The Value Profit Chain: Treat Employees Like Customers and Customers Like Employees

Drawing on research at the Harvard Business School dating back to 1974, Heskett, Sasser, and Schlesinger demonstrate how any company - whether manufacturing or service firm, profit or not-for-profit-- can achieve outstanding profit and growth by adopting their revolutionary organising framework, the Value Profit Chain. Building on research in more than 200 large corporations, they show how a quantifiable set of relationships exists between the loyalty, trust, and satisfaction of customers, employees, partners, and investors that is linked to profit and growth. The authors introduce a number of helpful concepts, including the "performance trinity," the starting point for changing the organisation, and the "strategic value vision," which will enable any manager to build more focused operations and results-oriented management capabilities. Of particular significance is a simple but powerful concept they call the "value exchange": what a company gets in return for its efforts to relate to customers, employees, partners, and investors. Written in clear non-technical prose, The Value Profit Chain will be received as a tour de force: timely, relevant, and essential reading.