The real test of understanding
August 11, 2002
The real test of understanding is if someone can take an idea in an new direction, which is sort of an application.
Let me come back to concretes before I range too far afield.
I was saying to someone that I was not blown away by Andy Grove and Lee Iacocca the way I was by Jack Welch and Sam Walton. Because I didn’t really see either Iacocca or Grove as a real customer-service icon.
I guess Welch maybe wasn’t one strictly either, but Six Sigma? - Delivering great quality and technology? Dell is also a great customer-service guy with a very broad expansion of his “customer” ideas (and the “buy direct” model). Bezos also distinguished Amazon this way.
So perhaps I’ve been taking for granted that CEOs an be customer-service / value oriented and now that I’m reading about Grove this is slightly more apparent.
Also in some ways the retail experience is different from other customer relationships.
I guess what really turns me on is the idea of creating great experiences for the customer - and very specific - that associate the company with a great experience. Is it possible to do it this way with, say, corproate clients? Is Dell, for example, although serving customers of whom he is a customer, even able to create those experiences?