Customer World

Secrets to building a customer-centric organization - #4

When it comes to building a team in an organization that thinks and breathes customers & selling best-in-class offerings, the process of recruiting the right 'fit' people rather than just the right people is important. What does this mean? It means that you might have identified the most qualified and the most experienced person for the job but they might not fit the culture, values, motivation, passion and environment that you may have in your company. The right fit is as much important as the right people. NY Times has an interesting article on 3 ingredients of success which provides more insights when you want to evaluate people and understand why they do what they do:

• After interviewing 200 people worldwide “who have made a difference in their fields,” three authors conclude that “success in the long run has less to do with finding the best idea or business model than it does with discovering what matters to us as individuals.”

• “When success just means wealth, fame and power it doesn’t last and it isn’t satisfying.”

• ...builders find lasting success when three essential elements come into alignment in their lives and work.

1. The first element is meaning. “What you do must matter deeply to you,”
2. The second is a “highly developed sense of accountability, audacity, passion and responsible optimism.”
3. Successful people “find effective ways to take action.”

Check the people who you want to recruit against this backdrop because you want to have in your team winners and not losers. Believe me, the difference will show and your customers will see it.

Secrets to building a customer-centric organization - # 3

Every customer-centric organization has to create a culture of organizational authenticity.

There is an interesting discussion around this topic in Fast Company. I have taken a few of the discussion points and posted them here.

What is organizational authenticity? Organizational authenticity means what is felt and thought concerning the mission and purpose aligns with what is said and done on a regular basis. - Paul S Markle

Transformational leadership transcends the one or few individuals and instills a sense of purpose and vision in the entire organization. The power play role of leadership is more focused with their position in their 'world' than organizational authenticity / integrity . - Donna  Karlin

How does a company ensure they attract authentic leaders for sustainability and growth and to promote a culture that is based on integrity?

"I believe there has to be a two way accountability pact or structure where both staff and leadership can ask and answer the question (in the affirmative) "Am I where I need to be to reach my level of excellence?" and "I am inspiring all those around me to reach for their level of excellence?" And can all include "...and live in alignment with my personal values and ethics?" If the people care about each other enough to ask, then they'll care enough to be authentic." - Donn Karlin

Here, you can take a organizational authenticity quiz. Go on and take the test!

Leadership scarcity

It's easy for organizations to be wanting to be customer-centric but the challenge is the need for a leader who can set the agenda, pursue the agenda relentlessly, be steadfast about the results, be ruthless about execution across various departments in the organization etc.. But, according to Jeffrey Phillips that's the area where there is a huge gap. Company boards need to find such leaders and there seems to be scarcity for such souls:

....there are few true leaders in most businesses, since it is impossible to pursue more than a handful of "visions" or strategies in any business without complete chaos.  Most senior executives in businesses are "managers" - that is, they understand the vision and attempt to implement it to the best of their understanding.  They don't create the vision, and in most cases don't fully back it or understand it, but are doing their best to implement the vision.  In any context, in any organization, there can be a maximum of one leader in this regard, however, in most firms there aren't any real leaders.  Most CEOs are pragmatists, guided by Wall Street and expected earning and returns.  Some leaders, like Jack Welch for instance, became recognized because he had a vision and pleased the street.  Some leaders, like Steve Jobs, have been recognized for their vision but have had up and down experiences - most likely because they could not communicate their vision effectively to a solid management team below them.  In many other firms, however, it is difficult to identify who is responsible for creating a vision and encouraging people to follow his or her vision.

....The best place today to find true leaders in businesses is in smaller, private firms.

Secrets to building a customer-centric organization - # 1

I have been coming across some interesting quotes (which resonate a lot & appeal to me) as building blocks towards creating a customer-centric organization. There is no one formula but I thought I will blog about them (as and when I find them), aggregate them here so as to serve as a resource for all. Here's the first!

How to get employees engaged?

I have already written in the past about the need to motivate employees to build customer-centric organizations. Technology can only do so much. We can have all the technology in the world but without engaged employees all these investments go down the drain. What are the building blocks of getting started on this? 

Nick Smith has some good suggestions:

