There’s a delicate line serving those above and beside us. For me, getting this balance right is quite similar to tuning a guitar; if even a single string is either too tight or too loose, the harmony of the entire song we’re playing simply won’t sound right.
Reading time: 2’38”
When you hear the word “customer,” it’s easy to think of the people who buy what you’re selling. But what if I told you that some of the most important customers are the people you see in team meetings, or those you exchange emails with daily? Yes, I’m talking about internal customers, typically coming from your management team or your peer group.
In my experience, some roles lean heavily towards data collection and analytics to serve the management team. Often, the idea is to offer a snapshot, a bird’s-eye view that informs key decisions. But what gets missed out is that this view is only as good as the information flowing from the team on the ground. So, even when the role seems management-heavy, it’s crucial to be a sturdy bridge to your peers, always understanding what’s happening at the coalface.
Now, there are also roles where you might find yourself as the go-to person for your peers. When they bring you problems, these aren’t simple, surface-level issues. They’ve tried to untangle the mess themselves and now they’re handing you the ball. Sometimes, they need someone who can dive deep, pore over the granular data, and find insights that weren’t obvious. And while it might seem like you’re mostly serving your peers, remember, management also needs to understand these ground-level complexities to see the bigger picture.
At an earlier stage of my career, I had a conversation with a colleague who was in the same role as me. The intriguing part? While I was tackling the job alone, he was sharing the responsibilities with another person. I was especially curious because the work seemed so integrated, it was hard to picture how tasks could be divided cleanly. So, I asked him how they managed it. His answer was elegantly simple, yet rich with meaning: “I do PowerPoint, and he does Excel.”
So, let’s pause for a moment of reflection. In my own journey, I’ve found that whether we realize it or not, we all have internal customers—people who depend on us to do our jobs well so they can do theirs. And while it’s tempting to view them through the lens of the roles we’re in, I’ve come to see that these relationships are more fluid, more symbiotic than they might first appear. There’s a delicate line serving those above and beside us. For me, getting this balance right is quite similar to tuning a guitar; if even a single string is either too tight or too loose, the harmony of the entire song we’re playing simply won’t sound right.
It’s not about telling you what to do; it’s about sharing what I’ve discovered in my own experiences. Maybe you’ve felt something similar in your role, or maybe it’s a perspective you hadn’t considered. Either way, when we begin to see the people around us as more than just coworkers, as internal customers each with their unique needs and contributions, we start to unlock a more collaborative, more effective way of doing business. And that, for me, is a lesson worth sharing.