A big issue for companies seeking renewal is the ANTIBODY resistance factor. "We tried that" or "that will never work" closely followed by "that is hurt our (profits, efficiency, shipping schedule..."
Invariably, when a company is successful with RENEWAL concepts, it has formed a separate group (think IBM Boca Raton Florida to escape the New York nexus) or division. Cisco had its Emerging Advanced Technologies group, backed by CEO Chambers; HP had Hewlett spawning new P&L divisions far from Palo Alto headquarters.
But some backfire. A story we heard recently was from the Admin for John Chambers at Cisco. She has been in this role for 24 years--knows him well!
Says he constantly wants to "stay in touch, close touch" with his customers. High availability, and all that. Explains his love of Cisco Telepresence!
But here's the great story. Cisco, with Chambers' full backing, decided to "go into consumer products" by buying Linksys routers for the home and FlipCam cameras for video recording. Recall those?
And his Admin says, almost immediately her office (and Chambers') were besieged with calls about "I didn't get my $5 rebate coupon validated" and other such consumer unhappiness. She said, by the third call that took twenty minutes for a $10 or $20 issue, she's saying, WHOA, how does HP's CEO handle this nonsense? And she said John wanted to be available for those calls. Crazy, but true.
May explain as much as the different profit margins, volumes, inventory tracking, etc. why it is so hard to get emotionally ready for an alien turf.
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