• Know where you are coming from.
  It's probably wise, before stepping up to the leadership plate, to examine our own motivations because 'where we are coming from' speaks far louder than anything we might say or do.
• Make conversation a first class citizen.
  Conversation is the way we have got things done since Adam and Eve decided to walk out of the Garden of Eden.  The process flow is always the same:
  Ideas ----> Conversation ---- > Agreement ----> Action.
• Start slow to go quick.
  It's in wandering around, kicking the tires and sharing our frustrations that we come to discover a place we can call our own within a team.. something we can contribute and feel good about.. some role that we can fill (or learn to) that is personally meaningful to us.
• Get comfortable with blindness.
  Helping people find their own inspiration can be tricky.  Many times we don't consciously know what we want ourselves, but it comes disguised as a rant.  After all, we never get angry about the things we don't care about.
• Let go of the concept of 'failure'.
  Going out on a limb is messy.  It's all new to us, like learning to walk all over again.  We trip, we fall down, we pick ourselves up and then we do it all over again.  If we've got someone looking over our shoulder ready to snatch back control when we mess up, then we give up trying.
• Use consent rather than consensus as a framework for decision making.
  Many of us talk about Enterprise 2.0 as the democratisation of the workplace.  But seriously, is democracy that good a model?  As far I can see there are two big problems with it.  First, the bigger and the more diverse the group, the longer it takes to get a consensus of opinion.  Secondly, debate has a way of killing the brightest ideas.
• Be mindful of unexpected good stuff.
  This is about staying open and receptive to  what can never be planned.  The really magic stuff that comes out of great groups is the stuff that comes out of the blue.  It's not east to describe but when it comes it sneaks up on us and hits us up the side of the head.. and  we know.
• Be disruptive.
  Most people think of good leadership as maintaining order and keeping everything running smoothly.  What we are talking about here is the exact opposite.  Instead of being a good 'motivator' you can be a master disrupter - rearranging things to allow us to do what naturally moves us, and getting the other stuff out of the way.
• Be the keeper of the sacred scrolls.
  Just kidding!.. or maybe not.  It's part of the human condition to forget what is most important to us.  We get stuck in the inertia of those two old, tired ideas - 'work' and 'effort'... and then forget that  the real magic happens when we just enjoy our Selves.

Living life in the edge

I have been reading a lot articles on disruption,crisis management in corporations, rapid cultural changes in society, changing media habits of consumers due to new techonologies etc. I have always wondered how does one keep pace with such sweeping changes and how, me as a leader, keep the edge without jumping off the edge? Here are some interesting tips from Fast Company on what some leaders do:

Many leaders say that pushing the limits outside the office gives them the experience of being in the moment, especially in times of crisis and keeps them focused, ready to take action. They say it helps them become comfortable with pressure and embrace risk.

• Continue moving…inaction leads to stagnation.
• Read…anything.
• Talk to people…constantly.
• Ask for feedback and be open to what you hear.
• Try something that seems counterintuitive.
• Don't let others in your organization do all the dirty work.
• Go work "on the line or in the trenches".
• Do a 360 on yourself.

Try This

Make a list of all the things that inspire you about other leaders. Compare them to your skill sets. What are you missing that they have? This is a great place to start understanding what you need to do to go to the next level. Then start learning those skills and practicing them. Start now, even if it's scary. You don't have to jump out of a plane to get your heart pumping; sometimes it is as simple as looking in the mirror and telling yourself the truth about something you should be doing and then taking the steps to do it.

'Physical Size Does Not Guarantee Success; What Matters Is Mental Size'

Subroto Bagchi, COO of Mindtree Consulting makes some lovely points on what it takes to build an organization. Frankly in my view, it's the 'soul of the enterprise' that makes all the difference.Everything else is replacable. Business  will follow if you cultivate the right culture. Ask yourself this question- Does your enterprise have a soul? Surely, your customers will know it, everytime your employees interact with them. May be you can start by asking them first. Be ready for a lot of suprises!

If you then want to go back to the drawing board, you can start thinking with Subroto's advice:

• Being big is not about size, but about mindset - Let us imagine that you want to someday build a skyscraper. You have to pre-think what plumbing must go into the skyscraper. It cannot be an afterthought.So you have to pretend that, "I am a skyscraper." The inlet and outlet for the skyscraper is going to be very different. So pretending [or imagining] is a very, very important thing.
• Countries like Singapore, or Israel, or Finland, are world leaders in many ways. These are developed countries. These countries are at the top-end of GDP. But they are so tiny. They're microscopic when you compare them to countries like India or Pakistan. Many of the African countries are significantly larger. In today's world, physical size does not guarantee success. What is important is mental size. Nokia was created out of Finland. Singapore's GDP is way bigger than the GDP of India, and ... the population of Singapore is half the population of Bangalore.
• Process to Empathy Ratio(PE Ratio)- Process is not a substitute for building an emotionally rich organization. Process without emotion can quickly bring you down to the lowest common denominator.
• Inventive Thinking -When you look at building an organization, yes, the first idea is important, but an organization is built only as an idea of ideas. Sometimes people fail because they don't take a long view of time. Sometimes they fail because they do not adapt. I think adaptability is very important.
• Create the right organization infrastructure - An organization, an enterprise, is about infrastructure.We have to continuously build infrastructure.Many companies do a good job of building the physical infrastructure. Some companies even do a good job of building the intellectual infrastructure. But above these two layers is what I call the emotional infrastructure. This is the most difficult - the most difficult to build and the most difficult to sustain.In a hyper-competitive world, it is easiest to demolish a company at the physical layer. It's less easy to demolish a company at the intellectual layer. But it is the most difficult to break a company apart at the emotional layer.
• Have the right balance - Look at your enterprise as a three-legged stool. One is the employee, one is the customer and the third is the investor. The three have to be balanced at all times. If you try to deliver to the investor at the cost of the employee, or at the cost of the customer, this three-legged stool topples over. So we need to be careful.

