23 Jun 2026
#43 Reclaiming the Soul of Strategy: Building Customer-Centric Organizations with Bernard J. Jaworski
This episode explores how modern organizations can reclaim the 'soul' of strategy by returning to the fundamental directive: the creation and retention of customers. I am joined by Bernard J. Jaworski, the Drucker Chair in Management and the Liberal Arts at the Drucker School.
Bernie is one of the world's leading voices on corporate strategy and organic growth. In this session, we unpack the 'customer blind spot' that plagues many firms today, discuss how to bridge the execution gap between legacy structures and customer-centric vision, and explore the 'Customer Choice Cascade' - a framework designed to move strategy beyond mere competitor obsession.
Drawing on the core principles of his book, The Soul of Strategy (co-authored with David E. Sprott), this conversation reveals how true customer centricity requires more than a shift in focus; it demands disciplined, evidence-based habits necessary to turn your strategic intent into lasting, real-world impact.
About the guest: Bernie Jaworski is the Drucker Chair in Management and the Liberal Arts, which is named in honor of Peter Drucker, the founder of modern management and the namesake of the Drucker School. Bernie is a ISBM and American Marketing Association Fellow. He is recipient of the three major Journal of Marketing awards – the Alpha Kappa Psi award (received twice), the Maynard award, and the Sheth award. He also received the Converse award and the Vijay Mahajan lifetime achievement award for contributions to marketing. His 2020 book on Organic Growth (with Bob Lurie) received the Leonard Berry AMA book of the year award. His work is highly cited (over 57,000 citations as of December 2024). He has been voted MBA teacher of the year (both at USC and Drucker).
Jaworski comes to the Drucker School from the Switzerland-based IMD, a highly regarded international business school. Prior to working at IMD, Jaworski spent a decade as a senior partner of the Monitor Group, a global management consulting firm. During his Monitor career, he co-founded and co-led two of the global practice areas, the e-commerce practice and the executive education unit. Among other activities, he was a senior team member of a number of significant multi-year corporate transformations for multinational clients in a variety of sectors, notably pharmaceuticals, biotech and medical devices.
From 1996 to 1999, Jaworski served as the Jeanne and David Tappan Marketing Fellow and a tenured full professor of marketing at the University of Southern California He has also served on the faculty at the University of Arizona and as a visiting professor at Harvard Business School as well as on the review boards of the Journal of Marketing, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, and the Journal of Marketing Research. He is the co-author four textbooks on e-commerce and two management focused books (the most recent “Creating the Organization of the Future” with Virginia Cheung). and has taught topics including leadership, corporate strategy, and service management.
About The Soul of Strategy - Building Customer-Centric Organizations: In The Soul of Strategy, Bernard J. Jaworski and David E. Sprott deliver an eye-opening new approach to business organizational strategy. The authors build on the classic work of Peter Drucker while retaining expanding in a current fashion a laser focus on the inescapable reality that the prime directive of every commercial firm is to create and keep paying its customers – whether it be a commercial business, a non-profit, NGO, or public sector organization. The book walks you through a comprehensive customer acquisition and retention strategy framework, and provides grounding the reader in core concepts related to intelligence gathering and customer behaviour.
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