Who do you work for?

Who actually benefits from your focused efforts?

Is it your customers who are the most important and get to benefit the most from the value you create, or is it your shareholders?

In theory shareholders are meant to benefit financially as a consequence of happy, loyal customers, but what happens when shareholder value gets put first, before anything else, and customers are simply seen as a means to an end?

Using customers to keep shareholders happy is not the ideal set of conditions to grow a sustainable, future-orientated business, but all too often this is where the real focus lies.

Leadership's intention lies not in customer delight, but keeping hedge funds happy. We're not in the game of prediction, but the road ahead for organisations like this looks challenging.

So ask yourself the question, 'who do you work for?'