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Understanding what makes a leader

Wired has an open debate - Do leaders teach? or Do teachers lead? - between Bill George, Professor at Harvard Business School and Wendy Kopp, President, Teach for America. In the quest of building customer-centric organizations, I feel it is important that there are enough leaders at every level in every organization who have a mission in mind and work towards that purpose relentlessly. This article has some interesting points on leadership which resonated with my thoughts a lot. Hence, I felt it will be a good read for you:

• In my studies of leaders who have failed, these leaders fell prey to the pressures and seductions they faced. It wasn't that they lacked leadership skills, style or power, but that the extrinsic rewards of leadership (money, fame, glory and power) went to their heads.
• Their egos, their greed, their craving for public adulation, and their fear of loss of power overwhelmed their responsibility to build their institutions.
• In contrast, authentic leaders understand that leading is not about advancing themselves and their personal interests, but serving others and bringing them together around a common cause. In the end they create great organizations because people are inspired to step up and lead.
• Perhaps leaders are more likely to stay on course when they're pursuing their passions.
• "Why is it so hard to lead yourself"? The answer lies in differences between your idealized self--how you see yourself, and how you want to be seen-- and your real self--how others actually experience you. The key to being able to develop yourself as a leader is to narrow that gap between your idealized self and your real self by developing a deep self-awareness that only comes from straight feedback and honest exploration of yourself, followed by a concerted effort to make changes.
• Teaching successfully is an act of leadership, and I often hear our corps members and alumni describe the moment they broke through as a teacher as the moment they realized that this work is not about them, but rather about their students.

I think the article really provides insights into how we should plan, prepare, practice and evaluate ourselves honestly, if we have to become great leaders.

Home or work - Rules are the same!

Read an extremely good article in ET friday last. Written by Verne Harnish, he says:

What is the underlying handful of fundamentals that drive everything else that’s important in business? What is still fundamental today in building a successful firm that hasn’t changed for over a hundred years? Tom Meredith, former CFO of Dell Computer, and I were discussing how the fundamentals that create a great business are the same as those for parenting great kids.

Anyone with children will recognise the fundamentals as:

• Have a handful of rules
• Repeat yourself a lot
• Act consistent with those rules (which is why you better have only a few rules)

Further, he also quotes from Rockefeller’s leadership and management principles:

Priorities - Does the organisation have objective Top five priorities for the year and the quarter (the month, if growing over 100% annually) and a clear Top one priority along with an appropriate theme? Does everyone in the organisation have their own handful of priorities that align with the company’s priorities?

Data - Does the organisation have sufficient data on a daily and weekly basis to provide insight into how the organisation is running and what the market is demanding? Does everyone in the organisation have at least one key daily or weekly metric driving his or her performance?

Rhythm - Does the organisation have an effective rhythm of daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual meetings to maintain alignment and drive accountability? Are the meetings well run and useful?

Customer-Centric Companies and customer management blues!

I often wonder how to get my organization aligned to customers and get all employees to have shared goals. I realize that it is far easier said than done. Getting an alignment across the entire organization is what I have to come believe is the key difference between the best customer-centric companies and the worst ones. We read a lot about Starbucks, Whole Foods etc. but  what make them the companies that they are?

Transparency amongst employees  is what I feel is the most critical.  The other one is having a fair compensation across various levels in the organization. The US companies seem to have lost the plot on this. John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods has an excellent post on compensation. He writes:

The second part of today's announcement has to do with my own compensation. While it has become necessary to raise the salary cap at Whole Foods to help ensure the retention of our key leadership, this is not true in my case. The tremendous success of Whole Foods Market has provided me with far more money than I ever dreamed I'd have and far more than is necessary for either my financial security or personal happiness. I continue to work for Whole Foods not because of the money I can make but because of the pleasure I get from leading such a great company, and the ongoing passion I have to help make the world a better place, which Whole Foods is continuing to do. I am now 53 years old and I have reached a place in my life where I no longer want to work for money, but simply for the joy of the work itself and to better answer the call to service that I feel so clearly in my own heart.

As you can see from the following chart, the average CEO received 431 times as much as their average employee received in 2004, while the Whole Foods Market CEO (me) received only 14 times the average employee pay in cash compensation.

