As companies aspire to become market-driven, they exhort employees to get closer to customers, stay ahead of competitors, and make decisions based on their markets. Yet, even the best-intentioned senior managers find it difficult to translate those aspirations into action. Failed or flawed change programs have many symptoms, most of which are traceable to a lack of commitment to the deep-seated changes needed. The organization hasn’t fully grasped what it means to be market-driven — or why it matters — and lacks a clear path to that end.1 Further problems occur if the change program is unsuited to the task of orienting the business to its present and prospective markets.
While the underlying principles and prescription of generic change programs offer valuable guidance, the organization must sensitively tailor the design of a change program to become market-driven to the particular challenges of understanding, attracting, and keeping valuable customers. My purpose in this article is to establish the six conditions that ensure change process success. I use the experiences of four different change programs — Fidelity Investments, Sears Roebuck, Eurotunnel, and Owens Corning — and post-audits of some failed change initiatives to validate the change model and explain the necessary conditions for a durable shift to a market orientation.
What Triggers the Change Process?
A firm’s orientation... To read the complete article, login or sign-up using the form below.
Get a premium subscription today to read this and all MIT Sloan Managmeent Review articles.
More Info.
Buy this article. Purchase one or more copies of this article as a PDF.
Subscribe today to read the most recent articles and the current issue of MIT Sloan Management Review.
Upgrade to premium
Current Subscribers: Do you subscribe to MIT Sloan Management Review? Register for online access.
- Register for free access to recent articles and the current issue of MIT Sloan Management Review.
- Subscribe and read articles from the past three years online.
- Premium subscription—access to the entire archive of articles.
