Page 174 - Harnessing the Strengths

Dilemma 7: Push Versus Pull ■ 157

Integrated growth:
Lean, but (1,10) through the
(10,10)
mean
Inner-directed improvement pull
Pushing

(1,10)
Customer’s creature
Outer-directed increase in customer satisfaction
Figure 11.4 Internal process versus external clients

On the one hand, a disconnection of Sales and
Marketing both from R&D and from Production
and, on the other, the elevation of the latter func-
tions to a dominant position, so that commercial
marketing considerations were largely ignored. 2

CEO Anders Knutsen regarded this imbalance as so serious
that he appointed himself the head of Marketing and Sales
until he found a vice director with international experience.
In this role, he discovered things that the company had
ignored for far too long. Bang & Olufsen thought that com-
munication was a one-way process and that its customers
were the dealers, not the end users. He recalled: “Naturally,
the dealers passed on our arrogant approach to the fi nal
client.” It turned out that the dealers were using the aura
of Bang & Olufsen to improve their own image, while they
spent more energy selling the cheaper products better suited
to the market, like Philips, Daewoo, Sony, and Grundig.
“The product and its market were completely detached,”