A Manager's Focus is to the Staff Not the Customers

A lot of fur is flying over on Tom Peter's Blog these days:

Only excited people can excite customers over the long haul—i.e., again & again.

Let's face it, not everyone is the direct face to the customer, but chances are people who work for you are.   So it is more important to have them excited about what you do and in turn they communicate that to the customers and you have happy customers.   So here's how it works:
1) You have a clear vision
2) Everyone on the team shares that clear vision
3) Everyone on the team is foaming at the mouth excited and proud of what you do
4) The customer is engaged

Does it work?  You bet it does.   Early in the 90's I had a clear vision of a new category of computing products.  We named them "appliances".   No one had ever heard of the term.   So I jumped up and down a lot.  Then my team jumped up and down a lot.  Built and delivered the product from scratch in 9 months, sold 10,000 units year 1 and won awards world wide.   

And how do you measure success?  I still stick by my 3 tier metrics.