MASTERING EXCELLENCE is for leaders with high expectations, a vision of the possible and urgency to improve the lives of many others. Robin Lawton provides you with a new way to think about work and customers, and an elegantly simple framework with tools you can immediately apply to transform your organization and your role in it. Based on the author's 30 years of work with organizations of all kinds and sizes, including multi-nationals, small start-ups, government agencies, healthcare, education and defense, you get an engaging and practical road map to dramatic change you would not think possible. There are many approaches to change. Most emphasize process improvement. They use tools that are statistical, analytical and operational in nature and assume that the absence of things gone wrong is equivalent to achieving excellence. That focuses on minimums, not optimums; compliance and consistency, not aspiration and possibility. Virtually none provides an integrated strategic system that begins with articulating purpose from the customer's perspective, uses linguistics to reveal and destroy the communication ambiguities we allow to persist, and redefines knowledge and service work in tangible, countable ways we can employ for creating excellence by design. This book, including more than twenty Leader's Actions exercises, does that and far more.As the CEO, executive change leader or consultant to leadership, you want customers that are enthused, employees that are engaged and fast, highly visible results that are sustainable. Eye-popping savings in the millions of dollars, customer wait times cut by 90%, strong revenue growth and an avalanche of customer kudos are the kinds of continuing results many Masters of Excellence have achieved. This material rewires your brain to understand how and your role in leading outstanding success.Expect this book to enable you to: -Transform your organization (for profit or not) from customer-desred outcomes inward-Use six levers (language, measures, values, power, assumptions and modeling) to eliminate ambiguity-Translate abstract vision, values and mission into concrete, deployable daily work-Redefine all knowledge and service work as tangible, measurable products-Determine the only three roles customers can play and minimize bias favoring the wrong customers-Engage and impassion employees to create unsurpassed customer success-Create an enviable reality for your enterprise and your role in it
About the Author: Robin Lawton is an internationally recognized author, executive coach and expert in creating rapid strategic alignment between enterprise objectives and customer priorities. Rob has directed strategic and operational improvement initiatives since 1985. His leadership and management clients worldwide come from a wide variety of knowledge-intensive fields including industry, government, technology, healthcare, banking, energy, utilities and education. He has lived in Latin America and traveled extensively. Rob was a foster parent twice before becoming an international adoptive parent in 1998. These diverse experiences have had a great impact on his unique ability to understand and solve complex organizational issues with simplicity that many clients have referred to as "thinking different".He coined the term "customer-centered culture" with his first book, Creating a Customer-Centered Culture: Leadership in Quality, Innovation and Speed. His latest book, Mastering Excellence: A Leader's Guide to Aligning Strategy, Culture, Customer Experience & Measures of Success, greatly expands on his ideas. Rob's books and many articles reveal the passion he has to transform thinking and transfer his methods to others. Rob's goal is to guide leaders to significantly enhance their customers' success. The vehicle for that transformation is his customer-centered culture system, referred to as C3.Thousands of executives, Master Black Belts and other change leaders have used Rob's powerful, easy-to-understand C3 principles and system to improve and measure service, knowledge work, customer experience and employee engagement. Rob has been published and referenced by many other authors worldwide. As a direct result of applying his ideas, clients have won prestigious awards from their industries, peers and recognition such as the Baldrige National Award.Mr. Lawton dramatically changes how his audiences think about what they do, who they do it for, what their customers' priorities really are and the role of leadership in making magic happen for their constituents and followers. He does this with humor and a highly interactive delivery style with thought-leading material few have experienced. The pragmatic and engaging way he connects his ideas to everyday work and experience creates a new version of common sense and enlightened possibility. Those familiar with his work have referred to Rob as the management thought-leader for the 21st century, equal to what Ackoff, Juran, Deming, Drucker and others were for the last century. Mr. Lawton has been ranked #1 of 88 speakers by American Society for Quality and featured by leadership organizations such as the Japan Management Association, Chamber of Commerce, Federal Executive Board, Association for Manufacturing Excellence, American Marketing Association, International Conference on ISO 9000 and others.