{"id":1454,"date":"2014-12-17T18:56:31","date_gmt":"2014-12-18T02:56:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.robinstewart.com\/blog\/?p=1454"},"modified":"2015-05-10T02:25:26","modified_gmt":"2015-05-10T09:25:26","slug":"the-paradox-of-customer-focus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.robinstewart.com\/blog\/2014\/12\/the-paradox-of-customer-focus\/","title":{"rendered":"The Paradox of Customer Focus"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Apple and others have demonstrated that one of the best ways to be successful\u00a0over the long term\u00a0is to focus on the\u00a0customer: to prioritize\u00a0customer\u00a0needs over all else. (I&#8217;ve also called\u00a0such efforts a focus on\u00a0<em>quality<\/em>.)\u00a0But achieving that requires, by definition,\u00a0focusing <em>less<\/em> on other things, including\u00a0the success of the business itself. For example, you might decide to\u00a0simplify\u00a0an existing feature instead of adding a new feature that will attract new customers and new revenue.<\/p>\n<p>That is the paradox:\u00a0If you really care about succeeding in business, the best way to actually get there\u00a0is to\u00a0<em>stop caring so much about\u00a0<\/em><em>succeeding in business<\/em>\u00a0(so you can focus instead on the customer needs). The more you want it, the harder it is to achieve it! It becomes a sort of mind trick of fooling yourself into wanting something else, in order to\u00a0actually get the thing you <em>really<\/em> wanted.<\/p>\n<p>Prioritizing customer needs, of course, is not <em>sufficient<\/em> to succeed in business \u2014 many other pieces must also fall into place. But\u00a0I think this basic paradox helps to explain why it has been <a href=\"http:\/\/www.asymco.com\/2014\/12\/17\/the-innovators-stopwatch-part-2\/\">so rare<\/a>\u00a0for other technology companies to imitate\u00a0Apple&#8217;s long-term success.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Apple and others have demonstrated that one of the best ways to be successful\u00a0over the long term\u00a0is to focus on the\u00a0customer: to prioritize\u00a0customer\u00a0needs over all else. (I&#8217;ve also called\u00a0such efforts a focus on\u00a0quality.)\u00a0But achieving that requires, by definition,\u00a0focusing less on other things, including\u00a0the success of the business itself. For example, you might decide to\u00a0simplify\u00a0an existing &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.robinstewart.com\/blog\/2014\/12\/the-paradox-of-customer-focus\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;The Paradox of Customer Focus&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robinstewart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1454"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robinstewart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robinstewart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robinstewart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robinstewart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1454"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.robinstewart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1454\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1547,"href":"https:\/\/www.robinstewart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1454\/revisions\/1547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robinstewart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robinstewart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robinstewart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}