Customer-Centered Excellence is
being the “best” in the eyes of your customers!
Welcome! Our website reflects 35 years of creative customer-centered excellence (C3) work and client success. This is merely the tip of the content iceberg. We continue to have fun learning, adding, and improving content every day. Some people like to browse for insights and answers. Others may wish to simply write us a note about their challenges and objectives. You might like to just pick up the phone and call Rob Lawton at 941-704-9888 or Tony Belilovskiy at 781-710-0285 to help us understand your situation.
We’ll discuss the customer-centered leadership options just right for you, along with the kinds of excitement, breakthroughs and lasting results you can expect to achieve. Or attend a live event for optimum learning. Our mission is your success. We’d love to hear from you.
TRAINING
CONSULTING
REFERENCE
I was first introduced to the customer-centered culture (C3) system over fifteen years ago. C3 was my foundation for totally changing the culture of my IT organization to be 100% focused on helping our customers. The difference between the way that department responds to customers, versus practices in other IT departments I’m familiar with, is notable. C3 has gone with me as my corporate home has changed multiple times over the years, proving C3’s enduring relevance to IT, my parent organizations, and our changing customers. Leadership of IT organizations everywhere could clearly benefit from what I have learned and applied.
During my long career, I was one of the few people in the world to study under, and spend personal time with Dr. Edwards Deming, Peter Drucker, Joseph Juran, Philip Crosby, Russell Ackoff, Tom Peters and Michael Hammer. In comparison to those giants of the past, Mr. Lawton is clearly in a comparable position to be today’s premier thinker and practitioner of quality as defined by customer satisfaction. He causes revolutionary new managerial thinking and decision-making.
This workshop is definitely NOT for the faint-hearted! Mr. Lawton led us through an intensive, fast-paced presentation designed to reframe how we think about customer satisfaction and service. He encouraged each participant to continually challenge how we think about ‘products’ and our role in providing these to our real customers. He provided a very clear understanding of what a customer-centered culture is and how to create one.
Education has been producer-centered, based on the belief that the instructor knows best and the learner is a junior apprentice who must be put through the hurdles prior to being permitted into the real world. Educators must become customer focused. Education must be offered at times and places and in formats convenient to learners rather than being by the faculty, of the faculty and for the faculty. The prime value of this program was the creation of skilled champions of customerization who can facilitate change through action and example.
You changed our view of our customers and helped the U.S. Coast Guard Yard win both the Maryland Performance Award and the Coast Guard Quality Award in 1996. I was a Board member for the Virginia Quality Award for about 6 years, and have been a member of the Executive Board for Maryland. Your C3 methods offer a level of customer awareness that has not been addressed anywhere else. I will reiterate that message as long as I am involved in promoting leadership practices.
When You Master Customer-Centered Leadership Excellence…
- You have created the customer-centered culture
- Leadership vision is simply articulated, rapidly deployed
- Employees are inspired, engaged, and achieve the impossible
- Change management becomes cultural transformation
- Your leadership creates the model of best practices
- Measures address all 8 Dimensions of success
- Processes turn complexity into simplicity
- Customers are raving fans
- The voice of leadership and voice of the customer converge, creating innovative and sustained excellence
Our passion is to make these outcomes your reality!
You Need C3 If...
(The more statements you agree with, the more critical your need for C3.)
- Your C3IQ score is < 90.
- Customer experience and satisfaction are high priorities.
- There is no articulated, widely used method for uncovering what the users of your organization’s work products want.
- Surveys are the main methods used to assess customer satisfaction.
- Knowledge and service work accounts for >25% of your organization’s personnel costs.
- Knowledge work is not well measured.
- Core values are not universally known, prioritized, and/or fully supported by policies relevant to all employees.
- Departments and functions do not all share common priorities.
- Conflict between and within departments is common.
- Many perceive the organization’s practices to be slow, complicated or inconsistent.
- The existence, size, and growth rate of “customer support” functions are not viewed as indicators of excellence. (This means customer support is necessary because excellence is not high.)
- Customers complain or defect.
- Employees are dissatisfied with the work one or more departments or functional groups perform.
- Managers complain it takes too long to fill open positions.
- Valuable knowledge is lost when talent leaves. (This means succession planning is directed by the position someone has in the hierarchy, not by the criticality of the knowledge at risk of being lost.)
- The cost of non-manufacturing rework is unknown, with few reduction goals.
- The root causes of problems are assumed to be related more to process issues than to product design.
- Far more time and cost is invested in improving internal processes than in improving outcomes (results) customers want.
- You have competitive adversaries.
- Few core products have recently been replaced or significantly improved by your organization’s innovative alternatives.
- The enterprise is at risk of losing key industry certification.
How We Do It...
Our Customer-Centered Leadership Excellence advisors guide you using the Customer-Centered Culture (C3) system.
C3 is a system for aligning the strategic direction and operational practices of an organization to satisfy customer priorities and engage employees to excel.
This includes a model for transformation described by 8 Dimensions of Excellence (8DX), principles, tools and a methodology not found elsewhere. Everything we do is built on this foundation. These powerful principles and methods are practical, universal, scalable and customized to you. Start by exploring the Customer-Centered Leadership Excellence topics below.