Most large companies also pay their executives large amounts of stock options in addition to large salaries and cash bonuses. However, this is not the case at Whole Foods Market. As the chart below indicates, the average large corporation in the United States distributes 75% of their total stock options to only 5 top executives with the remaining 25% going to everyone else in the company (actually most of the remaining 25% goes to the next level of executives below the top 5). At Whole Foods, the exact opposite is true: the top 16 executives have received 7% of all the options granted while the other 93% of the options have been distributed throughout the entire company with all Team Members eligible for a grant after 6,000 hours of service to the company

When you have such values and belief in the business that you lead and are willing to share this transparently with your employees, it  definitely shows in the way they treat their customers!

Quality of labor and its impact on customer-centricity

HBS Working Knowledge has an interesting article on this topic. I too have often wondered why some organizations are never able to scale-up. And why excellence is a board room discussion and not a widespread culture in organizations. The truth is managers can afford to ignore it or act as if it is not a problem but customers recognize it!

Over the past thirty years, several of my colleagues and I have tried to figure out why a handful of organizations are able to achieve true excellence. One of several things they all do is hire for attitude and train for skills. By "attitude," they typically mean the ability to identify with and "live" core values of the organization such as respect for others, being customer-driven, etc. Their managements have concluded that it is too difficult and costly to try to change the attitudes of adults. As a result, they release those unable to work and manage according to the organization's values and replace them with those who can.

"What goes in their head" series -Keoki Andrus, Head of operations, Intuit

Steve has a great post on  the topic High Performance by High Potentials. This is a presentation by Keoki  Andrus, Head of operations at Intuit on how best to lead and manage others. Here are some key take-outs:

Seven Deadly Deficiencies
1. Contempt for others
2. Obsession with self
3. Commitment dysfunction
4. Inflexible mindset
5. No productive focus
6. Unrelenting pessimism
7. Embraces Dilbertian views of leaders

Ten Ways to Build Passion
10. See greatness in those around you and share your vision
9. Express constructive feedback in terms of "the vision"
8. Believe that things can be different and approach the improbable with optimism
7. Set high standards for performance and hold EVERYONE accountable
6. Demonstrate courage, judgement, risk-taking and continuous improvement in your own performance
5. Recognize and celebrate success
4. Design growth experiences that stretch but don't break people
3. Invest in trust and even love
2. Respond maturely to failures and setbacks
1. Push power and decision making down

Success depends more on the strengths you emphasize than the weaknesses you minimize.

Eight Ways to Wipe Out High Performers
1. Work overload
2. Lack autonomy (micromanagement)
3. Skimpy rewards
4. Loss of connection
5. Unfairness
6. Value conflicts
7. Let low-performers ride
8. Create an environment of fear, uncertainty and doubt

Take a look at the video

Do you know what your customers are worth?

Here's an interesting post from Fast Company which demonstrates how executives are more clueless than ever about the financial implications of their customer strategies. Take a look:

Do you know the average annual value of a customer to your business?

Do you know the cost of a customer complaint to your business?

Do you know the cost of acquiring a new customer?

2005 Customer Experience Management Study, Strativity Group, February 2006

Companies that love their customerss

Fast Company has just completed announced the 2006 Customer First Awards.

The winners of Fast Company's 2006 Customers First Awards transform ordinary transactions into entertaining experiences -- delighting customers and showing everyone else the way. For the first time, Fastcompany.com has built a special database to capture your votes and your experiences. Scroll down for the Customers First rating and commenting tool and weigh in on companies and their customer service.

Our Customer Champions

• Mandarin Oriental
• NASCAR
• American Girl
• Burton Snowboards
• Life Time Fitness
• Mac Cosmetics

Honorable Mentions

• Title Nine Sports
• QuikTrip
• Best Cellars
• Nokia Experience Centers
• Cold Stone Creamery
• Scion

Local Heroes

• Amoeba Music
• Angelika Film Center
• Archie McPhee
• Babeland
• Brew & Grow
• Cereality
• Elephant Pharmacy
• Estrdige HOMExperience
• Flight 001
• Fresh Direct
• Frost Bank
• Home James
• MetroNaps
• Nail Taxi
• PartyBuddys
• PetCalls
• Pinkberry
• Sierra Trading Post
• Sunflower Farmers Markets
• The Art of Shaving
• The Party Source
• TopGolf
• Umpqua Bank
• Zane's Cycles
• Zingerman's

See a slide show

The power of passion - it changes everything that you do

Here is a very interesting quote from Bradley Horowitz, Yahoo's Product Strategy, Vice President.

”... We like people who are passionate about their product. If you have people with a pure financial motive, in my experience, the product suffers. Certainly, someone could figure out a way to scratch a user's itch and sell the product to us, and perhaps it would make great sense. But we are also looking not just for new products but also to be able to bring the world's best and brightest people into Yahoo.”

