( CNN ) -- `` Which is more important -- the customer being king or the employees being highly motivated ( keeping in mind reduction of operating expenses and being competitive ) ? '' - Ronald Mahondo , I & M Bank , Kenya . The customer is king . The customer is always right . These are phrases that have been with us for a while . As business and marketing environments have become tougher , it 's true that those companies that have found out what the king wants -- and provided it -- have been successful . This would make it easy , if only it was clear which king to ask . Many companies draw a distinction between `` consumers , '' those who are the end-user of a product or service , and `` customers , '' those who are the trade , distributors and so on . This kind of customer is very powerful indeed -- especially if they are Wal-Mart or Tescos . So which customer is more king than the other ? And what if they do n't agree on what they want ? Sounds like war . In global companies the complexity rises . They have consumers and customers , but it 's also common that employees of that company are also customers of other employees . A trend at the moment is that regional employees are customers for central employees . Motivation and , more importantly , aligned goals , are absolutely critical to success . Getting this wrong can be costly in many ways -- not least in morale , time and money . The real truth is that this is not a question of `` or . '' Customer and employee satisfaction and motivation are critical . The challenge is to create a virtuous circle . Motivated employees are a great way of delivering what the customer wants , be that service , fast moving consumer goods , innovation , or anything else , and happy customers make employees feel rewarded . Of course , the virtuous circle has to start somewhere . In creative industries such as ours , often the job is to stretch further than the customer can see . They can tell you what they like today , but tomorrow looks misty and murky . A motivated group of creative individuals love nothing more than the art of invention , the creation of the new , the alchemy of an idea . If you want a king , it 's the idea , not the customer or the employee . Being competitive comes from having better ideas than your competition : an idea about targeting a particular group of people , an idea about a new product , an idea about how or where to distribute it , or an idea about how to advertise it . In 1944 James Webb Young , an employee of JWT , defined an idea as `` nothing more or less than a new combination of old elements . '' It 's a definition that we continue to find very useful today . Your customers are an excellent source of the familiar ; a highly motivated employee will most likely be the one who combines the familiar in a new way , creating the idea , and the competitive edge . On my way to work this morning with a trainload of people in glorious iPod isolation , I wondered what kind of company Apple would be today if the employees had been thinking the customer was king instead of working out how to combine some music with a little bit of one of their computers .
Motivation and aligned goals are absolutely critical to success . Being competitive comes from having better ideas than your competition . JWT idea : `` nothing more or less than a new combination of old elements ''