CHAPTER 8Leading for the Future of Services

What great service leaders know: their current beliefs about the future of services are wrong.

What great service leaders do: they build agile service organizations that learn, innovate, and adapt.

When he was asked recently about the future, Herb Kelleher, CEO emeritus of Southwest Airlines, who was well known for cultivating a freewheeling image to go with Southwest’s culture, commented that, “I’ve always tried to look a little bit ahead, at least when I’m sober—and when I’m not, I look way ahead!”1

Fourteen views of the future of services that we’ve expressed or implied throughout the book are presented in the sidebar. To these we have added a 15th to reflect the discussion to come. All were formed ...

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