price. The price for a glove at some factories was over three times higher than what was paid for the identical glove at another factory.  The savings opportunity was approximately $1 billion over five years.

A team of employees assembled samples of all 424 gloves, labeled them with the current price, and put them in the boardroom. When executives were called in, they were amazed. A mandate for change came quickly and the gloves became part of a traveling road show to every corporate division and many plants. The tangible example and the dramatic presentation created a clear call to action because it was honest and, without coercion, it illustrated that there was a more sensible way to spend this money.

For me, this story demonstrates two things. First, the glove story is so compelling because executives can easily get their minds around internal efficiencies (or lack thereof) and opportunities to save money. Certainly we also can relate to how the inefficiencies developed in the first place. We have all experienced the silo mentalities that let practices develop without two-way communication among departments and divisions of companies. Organizations are comfortable dealing “inside the four walls” of their companies, since this is their traditional area of control.

Secondly, you should use similar creativity to sell customer-connection ideas within your organizations. If your team knows that customers will value the elimination of a process step or a change that will make their lives easier, your team members should compile data about the current state and tell the story about what the future could look like. Visual examples, such as the gloves in the boardroom, will make the argument more convincing. Clear reasoning will take you from a state of “I think we should…” to “Here is what change will mean to our customers.” That’s riveting. The key ingredient that data provides is a vision of the future. If you can show how customers will benefit in a quantifiable way, it will be easier for your organization to embrace the idea.

As Kotter observes, “people change what they do…because they are shown a truth that influences their feelings.” Change on behalf of customers happens when an emotional case can be made about how that change will positively affect those customers and, in turn, the beneficial impact that it will have inside your organization, as well. Data will not only increase the urgency, but will raise the level of buy-in. After all, everyone loves a great story.

Disruptive innovation (The Innovator’s Solution, Christensen and Raynor) is easy to identify in hindsight, but much more challenging when it appears as relatively small changes that surround your organization. All ideas seem to be small ideas when they begin, especially when being accustomed to success lead your company to inertia and perhaps arrogance. The danger, of course, from a supplier’s standpoint is that not responding to these changes can cause you to set your expectations too low about what the customer wants. It is easy to think that customers simply want what we have been giving them all along. For valid reasons, psychological research has created the nomenclature “status quo bias” to define the fact that people basically like to leave things the way they are.

There are undoubtedly ideas in the everyday operation of your organization that are trending toward obsolete. They are just hard to see in the present and frankly, it is difficult to “ferret out ingrained assumptions that people never stop to question.” The more we are able to clear out the cobwebs in our minds, the less disruptive the years ahead will be.  Because we are faced with so many more complexities and alternative trends than in the past, the solution must be fact-based to overcome the blind spots. “Success in business ultimately depends on dealing with the facts,” writes Miller.

Make sure that your organization is prepared for change by putting some customer-centered monitors in place that will condition everyone to look for new ways by questioning the old ways. Put your own “GPS” system in place to recognize when a better route is available. Set up a process to pull information from the marketplace and to evaluate change on customers’ terms, not yours. This process is not about gloom and doom. Just the opposite—it will be a great platform to start discussions of ways to strengthen your organization by consistently looking for ways to outperform.

Flexicurity is what Matt Miller calls it (adapted from the buzzword originated in Denmark’s labor market). It is the confidence to search out Dead Ideas that your company is operating under and replace them with dynamic Destined Ideas which will shape a new direction. These ideas have a phenomenally greater chance of survival if they are grounded in what your customers need. So the flexibility of your organization delivers the security for the future. Imagine a delivery model in which your customers never felt they had to sacrifice anything because you were keeping them at the leading edge of new ideas. It’s powerful, isn’t it?

It is really difficult to gauge the impact of change while it is happening. You are too close to it. Don’t let success lead to arrogance, which holds you back from the willingness to question how long yesterday’s ideas will stay viable. The only remedy is to develop a system to help you be aware of challenges to your current ideas and to allow your organization to be adaptable to its customers.

