A Customer-Centric Approach To Strategy

Management consultant Daniel Deneffe discusses his unconventional approach to “fad-free” strategy.  It starts with a deep customer immersion and works backward to take the guessing game out of strategy formation.

Improving The Odds of Strategy Execution

Everyone has their own definition of business strategy; and as varied as those perspectives may be – Its execution that ultimately determines impact.   For years now, I’ve been a keen observer of businesses who excel at the implementation phase of strategy, and the quintessential correlation that I notice among them is always an unbreakable link to their customer.

For nearly three decades, Daniel Deneffe has been on the forefront of strategy design and implementation – both as a professor of business strategy at Harvard Extension School, and as a management consultant.  To him, strategy is simply an extension of a relationship you have with your customer, still as you’ll discover during our conversation and in his latest book {with Herman Vantrappen} – Fad-Free Strategy:  Rigorous Methods To Help Executives Make Strategic Choices Confidently, those relationships are based on a depth of insight that far exceeds a surface interpretation of one’s purchasing and/or behavioral patterns.

As an intellectual, Daniel is both thorough and detailed in his descriptions, so listen with an open mind as he shares his ideas on the following topics:

• The modern definition of strategy.
• The correlation between effective strategy implementation and consumer insights.
• The trap of strategic thinking.
• What most companies and business schools often get wrong about strategy?
• What you’re likely not seeing when you fail to get the results you desire?
• Why what your customers don’t buy is a better alternative to understanding strategy?
• Why constraints lead to effective strategy?
• The role of pricing in strategy formation?
• Understanding the concept of willingness to pay and willingness to buy?
• Why companies don’t want a competitive advantage as much as they want to maximize commercial returns?
• Resources:
  • Website  | Fad-Free Strategy
  • Linkedin | Daniel Deneffe
  • Amazon | Fad-Free Strategy Book