Serving Your 
Customers Well

If serving your customers well is the goal of your organization, start with your organization's ability to execute its core competency. For a retailer that may mean excelling at the logistics necessary to get goods in your store in a cost-effective manner and never having an empty shelf. For the service sector, it might mean dispatch logistics on well-stocked service vehicles with highly trained service persons. For the manufacturing sector, it might be producing defect-free goods on time and shipping the product on schedule.

However, I frequently observe upper management engaging in what I like to call the flavor-of-the-month-management-strategy. This probably doesn't need explaining; it's the continuing saga of executives again and again stabbing in the dark for their instant silver-bullet solution to the perceived ills of their organization.

Per Minute In-Stock Product

Sure, your customers care about the age-old business triad: price, quality and service, with selection being part of the quality segment. But, in today's busy environment, what your customers really care about is you having what they want when they want it. "It's coming in this afternoon" is no longer acceptable. Your customers will simply leave and go to the competition.

Your customers measure you by their mental "per minute in-stock" proposition. So, if your organization's latest flavor-of-the-month program does not directly help your organization to be in stock at all times, be competitively priced at all times and be pleasant at all times. Then, why are you doing it?

Middle Management Mediocrity

How many times have you seen in your workplace people redoing work or activities for very poor reasons? Most likely, more than you'd like to admit. This situation frequently rears its ugly head when organizations' leaders experience communication challenges—let's call it what it really is: they are poor communicators.