Ranjay Gulati, author of Reorganize for Resilience: Putting Customers at the Center of Your Business, shares some very perceptive insights in a recent interview (http://bit.ly/aHk8QU). He correctly advises that customer-centricity starts with a sense of curiosity about the customers of a business. If companies want to stay ahead of the commodity trap, their leaders must instill a mentality of constantly learning about customer needs and how they are changing.

Bain & Company Chairperson, Orit Gadiesh, echoes the same emphasis on curiosity and business success. (Harvard Business Review http://bit.ly/bnA3FG). She says, “To forge strong relationships and find solutions…it pays to ask lots of questions.” This is “the only way to get to a workable solution to any problem. Having access to a multitude of outside perspectives makes me…better.”  It is true that asking lots of questions will yield lots of new information that can be used to solve customer needs.

The passive, more slowly-paced reactions of the past no longer work. So, ask yourself whether you are an armchair leader or an explorer. If your organization’s sense of discovery has waned, find a solution that will jump-start the passion about customers again. This culture shift is stronger than simply listening to customers. Be aggressive. Peter Drucker, quoted in The Starfish and the Spider, believed that “the purpose of learning is (not) to qualify oneself for a new and bigger job,” but rather “is self-improvement. It qualifies a person to do his present task with continually wider vision and continually increasing competence.” Curiosity is the basis of how ideas both begin and evolve.

The end result of this sense of curiosity is organizational flexibility. As Gulati writes in his book, customer-centricity drives companies to “become adept at monitoring fluctuations in customizing solutions real time” and to “anticipate changing customer needs and offer value-based solution before customer can articulate them. In other words, all elements within the organization become aligned to adapt to customer needs. “The goal is to immerse yourself in customer problems so you can offer up unique solutions.”

Customer-centricity will not happen unless your organization is curious about customers and what they will need in the future. If you want your company to be customer-centered, create a culture that is continuously looking for ways to learn more about customers. Don’t become complacent. Be an explorer.

Margaret Wheatley at www.margaretwheatley.com has an interesting take on keeping pace with change in her article “What Do We Measure and Why?” She challenges traditional business measures because they do not produce the behaviors that connect employees to their work and a shared sense of what they want to create for their customers. Visionary leaders understand that, in terms of measurement, “What was ‘right’ keeps changing.” But even though the established measures are no longer working, feedback is still important to “vitality and adaptability” just as in any living system.

Leaders need to set the tone for their organizations around gathering and applying the information necessary for them to “adapt and thrive” rather than assuming that the product or service offerings will continue to enjoy the same success in the future. They must support the approach to customers that is “context dependent” instead of unchanging. This culture learns new questions to ask in order for the business to hone its performance and it fosters an environment in which customers and organizations can “coevolve” and stay connected. I encourage you to read her article.

What has value to your customers? That is where their feedback is so important. Value equates to how the individual customer feels about doing business with you. It is your “fit” with their needs and it is embodied in an emotional connection. Execution involves a deep understanding and a high degree of flexibility because “fit” is judged by your delivery in its broadest, most proactive, sense. What if you could promise your customers that you will always look for better value for them—and mean it? If you are not articulating this philosophy of customer flexibility to your organization, you are voting by your silence for business-as-usual and showing customers you are really product-centric.

The challenge for the future is to keep up with changing customers’ expectations. The solution is a customer-centered system flexible enough to continually re-evaluate how you deal with your customers. With this deep-rooted customer focus, organizations learn to focus on adaptability and growth, rather than stability and control. If your customers are changing, and they are, you must have a customer-centered system that allows you to anticipate their needs and to change with them if you want to sustain superior performance. Capability of changing with your customers is the most powerful message you can send.

