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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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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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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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Creativity - The Key To The Challenge of Complexity for CEOs

Six Disciplines

In a recently released study from IBM , based on face-to-face conversations with more than 1,500 chief executive officers worldwide, “creativity” has been identified as the single most important leadership competency for enterprises seeking a path through this complexity.

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

Harvard Business Review

Faster, cheaper and more nimble competitors had eaten away at Big Blue's market leadership. Newly appointed CEO Lou Gerstner logged thousands of hours visiting customers, industry experts and analysts. He believed satisfied, engaged employees ensure customer satisfaction and retention, and this in turn drives profit.