Today's newspapers are all reporting on the "fiasco" (their headlines) customers experienced in trying to buy the new iPhone and activate them in a reasonable manner.  Apparently a problem with Apple's iTune servers prevented complete and timely phone activations.

With all of the customer dis-satisfaction generated, the obvious question is: "How well did Apple examine and test its rollout protocols?"  What assumptions did they make that had no foundation?

While Apple's failure is very public, many organizations struggle through the same issue, albiet with less public exposure, when they bring on new customers.  This type of failure usually develops because of a failure to understand the basic process of your workflows, not understanding the strengths and weaknesses of your systems backbone, and not forcing your team to practice for the key event that can establish a happy long-term customer.

Strong leaders and managers have a micro understanding of their workflows, and understand where in that process breakdowns could occur.  If you don't have that understanding, our first book, Positioning Success, can provide you the questions to ask.  It can be ordered from our Home page.  Our third book, Retaining Success (due out this fall), can do the same for your understanding of your systems backbone.