Seth Godin, author of the fantastic book “Tribes” often brings great ideas to the marketplace and certainly has more than a few hungry customers ready to snap up his every word.

In the book Tribes, Seth notes that “the top isn’t the top anymore, because the streets are where the action is”.

What he’s describing, without knowing it, is the Gemba.  Otherwise known as “where the work is done”, the Gemba is where the action is, where the customer interacts with us, and where we have the power to make or break a company.

Leading from the top is no longer enough.  Simply decreeing change will no longer work, it has to be led from the ground up.  The best way to discover customer value is by being there on the front lines.  The best way to see wasteful processes is to be there performing them.

Leading from the bottom, by creating a movement, a groundswell, a crowd of raving fans, is also the way to incite positive change.  Whether it is in a company or an entire industry, change is led from the bottom more than ever before.

And when we have a movement, an idea worth believing in, then all we need is a means to connect and communicate with our tribe and create that groundswell.  We have the tools to do this already at our fingertips – with Twitter, with Facebook, with WordPress, with dozens of other tools, all free and easy to use.

So if you’re having trouble connecting to your customers or inciting change, go to the Gemba.  Those third-hand reports you’re getting are simply not going to cut it.

Yours in change,

Dave McLachlan