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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. 2) Product Leader – Best Product or Service. 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

This small team was one of the most productive, spirited and lively groups I''ve ever known. As organizations increase in size, the leadership team moves from generalists to specialists who are responsible for a particular business area. Customer Intimacy. Effective Communication. Timely Decision-Making.

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The Small Business Advantage

Six Disciplines

This small team was one of the most productive, spirited and lively groups I''ve ever known. As organizations increase in size, the leadership team moves from generalists to specialists who are responsible for a particular business area. Customer Intimacy. Effective Communication. Timely Decision-Making.

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

Harvard Business Review

Now, every company of any scale and in any sector wants to be closer to its customers, to understand them more deeply, and to tailor their products and services to serve them more precisely. Consider the battle waged by IBM’s software development teams between competing methods for getting closer to customers.

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

Harvard Business Review

IBM began as a computing and tabulation company, selling an array of products, including meat slicers, scales, employee time-keeping systems, and other goods. Launched in August 1981, the IBM PC was an extraordinary triumph — in the first full year of production, the company's microcomputing revenues topped $500 million.