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

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

Get out of the office. Roam the frontline. Be observant. Hold your people accountable for creating the new narrative, a new story, in which your customers are the most important "characters". Because, you know, they really are.

The truth is that business is simple: create great products, merchandise them at the point of sale, continuously innovate and surprise, reward and achieve a position of loyalty with your front line, and seek new truth from the market. Deliver the goods at a competitive cost. Price to earn a decent but not competitively inviting return. Not much else matters.

Define a winning proposition that is consumer right and delivers margin accretion.

Consumers cannot think in abstractions. They cannot envision a new concept. They cannot predict their behavior. They can only compare against their current frame of reference. So you need to make the big leap for them. You need to provide them with a reason to buy, a reason to brag to their friends. Expect new-to-the-world ideas to fall on deaf ears. Consumers will, however, change their tune when they can see, touch, and explore.

All great companies have spirit and culture. Mean spirited returns mean spirit.