My wife and I are big music fans and we have been fortunate enough to attend a few concerts in the past couple of years. While I think most artists strive to provide a good show, I am not sure all of them look at their fans as customers. We recently attended our second Kenny Chesney concert, #noshoesnation #triparoundthesun, in Philadelphia at the Lincoln Center where the Eagles play. We learned Kenny has 28 tractor trailers full of equipment and 19 tour buses to set up the show. This provides incredible sound quality and stage presence for his performance. Most impressively we learned that he sits in every section of the stadium to see how things look from the perspective of his fans / customers. He does this not his stage manager or his assistant. The artist, they guy worth over 225 million, the one who 60 thousand fans will be screaming for in a few hours, sits where his customers / fans sit to see the stage from their perspective. Kenny does a 2 plus hour show that is truly none stop. He talks about his fans and what they have accomplished with the music, not what he has done. He never takes his eye off the customer / fan. He knows his success is based on them not himself. He sees the world from the seats of the fan, his customer.
Do we in our organizations remember to do this? Do we look at the great things we do or the awards we receive or something our teams accomplished? Are we guilty of internal congratulations instead of external thankfulness? As my grandmother used to say "are we going to break our arm from patting ourselves on the back". Let's make sure we sit in the fans seats, let's look at the service and product from their eyes! That’s just good common sense!
