Winning in the Customer-Driven Market

Businesses today operate in a customer-driven market. Everyone and everything is connected, everywhere and all the time.

It’s a world of rapid and unpredictable change in which organizations are constantly adapting to meet evolving customers’ needs, never reaching a steady operating state. It’s a time that challenges the historical devotion to organizational bureaucracy as a means for improving results, placing conformity above all other cultural values at the cost of inhibiting initiative and imagination.

Many companies believe that their access to technology or “big data” gives them an advantage, but in reality, high connectivity makes this access available to many. Those who are winning in this market empower their personnel to challenge what is possible, nimbly utilizing technology and big data to perpetually innovate, simplify and improve, increasing the value delivered to customers, accelerating progress and improving results.

Leaders in these organizations cultivate internal entrepreneurship, commitment and shared accountability by enabling their people to realize how each can make a difference for the business. They encourage individuals to think and behave like owners, urging them to collaborate in small, agile and cross-functional teams that innovate and improve. They transparently share information with these teams to create a direct link between their contributions and the resulting quantifiable benefits produced. And they stress how these benefits create personal growth opportunities for those who have invested their energy and talents to accelerate progress by driving change.

The customer-driven market is the future of business, and it is defined by those who challenge the past to drive change.