The Discipline of Market Leaders: Choose Your Customers, Narrow Your Focus, Dominate Your Market by Michael Treacy, Fred Wiersema
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(Paperback - Expanded Edition)
- Pub. Date: January 1997
- 204pp
- Sales Rank: 35,945
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Product Details
- ISBN-13: 9780201407198
- ISBN: 0201407191
- Edition Description: Expanded Edition
Synopsis
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 areraising the value bar in their industries, creating new customer expectations, and staking their claim to market leadership.
Annotation
Examines the implications of each discipline from an operating standpoint/offers step-by-step guidance/etc.
More Reviews and RecommendationsBiography
Michael Treacy is a leading authority and lecturer on business strategy and corporate transformation. He is the founder of Treacy & Company LLC, a Boston-based management consulting and venture firm.Fred Wiersema is the founder of Ibex Partners, specializing in strategic and management team alignment. He is affiliated with CSC Index, the international consulting firm, where he was formerly senior vice president. Michael Treacy is a leading authority and lecturer on business strategy and corporate transformation. He is the founder of Treacy & Company LLC, a Boston-based management consulting and venture firm.Fred Wiersema is the founder of Ibex Partners, specializing in strategic and management team alignment. He is affiliated with CSC Index, the international consulting firm, where he was formerly senior vice president.
Customer Reviews
A must-read for the Customer Perspective in Balanced Scorecardby Anonymous
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January 28, 2005: This book's concepts for strategic marketing management are so widely accepted that the popular Balanced Scorecard concept of Kaplan and Norton in 2001 decided to adopt the ideas for the 'customer perspective'. The authors manage to take Michael Porter's two generic competitive strategies - Differentiation and Cost Leader - and elaborate on these to an extent never presented so elegantly before. In the process, they discover a third generic strategy - Customer Intimacy. Thus, Treacy and Wiersema distinguish between focusing on the following value dimensions: - Operational excellence (cost leadership / focus on supply chain management) - Product leadership (innovation / focus on product lifecycle management) - Customer Intimacy (service leadership /focus on customer relationship management) These are the FOUR RULES that govern market leaders' actions: Rule 1: Provide the best offering in the marketplace by excelling in a specific dimension of value Rule 2: Maintain threshold standards on the other dimensions of value Rule 3: Dominate your market by improving value year after year Rule 4: Build a well-tuned operating model dedicated to delivering unmatched value Expanding on the fourth rule - operating models - may the best long-term contribution of this book. The authors explain in detail and via case stories how the operating models differ for each of the three value propositions. In practice, I've learned that by explaining the operating models, many people can easier find themselves depicted than in the overall generic dimensions of cost, service or product leadership. OPERATIONAL EXCELLENCE or Cost Leadership - Best total cost - operating model: Key success factor: Formula! Golden rule: Variety kills efficiency Culture: Disciplined teamwork; Process focused; Conformance, 'one size fits all' mindset Organization: Centralized functions; high skills at the core of the organization Core processes: Product delivery and basic service cycle; built on standard, no frills fixed assets Management Systems: Command and control; Compensation fixed to cost and quality; transaction profitability tracking Information Technology: Integrated, low-cost transaction systems; Mobile and remote technologies PRODUCT LEADERSHIP - Best product - operating model: Key success factor: Talent! Golden rule: Cannibalize your success with breakthroughs Culture: Concept, future driven; Experimentation, 'out of the box' mindset; Attack, go for it, win Organization: Ad-hoc, organic, and cellular; High skills abound in loose-knit structures Core processes: Invention, Commercialisation; Market exploitation; Disjoint work procedures Management Systems: Decisive, risk oriented; Reward individuals' innovation capacity; Product lifecycle profitability Information Technology: Person-to-person communications systems; Technologies enabling cooperation and knowledge management CUSTOMER INTIMACY - Best total solution - operating model: Key success factor: Solution! Golden rule: Solve the client's broader problem Culture: Client and filed driven; Variation: 'Have it your way' mindset Organization: Entrepreneurial client teams; High skills in the field Core processes: Client acquisition and development; Solution development; Flexible and responsive work procedures Management Systems: Revenue and share-of-wallet driven; Rewards based in part on client feedback; Lifetime value of client...
Highly Recommended!by Anonymous
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June 14, 2004: Authors Michael Treacy and Fred Wiersema make it clear that market leading companies all concentrate on creating value for their customers. Then they focus on specific cases from Nike to Johnson & Johnson. No company, including yours, can succeed by trying to be all things to all people. Companies must ascertain the unique value ? be it price, quality or problem solving ? they can deliver to a specific market. The book proves that comparisons are not odious if they are interesting, and the comparisons it offers are intriguing indeed. Anecdotes and case histories cover companies that are market leaders today ? AT&T, Intel, Airborne Express ? and companies that used to be market leaders. The authors offer you three choices: lead with low costs, great products or outstanding ability to solve customers? problems. But if you are going to lead, you have to pick a direction and implement a management strategy that supports it, a lesson eased along by the clarity of the writing. We recommend this book to executives who are seeking advice on trumping their markets.
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