Delighting Clients

The rise of giant corporations led to the atomization and specialization of work, resulting in workers being disconnected from both the final product and the purpose of their work. There was no line of sight to the client, and without that, it was impossible to know what clients actually needed, or what would delight them.

In a prior age, work, products, and customers were interconnected, and businesses, customers, and communities all benefited from a mutual understanding of the meaning of work. Work put people first, rather than things.

By making this principle the foundation of radical management, the line of sight to the customer opens to reveal a continuous flow of updated information and goals. Delighting customers also provides inspiration for the people actually doing the work, resulting in less disconnected and disgruntled employees.

Additionally, delighting clients makes good business sense, in that the new focus encourages management to dispose of anything that is irrelevant to the goal, thereby cutting costs, improving innovation, and attaining higher productivity.

To put this first principle of client delight into action, there are nine practices that can be implemented by radical managers:

* Identify primary clients.
* Delight primary clients by meeting their unrecognized desires.
* Aim for the simplest possible thing that will delight them.
* Explore the possibility of delighting more by offering less.
* Explore more alternatives.
* Defer decisions until the last responsible moment.
* Avoid mechanistic approaches.
* Focus on people, not things.
* Give the people doing the work a clear line of sight to those that the work is being done for.