Creating a Customer-Centered Culture: Leadership in Quality, Innovation, and Speed [Hardcover]

Robin L. Lawton (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1993

Many organizations have found it difficult to transfer the Voice of the Customer methods and technologies developed for manufacturing quality and apply them to knowledge and service work. This how-to guide makes it easier! Lawton challenges the traditional thinking about quality and service and provides approaches for integrating the two into a plan that works. Covers successfully applying formal quality management methods--from Taguchi, Deming, and others--to the service enterprise.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Robin L. Lawton's book, Creating a Customer-Centered Culture: Leadership in Quality, Innovation, and Speed is a very readable and important book that will change the way we think about our customers." -- Al Strauss, Senior Program Analyst, Our Own Hardware, 1994

"This book presents a hands-on practical approach to "achieving and sustaining leadership in quality and customer satisfaction for knowledge and service work." Through the use of exercises the book teaches a systematic approach to create a truly customer-centered culture. Customer service theories are presented in an easily understood format and there are generous tables, models, and examples to help interpret the author's approach to working for the customer." -- Annette Taylor, University of Wisconsin-Stout, Menomonie, WI, July 1994.

"We recently came across a book that we find worth reading by anyone involved with marketing service or knowledge products. With nearly two decades experience in the Quality Movement, Robin Lawton offers an enlightened perspective on several issues of critical interest to the professional marketer in his book Creating a Customer- Centered Culture: Leadership in Quality, Innovation, and Speed."

"Perhaps the book's most significant contribution is in its definition of the service or knowledge product. Long a subject of confusion, Mr. Lawton clearly defines the service or knowledge product as the tangible deliverable created by a work activity and yielding a desired outcome when used properly." -- Quest Executive Book Review

From the Author

"Creating a Customer-Centered Culture: Leadership in Quality, Innovation and Speed" was written to help transcend key constraints of voice of the customer methods developed for use in manufacturing.  Using a jargon-free approach, my intent is to make customer-centered systems thinking assessable to the novice and expert, alike.  This is intended to be especially useful for readers who do not personally manufacture devices (widgets).  Readers can apply the concepts in each chapter to their personal work, as well as the mission, services and products of the 21st century enterprise they work in. These concepts, principles and tools have become known as the customer-centered culture methodology, or C3 for short.

The voice of the customer (VOC) concepts used today can be traced to Yoji Akao's work with Toyota in the 1960's.  His 1978 book on his Quality Function Deployment (QFD) methodology introduced a valuable, rigorous but highly complex system.  The purpose of QFD is to capture and translate customer desires into functional product characteristics and features that engineers could use for product design and improvement.  The intent is to understand customer wants before building it for them.  Akao's system uses a series of matrices which are referred to as "the house of quality".  The full QFD system is far beyond what most of us mere mortals (non-engineers) will need, have patience for or will take the time to use.  In addition to the need for simplicity, these VOC methods have several technical weaknesses or omissions which can waste effort and severely limit effectiveness of results.  "Creating a Customer-Centered Culture" seeks to eliminate specific weaknesses of traditional voice of the customer methods, including:

• Poor applicability outside manufacturing.  Service and knowledge work does not create long runs of identical products, so product design in that context requires a different way.
• Assumption that "the customer" is known.  That can be a serious error.  QFD-based VOC methods, such as those used by Six Sigma and ISO-9000 practitioners do not provide a clear method for determining the small number of finite roles a customer can play with a product or service.  The result is that there is a high probability the most important customers do not get their voices properly solicited or heard.
• There is no explicit provision for uncovering customer desired outcomes, distinct from functions, features and undesired outcomes.  These are all different "voices", with desired outcomes being absolutely the most important.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 177 pages
• Publisher: Amer Society for Quality (September 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0873891511
• ISBN-13: 978-0873891516
• Product Dimensions: 10.3 x 7.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #590,513 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

ROBIN L. LAWTON
Author, Keynote/Motivational Speaker, Customer Strategist, Executive Coach, Innovation Leader

Robin Lawton is an internationally recognized expert in creating rapid strategic alignment between enterprise objectives and the voice of the customer. Rob is president of International Management Technologies, Inc., which he founded in 1985. Mr. Lawton coined the term "customer-centered culture" (also known as C3) in his 1993 best-selling book, Creating a Customer-Centered Culture: Leadership in Quality, Innovation and Speed (5-star rated at Amazon).

