Winning on Purpose

Preface

The Genesis of Net Promoter

Just a few weeks before my sixty-fifth birthday, I awoke from an anesthesia-induced sleep to hear my doctor pronounce six dreaded words: “You have a large malignant tumor.”

Talk about a bracing wake-up call. Later that day, I followed the nurse’s instructions to hold my breath and remain motionless while the unyielding gantry glided me through the CT scan machine. As barium-contrast dye pumped through my veins to ferret out just how far my cancer had spread, it struck me that no matter what the radiologist discovered, my clock was ticking. As usual, my head was full of ideas that I wanted to share. But this time was different. If I failed to get those thoughts down on paper, and if I reached the end of my ...