Take this story from Tammy MacLeod, VP and Chief Customer Officer at Arizona Public Service Company, shared by our friends at 50 Lessons.  This company blew apart their perception that smiley call center representatives would be enough to provide sufficient customer satisfaction, let alone a great customer experience.

In our client work, we’ve seen people really struggle to “blow apart” their thinking.  To facilitate this, and guide them down the road to self-discovery, we bring a cross-section of senior leaders together and divide them into groups.  We charge the groups with the creation of an end product.

Inevitably, the groups toward the “front of the chain” focus on fulfilling their esoteric goals.  They take their time.  They (unintentionally) ignore the customer and their role in helping the other team provide value to the customer.  In the end, neither team meets its ultimate objectives because they’ve focused on their process far more than the customer’s needs.

To participate in such an exercise is to participate in the breakdown of a value chain.  It’s like a bucket of cold water in the face.  The debrief, often in combination with customer data, “kick-starts” leaders on their road to self-discovery and the creation of their own line-of-sight to their role in the value chain.  In Tammy MacLeod’s words, “it’s a huge wake-up call.”

In the real world, organizations that provide an outstanding customer experience have people who see the ‘line of sight’ to the customer from wherever they are in the organization. Everyone understands their role in the value chain, how it links to the next step in the chain, and how their actions ultimately impact the customer.

To learn more about Forum’s work in the area of Customer Experience, click here.

“When I was faster, I was always behind.”

Neil Young has provided the soundtrack to many parts of my life.  His lyrics capture life’s truths and offer glimpses into its mysteries.  (Plus, he just rocks.)  This quote from his song “Slowpoke” could be a soundtrack for the faster companies in our Strategic Speed research.    Faster companies have learned that speed of strategy execution is not about a fast rollout.  Nor is it about streamlined processes.  Companies which rely solely on these approaches find themselves “always behind.”

Jocelyn Davis, Forum’s EVP of R&D and co-author of Strategic Speed: Mobilize People, Accelerate Execution, recently discussed these issues with Art Petty, noted leadership and management thinker.  Art’s blog is a tremendous resource for leaders, and  it is always a pleasure to share ideas with him.

Click here to listen to Jocelyn link Neil Young’s “Slowpoke” lyrics to the acceleration of strategy execution.   For more on how Forum can work with you and your team to accelerate execution, please click here.

“What were they thinking?!”

Mark Hurst used these four words to capture his “love-to-hate” feelings for poorly designed web site experiences.  Although Mr. Hurst focused on web experiences, poor customer experiences happen everywhere.

Why is it so hard to create a great customer experience?

Part of it has to do with the end-to-end nature of the experience, which requires not just one department in a company, but the coordinated actions of many.  Even in a simple trip to the grocery store, customers touch multiple functional areas—all organized around  a variety of policies, procedures, and systems.  Done well, the customer never realizes just how many groups create their experience; great experiences are seamless to the customer.  But creating and delivering that seamless experience consistently requires the alignment and orchestration of the organization around it.  And this is where it can get difficult.

It’s kind of like the parable of the blind men and an elephant.  In this case, the elephant is the customer experience and the blind men represent the major functional areas—Marketing, HR, Operations, etc.  Each man thinks he is describing what an elephant is, but in reality he has described just one aspect of it—it is a rope (the tail), it is a tree branch (the trunk), etc.  Similarly, functional leaders working in silos believe the customer interactions they have primary responsibility for deliver the full force of the experience, when in fact they have delivered only a fraction of it.  In the place of a seamless delivery—the “elephant”—the experience becomes inconsistent.  Sure the customer gets all the elephant parts—the trunk, the tail, the leg, and so forth—but too frequently the parts are not connected in a way to make a complete, attractive elephant.  The various company departments, wearing the blinders of their functional silos, have stitched together something that the customer experiences as disconnected and unappealing.

Companies wondering why they have not realized the full benefit of their investment in the customer experience may want to consider how they are—or are not—organized around the customer experience.  Do their customers experience an appealing elephant or something else?  Are their employees able to see through the eyes of their customers, or is their sight impaired by their functional silo?

A week plus six or seven great (but not great enough) ideas later, and I was beset by writer’s block.  I couldn’t decide.  Now mind you, I practically write for a living—laying words on paper (or, more accurately, on the screen) consumes about 60 percent of my typical day.  And now, with a free dinner calling to me, I’m blocked?  What’s that about?  I don’t know about you, but when I’m blocked, I get a lot of other work done—a highly effective avoidance tactic.  So, as I was avoiding … rather, um analyzing the situation, it came to me that I blocked because suddenly the stakes were high.  Okay, in the grand scheme of things, dinner is not really high stakes.  But clearly, the stakes had been raised.  What if I wrote the wrong thing?

