Being successful today means being with the customer. The closer you are to the customer the more power and influence you have.
I used to know an editor of a specialist magazine. He spent four days of every week with his readers. He talked to them, listened to them, observed them. Only on Fridays did he come into the office. He was a very successful editor.
I met him years later. He had been excited by the Web and had taken a job as a web editor for a large website. But he wasn’t excited when I met him. He was frustrated and a bit depressed. Now, Monday to Friday he was in the office. He hadn’t seen a reader (customer) in a year.
