As the year gets underway, I’m hearing the same conversations repeating themselves across global organisations.
2026 goals are being set.
Targets are being shared.
Teams are being asked to be lean, focused, and high-performing.
On the surface, this all makes sense. Ambition is healthy. Direction matters. Strong brands don’t drift — they decide where they’re going.
But in practice, I’m seeing something else emerge.
Many teams are interpreting lean as work harder.
More output.
More activity.
More pressure.
And somewhere in that shift — quietly, unintentionally — the customer starts to slip out of focus.
Not because people don’t care.
Not because customer centricity has been “abandoned”.
But because when the pace increases, organisations often default to doing rather than thinking.
What I’ve Been Seeing on the Ground
I’ve spent the start of this year working with global brands — the kind you’d instantly recognise.
These are strong organisations with experienced senior teams. They’re investing heavily in upskilling: sales excellence, digital shelf performance, data maturity, leadership capability. There’s real commitment to doing things properly.
Yet despite all of this, a familiar sentiment keeps surfacing in workshops and leadership sessions:
“It feels like this year we just need to work harder.”
That sentence always makes me pause.
Because when teams are already operating at pace, “harder” rarely translates into “better”. More often, it just means busier.
More initiatives layered on top of existing ones.
More meetings to manage complexity.
More activity that looks productive — but isn’t always impactful.
The Moment the Room Changes
What’s fascinating is what happens when we gently slow things down and reframe the conversation.
Not by removing ambition.
Not by lowering expectations.
But by re-centring everything around the customer.
When we move away from outputs and towards questions like:
Who is the customer right now?
What are they actually trying to do?
Where are they confused, frustrated, or stuck?
What would genuinely make this easier for them?
That’s when the shift happens.
You can feel it in the room. The noise quietens. The defensiveness drops. Teams stop justifying activity and start questioning relevance.
One comment from a global skincare brand last week captured it perfectly:
“We’re getting so caught up in the day-to-day, it was really refreshing to put the consumer in the centre again.”
That wasn’t a failure.
That was a reset.
Customer Centricity Doesn’t Get Lost Loudly
What’s important to recognise is this: teams don’t consciously forget the customer.
They lose sight of them because:
- internal targets start driving behaviour
- metrics become detached from real customer outcomes
- delivery pressure outweighs reflection
- activity becomes a proxy for progress
Over time, the customer becomes a slide in the deck rather than a lens for decision-making.
And when that happens, work starts to feel heavy. Direction becomes blurred. Effort increases, but impact doesn’t always follow.
Why Re-centring the Customer Changes Everything
When teams reconnect with the customer, something powerful happens.
Priorities sharpen.
Suddenly, it’s clearer what truly matters — and what doesn’t.
Effort becomes more focused.
Instead of asking “What else should we be doing?”, teams start asking “What actually makes a difference?”
Energy shifts.
There’s less frantic motion and more intentional progress.
This is what lean should really mean.
Not squeezing more out of people.
But stripping away the things that don’t serve the customer — or the business.
What This Means for You
If you’re leading a team, shaping strategy, or setting targets right now, this isn’t a call to dial down ambition. It’s a call to re-anchor it.
When pressure rises, it’s natural to default to action. More meetings. More initiatives. More deliverables. But effort on its own isn’t what customers feel — relevance is.
This is the moment to step back and ask whether the work filling diaries and roadmaps is genuinely making life easier for the people you serve.
It also means giving teams permission to pause. To question. To say, “I’m not sure this actually helps the customer.” That pause isn’t a slowdown — it’s a correction.
For leaders, it’s about creating space for those conversations and modelling them yourself. Bringing the customer into decisions not as an afterthought, but as a constant reference point. Not in theory — in practice.
For teams, it’s a reminder that customer centricity isn’t something you add to the workload. It’s something that helps you strip it back. It brings clarity. Focus. Direction.
If you’re serious about being lean, ask yourself this:
Are we asking people to do more —
or are we helping them do what actually matters?
A Final Thought
Ambition isn’t the problem.
High standards aren’t the problem.
Growth targets aren’t the problem.
The risk comes when momentum replaces meaning.
Sometimes the most productive thing a team can do isn’t to push harder —
It’s to step back, refocus on the customer, and realign effort with impact.
That’s when performance feels lighter.
And results get better..
Cognitive Union is a progressive, boutique learning and performance consultancy. We work with forward-thinking businesses. Transforming their people. Shaping their culture. Helping them embrace change and take on the world. Find this blog useful? Sign up to our email newsletter (bottom of this page) where you can receive articles like this and other insights (not publicly published), and you can also follow us on LinkedIn.