Your annual conference looks like the annual conference two associations down the hall. Same opening keynote. Same breakout grid. Same sponsor booth carpet. Same networking reception nobody enjoys.

That format exists because it always has. That’s the only reason. Nobody defends it. They just don’t question it.

Differentiation Is Subtraction

Every meaningful change to an event format is a decision to stop doing something. Not a feature — a subtraction.

• Stop assuming a business event needs a ballroom. A restaurant everyone already knows is cheaper, warmer, and repeatable across cities.
• Stop assuming audiences remember the pitch. They don’t. Shorten the blocks and hire someone whose entire job is doing the remembering for the room.
• Stop assuming networking works. Open networking rewards the loudest person present. Curated one-on-one meetings, matched by fit, do what the reception only pretends to.
• Stop assuming breaking the rule is enough. A clever format with no credibility is a stunt. Institutional partners make a new rule legible.

None of that is revolutionary. It’s subtraction. Differentiation is what’s left after you delete the assumptions.

Where AI Actually Earns Its Keep

Here is the part people get wrong. They think the move is to open a chatbot and type “design me a better conference.” That prompt gets you the same ballroom with a new name.

AI does three specific jobs here. Judgment stays with you.

Job one: the assumption audit

Paste a standard run-of-show and ask for every assumption baked into it — venue, timing, format, who talks, who listens, how people meet. You are not asking for fixes. You are asking for the inventory.

Job two: the hostile attendee

Ask it to play the person you most need in the room — with a full calendar and forty unread invitations — and to tell you exactly why she’d skip your event. The objections you can’t hear from inside the organization come out immediately.

Job three: the rejection pile

Ask for twenty alternative formats, and tell it the six you already threw out and why. That last part matters. Feed it your rejections and the next twenty come back sharper instead of recycled.

Then close the laptop. AI does not pick the venue. AI does not know which summarizer can hold a room. AI has not spent forty years watching planners forget speakers. It surfaces the questions. You make the calls.

Your Move This Week

Pull up next year’s conference schedule. Run the assumption audit. Don’t fix anything yet — just count how many assumptions you inherited from whoever ran the event before you.

Then pick one. Delete it. Build the day without it.

That’s what differentiation costs: one assumption, removed on purpose. It is THINKRUPTCY™ applied to a calendar.

Running the audit is the easy part. Knowing which assumption to kill is the part that takes a second opinion with forty years behind it. Start a conversation.

The post Your Annual Meeting Looks Like Everyone Else’s appeared first on James D. Feldman, CSP, CITE, CPIM Shift Happens!®.

Most associations are paying enterprise AI prices for intern-level output. The tool isn’t the problem. The thinking behind it is.

Here is what that looks like in practice, and the 3D Thinking™ fix for each one.

1. You’re running everything through one setting

Committee minutes and strategic member research don’t need the same horsepower — but most staff use whichever tool is already open.

The fix: Match effort to stakes. Fast and cheap for routine drafting. Deep and deliberate for anything a board will read. Depth means knowing which problem you’re actually solving before you pick the tool.

2. Board business and member business are bleeding together

One long-running chat thread for everything means confidential board discussion can leak context into a public-facing newsletter draft.

The fix: Separate threads by purpose — governance, membership, marketing. Never one thread for all three. Distance means seeing the workflow the way a member would if it went wrong.

3. Your member emails read like everyone else’s AI output

Associations run on decades of earned trust. A newsletter that sounds like a bot wrote it spends that trust down fast — and members notice before staff do.

The fix: Build a house-voice reference and make every draft pass through it. Your voice is an asset; treat it like one.

4. Nobody’s asking “should this be automated at all?”

Not every touchpoint should be AI-assisted. A form renewal reminder, sure. A retiring 30-year member’s thank-you note — that’s a human’s job.

The fix: Sort touchpoints into three buckets before automating any of them: automate, assist, leave alone. The associations getting this wrong are automating the moments that were never about efficiency.

5. There’s no policy, so everyone’s improvising

Without a shared standard, five staffers use five tools five different ways — and leadership finds out only when something goes wrong publicly.

The fix: A one-page AI use policy. It isn’t bureaucracy, it’s a floor. Determination means someone owns the standard, by name, with a review date.

The Pattern Underneath

None of these five is a technology problem. Every one is an inherited assumption nobody has priced — which makes the whole list a THINKRUPTCY™ waiting to be filed.

Ask the one-line test of each habit on this page: is this a wall, or is it a bill I’ve just gotten used to paying?

Start a conversation about the AI use policy for your association.

The post 5 AI Habits Quietly Draining Your Association’s Budget appeared first on James D. Feldman, CSP, CITE, CPIM Shift Happens!®.

Companies bought enterprise AI licenses by the hundreds. Twelve months later, most cannot name one workflow that changed. The tool didn’t fail. Nobody gave it a job.

The Bankrupt Belief

Better tools guarantee better outcomes.

