Staying true to your mission - continued

I while ago I'd written about Zappo's change to stay true to their mission of customer service (you can read it here). While that is certainly true for the big stuff, like business models, for an early stage entrepreneur it is also important to keep the focus on the day to day happenings that define the company. Unfortunately it is harder to do when you're being the Swiss army knife of your venture and switching from strategist to tactician constantly.

For example, we believe that customer focus is necessary in all aspects of business and the team supposedly has that down. But recently I was reviewing an overview document for a customer pilot - a document that I'd read and given feedback on at least a couple of times before - and since it was ready to go to the customer, I decided to look at it from the viewpoint of one. That's when I realized that while the main content was fine, the header had an internal focus, not a customer one. Instead of being titled something like 'Hot Stuff Program Pilot' where the customer could relate to and get excited by the 'hot stuff', the header was 'Pilot for XYZ Organizations' referring to the type of orgs that would do the pilot. Presumably it was not obvious as three different people, other than me, had reviewed it with the express intent of maximizing customer impact, and not one had caught the fact that all the header was doing was notifying the customer that this document was for them. Until I looked at it the way the customer would, I didn't see that we should draw attention to the program instead so we could have the customer at 'hello' (alright, the header). Maybe time pressures had something to do with it - but startups cannot use that as an excuse unfortunately. True, a larger company would have this kind of stuff covered under rules and guidelines developed by experienced staff who have time for building processes, but startups should, and can, get similar results by remembering the focus that they believe in.

Small things have a big impact, and when it comes to customers/users, the entrepreneur probably has to do some micro-managing (including of one's self!) until customer focus becomes second nature to everyone. The good news about having a small slip-up like this is that it makes for an excellent cautionary tale that everyone can relate to and makes it so much easier to do the right thing. That's another thing for the founder/entrepreneur to do: collect and tell stories!