Last month my department participated in a team-building experience. After deciding on whitewater rafting on the Poudre River by Fort Collins, Colorado, we chose Mountain Whitewater Descents to guide our team down the river.

It is drilled into the minds of all business school students (like me) that it is vital to the survival of your business to know your customer. After all, how do you create a product that satisfies your customers’ needs if you don’t know what those needs are? You could say the effective marketer’s motto should be: “Seek first to understand, then to be understood.”