”Find something you would do irrespective of financial motive or whether it will be the next big thing. In that case, you win either way.”

To me it just summarizes why passion is so important in a company and in everything that they do. It drives productivity, commitment, efficiency and a culture that can't be replicated. Ultimately, if everyone in the company can do their work with the same passion, customers win!

thro' brand autopsy

ICICI Leadership Secrets

Here's a great interview with KV Kamath, CEO of ICICI Bank, India's second largest bank. He had given this interview to Wharton Leadership Digest.

I have often been in awe of the ability of this organization to have scaled-up in the such a short span of time.  The interview gives insights into the man, his beliefs, his innovative and sharp business mind( esp. when he speaks about the rural India model).  Here are some excerpts:

• So our challenge is to invent a new business model where we can create a distribution base effectively in 600,000 villages in India, and to learn to do that at one-tenth the cost of urban India. Just to put that into a scale that someone could understand, we believe that to succeed in urban India, we need to do be able to do business at one-tenth the cost of the west. The reason is that the ticket size of the banking product in India is one-tenth that in the west. If it is a deposit of $10,000 in the west, it will be $1,000 in urban India and $100 in rural India. Loans operate at a similar scale.   

• First, I look for intellect or a high level of competence. Second, I seek out entrepreneurial leaders who have the ability to pick the right people – that means looking at how the person has performed in other contexts to build teams. People who have the ability to build and manage teams are very valuable. Third, the person must have a can-do attitude. What sort of reaction do you get when you talk to him or her about a challenge? Will he go for it or is it a problem? Fourth, the right people have the ability to withstand shocks without getting flustered or losing direction. Finally, whether this is an entrepreneurial quality or not – I think it is an important quality that I look for in people whom we pick as leaders – it is the ability to focus, focus, focus without getting diverted from the core business.

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Corporates have a new playbook

	New Rules	vs.	Old Rules
1	Agile is best; being big can bite you.		Big dogs own the street.
2	Find a niche, create something new.		Be No. 1 or No. 2 in your market.
3	The customer is king.		Shareholders rule.
4	Look out, not in.		Be lean and mean.
5	Hire passionate people.		Rank your players; go with the A's.
6	Hire a courageous CEO.		Hire a charismatic CEO.
7	Admire my soul.		Admire my might.

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When will organizations become more customer-centric?

I have always believed that software and technology can take an organization only so much closer to customer centricity. The real difference will start kicking-in  when you have a focussed people orientation to change attitude and behaviour. 

Amongst many areas of change management, one area where every organization might want to focus is creating a culture of taking an initiative.  Jeffrey Phillips has a great post on this:

...I find in many organizations that the culture forbids taking the initiative. Instead the mantra seems to be that individuals should follow the corporate dictates and not stray too far from what they've been instructed to do....

When there's a lack of initiative, however, there's quite possibly a lack of employee growth.  Most people want to take on more responsibility and learn new things.  How can they possibly do that while working in the same job, in the same environment, never taking any risks.  Often, taking the initiative is a great way to demonstrate some new thinking or some undiscovered skill.

As managers, we should celebrate when our reports take initiative and generate great work.  When a person who works for you takes the initiative, it means you've fostered an environment where people are willing to spread their wings and use all of their skills and talents.  What could be better for the firm?

Nike's principles

1. Our business is change
2. We are on offense. All the time
3. Perfect results count. Not a perfect process. Break the rules. Fight the law
4. This is as much about battle as about business
5. Assume Nothing - Make sure people keep up their promises, Push yourself; Push others, Strech the possible, Expect success - always
6. Live off the land
7. Job isn't done until the job is done
8. Dangers - Bureaucracy, Personal ambition, Energy takers vs Energy givers, Knowing your weakness, Don't get too many things on a platter
9. It won't be pretty
10. If we do the right things, we'll make money damn near automatic

             Thanks - Henry Lambert

    

Howard Schultz’s leadership ways

LESSON 1: Dig deep to identify what you are truly passionate about (hint: it's not always the product itself) and convey that message to employees, customers, and colleagues. When you are passionate, you come across as excited, energetic, and enthusiastic -- all of the qualities people like to see in others. And if people like you, they're more likely to do business with you or to back your vision.

LESSON 2: Inspire your colleagues, investors, or employees by painting a picture of a world made better by your service, product, company, or cause.

LESSON 3: To get the most out of people, a leader has to tap into their emotions as well as their minds. People can relate to stories. They can see themselves in other people's stories. The ability to use stories to get people to buy into one's vision with their hearts is a powerful leadership capability.

thro' brand autopsy

Re-igniting the passion - Bob Lutz's speech

I came across a lovely speech my Bob Lutz of General Motors which he delivered at the Swiss American Chamber of Commerce. It's extremely candid, optimistic and he makes his point quite well to all the people who spell doom for GM and their products.

