Engineer Ownership Through Anticipatory Management: Address Employee and Customer Needs Before They Arise

Organizations that engineer customer and employee ownership learn to predict and respond to customers' needs before they arise. Technology and information systems can be a great help in this endeavor. But just as important are the combined efforts from all parts of the organization-especially marketing, operations, human resources, and information technology-working seamlessly together to help frontline employees deliver value to customers. This chapter demonstrates how employees and customers benefit from the set of concepts at the core of anticipatory management. This chapter is excerpted from "The Ownership Quotient: Putting the Service Profit Chain to Work for Unbeatable Competitive Advantage."