Phil Lauterjung

No, this is not another Top 10 list of anything.  I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty tired of seeing those.  I know that they sometimes have some interesting insights, but enough already!

As a history buff I do know that there is value in looking back and learning from the past.  The old axiom of hindsight being 20/20 is often very true.  And, as technology advances ever faster it becomes more difficult to take a breath and review anything.

What prompted this bit of philosophical musing on my part was talking with a colleague I used to work with about 15 years ago.  It was a Fortune 500 company that is no longer 500 anything.  But, at that time we spent some time developing a strategy to deal with the rapid pace of change that we were seeing.  We had implemented laptops for all of our field salespeople in 1993 and were pretty much leading our industry in using technology.

Looking back after six years with that company I could see clearly that technology by itself doesn’t solve much of anything.  You still have to listen to your customers and respond to their needs.  Which is really pretty fundamental no matter what you sell, or what technology is available.  The same is true today.  You can have thousands of followers on Facebook or Twitter or whatever cool social media tool, but if you aren’t in tune with your customers – so what?

I am not advocating dumping social media tools, they can be very helpful is used properly as part of an overall marketing strategy, but we do need to have a viable people-centered strategy to begin with.

The pace of change is going to continue at a rapid rate.  It is up to each of us to pause once in a while to look back and take stock of exactly what our business is all about, and remember that whatever we do should have our customers at the center.

So, here’s my resolution – not for the new year, but in general – keep focused on my customers and provide them the products and services that help them grow their businesses.  But, I’d still like to give the Google Nexus One a try.  Still a gadget guy at heart.

What about you?  Share your thoughts on this in the comments.  I also want to stay focused on providing meaningful content on this blog.  Let me know what subjects you’re interested in.

Photo Credit: Fotolia.com

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