Book Image

Enterprise Agility

By : Sunil Mundra
Book Image

Enterprise Agility

By: Sunil Mundra

Overview of this book

The biggest challenge enterprises face today is dealing with fast-paced change in all spheres of business. Enterprise Agility shows how an enterprise can address this challenge head on and thrive in the dynamic environment. Avoiding the mechanistic construction of existing enterprises that focus on predictability and certainty, Enterprise Agility delivers practical advice for responding and adapting to the scale and accelerating pace of disruptive change in the business environment. Agility is a fundamental shift in thinking about how enterprises work to effectively deal with disruptive changes in the business environment. The core belief underlying agility is that enterprises are open and living systems. These living systems, also known as complex adaptive systems (CAS), are ideally suited to deal with change very effectively. Agility is to enterprises what health is to humans. There are some foundational principles that can be broadly applied, but the definition of healthy is very specific to each individual. Enterprise Agility takes a similar approach with regard to agility: it suggests foundational practices to improve the overall health of the body—culture, mindset, and leadership—and the health of its various organs: people, process, governance, structure, technology, and customers. The book also suggests a practical framework to create a plan to enhance agility.
Table of Contents (23 chapters)
Enterprise Agility
About Packt
Forewords
Endorsements
Contributors
Preface
Other Books You May Enjoy
Index

Chapter 11. Customer

What is the focal point for everything that a business does? Who is even more powerful than the board of directors in influencing the future of a business? Which is the most important entity on whose patronage the survivability of a company depends? The answer to all of these questions is straightforward: the customer. As obvious as this may seem, it is quite surprising that many enterprises overlook or even ignore this blatant fact, intentionally or otherwise. If this seems too extreme, it can at least be said that most organizations see the customer as being "on the other side of the table."

The aforementioned mindset toward the customer can lead to a belief that delivering value to customers and generating value for the enterprise are two different objectives. The potential misalignment between these two objectives can result in trading off one for the other, which will result in an overall suboptimal outcome. A business must view customers as an integral and critical...