Here are some excerpts:

Well, we don’t care what the newspapers, or the radio, or our kids tell us. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy; we’re not going to listen to the naysayers — we’re going to listen to our customers( He quotes a nice little story to make this point).

Perhaps you have heard the economic parable about the old man who sold hot dogs on the street corner. He was hard of hearing so he had no radio. He had trouble with his eyes, so he read no newspapers. But he sold good hot dogs.

He sold so many that he increased his meat and bun orders. He bought a bigger stove to take care of his booming business. Business was so good he brought his son home from college early to help him out. And his son said:

"Father, haven't you been listening to the radios or reading the newspapers? The economic situation is terrible. All of our jobs are going away — we’re headed for depression. This is no time to be spending like this."

The father thought to himself, "Well, my son's been to college, he reads the papers and he listens to the radio, so he ought to know."

So the father cut down his meat and bun orders, took down his signs, and his hot dog sales plummeted almost overnight.

The father said to the boy, "You're right, son, we certainly are in the middle of a great depression."

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If you are a leader, you got to believe in your goals, plans and your vision. Don't worry about what the world feels, thinks and says. If you are convinced, execute with great passion and don't worry about the results.

Decoding Leadership

Read a lovely quote on this topic:

As a leader: I don't think it's our job to have ideas...there are plenty of ideas around us. We need to listen more."(ed. - YES!)

Thro' christopher carfi

Learning from great leaders - HOW I WORK

Fortune has a great piece on how great leaders work - How I work.

Sure, each one of us can pick-up a tip or two from each one of them.

Laws of lifetime learning & growth

Great customer management is about building a culture of commitment, learning, passion and an unsatiable need to collaborate. Here are some laws that all of us should practice, if we want to build a focussed customer-centric organization. These  laws are from a book called Lifetime Growth.

Always make your future bigger than your past.

"Approach your past with this attitude, and you will have an insatiable desire for even better, more enjoyable experiences."

Always make your learning greater than your experience. "Experience alone is no guarantee of lifetime growth. But continually transform you experiences into new lessons, and you will make each day of your life a source of growth."

Always make your contribution bigger than your reward.

"The one sure guarantee that rewards will continually increase is not to think too much about them. Instead, continue making an even greater contribution – by helping others eliminate their dangers, capture their opportunities, and maximize their strengths."

Always make your performance greater than your applause.

"If you become more skillful and useful, you will receive greater applause from an expanding audience. This can be intoxicating, and the temptation will be to start organizing your life around other people’s recognition and praise. You’ll keep repeating what got you the applause in the first place – rather than moving on to something new, better, and different. The applause will become more important to you than your improved performance."

Always make your gratitude greater than your success.

"Continually acknowledge others’ contributions, and you will automatically create room in your mind and in the world for much greater success."

Always make your enjoyment greater than your effort.

"Finding ways to get more and more enjoyment from your activities is one way to ensure continued growth."

Always make your cooperation greater than your status.

"Working with others and creating opportunities for increased cooperation makes greater things possible in our lives and in the world."

Always make your confidence greater than your comfort.

"Many successful people start off life as dreamers and risk-takers, but the moment they become successful, they start seeking greater security and comfort as their main goal. This attitude puts them to sleep motivationally, and they lose the confidence that made them so successful."

Always make your purpose greater than your money.

"Money as an end, become as growth stopper. Having a purpose that is greater than yourself will give you a constant impetus to strive. Purpose gives life meaning and helps us direct and focus our talents and efforts."

Always make your questions bigger than your answers.

" … all growth lies in the territory of the unknown. What we already know is in the past. What we have yet to discover is the future. Always make your questions bigger than your answers and you’ll keep drawing yourself into a bigger future with new possibilities."

thro' Brand Autopsy

Stories of customer ownership - Do you have one?

Fast company has this nice compilation on FAST TALK about Brand Revivers. It's truly inspirational!

Kim Richmond, EVP Marketing, FAO Schwarz - We went to vendors and talked to them about personalizing the experience for every child. When it came time to hire new staff, we weren't looking for retail background. We were looking for passion. You're on stage the whole time you're working here, so we rented an off-Broadway theater in New York and had a casting call.

Paolo Timoni, CEO, Piaggio USA - A lot of companies have a name, and they assume that a name is a brand. No. Brands are something that take a very long time to develop, a mix of science and art. Some of the things you can explain, some you can't.

Jacqueline Maartense, EVP, global product marketing, Corel If everybody gets close to customers, the organization will build a better product. It's as simple and as hard as that. The dialogue you inspire with customers and employees is where real insight comes from.We have a program called Follow Me Home, an Intuit innovation, where we literally follow customers into their homes and watch them use our products.

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Lush Cosmetics- When customers challenge better than competitors!

