ABSTRACT
In most companies that claim to have launched grand improvement strategies (i.e., some version of Lean or Six Sigma), the sales and marketing function is nowhere to be found. They are pretty much still off doing what they have always done without much regard for what they, and the rest of senior management, typically view as strictly operational concerns. Unfortunately for the companies that roar down that path, the words of English poet John Donne apply to businesses as well as people: “No man is an island, entire of itself.” You can’t launch any operational strategy and have the sales and marketing team members off doing their own thing and expect the business as a whole to gain much by it. At best, you get organizational conflict and confusion; at worst, the whole place comes unglued.
