I recently heard that Intuit created Quick Books (a wildly successful software) somewhat as a result of following their customers home. Imagine this:

Intuit staff would often follow a customer home from the store and watch them use Quicken. They watched every part of the experience–from opening the box to using the software. As they interacted with the customer, they realized that Quicken was to cumbersome for the small business owner, who didn’t need all the high powered tools embedded in Quicken. So, the team at Intuit, based on the customer input designed Quick Books as a simple solution.

BRILLIANT.

Ram Charan, guru business coach to top CEO’s across the country, spoke to 15 of us who are attending a retreat on leadership this week.

One of the brilliant things he said was this:

If your vision isn’t anchored in the needs of customers, your vision is a hallucination.

How do you anchor your vision in your customers’ needs? Follow them home.