Fast Company has this brilliant interview with Mark Constantine, CEO  Lush Cosmetics on the hows of keeping his company fresh and not just  being cosmetic abou it.

Here are some things I found enlightening:

• Make the Most of Mistakes -"We reserve the right to make mistakes," says Constantine. "I believe that's a great privilege."
• Drink In Customer Feedback - Lush's online company forums are home to tens of thousands of company fanatics, called Lushies, who speak their minds when designers change something they love. "You don't have to wait until the next focus meeting; I can ask them a question, and they'll respond immediately.
• Look Outside the Company- Lush gets inspiration from local businesses (shaping products like bread, or stacks of fruit). Many products start merely as words suggested by customers.

Breaking networks can drive innovation

Fast Company on innovation:

Entrepreneurs believe in the power of networking. Many are very good at it. They become good because they recognize that most people with interesting notions usually have only one piece of a puzzle. Often unexpected combinations of ideas, or chance meetings of people with complimentary perspectives, ignite genuine breakthroughs.

Aspiring innovators from large companies are handicapped in the networking game — not because they lack skill, but because of the nature of their jobs. Once a business is proven and profitable, the name of the game is to make operations as efficient as possible. Employees at all levels are pulled into ever more specialized roles. Repeated tasks are joined together by rigorously documented processes. As a result, each manager’s web of connections increasingly mirrors the way today’s work is organized.

For example, once a balance of power and authority between two individuals is agreed upon, even implicitly, it is very hard to change it. Once a pattern for dividing and conquering tasks is established, it is not easy to change it. Once people invest enough in a relationship to establish genuine trust, they are reluctant to walk away from it.

Breaking networks is the only way to prepare an organization to take innovation efforts beyond mere ideas.

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Innovating for customers - Look at what Skype's CEO has to say

Niklas Zennström, founder and CEO of Skype Technologies has this to say( in Economist 2006's Annual):

There is now a relentless need to innovate at a pace modern customers demand. Unencumbered innovation requires speed and vigilance, and slowing down to keep an eye on the competition is a distraction that keeps you from your goal. Competition is healthy, of course, and as the market for internet voice communication matures, competition will continue to grow. This will spur even more significant innovation, benefiting consumers with lower prices and better choices.

To create true change, the focus must be on proving new definitions and value, not just reducing costs for a known commodity. Disruptive companies must provide consumers with ways to enhance their lives, increase their productivity and enable operations to run more efficiently and cost-effectively.

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Customer World Weekly News - Update (Vol 1, Dec 2, 2005)

Here is  past week's interesting customer management related news:

Is enterprise CRM dead?

Now What? The Post-CRM World

How Do Your Customers Value You?

An adman's guide to survival

Captializing on conversational capital

Giving VIP customers something extra

Spreading the word

The MySpace Generation

Loyalty Programs: Do they work?

Buzzmetrics captures TV Buzz

Customer Experience Management - A roundtable discussion

Are Customers Your Best "Marketing"?

Drucker Talk - Part 1

On Leadership: Don't ever think or say "I." Think and say "we." Effective leaders know they have authority only because they have the trust of an organization. They understand that the needs and opportunities of an organization come before their own needs.

On Talent: Attracting and holding talent have become two of the central tasks of management. Knowledge workers have many options and should be treated and managed as volunteers. They're interested in personal achievement and personal responsibility. They expect continuous learning and training. They want respect and authority. Give it to them.

On Work: Focus on opportunities rather than problems. Problem solving prevents damage but exploiting opportunities produces results. Unless there is a true crisis, problems shouldn't even be discussed at management meetings until opportunities have been analysed and dealt with. Exploit change as an opportunity, and don't view it as a threat.

On Making Decisions: Every decision is risky; it is a commitment of present resources to an unknown future. Risks can be minimized if you know when a decision is necessary, how to clearly define a problem and tackle it directly, and that you'll have to make compromises in the end. You haven't made a decision until you've found a way to implement it.

thro' emergic

How long is 'always on'?

Rajesh Jain writes  on a report  from smartmobs where they take a look at the next step in "always on" communications, in which new technologies like RFID and smart computing promise a world of networked and interconnected devices that provide relevant content and information whatever the location of the user...

I often wonder, how long is 'always on'? I am in conference right now, there is Wi-Fi all over. But our laptops are not always on! The battery technology is from the last generation. The number of hours my mobile can hold on is funny - not too long as I want it to be. Is this being looked at or is it all talk.? I think one should rather talk powerwidth rather than bandwidth and start innovating!

Tribute to Peter Drucker( 1909 -2005)

Peter F. Drucker, one of the world's foremost management gurus, passed away on Nov 11th 2005 in Claremont, California. He was 95.

