Who Decides What Job Gets Done?

The business literature is full of great stories, and one of the best--and most immediately relevant to today--appears in 2010 Forbes article about Haier, the Chinese appliance manufacturing giant. Haier built the machines to do one job for customers--wash clothes--but they discovered that more than a few expected them to do other jobs as well. The article reads:

“About 10 years ago, a rural farmer dialed into Haier’s call center complaining that his washing machine was full of dirt and not functioning properly. When the technician visited the customer’s home he discovered the dirt was not from the clothes the farmer wore in the field to harvest his potatoes, but rather from the harvest itself. The man had been using his washing machine to wash both clothes and potatoes. Instead of educating the farmer on how to properly use a washing machine, the technician returned to headquarters with the man’s feedback. Haier subsequently released a washing machine capable of washing both clothes and potatoes, the 2009 upgraded version of which led Haier to become the number one provider of laundry equipment in the entire world.”

Haier let the customers decide the job(s) its appliances would be capable of doing, not the other way around. We encounter too many schools that do the job the school people want to do when parents and students want something else. The "who decides" question eventually becomes moot: customers decide via their enrollment and re-enrollment decisions. Strategic planning process need an outward-facing market orientation to better match job(s) on offer with what customers want.