A Perfect Failure Part 3: Expecting Your Company to Be Perfect 🕒 2 min read By Frank Hurtte People inside your company are prone to making mistakes. The warehouse ships the wrong part. Customer service transposes two numbers. Accounting sends an invoice that leaves everyone scratching their heads. Inside sales misunderstands a purchase order. It happens. Such are the travails of working with humans. One of the biggest surprises of my career was discovering that customers are generally more forgiving than salespeople expect. They understand mistakes happen because they run businesses too. What they don't tolerate is finger-pointing, excuses, or silence. I once watched a salesperson spend fifteen minutes proving a mistake wasn't his fault. By the time he finished, he'd convinced the customer nobody else inside his company could be trusted either. Accountability has rescued more customer relationships than perfection ever has. Companies don't earn loyalty by avoiding ever...

Marketing Moment: Keiretsu (pronounced kā-rĕt′soo͞ ) By Desiree Grace Healthy eating. Cleanliness. Politeness. Respect for elders. These are traits we often associate with Japanese culture, and they’re worth admiring. But Japan’s business culture offers equally powerful lessons. After World War II, Japan partnered with the United States to rebuild its economy. (If only that level of civility and collaboration were common practice today. Imagine the progress we could make if adversaries worked together for the greater good.) From that partnership came LEAN manufacturing, Zero Work in Process, and other best practices still shaping global industry eight decades later. One of the most compelling concepts from this era is Keiretsu . What is Keiretsu? Loosely translated, Keiretsu refers to a deeply connected, intentionally cultivated business partnership, one that transcends a standard vendor-customer relationship, and certainly not anything underhanded. Instead, it is an eleva...