Challenge:  The challenge we faced in our organisation was the turnover of one particular subsidiary of  the company – a B2B market leader in the furniture hardware industry. The situation was  such that the turnover of the subsidiary was going down; our customers found it tedious to  place orders with us; the competition was doing better than us and we had no solution in  sight to fix this problem.   We decided to start small and address the question – how do we get the customers to order  more online.    Selection & Application:  We realised that we did not know what the market really wanted. So, we decided to ask our  colleagues from the subsidiary the story of our customers and visualised a day in the life of  “Mason” – our fictitious typical customer.   We made a virtual team who would meet via video conferences and exchanged information  about Mason. Who is he? What does he like? What car he drives? What does his wife do?  How many kids does he have? How frequently does he place orders with us? What’s his  favourite product from our catalogue? Whom does he sell those products to?  With every meeting our understanding of Mason’s life grew. We validated the information  we collected by asking our sales staff to interact more and more with our customers. Thus,  in four weeks, we were able to make the following picture.

From this picture, we were able to clearly see the problems that could be solved quickly. We  decided to initiate the setting up of an online shop to ease the life of our customers such as  Mason. The shop would be started with functionalities the need for which became apparent  to us through this visualisation of Mason’s life.    Insight:  What I learnt through this exercise what that we do not realise how much we do not know  what the customers want. Also, the shared learning that took place during our entire  experience helped with our confidence is using unconventional methods of problem solving.

It made us see the whole picture and also convinced us why it is important to see the big  picture to be able to address even small problems.    Approach:  One thing I would like to do differently next time is making the team more diverse. For this  case, we had a team which involved people directly affected by the problem. It would be  interesting to find out how a more diverse team with people representing totally different  markets would work in this scenario and what would the results be.


Challenge : The challenge we faced in our organisation was the turnover of one particular subsidiary of the company – a B2B market leader in the furniture hardware industry . The situation was such that the turnover of the subsidiary was going down ; our customers found it tedious to place orders with us ; the competition was doing better than us and we had no solution in sight to fix this problem . We decided to start small and address the question – how do we get the customers to order more online . Selection & Application : We realised that we did not know what the market really wanted . So , we decided to ask our colleagues from the subsidiary the story of our customers and visualised a day in the life of “ Mason ” – our fictitious typical customer . We made a virtual team who would meet via video conferences and exchanged information about Mason . Who is he ? What does he like ? What car he drives ? What does his wife do ? How many kids does he have ? How frequently does he place orders with us ? What ’s his favourite product from our catalogue ? Whom does he sell those products to ? With every meeting our understanding of Mason ’s life grew . We validated the information we collected by asking our sales staff to interact more and more with our customers . Thus , in four weeks , we were able to make the following picture . From this picture , we were able to clearly see the problems that could be solved quickly . We decided to initiate the setting up of an online shop to ease the life of our customers such as Mason . The shop would be started with functionalities the need for which became apparent to us through this visualisation of Mason ’s life . Insight : What I learnt through this exercise what that we do not realise how much we do not know what the customers want . Also , the shared learning that took place during our entire experience helped with our confidence is using unconventional methods of problem solving . It made us see the whole picture and also convinced us why it is important to see the big picture to be able to address even small problems . Approach : One thing I would like to do differently next time is making the team more diverse . For this case , we had a team which involved people directly affected by the problem . It would be interesting to find out how a more diverse team with people representing totally different markets would work in this scenario and what would the results be .