No matter how successful a business gets, it’s important not to lose sight of the strategies that have taken you there. For most that involves building strong customer relationships and consistently delivering a great product or service. In recent months, eBay, the popular online auction house has veered from that path perhaps, but its CEO John Donahoe is attempting to change all of that. After the much talked about sale of Skype last month, the company is returning to its roots as a customer-focused organization.

Inspired by Cisco CEO John Chambers and to support this effort, Donahoe has been personally visiting many of eBay’s strongest sellers, interviewing them using little more than a Flip video camera and his own questions. He has called the process “eye-opening,” saying “it’s incredible how they make a business out of nothing, really. They find inefficiencies in the supply chain and are able to create businesses around them.”

The kind of business 101 that you wouldn’t expect a successful CEO to need, but this feedback has taught him how to make improvements in the eBay operation. Insights that he has gladly shared with his own employees. While he might not be the first corporate decision maker to undertake this kind of first person fieldwork, it’s still stands as a powerful example of what getting back to your roots can bring to your company at any stage.

[image via Aaron Escobar]