Jefferey Phillips writes:
Every once in a while, become your customer. As much as possible, step away from your team, your process or your company and experience what it's like to interact with your group from an objective customer's point of view. I suspect you'll be surprised at what you find. Why? Well, as we've discussed already, we tend to optimize measurements of the process that are internal, not external. Second, apathy sets in in many places as people become used to providing poor service and receiving poor service. Finally, inertia makes it difficult to change even the things you know aren't quite right.
When was the last time you looked at your process or your team from your customer's perspective, and understood the challenges that they face when working with you? Does the interaction a customer has with your team or firm reflect the goals and expectations you have for your team?
I can't agree with him more.