Life Coach - Step 9 of 100 - What business are you in - understanding primary and secondary customers

Meharban Bajwa (wrote to me today morning) feels that we are in business of defense. Thank you Meharban for reading my mail and making that statement, I too felt the same for a long time.

It is like saying SRK is in business of acting. Is that really true?

Or Tata is in business of making steel. Read in the end what business Tata is truly in.

To understand our business - We have to understand primary and secondary customers.

As a CO who is our primary customer - our primary customer is our unit and its objective or put in another way the brigade commander - depends on what matters to the CO or maybe combination of both
Who is our secondary customer - the country - it comes above the primary customer always.

Why is this important?
If I am a CO and I am involved in a attack which does not make sense to me. I have to construct a bridge in an area which I know is not the thrust axis. Do I simply follow orders when they make no sense? And to be honest, I know that the bridge once constructed in that area would be of no use due to river width exceeding my capability. So if my primary objective is my unit, I would think it is atrocious thinking.

But what if that bridge is actually a feint, to create a diversion. Boxers know better when the left hook is a feint for the right upper cut. Or chess players know it much much better.

What is important is our secondary customer.

So if our secondary customer is the country - what business value are we providing to our secondary or the end customer?

As a business we only exist because we provide value to the end customer. Nothing else matters.

So if tomorrow I have to sacrifice myself and my battalion for winning the war, the primary customer only is a means to satisfy the end customer.

I ask you again - what business is the army truly in?

Actually Tata's is in business of quality. When I buy a TATA product I know that I would be assured of the quality ( Step n of 100 - what is quality). Be it Tata chai, Tata steel, Tata trucks. Tata did start off with steel, but then they understood that their core competency was quality ( Step m of 100 - core competency - what is ours) So Tata is in business of providing quality products - what they produce truly does not matter.