Why is it that Casio can sell a calculator more cheaply than Kellogg's can sell a box of corn flakes? Why can FedEx "absolutely, positively" deliver your package overnight but airlines have trouble keeping track of your bags? Why does Lands' End remember your last order and even your family's clothing sizes but after ten years of membership American Express still solicits you to join?
How is it that some companies are reinventing competition in their markets while others are seemingly oblivious to the changing world around them? These are the questions that authors Michael Treacy and Fred Wiersema explore in their groundbreaking book, The Discipline of Market Leaders, from the same consulting firm that brought you business reengineering. The answers provide a revolutionary way of thinking about customers, competition, markets, and the fundamental structure of your organization.
The authors' thesis is deceptively simple: that successful organizations - the market leaders - excel at delivering one type of value to their chosen customers. The key is focus. Market leaders choose a single "value discipline" - best total cost, best product, or best total solution - and then build their organization around it. They sustain their leadership position not by resting on their laurels, but by offering better value year after year. Choosing one discipline to master does not mean abandoning the other two, only that a company must stake its reputation - and focus its energy and assets - on a single one to achieve success over the long term. No company can reliably succeed today by trying to be all things to all customers.
Through detailed case studies of some of the world's best-known companies, The Discipline of Market Leaders examines the implications of each discipline from an operating standpoint, offering step-by-step guidance on choosing and implementing the right one. Each discipline demands a distinct organizational model with its own structure, processes, information systems, management systems, and culture. Treacy and Wiersema also show how to involve every member of a company's work force in the "cult of the customer," a new way of looking at work in the context of customer value.
What does your company do better than anyone else? What unique value do you provide to your customers? How will you increase that value next year? If you can't easily answer these questions, then The Discipline of Market Leaders is required reading. Because the companies that can answer these questions are raising the value bar in their industries, creating new customer expectations, and staking their claim to market leadership.
The consulting firm that produced Reengineering the Corporation offers a strategy for reinventing competitiveness that focuses on one value discipline--customer intimacy, product leadership, or operational excellence--to outshine the competition. 250,000 first printing. $175,000 ad/promo. Tour.Consultants and business strategists Treacy and Wiersema provide the conceptual model for companies to attain and sustain market leadership. Their plan is simple: put unmatched value (best product, best total solution, or best total cost) in the marketplace while meeting threshold standards in other dimensions of value. Making the improvement of the chosen value to customers the focus of the entire company will result in corresponding shareholder value. The authors follow up their theory with practical guidelines for constructing an appropriate operational model, and offer many examples using well-known companies. A landmark work in market strategy that goes beyond TQM principles, this volume is essential for entrepreneurs and for public, academic, and corporate libraries.-Nancy Myers, Univ. of South Dakota Lib., Vermillion Copyright 1995 Cahners Business Information.
Using data from CSC Index, a management consulting firm whose work spawned the bestseller Reengineering the Corporation, Treacy and Wiersema present their case on how corporations can become number one in their market. Their central thesis is that companies can't be all things to all people and therefore must concentrate on one of three areas?operational excellence (low prices), product leadership (the newest products) or customer intimacy (providing complete solutions to meet customers' business needs). Once a company chooses the area it wants to focus on, all systems in the company must serve that primary goal, although the authors stress that companies must remain at least adequate in the areas that they are downplaying. Treacy and Wiersema, both of whom are management consultants, provide short case studies on how three companies?AT&T Universal Card, Intel and Airborne Express?used this focusing technique to carve themselves a major share of business in their respective markets. Written with a minimum of management jargon, the work seems aimed primarily for executives at large companies, although small businesspeople could find relevant ideas here. $500,000 ad/promo; author tour. (Feb.) Copyright 1995 Cahners Business Information.
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