Customers no longer exist to buy your products; you exist to solve your customer’s problems.  The company that remains self-rather than customer-centric cannot endure. 
In the customer economy, yesterday’s innovation is baseline today and obsolete tomorrow.  What was once unimaginable quickly becomes routine, and then expectations are even higher. 
Anticipation is an edge that every alert company needs to sharpen. 
Michael Hammer, The Agenda:  What Every Business Must Do to Dominate the Decade

——————–

The news is filled with companies struggling mightily to survive this scary business era.  I’ve already read the reasons why the Nokia purchase by Microsoft might be doomed to disappointment (maybe it won’t be…  but who knows?).  It really is a difficult time to predict what will be successful and what will disappear.

But, there are some business basics that a company ignores at its own peril.  And I keep feeling drawn back to such basics.  Even if the basics are partly the “new” basics for the new era.

So, here are a few of the business basics from a pretty astute observer, Michael Hammer.  Occasionally, I go back through my handouts for synopses I presented “long ago.”  I presented The Agenda by Michael Hammer back in January, 2002 at the First Friday Book Synopsis in Dallas.  (An acknowledgement:  I suspect that I said words I had not yet grasped when I presented this over a decade ago.  15 years of reading business books has brought quite a bit of understanding that I simply did not have at the beginning of this multi-year learning endeavor.  And I clearly grasp that there is so much more to learn!).

Here is the paragraph summary of The Agenda that I included in my handout:

The next chapter in business will be dominated by the customer economy.  The only path to dominance in such a new world is through the right processes.  Only the companies that follow this path will dominate. 

The book is filled with terrrific insight and wisdom.  Like:

The questions of management…

1) How can a company devise products and services that satisfy customers, and at the same time deliver them in a profitable way that satisfies shareholders?
2) How can a company retain customers in the face of new competitors, and respond to new needs without sacrificing its existing position? 
3) How does a company distinguish itself from other companies with similar offerings and identical goals, and maintain its success as times change? 

and

Element #1 – ETDBW.  The dominant company must be EASY TO DO BUSINESS WITH. 

and

Create a Process Enterprise.

• Process is a technical term with a precise definition:  an organized group of related activities that together create a value to customers.  Put most simply, processes are what create the results that a company delivers to its customers.
• Not organized = undesigned = work that meanders…

These insights (and the others from this terrific book) all fit together.  There is no “this one is more important” element.  Be a problem-solving customer resource; be easy to do business with; be designed/organized, with close-to-flawless processes; keep innovating…

In other words, we are back to the modern-day basics.  We’ve got to do the important things just right.  Or else…

——————–

My e-book 12 Vital Signs of Organizational Health provides a quick, accessible “overview” of critical business basics.  Check it out.