One of my favourite parables that I use to discuss and teach the importance of customer-centricity is “The Three Bricklayers”
The parable tells the story of how three bricklayers describe what they’re doing.
- The first bricklayer says he is simply laying bricks
- The second bricklayer says he is building a wall
- The third bricklayer says he is building a cathedral so that people can honour God
Each level expands on the purpose for their bricklaying from Level 1 (task-oriented) to Level 3 (vision-oriented)
Applying that parable to the modern day knowledge worker:
When you’re building a product or providing a service, are you
- Writing code or answering the phone?
- Building or using an application?
- Fulfilling a customer need?
The more times you refer to your customer in what you do,
- the more customer centric you are.
- the more you understand why you’re doing what you’re doing and,
- the more likely you will satisfy and even wow your customer.
Recently, during the demo of what an Agile team had accomplished during their last 3-week sprint, the team spent most of the time describing what they had done vis-a-vis Level 1 tasks.
Often diving into the technical details of what they were doing. How they were building UI components to provide a set of LEGO-like building blocks to be used by front end developers to build their web pages.
There was no mention of who the users of the web pages were nor what needs they were trying to fulfill!
The business stakeholders spent more time learning about technical UI tools like Storybook than providing feedback on what was being built for business end users and how that would fulfill their needs.
Looking at this story through the lens of the Three Bricklayers parable, here’s how we might have improved on the demo event by going beyond Level 1:
- Level 1: Writing UI Components and cataloguing them in Storybook
- Level 2: Combining UI components to render a front-end webpage for End-User ‘X’
- Level 3: Replace End-User ‘X’s legacy system
- Level 4: Enhance the life of End-User ‘X’ by automating the mundane parts of their job
- Level 5: Realize 5 benefits for Company ‘Y’
- Level 6: Make Company ‘Y’ #1 in its market
What level of bricklayer would you like to be?
Do you want to be just another brick in the wall or be part of something greater than yourself?
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