And then it came to me:  “blocking” is not unique to writing.  It’s also endemic to leadership.

Last winter I spoke with several senior leaders who expressed frustration that their people (themselves senior leaders) seem constitutionally unable to make decisions and take action when the stakes are high.  Rather than coming in with a decision, supporting reasons, and a series of actions, they ask the boss for a decision.  What if they decided the wrong thing?  Now, for me, the downside of the wrong blog post is that I buy dinner.  Oh, and I’ll be reminded of it for a good long while.  Contrast that with the upside of winning, which pretty much ends with dessert.

If we’re honest, the “wrong” decision in business has a much deeper, longer downside than the “right” decision.  How often do we recognize people for making the right decision (or for making one at all for that matter) versus “punishing” for the wrong one?  And circumstances dictate whether a decision is right or wrong.  No wonder leaders block, or freeze up.  As leaders, we want to create circumstances in which people weigh decisions by focusing on the risks that matter—not the personal impact of a wrong decision, but the business impact of the right one.

What can you, as a leader who needs people to step up with decisions, do to create these circumstances?

It’s true. After the first meeting with a sales person, the likelihood of the customer buying from the supplier is lower than it was when the customer made initial contact with the supplier’s web site, advertising, blog, or other media (see Forum research report, Navigating the Sales Funnel: Understanding How Customers Buy). Somehow salespeople are failing to meet important buyer expectations in their very first encounter. This gap lengthens sales cycles, reduces lead conversion rates, and provides an opening for competitors to enter.

So, did the salespeople in our research sample forget to wear deodorant? What does this statistic mean—and why should you care?

Today’s buyers already know a lot about your company before your salesperson shows up. Marketing organizations make more content available than ever before, through company web sites, webinars, blogs, and social media site profiles. Buyers are using these sources to research you. Sixty-four percent of senior executives are now going to the web more than six times per day in search of business information, according to a Forbes/Google study. When buyers agree to a sales meeting, they have already formed a favorable impression of your business—and they believe you can help them. They are already attracted to your brand, for reasons that are both conscious and unconscious to them.

So why can’t companies capitalize more effectively on this favorable customer disposition? Why is it that the meeting with the sales rep causes prospective customers to reconsider doing business with the supplier—and requires the rep to regain lost interest or confidence with the prospect? One reason, I believe, lies in salespeople not always behaving in ways prospective buyers are expecting, based on the marketing messaging of the supplier organization. A salesperson must not only quickly convey a relevant value proposition that is consistent with the company’s marketing messages, he or she must embody the company personality as well.

For example, your corporate messaging might convey your company as friendly and easy to do business with. The buyer finds this appealing and calls for a meeting. But, highly confident in your excellent products and services, your salesperson believes in sticking to your company’s reliable selling process. Somehow the prospect perceives the confidence as arrogance, and the process discipline as rigid and bureaucratic. A subtle but unmistakable mismatch arises between what the prospect expected and how the salesperson shows up. Even though your products and services are impeccable, this kind of missed expectation creates a drag on your sales potential, as the prospect considers whether another supplier might better fit what she was looking for.

Great salespeople have long understood that personality matters as much as the product/service offering. They learn to combine both in a highly effective sales strategy. How would you describe your company’s personality? Is your view consistent with that of your Marketing department (which owns branded messaging to the market)? Would your customers say that your salespeople and the other employees they encounter embody your company personality?

Days later, as my sister-in-law gardened, she spotted the kid and marched right up to him. Uh-oh … showdown!

But you know what she did?  She introduced herself.  She shook his hand, and welcomed him to the neighborhood.  She told him about herself, the other folks who live in their condo building, and how much pride they took in their garden and in keeping the neighborhood clean.  That was weeks ago.  No more eggs.

This story reminds me of the victim personalization tactics used by the senator in The Silence of the Lambs as she pleads with the psycho Buffalo Bill to return her daughter unharmed.  In a less macabre way, it’s a great example of using influence to change a behavior or overcome resistance.  This is always a hot topic when we work with leaders of organizational change and leaders in transition.  One framework we like to use in these situations is the Friends, Foes, Allies, and Adversaries relationship framework[1].

Friends and foes are people who support or oppose you unconditionally.  Friends are with you no matter what.  Foes are against you just because.  Allies and adversaries are people who support or oppose you, but that support or opposition is conditioned by self-interest.

This framework is helpful to consider when your business changes. When business changes, people’s goals and underlying motivations change, which means relationships change.  People who you never thought would support you, very well might – and so it’s important to review relationships.

