“Companies Are Getting Worse at Listening”. That Makes It Your Advantage
You remember the BlackBerry phone?
I hadn't thought about them in years until I was planning this newsletter.
And there's a reason for that. They stopped being relevant the moment the market shifted and they didn't hear it.
BlackBerry had market dominance.
Then the iPhone showed up and redefined what people expected from a phone.
BlackBerry fought hard to stay relevant. They doubled down on what they knew. But they'd stopped hearing what was changing in the market.
By the time they noticed the shift, it was too late.
It was drift.
And drift is what kills most companies. They stop hearing change early enough to do something about it.
When you start a business, it's designed to survive. And it survives off your back mostly.
You're in every conversation. You hear everything. You know what your customers want because you're right there with them.
As you grow - whether linearly or at scale - things have to change. You outgrow that version of the business.
You step back. You delegate. You hire people to handle things you used to do.
And one of the first things you lose? Your direct conversations with customers.
-You won't get to have all the same ones you used to.
-You won't have the same volume.
-You're going to lose some of that connection.
That's normal.
But your business can't afford to lose it entirely.
I saw the early version of this in my own business years back.
We used to hold peer group meetings at our office.
Coaches ran the meetings, and I would sit in as often as I could.
I was basically a fly on the wall, soaking up the real problems clients were solving with each other.
That was probably the highest return listening I ever did. They'd talk about things differently with each other than they would with me. There are things they don't know to surface. Things I don't know to ask about.
But when you can see them in their natural environment, having a conversation with a peer? You get serious input.
Then we moved the meetings elsewhere.
The business kept running. Revenue held steady. The team didn't fall apart.
But about 3 - 4 months later, a couple of questions came up in internal staff meetings, and I caught myself thinking, "I… don't know."
That was new.
I'd gotten less informed.
Fortunately, I felt the tension before it became a problem. We restructured so key staff could stay connected to those conversations.
But most founders don't catch it that early. They assume they're still close to the market because nothing's obviously broken yet.
Growth creates distance. And if you don't intentionally replace that proximity, alignment starts to weaken.
So when you step back from those customer conversations, how does the business still hear the market?
You have to find other people who are really good listeners. People who are built for that.
You have to make it purposeful.
And you have to do this now, because companies are getting systematically worse at listening.
Think about what's happened over the last decade. Customer service teams that used to sit next to product teams, having conversations over coffee about what customers were saying? Now outsourced.
The casual exchange of customer perspectives that used to happen naturally? Gone.
Add AI chatbots into the mix. More automation. More operational layers between the founder and the actual conversation.
When these tools are built into a system with intention, they can work. But most companies are just layering them on top of each other without thinking about how the business still hears the market.
Which means if you build listening into your structure intentionally, it becomes a competitive advantage.
That pattern is exactly why I invited Paul Austin-Menear onto the podcast.
Paul helps growing businesses reinforce listening structurally, as a strategic function tied directly to innovation and alignment. His work focuses on how to make sure the business still hears the market when the founder is no longer in every conversation.
We talked about what changes as you move from producer to leader.
- The early warning signs you're losing the signal.
- How to hire for listening.
- How to build it into your culture so it doesn't die when you hand it off.
- How to turn listening into an innovation engine instead of just a support function.
