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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.

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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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IBM at 100: How to Outlast Depression, War, and Competition

Harvard Business Review

Throughout the 1920s, and even in the midst of the Great Depression in the early 1930s, he kept the company focused on what was then cutting-edge tabulation — the punch card machine — pouring profits back into research and development. Know your customers intimately. The deadline for the IBM PC's introduction was Fall 1981.

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How IBM, Intuit, and Rich Products Became More Customer-Centric

Harvard Business Review

In this article we look at three very different organizations – IBM, Rich Products, and Intuit – and the three different paths they have taken in reconfiguring their operations for more customer intimacy, by changing methods, reengineering processes, and transforming culture. IBM: Applying a Hybrid Design-Thinking Approach.

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Embracing Digital Change Requires a Clear Strategic Focus - SPONSOR CONTENT FROM DXC TECHNOLOGY

Harvard Business Review

Operational excellence, customer intimacy, or product leadership — successful companies excel in one dimension and perform well in the others. Leadership teams, recognizing that technology’s supporting role has changed, have also reordered their thinking about digital leadership. Mastering big data.