It all starts with customers

Only if we didn't have students interrupting us, university will be a so much better place to work.

It seems a totally backward statement.  School without students will be without its purpose.  Rev. Christoper Renz used this example to highlight how we may have things backward during homily today.  Sometimes we are so into day-to-day grind, we forget why we are there to begin with.  It is not uncommon to come across these types of backward thinking in our lives.   

Let's hope that you don't get into
a conversation like this...

We all know companies are there to serve customers by solving customer's problem.  But as company grows and starts scaling customer base, it can feel like some customers are there to make our life more difficult by pointing out problems and demanding more attention from us.  As you scale, it's easy to lose the customer focus because it takes efforts to indoctrinate new hires to be as customer focused.

Why?

It's easy to take ownership when you are small.  All founding members know each other (chances are they all sit across tables from one another), and it's easy to influence product decisions when you are that small.  When you have an idea, that idea becomes reality based on a quick chat that you had earlier in the day.  Everyone feels empowered to make things happen.

This empowerment is a hard thing to scale.  When you have hundreds of team members and you have to send messages to get your points to someone you are not seeing face-to-face, it's not easy to feel that you are as empowered to make changes for the better.  Even if you have ideas, you tend not to share them with others.  It's a bad cycle.  Less you share, less you feel that you can make the difference, more you feel apathetic.

We have to remember that company exists to solve customer's problem.  To maintain that focus, we must improve how we respond to each other's requests.