Lead Change Blog

APRIL 26, 2011

What is your organization’s claim to fame—operational excellence, customer intimacy or product leadership? If your focus is customer intimacy, do the employees who personally excel at operational excellence and product leadership feel engaged or disenfranchised in your workplace?

Customer Intimacy 281

Customer Intimacy Operations Productivity Products 281

Next Level Blog

FEBRUARY 1, 2022

The authors argued that companies had to pick between one of three paths to value creation and success in the market – operational excellence, customer intimacy or product leadership. And once you picked one, the work of leadership was to align the culture with the chosen path.

Company 246

Company Customer Intimacy Schein Long-term 246

Six Disciplines

DECEMBER 13, 2013

As organizations increase in size, the leadership team moves from generalists to specialists who are responsible for a particular business area. Customer Intimacy. In smaller organizations, a much greater percentage of employees work with customers directly. Timely Decision-Making.

Customer Intimacy 133

Customer Intimacy Hammer Competitive Advantage Organization 133

Six Disciplines

MAY 17, 2013

As organizations increase in size, the leadership team moves from generalists to specialists who are responsible for a particular business area. Customer Intimacy. In smaller organizations, a much greater percentage of employees work with customers directly. Timely Decision-Making.

Customer Intimacy 116

Customer Intimacy Hammer Competitive Advantage Organization 116

Lead Change Blog

OCTOBER 16, 2015

We live in a time flush with high efficiency, cost control, and lean operations. The culprit was the myopic view of leadership driven by a “make the numbers” through operational excellence not customer intimacy. Then, the steam-driven drill slammed into rock-hard reality.

P&L 150

P&L Customer Intimacy Price Retail 150

Harvard Business Review

APRIL 30, 2013

Most people think standard operating procedures are a strait jacket that limits their flexibility. They can actually make it easier to tailor customer experiences at low cost. For example, we are building a development platform for the iPad, and defining how it will interact with our electronic medical record system.

Operations 8

Operations Customer Intimacy Supply Chain Wiersema 8

Harvard Business Review

JUNE 17, 2015

Yet wanting to be closer with customers, and knowing what actual, operational pathways to take in order to achieve this are two very different things. Consider the battle waged by IBM’s software development teams between competing methods for getting closer to customers. The Future of Operations.

Productivity 8

Productivity Products Customer Intimacy Software 8