Dear Bob ...A long time ago people were calling everyone including the dog their customer. A lot of that is still going around and it gets in the way of clear thinking sometimes.I liked your (now ancient) article [probably "Who defines value," InfoWorld's Survival Guide, 7/29/1996) positing that only paying customers are real customers and that HR, Facilities, Operations, etc are IT partners – not customers – in Dear Bob …A long time ago people were calling everyone including the dog their customer. A lot of that is still going around and it gets in the way of clear thinking sometimes.I liked your (now ancient) article [probably “Who defines value,” InfoWorld’s Survival Guide, 7/29/1996) positing that only paying customers are real customers and that HR, Facilities, Operations, etc are IT partners – not customers – in the job of meeting the needs of the real customers. In that article you mentioned that government organizations are much the same but with a twist since the paying part is different for them. I work for DoD and sometimes find it useful to point out the advantages to an organization of the “paying customer” way of looking at things. However, the point gets a little lost when the discussion drifts off to taxpayers as the paying customer.Since this is DoD the concept of the war fighter as the customer instead of everyone helps but I was hoping you could help me refine a useful stance for government in general.– Gummint Guy Dear GG …Personally, I’m sick to death of taxpayers thinking they’re government’s customers. We’re the owners. Even that isn’t quite the case – all adult citizens are government’s owners, not just taxpayers – but it’s a lot closer to the mark than all of us figuring that since we put money in, we should receive goods and services in return.Customers are the people who make buying decisions. Smart businesses cater to them because in the world of commerce that’s usually a better way to build revenue and profit than ticking them off. Government doesn’t have customers. When public officials try to please the people who “make a buying decision” it’s called taking a bribe and is considered bad form (unless the funds are delivered in the form of campaign contributions, and what’s received in exchange is access and influence, at which point it’s the American Way … but that isn’t relevant to this discussion).Searching for the right metaphorical equivalent to “customer” in the conduct of government isn’t a good use of mental energy. If we’re going to spend a lot of time forcing a metaphor to fit where it doesn’t belong, let’s think of government as a tavern and try to figure out what it produces that’s parallel to beer, cocktails, Irish stew, and free popcorn.What’s the point? While it makes sense to run government in a businesslike way, it doesn’t make sense to run government as a business. Government doesn’t have customers in any meaningful sense, doesn’t have competitors in any meaningful sense, and doesn’t operate by exchanging products and services for enough money to pay for their production plus a margin of profit.What government agencies do have is a mission – a reason for existence: Something they are supposed to do; people or organizations they are supposed to serve. My best advice is to stop worrying about who is the customer and instead focus everyone on what they are supposed to accomplish.In your case, it sounds like your team exists to help the men and women who fight our wars to win their battles and live to fight the next one. I think you’ll find that if you’re able to keep everyone’s eye on that ball, the need to identify a “customer” will go away. What won’t go away is one of the needs identifying customers does satisfy, and that’s determining who has the expertise and experience to help your team figure out what the best results look like. If you build a minivan and want to improve it, understanding that parents with a few children are the most likely buyers means you know to ask a bunch of them what they want that your current products don’t deliver. They are the experts in what they are willing to spend money for and the criteria they use to choose from among competing products.If your team (for example) is responsible for the design and production of a weapon system, I imagine the equivalent experts are officers and soldiers – officers because a weapon’s capabilities influence battlefield tactics; soldiers because the weapon has to operate under battlefield conditions.Equivalent logic will serve to identify the expert you should listen to no matter what your team’s mission. – BobPowered by ScribeFire. Technology Industry