What we don’t see is the environment that allowed these ideas to germinate and blossom—a creative, customer-centered culture. Roger Martin, in The Design of Business, dissects several world-famous stories of innovation, including Cirque du Soleil, Apple’s iPod and Steelcase’s acquisition of IDEO. What they have in common is a leadership strategy committed to the belief that designing from the viewpoint of the customer will strengthen what the organization will offer. 

Target’s CEO, Bob Ulrich, for example, transformed an organization in “one of the dullest and dreariest industries in America: discount retailing” by “embracing design as a competitive advantage,” writes Martin. Target bought the patent to the now-famous Clear Rx™ medicine bottle by Deborah Adler because it was designed to be intuitive, and therefore safer, for the consumer. There are customers today who only have their prescriptions filled at Target because of these bottles.   

Target’s VP/Creative Director, Minda Gralnek, put it best. “The pharmaceutical industry often talks about addressing “unmet medical needs,” but it invariably means discovering new drugs, not redesigning the packaging in which they are sold.” (@Issue Journal, vol.12, no.1, www.atissuejournal.com) Adler deconstructed the standard prescription drug bottle to discover dozens of improvement areas. How versatile is your organization in defining “unmet customer needs” broadly enough to discover improvements which your customers will value?   

The caution-sign graphic with this post illustrates what must happen. Companies know their direction (the bottom vertical line) but are stuck at the inflection point. New ideas are simply not developing from a traditional product-centric approach. The solution is to shift (illustrated by the horizontal line) to a customer-centered approach. By thinking expansively about “unmet customer needs,” any business can take off with a fresh, invigorated energy that will lead to a much higher performance. 

Many organizations are bothered that they cannot make change happen by simply tweaking their existing systems. But tomorrow’s success does not come from yesterday’s thinking. Dramatic change can only happen through commitment to a heuristic system which enables organizations to focus on designing products and services driven by customers’ needs. That is how breakthrough thinking takes off.

Remember the paging system for restaurants that was introduced in the 1980’s by JTECH and others? (Creating Competitive Advantage, by Jaynie Smith) The electronic signaling technology was originally created simply as a way for restaurant employees to communicate in order to get customers to open tables more quickly. But when these lighted buzzer devices were handed to the customers, the idea resulted in fewer patrons walking away from the restaurants that used them and more convenience for customers who did not have to listen for their names to be called from a waiting list. Life became easier.

Now, Somtu MMS (mobile messaging system) has a new service in which text messages, such as “Your table will be ready in ten minutes” can be sent to your mobile device (Tuned In, by Stull, Myers and Scott). Life got even easier for customers (and a little cooler) and the 1980’s solution could be obsolete in the future.

No organization can afford to stand still. The best way to avoid inertia is to think like a customer. Because innovation is on a continuum, companies must constantly evaluate where they are. As Margaret Wheatley and Myron Kellner-Rogers observed in A Simpler Way, “there are no windows of opportunity (that will eventually shut) but infinite possibilities.” Searching for these possibilities helps businesses learn how to sustain the energy for customers which they had when the company first began.

The mindset that organizations should embrace is one of invention, not survival. Learn to experiment. Be inquisitive and willing to ask questions. Work is not a test in which you must fear not getting the solution right the first time. “Look for what works, not what is right.” (A Simpler Way). Once you start, you never will want to stop. Wheatley and Kellner-Rogers said it this way: “The surprise within the surprise of every new discovery is that there is ever more to be discovered.”

So, build a company whose culture is grounded in tinkering with existing systems to discover what is possible. Encourage teams to have “constant awareness” by asking these types of questions:

• How can we make this product or service more valuable to the customer?
• Are we evaluating each customer touch-point by the same criteria that the customer uses?
• What transparency can we add to ensure that customers fully understand our processes?
• How might we better anticipate customer needs?

Don’t lose your inquisitiveness about how to improve. Your customers don’t want you to stand still. They want you to pull them into the future with new ideas and services. That is why they are buying from you now and will rely on you in the future. Customers recognize that the sense of discovery in your organization means that you won’t be the same as you were a year ago—you will be better.