Let me tell you a story.

Once upon a time I worked at a place where the user was the last thought on peoples’ minds. Trying to change that was an uphill battle. Every project had an inertia that was like wading through molasses. It was really hard to get people to see past their limited project view and get on board with a product that was built to serve customers.

Here are some of the things people said in defense of their trajectory:

“We already know what they want”

“We’ll just train them”

“I can use it just fine”

“It’s fine just like it is”

“It doesn’t have to be amazing”

It sounds strange because usually at the outset, most people are on board with ‘delivering a great experience’. It always sounds great on paper. But without constant input of energy from myself, the project team was always in a downward trajectory of slipping away from delivering a product that had value to customers — and falling into a mediocre rhythm that satisfied all requirements but the customers’.

I see this happen a lot — and it’s easy to see why. There are always a million other voices represented in the room where decisions are made. Someone’s trying to cut cost, someone’s trying to drive sales, someone’s managing a reputation, someone’s responsible for delivering on time and within a reasonable budget.

These are all just people under pressure and trying to get an outcome. But where are the people whose job it is to genuinely care about customers and bring their voice into the room? Unfortunately in most organisations the voice of the customer and a thirst for excellent products is lacking because that sentiment is hard to culture — and where it does exist it has a tendency to be eroded by competing interests.

Steve Jobs talked about this phenomenon way back —

“the product…genius that brought them to that position gets rotted out by people running these companies that have no conception of a good product versus a bad product… and have no feeling in their heart of really wanting to help the customers”

Apple had the fortune of being run by a product person — one who was uncompromising in his demand for ever better products. With Steve at the helm, Apple revolutionised industries. It will be interesting to see if they continue to define the market with an operations guy at the helm. Steve not only helped a product focus flourish — he drove it incessently. Like I mentioned before, without that constant input of product focus there’s a strange inertia that lands teams and organisations in a limbo of product mediocrity.

Why is this important for organisations today? Because it’s no longer tech specs, or cost, or ads that will differentiate companies and increase market share. Organisations are defined by the stories people tell about them — and people tell stories about their experiences. Social proof wins hands down over price, features or exposure. Why else are organisations trying to game social media sites like Reddit and Facebook?

Your organisational and product experience will be the differentiator of your organisation in the years to come. There’s no room for mediocre experiences — every new disruption will be an experience disruption. It will be something that’s just better for customers; more enjoyable, serves their need better, integrates into their life better, makes them smile more.

Creating something like this takes a huge amount of energy in a large organisation, because you’re fighting against enormous pressure. It’s why startups disrupt more easily, they’re not wading through molasses. And that’s why it took Steve to be the head of Apple. Easier to direct focus when you’re CEO.

If you’re not already considering your next experience improvement, you’re fading. Things are changing faster than ever and organisations that know what’s coming are making space for a new organisational core — a product and experience core that brings the customer to the centre of the organisation. Give your product people a voice, or you might just fade away — a natural progression for companies with bad experiences and bad products.