Executive Summary The phrase “customer-centric” is bandied about by just about everyone. Every organization in the world says they are customer-centric, and the term gets bandied about at conferences, in marketing campaigns, and in corporate literature and from the mouths of the most senior leaders in organizations. We have a whole lexicon of phrases associated […]
Why Artificial Intelligence Is Becoming the Greatest Operational Force Multiplier and the Most Underestimated Governance Risk in 2026 Introduction Industrial and manufacturing firms entered 2025 under pressure to modernize. Things were getting tough. Labor shortages were still a problem, and the supply chains were still fragile. Our customers were demanding more reliable, traceable and faster […]
Introduction: The Invisible Revenue Problem Every CFO knows the agony of arguing over customer acquisition costs (CAC) with marketers and sales leaders. Every marketing budget, sales headcount and demand gen initiative is sized up and torn apart by the CFO. The Cost to Acquire a Customer (CAC) is front and center, always being measured, compared […]
Why Decisions That Appear Clear at the Top Rarely Translate into Results on the Ground in 2026 Introduction In many companies the source of underperformance is not bad strategy, wrong markets, lack of competence or even poor intentions. Rather the cause is a disconnect between what senior management intends and what transpires throughout most of […]
Introduction: The Function That Was Never Given a Real Job Customer Support has been defined for decades as anything other than Sales, Success or Strategy. We are the team that gets called in to clean up the messes that should never have happened in the first place. The messes are quickly and quietly resolved for […]
Why International Companies Systematically Misread the United States and How Execution, Governance, and Credibility Decide Outcomes in 2026 Introduction For global businesses, the US is still the most attractive and most misunderstood market in the world. In 2025, over fifty European, Asian and Middle Eastern companies, with hundreds of sales and production subsidiaries, attempted to […]
A Title Without Authority Is Theater I used to believe that the companies that established a Chief Customer Officer role in the last 5 years did it for the wrong reasons. Customer retention was simply a cost of acquiring new customers, and a price that was paid for with a check rather than action taken […]
Why Scaling in 2026 Requires Structural Discipline, Not Momentum Introduction Growth has long been the drumbeat of the successful company. Boards are always in favor of it, shareholders always want more of it and chief executives are paid to deliver it to earn the millions that they feel they deserve and to justify the huge […]
In 2025, most leadership teams thought they’d finally found the solution to their customer experience challenges. Artificial intelligence (AI) promised the scale, velocity, and personalization they needed, and it did so with a favorable impact on costs. Vendors confirmed it. Dashboards were improved. Processes were streamlined. Headcount growth was no longer a worry. By year-end, […]
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