The term “human centricity” has general and industry-specific meanings.

For example, there is human-centred design, which focuses on designing solutions that work for human beings – effectively a design-thinking approach.

There are also human-centred organisations, which are about fostering a common purpose of data-driven human-centricity using data to get closer to our likes, dislikes, and so on.

The reality is that most of these perspectives and definitions reinforce a form of customer or business centricity that does not, in our view, address the critical, human-centric elements of connecting, caring and supporting.

The concept of customer centricity is already well known, and many strategies are built around this theory.

However, the vagueness of the concept of customer centricity means it does not create immediate benefit, and in general is only a small contributor to driving sustainable and successful business outcomes.

Because of this vagueness and the lack of understanding about what needs to be done to implement customer centricity, confusion and paralysis is often the result in company leadership.

Yet a shift to human centricity must become a core and industrialised part of our businesses. As with most proposed changes that can have a significant impact on business, we recommend starting with an element of analysis and review.

Where to start

We know this will be difficult and will compete with many other priorities, business strategies and initiatives. As with most proposed changes that can have a significant impact on our businesses, we recommend starting with an element of analysis and review.

The analysis consists of three parts:

Understanding how human-centric your business is.
Evaluating customer-centric initiatives and whether these are delivering on their expected value and benefit cases.
Evaluating business culture and its effectiveness?