Mary Parker Follett, a pioneering business consultant, was asked to help a troubled window shade company. The company’s thinking was narrow and limited. When asked to define their business, they said, “We produce window shades.”

She asked them “What business are you really in from your customer’s point of view?” In other words, why do people buy window shades?

They realized they were really in the light control and privacy business. They turned their business around by developing creative ways to control light and create privacy for windows.

I asked the same question at Stanley Magic Door, a manufacturer of automatic doors. When they considered what business they were really in from their customer’s point of view, they realized they were in the business of “facilitating and controlling the access of people and objects through buildings.” As a result they identified new business opportunities, new directions, and changed the name of their company to Access Technologies.

The same lesson applies to teams

A few years ago the accounting department of a Fortune 1000 company told me their biggest problem was lack of cooperation from other departments—they did not receive the information they needed to create their reports in a timely manner and often had to go hunt it down.

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