But that’s the thing.  We tend to look at relationships as more cut and dried.  It’s like that old line, “You’re either with us or against us.” But when we stick with that polarizing mentality, we miss significant opportunities to advance our agenda because we don’t realize that most business relationships are conditional, and can change.

Now, back to the “egg bandit.”  My sister-in-law realized that she could turn this adversary into an ally.  Well, maybe not an ally, but at least someone who wouldn’t egg their condo. She influenced him by connecting personally and aligning to his (latent) needs to be a good guy and keep the neighborhood clean.  Had she treated him like a foe, and either ignored him or told him off, the local chickens would not have been able to keep up with egg demand.

How about you?  Have you reviewed your business relationships lately?  How have changes impacted other stakeholders’ own goals and agendas to make them more in line with your own?  Any adversaries you could convert, allies who need nurturing, or foes who would be a waste of time?  For more on Forum’s program and coaching on Leading Through Transitions, click here for a replay of a recent Forum webinar, or here for the slide deck.

The nurse’s friendly and assuring manner put my son at ease.

As we waited in the examination room, I overheard the nurse briefing the doctor on our case.  He told her about my son’s medical history and symptoms, and also shared his hypothesis about what caused the symptoms (nothing serious, fortunately).  Then, just before the doctor entered the examination room, the nurse said “One more thing:  Watch out for the alligator!”

I thought the “alligator warning” was pretty funny, as did the doctor.  But it also reminded me of research by Amy Edmondson (of Harvard) and others on how communication gets stifled in medical settings.  These researchers have found that, without a feeling of “psychological safety,” medical staff members are reluctant to point out problems or mistakes, which inhibits learning and threatens patients’ safety[1].  According to this reasoning, our nurse today did a “psychological safety” assessment and concluded that this was a place where it would be okay to joke about alligators.  In less receptive settings, the same comment might lead to the nurse being belittled, ignored, or considered “unprofessional.”

Does it matter if a nurse feels free to make a joke?  It matters a great deal, because the same psychological safety that enables humor also leads to a willingness to communicate in other ways.  For example, instead of “watch out for the alligator,” our nurse might have said, “I noticed a small lesion that could be nothing, but I suggest you check it out,” or “I’m concerned about a possible drug side effect.  Let me show you what he’s taking.”  Staff members in clinics that create a climate of open communication are able to learn continuously—and ultimately deliver better care.

What kind of climate does your company have?  Do people feel free to raise problems, issues, or ideas?  Do they use humor?  And, most important, do they warn each other about the alligators?

Forum interviewed futurist Bob Johansen for his take on what lies ahead.  (Spoiler alert:  More VUCA.)   Click on the link below for the condensed interview.

A participant in our June 17th webinar on strategic speed asked this great question. We hear this question a lot from clients and other business leaders. Scorecards and metrics play an important role in strategic speed. They relate to the “future state” of the organization and provide leaders with vehicles with which to communicate that direction throughout the company. They also provide a concise display of the impact of the strategy on the business. Mostly, though, scorecards and metrics define miracles.

Have you seen this cartoon: Two guys are looking at a chalkboard, mapping out a beginning and an end state, and in the middle they write: “And then a miracle occurs”? Those guys must work at a slower company. Faster organizations use scorecards to define that “miracle.” They connect intended business results to people. For example, they start with revenue-growth targets, then determine what customer responses are needed, if they are to hit those targets. From there, they identify the customer experience needed, if they are to obtain those responses. Finally, they describe the changes needed in people, processes, products/services, and climate, in order to drive the needed customer experience.

Problems with metrics arise when leaders focus excessively on lagging indicators—or when they don’t know exactly what to measure, and so just measure everything. For example, when Unilever began to execute on a new strategy (link requires log-in), one of its divisions collected data on 192 metrics. 192! Can you imagine how scattered (and, as a result, slow-moving) the Unilever people must have been?

Challenges aside, scorecards and metrics enhance strategic speed if they:

1. Connect business results to people
2. Involve a healthy mix of leading and lagging indicators
3. Are kept alive in discussions—and not left sitting in a binder somewhere
4. Are given time to work
5. Have teeth
6. Support organizational goals over and above functional/divisional goals
7. Measure the right things

In some ways, it all comes down to this last point: Are you measuring the right things? In the coming weeks, we’ll expand on your unique “value variables”—ways to identify them and measure them. Stay tuned!

This is just one of the more colorful quotes we heard in our case study interviews on Strategic Speed.  This quote, along with 18 other quotes like it, are in this slideshow.  Which quote is your favorite?