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Customer Intimacy vs. Customer Satisfaction

CO2

These paths are clearly and effectively outlined by Fred Wiersema and Michael Treacy in The Discipline of Market Leaders: Choose Your Customers, Narrow Your Focus, Dominate Your Market : 1) Operational Excellence – Lowest Cost. 3) Customer Intimacy – Best Overall Solution. How are you operationalizing it?

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Gutting the Talent Bench

Lead Change Blog

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?

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The Senior Leader’s Checklist for Shaping Company Culture

Next Level Blog

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
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The Small Business Advantage

Six Disciplines

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.

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The Small Business Advantage

Six Disciplines

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.

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Are You Leading Cash Registers?

Lead Change Blog

The culprit was the myopic view of leadership driven by a “make the numbers” through operational excellence not customer intimacy. And, the human in command of taking care of the customer was jailed by a system that quarantined a solution that favored the customer.

P&L 150
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Standard Operating Procedures Can Make You More Flexible

Harvard Business Review

Yet at the same time they use these standards as a springboard for creating unique solutions for each customer based on a deep understanding of their needs. (I I call this understanding and tailoring "customer intimacy" ). The result is a powerful combination that fulfills two customer value propositions at the same time.