Enterprises promote their offerings through marketing tools that, using various channels and instruments, seek to reach and influence the final customer. Because it is simple: no clients, no enterprise. Therefore, it is understood that large amounts of capital are invested in technologies and projects with the goal of getting to know their clients, current and potential, understanding their needs and sensitivities, measuring their satisfaction and collecting data to better target communication. So, client first. But is this really how organizations work?
In reality, in the vast majority of enterprises, there is a very different and very precise client hierarchy. A hidden hierarchy, never stated, but active h 24. Here it is.
Who is the first client in our organizations? The Boss. And the second? The people who are influential for our own career. The third? Ourselves as internal clients. And at the bottom of the client hierarchy, who is there? The final customer. In spite of all the investments and technological innovations.
Boss first. The traditional hierarchy, inherited from a past that no longer exists, continues to be the immovable backbone of our organizations. Everything changes in companies except the hierarchical logic whose essence is very easy to summarize: those above decide and evaluate those below. Where, then, does people’s attention go? Upward, to the real client of the pyramid: the Boss (and, of course, the Boss’s bosses). Basically, you work with your head up. In my book, Hierarchy to Die or to Thrive?, I talked about “organizational wry neck,” the effect of a posture that prioritizes the moods, needs, intentions, and especially evaluations of the Boss so as to show up, protect oneself, or complain (never to him/her). One will say: those at the top know the priorities and make better decisions. Really? The higher we go up the pyramid, the further we move away from the meeting places between supply and demand where problems and opportunities are continually generated: the stores, the branches, the service centers… The traditional pyramid creates a structural distance between decisions and the problems/opportunities that emerge in the daily exchange with clients. In practice, the further you are from the final customer the more decision-making power you have.
People who are influential for our own career. These are the people who for various reasons can influence the hierarchical stakeholders who decide the careers of individuals. For this reason they enjoy attention and, above all, are treated as important clients and held in the highest priority.
Ourselves as internal clients. In order to do their job, everyone needs the skills and input of others: information, components and semi-finished products, specialized contributions, support services, products… In fact, in an organization, everyone is considered both an internal client (with the right to receive from others what they need to do their work) and an internal supplier (with the responsibility to give what they need to others to do their work). The concept makes sense. Well, what have decades of spreading this concept produced? Companies packed to the rafters with internal clients asking, pawing, demanding and complaining that they are not getting the support they are due from internal suppliers. This generates ongoing cross-functional conflicts that fortify silos and drive “scaling up” to put decisions back in the hands of the hierarchical Boss.
What about the final Customer, the one with a capital C? Excuse me, who? Most people who work in companies never meet him or her. So when they work, they are focused on their own activities and have no end client in mind. It is the people working at the bottom of the pyramid who meet clients and users every day. But the absence of decision-making power, on the one hand, and the hierarchical culture on the other, have forged a mindset that is an exact photocopy of the organizational chart. And so it is not uncommon to hear the answer “look, I’m not the one who decides… tell it to those above!”
Is this good for business competitiveness or is there something we need to evolve? The starting point would be very simple: there is only one client and it is the same for everyone. The final external one.
Marina Capizzi, author of Hierarchy to Die or to Thrive?