The Needsscape

-scape

suffix forming nouns

1. Indicating a scene or view of something, esp. a pictorial representation: seascape, cityscape, soundscape.

Word Origin: Abstracted from “landscape”.

The Essence of Business

Business is, in essence, about attending to folks’ needs. Here’s a quick list of typical needs, to illustrate:

• The financial needs of the owners and shareholders, and of staff.
• The particular needs of customers, which the business’s products and services attempt to address.
• The needs of suppliers for revenues.
• The needs of wider society for commerce, prosperity, growth of social cohesion and living standards, wealth distribution, and so on.
• The emotional needs of owners, shareholders, executives, managers and staff (examples: status, self-worth, compassion for others, making a difference, safety, love, esteem, curiosity, joy, learning, accomplishment, contributing to society, etc.).

I use the term “needsscape” to refer to the ever-changing set of Folks That Matter, and their ever-changing sets of needs. (Not all the needs listed above might feature in a given business’s needsscape).

In particular, the term Needsscape, for me, evokes the idea of one or more visualisations of the ever-changing set of Folks That Matter, and their ever-changing sets of needs, including the evolution of those sets over time. And especially visualisations of the current and relevant future set of Folks That Matter, their various sets of current and relevant future needs, and where the business is “at” in terms of attending to those folks and their needs. In other words, making all work (and objectives) visible, including attributes such as progress, status, and other interesting aspects of the work (aspects made interesting due, themselves, to the pertinent set of Folks that Matter, and their needs).

Indeed, all value-adding work is attending to (some) folks’ needs. And all wasted work is work where folks’ needs are undermined.

What value would a real-time (or near real-time) visualisation of the needsscape bring to your group and/or business?

– Bob

Further Reading

English Words Suffixed with -scape ~ Wiktionary entry