When Underpin builds products or services we have a bit of a mantra.
“Does this move us closer to the people this exists for, or further away.”
If the answer’s unclear, the work stops.
The Lodestone
We use customers as a lodestone. Not as a focus group. Not as a late-stage sense check. As the directional force.
That is not a metaphor we chose lightly.
A lodestone is a naturally magnetised piece of iron ore. No wires. No power source. No moving parts. Left alone on a piece of wood floating in water, it will turn. Slowly. Inevitably. Pointing north.
For centuries, nobody understood why.
The History of The Lodestone
The earliest recorded use of lodestones comes from China, more than two thousand years ago. At first they were not used for navigation at all. They were used for divination. The south-pointing spoon, carved from lodestone, placed on a bronze plate. When spun, it would come to rest facing the same direction every time.
It looked like magic.
Later, Chinese navigators realised that this strange, reliable behaviour could be trusted when landmarks disappeared. When clouds rolled in. When coastlines vanished. The compass was born not from theory, but from observation. It worked, even if nobody could explain it.
When the idea reached Europe centuries later, reactions were mixed. Sailors adopted it quickly. Scholars were suspicious. Some believed the compass was influenced by demons. Others thought it interfered with the soul. There were genuine fears that the needle was being pulled by witchcraft rather than the earth itself.
The truth, when it eventually emerged, was no more intuitive. An invisible magnetic field generated by a molten iron core thousands of miles beneath our feet, shaping the behaviour of metal on the surface of the planet.
That explanation did not make it feel any less strange. It simply replaced superstition with physics.
The Mystery of Direction
This matters, because it mirrors how people still misunderstand direction.
In organisations, direction is often treated as something you decide once and then impose. A strategy document. A vision statement. A set of objectives laminated and forgotten. When reality shifts, the response is usually more control. More metrics. More internal discussion.
Rarely is the question asked whether the organisation is still aligned to the force that made it relevant in the first place.
Customers are not data points. They are the magnetic field.
They exert pull whether you acknowledge it or not. Ignore it, and you drift. Fight it, and you burn energy going nowhere. Align with it, and movement becomes easier, even if the destination is not fully mapped.
Purpose is Magnetic
This is where having a purpose and social value enters the picture.
Too often, the purpose of a company, or the social value, is treated as a layer added after the real decisions are made. A requirement to satisfy. A box to tick. Something delivered adjacent to the work rather than integral to it. A lot of companies say they are driven by purpose, by a greater good, but profit and efficiency over public positive action quickly take over as they grow. When customers are your lodestone, that becomes impossible.
People do not experience services in silos. They experience them as moments. As feelings. As outcomes that either improve their lives or waste their time.
In my work, I see this play out repeatedly. Projects fail not because teams are incompetent, but because they are navigating by internal maps while the magnetic field has shifted. Communities are saying one thing. Systems are optimised for another. The compass spins, but nobody is watching it.
The Uncomfortable Truth
Using customers as a lodestone requires humility. It means accepting that direction is discovered, not declared. It means listening for patterns rather than hunting for validation. It means designing services that can turn, slowly and deliberately, as the field changes.
This is uncomfortable for organisations built on certainty. But it is how resilience is created.
The most interesting thing about magnetism is that it works whether you believe in it or not. You can deny it. You can fear it. You can misunderstand it. The needle still turns.
Customers do the same.
They pull through behaviour, not feedback forms. Through choices, not slogans. Through where they show up, where they disengage, where they linger and where they leave.
Our job is not to overpower that force. It is to notice it early, respect it deeply, and build systems that respond to it honestly.
Navigation has never been about knowing exactly where you are going. It has always been about knowing which way is true.
That is why we build with a lodestone at the centre