He has extensive experience directing both strategic and operational improvement initiatives. He has developed and deployed powerful but easy-to-understand principles, strategies and tools. They are used to design, measure and improve strategic excellence, service, knowledge work, customer satisfaction and innovation. Representative results achieved from his work include the following:
* Within a two year period, a state agency saved over $20 million in 2 years, jumped in rank from 25th to #1 and was rated tops in citizen satisfaction.
* Three organizations won their respective Baldrige-based state awards (in Maryland, Missouri and California) as a direct result of applying Lawton's unique C3 principles and tools.
* Numerous voice-of-customer and product/service design initiatives have produced better than 5-to-1 returns on investment within one year of project completion.
* Initiative leaders and project teams have received awards, regional and national recognition for innovative, dramatic and sustainable results by application of C3 practices.

Mr. Lawton has been cited by seasoned quality professionals as making profound, yet practical contributions to leadership practices, equivalent to those of Dr. Edwards Deming. Dr. Deming became well-known in the last century, late in his career, for his management principles and focus on process improvement that was particularly well-suited for mature industrial age enterprises. Mr. Lawton's work is seen as having similar importance for the service and knowledge-intensive enterprise of the 21st century, with special focus on new ways for understanding the voice of the customer and translating them into satisfying, innovative products and services that strengthen the practicing enterprise's mission and strategic objectives. Where Deming promoted the use of statistical methods, Lawton's Voice of the Customer linguistic tools and methods enable language to be treated with almost mathematical rigor but with an intuitive simplicity that is fast and easy to learn.

IMT Clients include award-winning organizations such as Mayo Clinic, Motorola, AT&T, Group Health Cooperative, American Honda, Siemens, American Express, Eastman Kodak, Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, ITT, Imperial Oil, Missouri Department of Revenue, California State University, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Affinity Plus Credit Union, City of Louisville, Raytheon, Naval Air Depot, Pinellas County Utilities, U.S. Department of Defense, state and federal agencies from Alaska to Vermont and many others not yet so well known.

Rob has the unique ability to develop and articulate alternatives to complex organizational and competitive challenges. He makes the solutions feel like common sense. Rob has a combination of excellent communication skills, leadership vision and bias for action that compels others to follow. He is known as a dynamic innovator who inspires others to think creatively and push the boundaries of what was previously thought impossible. He is listed in the directory of Who's Who of Business Leaders and was named Quality Guru by American Society for Quality.

Mr. Lawton is an engaging, humorous and interactive speaker. He was ranked #1 of 88 speakers in 2007 by an international organization and has been repeatedly named "best speaker" by hosting organizations. His keynote presentations combine high technical content with an entertaining, motivational delivery style that is truly inspiring and unique. Rob has been featured at many international, national and regional conferences sponsored by such organizations as the Japan Management Association, Chamber of Commerce, Federal Executive Board, Association for Manufacturing Excellence (AME), Six Sigma Forum, Quality Institute for Healthcare, American Marketing Association (AMA), International Standards Organization (ISO), American Society for Quality (ASQ) and others. He has taught Six Sigma Master Black Belts and other skilled change leaders to advance their understanding and practice of leading edge Voice of the Customer methods.

Prior to starting his firm, Rob worked as an oil well laborer, administrator at a maximum security prison, night club entertainer, teacher of English as a second language, educational program evaluation researcher and other interesting positions. This unusual, non-linear career path has enabled him to routinely view a problem or challenge from an unconventional perspective. His two-time stint as foster parent to teenage girls offers proof that he is also an adaptive optimist. His teenage adoptive daughter, a Gypsy (Roma) by ethnicity, will testify to that.

