Are you living at the rock face?

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“Living at the rock face” is a term coined by George Stalk and Rob Lachenauer in their book; “Hardball - Are you playing to play or playing to win?”. It’s a metaphor for being physically and personally connected to the market. This is more than just talking to customers, consumers, and suppliers; it means to physically be a part of the product and the process. Don’t just talk about customer concerns over lunch once a quarter, “staple yourself to the order” so you can experience the entire process from order to delivery. You have to experience the customer’s experience for yourself and discover the imperfections. What is it that bothers your customers the most? How can you easily improve on the experience? There are many cases where the low-hanging fruit (in terms of quick and meaningful customer improvements) can only be discovered when you’re out in the field among the fruit trees. Don’t rely on customer surveys or focus groups. Get out of the office and experience it yourself.

For airline executives, this means having to stand in line at the airport and sitting in the back of the plane. Book a flight that you know will be overbooked and then experience the process of being bumped. That fifty dollar voucher that seemed fair up in the executive suite, may not seem so reasonable when you are actually going through the process of being bumped and having to re-book your flight. For insurance executives, it means going through the long, sometimes laborious underwriting process that all customers go through. Experience the disconnect between what the agent says about the process and the actual process itself. And for auto executives, it means having to actually buy a car from a dealer.

When Ross Perot became a member of General Motors’ board in the 1980’s one of things he recognized early on was the disconnect between senior GM executives and the average GM customer experience. He noted that GM executives always drove new GM cars in impeccable condition. In fact, most executives never came close to the dealer floor or a service department.

Perot attacked this mindset in way typical of his bulldog style:

“We ought to cut out this business that if you’re an executive your car comes into the garage every morning and the mechanics take it out, and if there is anything wrong with it, they fix it. You don’t know what reality is. Your car is perfect. Buy a car. Negotiate for it. Have the engine fail. Have the transmission fall out. Have the tailpipe fall off.”

GM’s response to this type of ‘in-you-face” critique was typical - they threw Perot off the board.

Here’s the takeaway. Are you “living at the rock face?” Get out of the office and experience what your customers experience. It’s the only way you can really improve the process.