'Good is the enemy of great', six words from Jim Collins have proved to be one of the most thought provoking and powerful statements in management. I remember my days as a visiting faculty at IIPM Bangalore trying to share some basic principles on customer relationship management with young students brimming with energy to enter the corporate world.  Once I made them play a car game to help them learn the most important management lesson -'Know your customer'. This game had a few standard car parts drawn on a sheet of paper, a pair of scissors, colours and gum. They had to make a car out of the given resources and sell it to the class. The rules of the game were very simple - use only the resources given and complete the car in 25 mins. What came out from the teams was simply bizarre; almost everyone in their attempt to make a higher sales pitch was over promising or rather lying to customers/the class about things which were not even given as resources!

So where does it all begin from in an organization? "Our turnaround at Xerox was the result of staying connected with our customers", says Anne Mulcahy, CEO of Xerox.  Every single day, every single person is a customer for umpteen products and services, yet most of us tend to forget the very fundamental role of being a customer when we become sellers! Strange as it may sound, such is the market of buyers and sellers. Most companies would have elaborate strategic and operational plans but they tend to overlook the linkages of these strategic and operational plans when it comes to the customer! The customer without which we won't even exist. Being a customer-centric organization is no rocket science, because its not a science at all, it's an art, an art which requires discipline in all dimensions right from the very obvious to the not so obvious domains with one sole focus - the customer.

Everyday, choices are made in going for one product over the other, one service over the other and the general tendency of any organization is to go to the next customer without ever trying to find out why a customer chose someone else's product or service over theirs. Were the differences too obvious for the customer? Or were the differentiators we claimed not obvious or good enough for the customer? These are the questions we continuously need to ask ourselves as an organization; because good is the enemy of great and few ever  become great, becoming great is a matter of conscious choice and discipline!