Everyone in retail has heard the apocryphal story about how Stanley Marcus, known to all as Mr. Stanley, would greet his customers at the Neiman Marcus door in Dallas every morning. He knew his customers by name, knew what they wanted and treated them as the VIPs they were. They returned the favor by giving Mr. Stanley and his Neiman Marcus store their lifelong loyalty.
Startups are, by definition, risk-taking operations. They go up against giant corporations that are better funded and more firmly entrenched. They upend industries. None of that happens by following tried-and-true paths. It only happens by plunging into the unknown.
The biggest audience companies play to these days is their employees, not their customers. Certainly, customers matter. But employees matter more. Customer-centricity is subordinate to employee-centricity.
It has been written that culture eats strategy for breakfast and that culture is a great differentiator among companies.
Merging a company is hard to do. Yet it can be incredibly fulfilling and empowering for leaders and for employees. Mergers present both opportunity and anxiety. Possibilities are endless for leaders to transform both entities and use the new start to set a new direction with a performance culture. At the same time, change creates anxiety as many people are forced to think outside their default behavior zone. Mergers put human behavior on the front...
