Business: How Customer-Centric Operational Excellence Turned a Failing Business Into a Growth Engine

5 years of revenue and profit decline. Terrible product quality. Customers openly unhappy. And the biggest competitor? Owned by our customers.

That was the situation when I was asked to lead the turnaround of a 1,000-person business unit at AT&T Network

Systems.

Most people would have run.  I said “Yes.”

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The Challenge

The team was smart and hardworking, but understandably frustrated and demoralized. Even worse, there was no winning strategy or plan — just a slow and painful decline.

To succeed, I knew we would need strategic creativity to find a way forward and disciplined execution to rebuild trust with customers and deliver results.

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The Insight

My starting assumption was simple: If customers make rational purchasing decisions, they’ll choose the superior product. But to overcome internal politics and entrenched preferences, the product must be better by a lot.

That insight became the basis of our strategy:

• Identify the attributes most important to our customers.
• Outperform competitors on those attributes — by a lot.

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The Attributes That Mattered

We didn’t guess. We asked our customers directly. Their priorities were clear:

• Price and value
• Development cycle time
• Product quality
• Customer support
• On-time delivery

Everything else — while not unimportant — was far less critical to their decision-making.

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The Plan

We benchmarked performance on these attributes — not only against our primary competitor but also against the best B2B software providers anywhere.

Our goal: Best-in-class performance across every attribute customers cared about most.  

We set our bar very, very high — and we cleared it.

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The Results

Within a few years, we transformed:

• Sustained 20%+ annual revenue growth
• Strong profit margins
• Customers who went from openly unhappy to loyal advocates

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The Lesson

This was my first experiment with what I now call Customer-Centric Operational Excellence — and it reshaped my strategic and operating approach forever.

Too often, companies focus on internal metrics, competitor features, or “nice-to-have” improvements. But when you identify exactly what customers value most — and outperform everyone else in those areas — growth and profit follow.

That principle isn’t locked in the past. It’s just as relevant now for mid-sized tech firms, PE-backed portfolio companies, and divisions of global enterprises.

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Could This Work for You?

I now help tech companies apply this approach to accelerate growth, improve margins, and win back customers.  Every situation is different but all require strategic creativity, the vision to connect the dots, and the operational discipline to implement.

If your business is facing stalled growth, customer churn, or increasing competition, I’d be glad to compare notes — and share the framework I’ve used to deliver results in tough markets.

(Curious? DM me on LinkedIn.)