The smell of lemon oil filled the boardroom. The oil was on the long table. The table was dark wood. Five people sat at the long table. These people were the leaders of the company.

The leaders looked at a screen on the wall. The screen showed a chart. The chart showed fourteen different lines. Each line represented a Customer Success Manager. Each line showed the steps the Customer Success Manager took during onboarding.

The lines did not match. Some lines were short. Some lines were long. Some lines had circles where a Customer Success Manager had repeated a step.

The Mandate for the “Gold Path”

The Director of Operations pointed a finger at the screen. The Director of Operations said the lines were messy. The Director of Operations said the variation was a problem. The Director of Operations said the company was paying for fourteen different processes.

The Gold Path was a sequence of six steps. Every Customer Success Manager would follow the Gold Path. Every customer would experience the same sequence.

Sarah sat in a chair against the wall. Sarah was a Customer Success Manager. Sarah had worked at the company for four years. Sarah looked at her line on the screen. Her line was the messiest line. Her line had many circles.

Sarah knew why her line was messy. Sarah worked with customers who sold industrial valves. Sarah also worked with customers who sold software for schools. The valve customers wanted to see data. The school customers wanted to see the interface. Sarah changed the sequence for each customer. Sarah changed the sequence to help the customer.

The leaders did not ask Sarah about the customers. The leaders spoke about efficiency. The leaders spoke about scale. The leaders said that the Gold Path would make the company grow. The leaders said that the Gold Path would make the Customer Success Managers faster.

The leaders printed the Gold Path in a blue binder. Each Customer Success Manager received a blue binder. The blue binder had tabs. The tabs marked the six steps. The leaders told the Customer Success Managers that they must not skip a tab. The leaders said that deviation was a defect.

The Friction of Reality

Sarah went back to her desk. Sarah looked at the blue binder. Sarah had a meeting with a new customer. The customer was named Miller. Miller owned a company that made heavy gears. Miller did not like to wait.

Miller wanted to know if the software could track the weight of the gears. Sarah knew that the Gold Path said Step One was a Welcome Presentation. The Welcome Presentation lasted twenty minutes. The Welcome Presentation showed the history of the software company. Sarah knew Miller did not care about the history of the software company.

“Sarah told Miller that gear weights were Step Three. Sarah told Miller that the Gold Path required Step One first.”

Sarah opened the blue binder. Sarah followed Step One. Sarah showed the Welcome Presentation. Miller looked at his watch. Miller looked at his phone. Miller tapped his pen on the desk. Miller asked about the gear weights.

Miller stopped tapping his pen. Miller became quiet. The meeting ended. Miller did not schedule the next meeting for two weeks.

The Bethlehem Steel Precedent

In the year 1898, a man named Frederick Winslow Taylor went to the Bethlehem Steel Company. Frederick Winslow Taylor was an engineer. Frederick Winslow Taylor wanted to find the one best way to work.

Frederick Winslow Taylor watched men move heavy bars of iron. The men moved the iron in different ways. Some men moved fast. Some men moved slow. Some men took breaks. Frederick Winslow Taylor used a stopwatch. Frederick Winslow Taylor measured the seconds. Frederick Winslow Taylor measured the feet.

Frederick Winslow Taylor decided that a man should move 12.5 tons of iron a day. Frederick Winslow Taylor decided the man should use a specific shovel. Frederick Winslow Taylor decided the man should move his arms in a specific arc. Frederick Winslow Taylor called this Scientific Management.

The men moved more iron. The iron moved in a straight line. But the men were tired. The men were angry. The men felt like machines. The men left the Bethlehem Steel Company.

The company where Sarah worked was like Bethlehem Steel. The leaders used the blue binder like a stopwatch. The leaders checked the software logs. The leaders saw that Sarah was following the Gold Path. The leaders were happy.

The lines on the screen were now one single line. The line was straight. The line was clean. The Director of Operations said the company was now efficient.

But the customers were not happy. The customers felt like they were on an assembly line. The customers felt like the Customer Success Managers were not listening. The customers stopped calling with questions. The customers stopped giving feedback.

The customers felt the sequence was a wall. Sarah felt the wall too. Sarah used to feel like a partner to her customers. Now Sarah felt like a narrator. Sarah read the slides. Sarah followed the tabs. Sarah did not look at the customer. Sarah looked at the blue binder.

The Beauty of the Blurry Photo

I once deleted three years of photos from my phone. I pressed a button by mistake. The photos were gone. Some photos were blurry. Some photos were dark. Some photos showed the floor. I thought I wanted a clean phone. I thought I wanted only the best photos.

But when the photos were gone, I missed the blurry ones. The standard sequence is like a phone with no blurry photos. It is empty. It is too clean.

The customers began to leave. The customers said the software was fine, but the relationship was cold. The customers said they felt like a number in a queue. The Director of Operations was surprised. The Director of Operations looked at the straight line on the screen.

The Director of Operations did not understand how a straight line could lead to a loss. The Director of Operations thought the problem was the Customer Success Managers. The Director of Operations thought the Customer Success Managers were not following the Gold Path well enough.

The company needed more people. The company needed people who would follow the Gold Path without complaining. The company looked for people who liked rules. But the company also needed people who could keep the customers from leaving.

This is a difficult balance. To find people who understand how to balance process with intuition, companies often turn to

NextPath Workforce Solutions. These professionals understand that a person is not a line on a chart.

Breaking the Binder

Sarah had a meeting with a customer named Elena. Elena ran a school district. Elena was very busy. Elena had ten minutes. The Gold Path required a forty-minute training session. Sarah looked at the blue binder. Sarah looked at Elena. Elena looked tired.

“

Sarah closed the blue binder. Sarah put the blue binder on the floor. Sarah asked Elena what she needed right now.

Elena said she needed to add five new teachers to the system. Sarah showed Elena how to add the teachers. It took four minutes. Elena smiled. Elena thanked Sarah. Elena said Sarah was the first person to actually help her.

The next day, the Director of Operations called Sarah into the boardroom. The Director of Operations had the software logs. The Director of Operations saw that Sarah had skipped Step Two and Step Three. The Director of Operations saw that the meeting only lasted ten minutes.

The Director of Operations said Sarah was creating a defect. The Director of Operations said Sarah was hurting the data. Sarah told the Director of Operations that Elena was happy. Sarah told the Director of Operations that Elena would stay with the company.

The Director of Operations told Sarah to follow the Gold Path or leave. Sarah looked at the long dark table. Sarah looked at the lemon oil. Sarah thought about her deleted photos. Sarah thought about the blurry moments that made the work real.

Sarah realized that the company did not want her brain. The company wanted her hands to turn the pages of the blue binder. Sarah left the company.

The Cost of Compliance

Three other Customer Success Managers left the company. The company hired new people. The new people liked the blue binder. The new people did not know how to help Miller with his gears or Elena with her teachers. The new people only knew how to read the slides.

The line on the screen stayed straight. The line was very clean. The line was also very short because there were fewer customers to track.

Standardization treats a human interaction like a piece of iron. Iron does not care how it is moved. Iron does not have a schedule. Iron does not have a preference for data or interfaces. But a customer is not iron.

A customer is a person with a problem. When you erase the variation, you erase the solution. You replace a living conversation with a dead script. The script is easier to measure, but the script is harder to love.

The sequence stopped the manager from helping the customer.