The Partner Chain:
“Mastering Customer-focused
leadership in the digital age”
There
is a growing understanding of the need to delight customers who, because of
global trade patterns, have more options than ever before to take their
business elsewhere. Winning executives are thinking beyond traditional
customer service rhetoric—expanding their focus to the entire “partner
chain”. They know that in order to delight customers they must meet the
ongoing needs of each contributing link; funding partners (banks and
investors), external partners (suppliers, distributors, and other
contractors), and internal partners (employees, supervisors, managers, and
executives). If any part of the chain’s needs go unmet, the flow of human
and financial capital will be disrupted—and without investment, there’s no hope
of keeping up.
In
this fast-paced world, people from all parts of the chain are being called upon
to influence and inspire each other—in order to serve the customer. But
chains are only as strong as their weakest link. This reality places a priority on leading people.
You can't make it focusing only on the managing plans,
processes, and policy. An additional complication is that rigid structure
and exclusive ownership are of necessity, giving way to the formation of strong
strategic alliances—introducing yet another challenge; a requirement for new
skills to accommodate the forming, managing, and disbanding of transient teams.
These and other market forces are transforming the role of people
traditionally thought of as followers. To succeed all the partners must
step up and courageously innovate around the margins of their assignment.
Leadership is becoming everybody’s business.
New
tools from a world-altering digital revolution have irrevocably changed human
perceptions of location, distance, speed, and time. However, many people
throughout the partner chain are unknowingly influenced and subsequently
impeded by remnants of the industrial age—leaving them struggling to make sense
of things through a paradigm that no longer exists. This unfortunate
reality means that personal and organization development initiatives, strategic
plans, the management of daily operations, reporting relationships,
compensation , communications, and the complex task of balancing work and
home-life are often built on assumptions that are dangerously
inaccurate—vestiges of a world that no longer exists. When strategic initiatives are launched on the shaky foundation of false
assumptions, anything built above the weak foundation is doomed to failure.