Product-Centric Leaders

I was forwarded a great article on Search Insider about how great product companies often have product-centric leaders, who are essentially customers themselves. By this I mean they understand what customers want because they are the same people. The article really resonated with me because I really am that guy. Just about everything creative I’ve ever come up with is a response to what I felt was not good enough. I’m constantly trying to “improve” products, services, systems, software, buildings, that I see. When I see something I like; when I’m in customer mode, my mind immediately goes to, ok, how can I improve this? What’s missing from this product or service? Most of the time I come up with good ideas.

At Leads360 I think we do this well. We have numerous people that behave like this and it’s enabled us to develop some pretty innovative products and services over the past 3.5 years. I wouldn’t say I know what our clients want 100%, but I get us in the ballpark for sure. The key is to add the customer input on top of baseline innovation.