Who is on your team? What people make up your business?

Simple answer, execs, employees, and maybe investors. Isn’t that it? For most people, it is. But I think that misses a potential opportunity.

What if you thought of your team as more than those in your immediate view? What if you included customers in your definition of your team? How might that change things?

Your decisions would change. Customer well-being would be part of every discussion.

Your ability to innovate would change, too. When customers are part of the team, you rely on their ideas and suggestions. They would drive your conception of new products. Their feelings would inform the design, look, and feel. They would approve or deny the rollout.

And while that might sound like it would be time-consuming or stifling, think of the overall time savings when new products are created that are right the first time because they were essentially conceived and designed by the customer. That sounds like more revenue to me.

Now think about how your processes would evolve? If customers’ opinions become part of process improvement, you might actually find ways to trim out unnecessary work by removing redundant or unnecessary steps that customers see but you do not. This could potentially provide big cost savings.

By pulling customers into your organization and seeing them as assets rather than necessary evils, they bring much to the table. New products that are right the first time and lean and effective processes are just a few opportunities that come with adding customers to your definition of who constitutes your team.

Why wait? Why put off something as easy as getting to know your customers and learning from them? Why not make customers part of your team? What are you missing but an opportunity?

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