Tuesday, 8.55pm
Sheffield, U.K.
Every successful individual knows that his or her achievement depends on a community of persons working together. – Paul Ryan
I’m still working through Tom Peters. More than half way through. And I have a few thoughts to connect.
The first is getting clear on the difference between a product business and a service business. A product is a thing people want or need. The thing is what matters. A service is an outcome that they want or need. The results are what matter.
Creating and managing either type of business comes with challenges. But let’s focus on service businesses because that’s what I’m interested in right now. What’s really at the core of a service business?
Two things.
Community. And Purpose.
Community is the idea that connects to the current section of Tom Peter’s book ‘the brand you’. The community is the group of people you serve. The group that your Clients come from, clients with a capital C. These are the people that you work with, that give you business, to whom you give value.
If you’re employed right now your client is your manager, the person that needs you to produce positive outcomes. We start with no clients, move to having a client, and progress to having multiple clients as we develop our capabilities and let go of our limitations.
Start. Learn. Earn. Connect. Create Value.
Service businesses are hard to scale and that’s not a bad thing. These are firms that depend on people giving other people value, giving other people service. But what is it that makes it possible for you to deliver a service of value?
I don’t think it has to do with the service itself. If it were, you’d be able to treat it like a product.
Some people do. The holy grail, it seems, is to “productize” services. To take something that’s about community and connection and scale it so that it becomes about process and self-service.
That results in something, quite often a better something, like reliable electricity, good phone lines, as service businesses transition to product businesses.
The thing that’s at the heart of a service business that’s still about service is the idea of “purpose”.
Purpose matters.
Let’s put this in another way – one that might be easier to grasp.
I met a priest recently. One who said that what he did, what his life was spent doing, was serving his community and god.
If you substitute purpose for god in that thought you have the essentials for anything else you do.
If you run a cleaning business or if you run a financial brokerage – the purpose you bring to the task makes a difference.
A good purpose is to delight your clients. A poor one is to make as much money as possible.
I still remember the face of a guy, licking his lips as he described charging an obscene amount of commission on a transaction for a less-informed client.
Not the kind of person I wanted to work for or work with.
That’s why you have to choose your clients carefully. Choose to work with ones that need what you offer but that also are worthy clients.
I can’t define what makes them worthy but you’ll know it when you see it.
Cheers,
Karthik Suresh
Handcrafted insight 