A grid for better customer / citizen led transformation

Benjamin P. Taylor
2 min readJun 14, 2021

There is no transformation without insight.

Helping actual customer or citizens achieve their purposes is the purpose of organisations.

Yet organisations in public and private sector are often like the drunk under the streetlamp — looking where they can see, not where the keys are.

It’s important to understand there are two different dimensions in insight:

FIRST, which world the data comes from:

  • citizen/customer world where we live our lives
  • service world where we deal with demand
  • management world where we try to make the whole thing function
  • board or political world where we try to steer while staying in charge

It’s so easy to forget that we are all customers and citizens. Not least because even the same data changes every time it crosses the boundary between worlds.

SECOND, the type of data we are looking at. Is it about who, where, why, when, what, or how the customer or citizen is contacting us.

The attached grid allows you to think differently about your customer or citizen insight.

My big advice is triangulate — make sure all insight covers all three columns and at least three rows in the grid. This is a rule of thumb for generating real insight that can drive transformation.

What’s your favourite tip for customer or citizen insight?

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