Three minutes, three days, three weeks.
by Tijs Besieux, PhD
“A healthy human can last three minutes without air, three days without water, and three weeks without food. A successful company can last three minutes without valuable customers, three days without a clear culture, and three weeks without effective leadership.”
This is often how I start a keynote on customer-first leadership.
Your entire organization, all its people working with dedication, and the millions of interactions are only possible because customers choose your product over others. If that stops, if customers no longer decide to buy from you, the entire organization will collapse immediately.
Culture is about “the way we do things around here”. The unique answers your company has to universal questions. It’s what allows you to differentiate yourself from competitors by doing things differently for the customer. If that compass disappears, your people will soon be navigating in the dark, slowing innovation for customers, and becoming irrelevant.
And leadership is a coherent set of behaviors that guide the organization in creating customer value. If that guidance stops, your culture will suffer, and the company will lose its core purpose, as it will no longer be able to serve and keep its customers.
To keep the fire burning, to keep your company successful, ask yourself three questions:
(1) Who are our valuable customers?
(2) What is the culture we need to promote so that everyone across the board shows up each day with an intent to create customer value, directly or indirectly?
(3) How can I demonstrate effective leadership that shapes, recognizes, and further grows our culture in service of our customers?