Pillar 01 · of 05

The CX operating model.

The conversion chain that turns a piece of customer signal into a board-level decision, into action on the ground, into a change the customer can feel. The dashboard is its output. This pillar collects everything the practice has written on the model beneath the dashboard. Essays for executives, frameworks for steering, short notes for the in-between weeks.

14pieces, total
9essays
3frameworks & one-pagers
2short notes
the cornerstone

Customer obsession is an operating model.

If you read one essay in this pillar, read this one. It sets the five questions (signal, hearing, decision, action, feedback) that the rest of the work returns to.

Subsequent letters drill into each question in turn, and the frameworks are the printable form of the same five.

Read the cornerstone essay →

Everything written so far.

All 14 Essays 9 Frameworks 3 Notes 2
No. 47
Cornerstone essay
Customer obsession is an operating model.
The five questions a serious operator should be able to answer in writing before the next steering meeting. May 2026
No. 44
Essay · 13 min
Channel programmes the country actually uses.
A note on why the channel decision is rarely about the channel, and how to read the third question at the regional level. Jan 2026
No. 41
Essay · 16 min
From the room and from the airport.
What changes when the steering meeting is in one capital and the operation is in another. Mostly the model survives. Sometimes it doesn't. Oct 2025
No. 39
Essay · 10 min
When the score moves and the business doesn't.
The most common failure mode: a programme that tracks well and operates poorly. How to tell, and what to do about it. Aug 2025
No. 35
Framework · 8 min
The operating-model diagnostic: twelve questions.
A printable diagnostic the practice uses in the first three weeks of an engagement. Twelve questions, four headings, one page. Apr 2025
No. 31
Essay · 12 min
The third question, where the wheels come off.
A longer reading of the hardest question, what decisions does the signal actually change, and how steering committees avoid answering it. Dec 2024
No. 28
Essay · 11 min
The closing of the loop: what the customer should know.
The fifth question, feedback, gets the least airtime and produces the most experience. A short rehabilitation. Sep 2024
No. 24
Framework · 6 min
A one-page operating brief for the new CCO.
If you've just been hired into the role, the page to write in your first week. Reproduced verbatim in five engagements. May 2024
No. 19
Note · 4 min
On the difference between a tracker and an operator.
A short note on the drift, and the one sentence that reveals which side a programme is on. Dec 2023
showing 9 of 14 Show the older five →

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One letter a month. Pieces in this pillar arrive roughly every other month, mixed with the other four.