These experiences, plus his several years living in Latin America and working with management from many countries, have given Rob special appreciation for and insights regarding the importance of cultural uniqueness and values. They have led to Rob's striking ability to develop and articulate alternatives to complex organizational and competitive challenges, making the solutions feel suspiciously like common sense. His passion and bias for dramatic and sustainable results inspires others to surpass their goals.

In addition to his best-selling first book, Mr. Lawton has authored, contributed to or been referenced in many publications, including these books by other authors:
- Beyond Strategic Vision, Effective Corporate Action with Hoshin Planning, M. Cowley, E. Domb
- The Lean Extended Enterprise: Moving Beyond the Four Walls to Value Stream Excellence, T. Burton
- The Kaizen Blitz: Accelerating Breakthroughs in Productivity and Performance, A. Laraia
- The Performance Improvement Toolkit: The Guide to Knowledge Based Improvement, R. Gerst
- ISO 9001:2000 Quality Management System Design, J. Schlickman
- Tools to Create Great Corporate Strategies Using Insights from History and Science, Dudik & Dudik
- We Don't Make Widgets, K. Miller
- The Innovator's Toolkit, D. Silverstein, P. Samuel, N. DeCaarlo

Rob's community and professional involvement includes:
* Board of Directors, Planning and Evaluation Chair, Sarasota Healthy Start Coalition
* Adjunct instructor, University of Minnesota and Metro State University
* Teacher of English as a second language, Model Cities
* Senior member and frequent contributor, American Society for Quality
* Volunteer work with several civic organizations

Mr. Lawton has a B.A. in sociology and M.A. in educational psychology from Michigan State University.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A "Must Read" and "Must Act Upon", April 8, 2000

By 

Quentin Wilson (Jefferson City, Missouri) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Creating a Customer-Centered Culture: Leadership in Quality, Innovation, and Speed (Hardcover)

With the vast array of performance improvement and customer focus books on the market, readers need to be somewhat selective about what they read. This book should definitely be on any manager's list. The tools described in the book apply to any type of organization, public or private, and at any level of the organization. At the Missouri Department of Revenue, we've used Robin Lawton's customer-centered culture approach as a touchstone for many successful Performance Excellence Teams.

The only thing worse for a results-oriented leader than not reading this book would be to read it and not put it into action. Unlike so many performance improvement books, the clear guidance is more than matched by the clarity and simplicity of the steps to implementation.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Critical Gap Has Been Bridged!, January 15, 2001

By 

"jandell" (Phoenix, AZ USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Creating a Customer-Centered Culture: Leadership in Quality, Innovation, and Speed (Hardcover)

Robin Lawton has shared with us a missing link! There are books that discuss how to fix problems, books about the "balanced scorecard", and books about meeting customer expectations. However, none of them seemed able to address a critical question: what objective measure will enable us to track our level of success? By answering that question, this book enahnces the value of all other volumes on six sigma, management, and problem solving. Lawton does so by guidng the reader through a straightforward process. By all means, read the other books - but only after you read this one first!

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What do your customers want? Rob tells you how to find out!, January 31, 2000

By 

Kristin Arnold (Fairfax, VA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Creating a Customer-Centered Culture: Leadership in Quality, Innovation, and Speed (Hardcover)

Not all customers are created equal. Some are indeed the end user, others broker or "fix" your product or service on behalf of the end user. Where does your company focus it's energies? And does your company really focus on what the end customer wants? And are you really measuring what the end customer truly cares about (versus what you, the producer cares about)? Read this illuminating book that gives you the secrets to Creating a Customer-Centered Culture within your organization. I have found Rob Lawton's model extremely useful for manufacturing as well as service organizations. I highly recommend it!