I started learning( and am still a student) about management  concepts  and theories at my b-school several years ago, by reading  Peter Drucker and his philosophy of management. His articles and thoughts have left a deep impression in my mind. I still  try to read and re-read a lot of his books and articles  on management. Everytime when I do so,  I always get a new point of view and it still brings-out  my vast ignorance  in this subject.

The NY times pays a tribute to this great thinker and legend of our times. Here are some excerpts:

• He challenged both business and labor leaders to search for ways to give workers more control over their work environment.
• He also argued that governments should turn many functions over to private enterprise and urged organizing in teams to exploit the rise of a technology-astute class of "knowledge workers."

• Mr. Drucker staunchly defended the need for businesses to be profitable but he preached that employees were a resource, not a cost. His constant focus on the human impact of management decisions did not always appeal to executives, but they could not help noticing how it helped him foresee many major trends in business and politics.

Here are some of his quotes:

• "Marketing is a fashionable term. The sales manager becomes a marketing vice president. But a gravedigger is still a gravedigger even when it is called a mortician - only the price of the burial goes up."
• "One either meets or one works."
• "The only things that evolve by themselves in an organization are disorder, friction and malperformance."
• "Stock option plans reward the executive for doing the wrong thing. Instead of asking, 'Are we making the right decision?' he asks, 'How did we close today?' It is encouragement to loot the corporation."

May his soul rest in peace.

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Why bad hires are bad for our customers!

I have always felt, right employees, great talent  and impeccable processes make a big difference to a company's customer experience.  Because, we can't be there at all the places, all the time.There is no use having great ideas, great products  etc., if we don't have the right talent around us. Believe me, that's a scarce commodity.This has been the problem of small companies not being able to scale-up and become great companies. The difference today, is not just ideas but our people. One person can make a huge difference. My clients tell me that all the time. Imagine, we have hundreds of them. It has the potential to become your competitive advantage.

Rajesh Jain has this to say on this topic:

As Jack Welch put it: "Hiring good people is hard. Hiring great people is brutally hard. Yet nothing matters more in winning than getting the right people on the field, then guiding them on the right way to succeed and get ahead."

In this context, these words from Joe Krause ring true:

I always keep two things in mind when hiring, no matter how desperate I feel.

1. a bad employee does far more damage than no employee, no matter the issue.
2. A players hire A players, B players hire C players, and C players hire losers. Let your standards slip once and you're only two generations away from death.
...
Any hiring process should focus on never letting in a bad fit. Even if that means accidentally rejecting a lot of people that would be good fits. Said another way, it optimizes for no false positives, even at the expense of false negatives.

Customer Advocacy - Why is it becoming important?

Peppers & Rogers write:

Forrester Research recently published reports detailing the need for customer advocacy. It lists four components of customer advocacy: transparency, simplicity, benevolence, and trustworthiness.

...now the strategy of customer advocacy, specifically making the business more transparent, is coming to the fore. The International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers & Associations (IFPMA), a consortium of pharmaceutical companies, has launched the Clinical Trials Portal. It is the first Internet search engine constructed specifically to link to online information made available by the pharmaceutical industry about clinical trials worldwide.

"The product should be the one a trusted friend would recommend. For the customer to have confidence, belief, and willingness to accept your advice, you must establish trust with a carefully instructed advisor virtually on the Web or in person," Urban says. "A transparent and intelligent advisor who is genuinely in the corner of the customer represents advocacy for the customer across your firm's product offerings. This need is amplified by the fact that customers want to make good decisions efficiently. They want to trust an advisor to save time and make a better decision."

Customer data strategies get into the boardroom

Peppers & Rogers Group  writes:

Just over 89 percent of the 348 U.S. executives interviewed say their volume of data has increased over the past five years, and 50 percent report that their data is doubling every year. Many say they're applying additional technologies to automate data, expanding their storage, and hiring staff or creating data departments to manage the data.

The top four goals executives in the survey say they seek include:
• improved response times,
• access to customer history,
• real-time access to data, and
• integration with enterprise systems

What's changing, says Bob Fair, chief marketing officer at Teradata, is the profile of executives that are interested in analytics. He sees data and analytics becoming boardroom priorities. In the study, 57 percent of respondents say their decision-making has improved because of analytics, and they plan more. They're seeing productivity and customer satisfaction increase as a result and want to make the efforts to improve their data initiatives for even greater successes across the enterprise.

For instance, Donald Carlson, senior vice president, data management and data warehousing at Bank of America, says he initiated a data stewardship program in conjunction with deploying data warehouse technology to be sure the team was making the most out of the information collected. "You can't do it alone," he says. "You have to have friends of data around the enterprise to help you."

2005 Customer First awards - Here's the list

Fast Company has announced its second annual customer first awards.

Here are the winners:

Our Customer Champions

Netflix Panera Bread Talbots Cabela's W Hotels