Back in the 1980s, we held quarterly user group meetings.
They weren't focus groups. They weren't sales presentations. And they certainly weren't carefully controlled.
We invited our customers into the same room and let them talk.
- BP.
- Cadbury.
- Hospitals.
- Prisons.
- Airports.
- Occupational health physicians.
- Nursing staff.
The opinions were strong. The priorities were different. The debates were often uncomfortable.
And the conversation rarely stayed on the agenda for very long. It travelled sideways.
What fascinated me was that every group saw the world differently.
- The occupational health doctor saw one problem.
- The nurse saw another.
- The employer saw another.
- The patient saw another.
Nobody was wrong.
They were simply standing in different places.
What many companies fear about user groups is exactly what makes them valuable.
They're afraid customers will point out flaws. They're afraid clinicians will challenge assumptions. They're afraid they'll discover something isn't working.
We weren't.
Every weakness discovered in that room was one less weakness discovered after deployment.
Looking back, those meetings gave us access to something extraordinary.
If we'd paid for the expertise sitting around those tables, it would have cost a fortune.
- Consultants.
- Doctors.
- Senior nurses.
- Clinicians.
- Operational leaders.
Some of the smartest people in their respective fields.
Yet for a few hours they became part of our research and development team.
Not because they worked for us.
Because they worked with us.
And because they knew they were being heard.
Over time, those sideways conversations revealed opportunities we would never have discovered on our own.
One of them eventually became a cardiac rehabilitation platform.
It didn't begin as a cardiac rehabilitation platform. It began as an occupational health system.
But by listening to clinicians, involving consultant cardiologists and understanding the realities they faced every day, the platform evolved into something far more valuable.
Eventually it captured around 40% of the UK's cardiac rehabilitation market.
The lesson wasn't about software.
The lesson was about perspective.
Many organisations spend enormous amounts of time explaining their products to customers. Far fewer spend time understanding how customers see the world.
The most valuable innovation opportunities often sit in the gap between those perspectives. Looking back, I realise those quarterly meetings weren't really product meetings at all.
They were exercises in empathy.
Not empathy as kindness.
Empathy as the ability to leave your own perspective and temporarily inhabit somebody else's.
Today, people often talk about empathy as a soft skill.
My experience has been the opposite.
Empathy is one of the most commercially valuable skills an organisation can possess.
Because the people closest to the problem are often the people closest to the solution.
The question isn't always whether we're listening.
The question is whether we're listening to people who see the world differently from us.