The most effective CEOs have a primary source for tracking their markets. They meet with their teams frequently enough to keep innovation flowing, to reduce and focus costs, to be energized. They create a tight agenda and they set high goals.

I like to take CEOs into consumers' homes to see the "real world." CEOs have privileged lives with big incomes, lots of help, access to just about anything they wish. The average consumer lives on $53,000 a year and has daily tradeoffs and compromises that must be made. I took a CEO into a trailer park so he could observe first-hand - and understand - how consumers use his product.

The starting point is to create a qualitative understanding of market drivers. You need to get into the head of the consumer and be able to tell her story. It is both art and science. The purpose of the market map is to define dissatisfactions, hopes, dreams and fears. Winning solutions respond to the distinct and specific needs of a group of consumers.

Consumers are time constrained, budget restricted and less loved than they would like. Give them a wonderful experience and they will share it. Capture their soul and win big time.

Respond to your customer's dissatisfactions with precision and power.

Business operators that really deeply care about their employees and consumers deliver the right response every day.

Truth is so difficult to hear about. It must be experienced.