Executive Interviews: Interview with Don Peppers and Martha Rogers on CRM
January 2008 - By Dr. Nagendra V Chowdary

Don Peppers and Martha Rogers on CRM
Founding Partners
Peppers & Rogers Group.

to focus on all of these at once.So our book is an effort to weave these ideas together and create a new mentalmodel for business leaders to use when visualizing how their companies create shareholder value.

A raging crisis of short termism threatens companies that try to operate by todays accepted wisdoms in business. When the lowliest employees can leap tall hierarchies in a single click, it not only flattens your organizationchart, but also elevates the importance of your corporate culture, transforming it into perhaps your best management tool as well as your most reliable competitive advantage. And when customers can share their experiences electronically with millions, customer trust becomesmore than a catchphrase; it becomes a business necessity and a divining rod for any company's success over the long term. Even change itself is no longer a constant; it is accelerating. No matter how great your product or service is today, tomorrow it will still be just another commodity, and tomorrowwill come faster than it used to. Big or small, manufacturer or service firm, in today's technologyaugmented business environment you'll have to knowhowto harness the power of your connected customers and your networked employees. You need innovation, creativity, resilience, and leadership to produce not just quarterly numbers, but genuine shareholder value.

• Do you still see the relevance for operational innovation in the heightened commoditization across the industries?
  The more commoditization in an industry, the greater the need for operational innovation it is one of the few ways for a company to establish some true differentiation.

• Is there a relationship between the national culture of an organization (where its roots are; the headquarters is) and its organizational efforts?
  Yes there is. Different countries have different strengths and weaknesses when it comes to succeeding with operational innovation. For instance, some are more comfortable than others with making deep change; on the other hand, some of these may be better at the teamwork needed for operational innovation.

• Why do you think some change agents are successful while many are not? For instance, Howard Stinger at Sony. Even those who are successful once (initially) are not consistently successful. Why is it so? For instance, Ed Zander at Motorola and Carlos Ghosn at Nissan Motors.
  I cannot comment on these specific examples, but in general, executives who are successful at leading major change are passionate about it, are willing to invest their personal prestige in it, maintain commitment rather than just treat it as a short term project, and are willing to do whatever it takes including dismissing members of the executive team to make it succeed.

• It might be relatively easy to identify the need for a change initiative / intervention in the case of a company, i.e., there are sufficient warning signals alerting the company. However, change management is required at an individual level too (in different capacities; at the highest level one becomes the initiator; at all the other levels, one becomes the follower). What are the signals for an individual to look at change management initiatives before he / she is forced upon to embrace the change?
  I am not sure I understand this question, and in any event, I think it is outside my area of expertise.

• If you look at companies like Nike, Southwest Airlines, Bloomberg, etc., how difficult is to manage change (including the transition) when the founder CEO is not around?
  In some cases, it is more difficult to make deep change when the founder CEO is still around, since it is often difficult for that individual to let go of the principles and techniques that led to the company's original success. Deep change is often best led by someone other than the one who created the system that is being changed.

• How do you think companies can make "Change Management" a part of their "catastrophe culture" (as Samsung Electronics CEO Jong Yong Yun has done) so that the fire is on at all the times, both good and bad?
  The most successful companies always believe that their success is only temporary and that they must always change or decline. This is a characteristic of Wal Mart, Intel and Progressive Insurance. Creating a culture like this is the responsibility of the CEO, who must instill it through personal behavior, expectations of other managers, the reward and promotion systems, as well as through relentless communications.

1. CRM Strategy Case Study
2. ICMR Case Collection
3. Case Study Volumes