“Getting Out Of The Building……”

Steve Blank has a concept he calls, “Getting out of the building.” Tom Peters has written about a similar concept, MBWA–Management By Walking Around. These are similar approaches focused on how we really get to know and understand our customers, it’s seeing them in their “natural habitats.” Much of my career has been built on this principle, whether it is wandering around customer facilities, or the organizations I led.

There was always something different about wandering the halls and offices of my customers and people. Doing this enabled me to see how they really work. I saw how they engaged each other, what they talked about, what they cared about, how they got things done. It was not just the formal part of how they work, but also the “messy/sloppy” part of how they worked. Just looking at offices/workstations, seeing what they had on their desks and walls, seeing the conference rooms and cafeterias, hearing the casual conversations in breaks or as they walked to meetings, provided deep insight and context into who they were.

These encounters “in the wild,” weren’t just in their workplaces. I’ve often talked about “hanging our where our customers hang out,” and written about my early adventures hanging out with bankers/brokers at “Harry’s of Hanover Square.” Just being with them, listening to what they talk about and how they talk enabled me to connect with them more effectively.

And there are so many other places where we can encounter our customers and people. Conferences, trade shows, at any of the hundreds of meet ups they participate in.

Permit me a slight diversion with an analogy. Imagine trying to get to understand a city only by looking at Google Maps. While we might see pictures, satellite images, and see maps of how the city is laid out, where certain notable sights and businesses are, this doesn’t give us any experience of the city. The only way we get a feel for the city is by walking around, seeing what it happening. We tend to treat our customers/people in the same way we experience cities through Google Maps.

Today, too often, we fail to “get out of the building.” Our knowledge of our customers and our people becomes something very sterile, like a “list of requirements.” As accurate as our list of requirements might be, it only conveys a small part of what our customers and people experience. It misses all the messiness, the fun, the sloppiness, the trial and error of how people actually get things done, where they are worried, what creates meaning for them.

It misses the majority of their work experience.

And it’s in understanding these work experiences, connecting with people in those experiences that builds our ability to develop relationships, trust, and create meaning and value with them.

Some might argue, “Dave, that’s really inefficient.”

But somehow, in all our efficiency, by focusing on an abstraction of the customer or our people and their lists of requirements, we are unable to establish a connection with them. And as a result we fail.

Our customers and people want and deserve more than our understanding their lists of requirements. These don’t capture who they are and what they care about.

And if we don’t care about who they are and what they care about, then why should they want to engage with us? If all we do is focus on prioritizing their lists of requirements and what we do about them, there are better ways for them to accomplish the same things.

We have to start “getting out of the building,” whether it’s our own offices, our remote working offices, we have to start visiting our customers and people where they are.

How do we get started? Here are some ideas, they are, by no means, complete:

1. Start actually visiting our customers at their workplaces. We don’t have to visit every customer or every workplace, actually a very small number starts helping us bridge the gap of understanding requirements and their work experience. Perhaps every month visit just one customer in their “natural habitat.” Don’t keep going back to the same customers, visit different customers.
2. In these visits, don’t only focus on the meeting you have arranged to talk about a proposal or the latest product offerings. Ask them, “What’s going on with your group, your company, at this site?” Have a cup of coffee, sitting in their break room where you can see others interacting and talking. Look at their offices, look at the workspaces.
3. Invite customers to come to your offices. Let them talk about what’s going on in their companies, key industry issues, what they are concerned about. Minimize discussions about your products. Customer Councils used to be a thing. Consider creating customer councils, inviting them to meetings a few times a year.
4. Every onboarding program should include each person spending a few days at a customer site. The whole objective is to learn about them, watch how they get things done, “break bread.”
5. Every conference room in your company should be named after a customer enterprise. Have pictures of some of the people you work with, at those customers, on the walls of the conference room. Include a short paragraph with their stories.
6. For managers and leaders, rather than having people meet in your office, meet them in their office/cubicle, workspace. Every day, take some time to wander the organization, say “Hi” to people, see what they are up to, visit other departments.
7. Go to conferences/trade shows/other events where customers congregate. Keep your eyes and ears open–not just for opportunities, but to learn what’s going on.
8. Don’t let remote work or WFH create an excuse for not doing these things. Visiting customers is important, wherever you work. Getting back to the office for a day or two every month/quarter is still important.

Understanding our customers’/peoples’ needs and requirements don’t help us understand who they are. Until we start understanding who they are, what drives them, how they work; we won’t connect as impactfully as we can.

 

Afterword: This AI generated discussion of this post is a little long. But it’s one of the best discussions of these posts that I’ve heard. Enjoy!