Why culture is the cheapest thing to change in your organization (to be customer focused)

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Sounds too good to be true? Like one of those late night infomercial offers?

So what's the secret to developing that customer first culture? Well, it's as simple as the first question that the CEO (aka Boss) asks when s/he walks into the office in the morning. Really, it's that simple. Here's a really easy example to get the point across.

Let's say you work for a company that is completely focused on revenue. You know, those numbers that every quarter your investors or board looks to see positive movement in. What kind of questions would your CEO have to ask each morning to ensure focus and a culture driven by the revenue KPI? Maybe questions like;

1. How many sales did we make yesterday?
2. How many units did we sell yesterday?
3. What was our growth yesterday?
4. How many customers churned yesterday?
5. Did we win any major accounts yesterday?

All very valuable questions and ultimately necessary to drive the business. However, when focused on short term KPIs like revenue and sales, often we forget the other elements of our business.

Now, imagine if the CEO came in to the office every day and asked one simple question;

How many customers did we make happy yesterday?

What would that do to change the behaviour of your organization? What would you do upon entering the office knowing that was the first question you'd have to answer? Would you call prospects to close the deal? Would you call the customer to convince them to increase their package? Would you focus internally on challenges in delivering on your orders? Or would you simply make sure that any of those tasks also had a simple added objective? To make sure that the things you need to accomplish are also benefiting your customer?