The Discipline of Market Leaders: Choose Your Customers, Narrow Your Focus, Dominate Your Market
by Michael Treacy, Fred Wiersema

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• ISBN13: 9780201407198
• Condition: New
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Book Reviews of The Discipline of Market Leaders: Choose Your Customers, Narrow Your Focus, Dominate Your Market

Book Review: A Business Classic
Summary: 5 Stars

Such a simple idea and so hard to live up to. Treacy argues that companies compete on three dimensions: Product Innovation, Low Cost Provision (aka Operational Excellence) or Customer Intimacy. He further argues that the way to make money is by being best in one (and only one) dimension. Trying to be "world-class" in more than one dimension diffuses your efforts, sets up contradictions in your organization and confuses your customers. Pick how you want to compete and be disciplined about sticking to it.

This book offers a classic model for thinking about business and how you serve your customers More than just high-level strategy setting, this book gives you a lens through which to prioritize projects and make decisions at every level of management. It brings clarity to confused business cultures (or at least gives leaders a way to talk about why they have different visions of the future of the company).

Incidentally, there has been a fair amount of quantitative research since this book was first published confirming the correlation between strategic alignment and financial performance. As long as you've maintained a minimum (parity) on the other dimensions, companies that stick to one agenda really do perform better financially.

I was taught the basic model years ago and have used it more times than I can count since. This book is on my very short list of "must-read". The examples are getting a little out-of-date now, but the core lesson is timeless.

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