Oleg Lega: Customer-centricity is a thing of the past.

Linden Brown: What does customer-centricity and a focus on the customer mean for you and your business?

Oleg Lega: Five years ago, I wrote an essay expressing the idea that if you are customer-oriented, you are manipulating people. Because, in reality, you are not thinking about people, but about their money. That's it. And never tell me that you truly think of a client as a person if you are CUSTOMER-oriented. The only way to show genuine care is to be not CUSTOMER-oriented, but HUMAN-oriented. The foundation of everything is the relationship between people as human beings.

When I am customer-oriented, the person disappears for me. In that moment, I am not truly living; I am merely functioning—trying to satisfy their needs to make money. And that is the old, conventional economy within which most companies still operate today.

The next step for me is to live within the paradigm of the new economy. According to Ken Wilber's philosophy, each new level of development includes the previous one. Thinking of a client as a person does not mean abandoning the achievements made at the previous level, where you thought of a person only as a customer in a commercial sense. This new level of understanding includes the person as a customer and enriches it with the understanding that they are, first and foremost, a human being.

The core value for me is to be fully alive in every moment. And then, when thinking about a person, I can avoid being just a function and remain alive at all times. By infusing meaning into our shared experience, we will inevitably encounter a person's questions about life—because ultimately, everything is about life in one way or another.

But what does it mean to think about a person? How can one be alive in every moment? This is, in fact, what unites us at "Bushe." This is precisely how I find meaning in life. And if I find these meanings, and I do it honestly, how can I possibly do it poorly? Then, whatever I do, I do to the best of my ability, including in my daily work, and this binds us together. Success then comes to me naturally, like getting an 'A' on a test—a confirmation that "hey, you did it." Then, I strive not for external validation, but to find the most profound, internal meaning in what I do. Success is a measure of how well I am searching for that meaning. And this is how we build our relationships within the company. In this context, if I become merely CUSTOMER-oriented, I am taking a step backward.