Bringing the customer into the room

So I was recently talking to a colleague about the amount of human capital that is wasted as we fly through projects, coming up with great ideas, putting them on the board and moving on to the next challenge. I’ve started reviewing older work with a view to pulling out quality thinking that might bring some value.

One thing I’ve done in workshops where we need to build some consensus in a group of stakeholders is a “true of false” exercise. Small groups gather around tables with stimulus cards on them. Each table discusses which is true, then teams regroup to compare notes.

Are you customer obsessed?

I did this exercise remotely last year and was happy it still worked. I was helping with a group of technology leaders needing to refresh their platform. There were one or two product and design people in the Zoom but on the whole, the group wasn’t really focused on the customer.

So to shift the window towards the user I did a “True or False” session using “are you customer obsessed” as a basis for the cards. Many of these will seem blindingly obvious to my peer group, but on the day there was vigorous debate about the costs and complexity of serving your customer well.

As I’ve managed to dig up the PDF with the stimulus cards, I thought I would share. You can grab it here:-)

Stay at home, protect the NHS, save lives. Please. (at least for now, until the boffins agree on some next steps)