People-focused knowledge management

The Situation
Sales of Asterix Consolidated’s large trucks, its major product line
and the market leader, were declining. That happened in spite of
recent innovations and new product features requested by customers.
The decline seemed to continue, and unless sales picked up, drastic
and undesirable steps would be required. Sales and Marketing did
not have a clear picture of why sales were down — and that was a
real problem. Recently, Asterix had also lost two large follow-up sales
to long-time fleet customers. In both cases Asterix had been short-
listed and had felt that it was both price and feature competitive to
the point that it expected to win. The debriefing meetings had not
provided concrete reasons for why Asterix lost. So, what was wrong?
What did the company need to change?
Information Gathering
Ken Haas, Asterix chairman and CEO, frustrated that no one
seemed to know, or had been willing to tell him why such a serious
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situation had developed, created a taskforce to investigate in-depth.
He chose four midlevel people known for their vigilance: an outside
trucking industry expert and one expert each from Marketing, 
Manufacturing, and Research and Development (R&D). The team
arranged to visit existing and potential customers to talk to both
senior executives and rank-and-file representatives. After one week’s
intensive work and travel, the team had been surprised by what they
were told, although other customers had earlier voiced similar opin-
ions. The companies they visited were quite critical of Asterix, and
all shared much the same opinions. That information had never been
assembled into a single, coherent message, however. Over the
weekend, the team organized their findings in a brief report that 
summarized the situation.