Smart companies focus on building differentiation in what they do and how they operate rather than on what they sell. Get this right and the flow of products, services, solutions and experiences will follow.
To those who fear the constant shift of consumer behaviour and how to stay relevant, developing such capabilities will be the best antidote to falling behind, or better, the best tools to continue to shape your value proposition, the authors note in the book. In this engaging and well-researched book, Mani and co-author Paul Leinwand outline seven imperatives for achieving change, with extensive case studies to illustrate their points. Some of that involves bold and creative thinking but on occasions organisations just need to look closely under the bonnet.
As its former chief executive, Michael Corbat, tells the authors, Citi recognised that it needed to match or exceed what he terms “best-in-life” experiences. “If that’s their Uber experience or that’s their Amazon experience – whatever that experience is – if you are not at least getting to that place, you have vulnerabilities.”
“All this [risk] means you have to dramatically increase the visibility of ecosystems within your company. Microsoft, for example, has an individual on its senior leadership team who is explicitly responsible for representing the ecosystem in the company. That individual is also responsible for investing in the ecosystem to ensure that, as much as Microsoft is benefiting from the ecosystem, it is also contributing to that ecosystem.
There is a challenge for organisations in reframing performance metrics. Unilever’s Paul Polson famously abandoned quarterly reporting to discourage short-termism while Microsoft abandoned its mid-year review. As Mani notes, it is not a matter of abandoning what were previously seen as core metrics but is one of knowing how to introduce metrics that are more aligned with transformational objectives.