It is the most expensive assumption in business technology, and it survives because it feels obviously true. Buy the better thing, get the better result.

Except the ball never once refused to go in the net. The ball does exactly what it was struck to do. So does AI.

When a team loses, the whole conversation becomes: was it the players or the coach? Wrong question. It is the same wrong question your organization asks about AI — did the tool fail, or did our people fail?

Blame is a lagging indicator. Clarity is a leading one.

The Cost

Here is what the blame debate is costing you.

The licenses got bought. A year passed. Nothing named itself as changed. So the organization launched a pilot program.

Let me be blunt: your pilot program is where AI goes to die.

A pilot with no kill date and no scale date isn’t an experiment. It’s theater — a way to look busy while avoiding the only decision that matters: what job is this tool actually doing?

And when the pilot fizzles, the verdict comes down. AI failed us.

No. You never gave it a job.

The 3D Thinking™ Reframe

You would never hire a human with the job description “just be helpful.” No role. No metrics. No owner. No deadline.

That is the entire AI deployment strategy at most organizations.

So stop asking whether AI works. Start asking the three questions that make up 3D Thinking™:

• Depth — what specific problem loses us money every week?
• Distance — what would this look like solved 90 days from now?
• Determination — who owns the outcome, by name?

Tools don’t fail. Assignments do.

One Move

Write AI a job description. One page. Today.

Name the problem. Name the measure. Name the owner. Name the date you’ll know whether it worked.

If you can’t fill in that last line, the tool was never your problem.

Strategy first. AI second. That is the whole of AI Sauce™ — a little enhances everything, too much ruins the dish.

This is THINKRUPTCY™ applied to the single most expensive belief in the building: that buying the tool was the decision. It wasn’t. Assigning it is.

Start a conversation about the job description for your organization — built on your expertise, not generic advice.

The post AI Didn’t Fail You. You Never Gave It a Job. appeared first on James D. Feldman, CSP, CITE, CPIM Shift Happens!®.

Captain Kirk beat the unbeatable test by changing the test. The lesson is not that he cheated — it is that he was the only one who asked who wrote the rule.

There is a scene in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan that every entrepreneur should study.

Starfleet Academy built a training simulation called the Kobayashi Maru — a rescue mission engineered so that no matter what a cadet does, they lose. It is not a test of skill. It is a test of how you behave when losing is the only outcome available.

Kirk took it three times. On the third attempt he reprogrammed the simulation itself, quietly, before it ever started, so the no-win scenario could be won. Starfleet gave him a commendation for original thinking.

The Part Most People Miss

Kirk didn’t win by cheating. He won by asking the one question nobody else in that simulation bothered to ask: who decided this had to be unwinnable — and are they still around?

That is the difference between a hack and an audit.

A hack breaks a rule to grab an advantage. An audit asks whether the rule ever deserved to survive in the first place.

Most businesses try to win by working harder inside a system nobody has inspected in years. Lower the price. Add a feature. Send one more email. Work one more Saturday. Kirk did something different. He didn’t out-work the simulation. He out-audited it.

Great entrepreneurs — the ones who actually move markets — don’t just ask “how do I solve this problem?” They ask “who decided these were the only options, and is that still true?”

That’s the Whole Premise Behind THINKRUPTCY™

You don’t file bankruptcy on the business. You file it on the belief that has been quietly running the business since before you remember deciding it.

Uber didn’t build a better taxi. Netflix didn’t build a better video store. Airbnb didn’t build another hotel chain. Every one of them filed bankruptcy on a belief the entire industry was still servicing.

What It Looks Like When You Actually Do It

Theory is easy to nod along with. Here is a room built on the audit, with no metaphor attached.

The Exchange runs one day in Chicago with the International Platform Association, at Maggiano’s Little Italy. It breaks nearly every assumption the speaker-showcase format carries:

• Showcases should be open-door. Every meeting planner in the room is vetted first. An open door was never a feature. It was just a default.
• More speakers means more revenue. Only Certified Speakers are invited, capped at 28. Fewer speakers means every buyer meeting is worth having. Scarcity isn’t a limitation here. It’s the product.
• A business event needs a ballroom. Maggiano’s has 50 locations nationwide. That is not a venue preference — it is a franchise-able template hiding inside a lunch reservation.
• Audiences remember the pitch. They don’t. Showcase blocks run seven minutes each, and Dale Irvin closes every block as the professional summarizer, doing the remembering on the room’s behalf.
• Networking is efficient. It isn’t, for anyone. The day closes with curated one-on-one buyer meetings, matched by fit rather than chance.
• Breaking the rule is enough. On its own, it isn’t. A clever format with no credibility is a stunt. The Exchange runs alongside the National Speakers Association and a major meetings-industry publication — institutional partners who make the new rule legible.

Kirk reprogrammed a simulation. This reprogrammed an industry format, and got the institutions to co-sign it.

When You Hit Your Own Kobayashi Maru

The no-win quarter. The no-win negotiation. The org chart that no longer makes sense. Don’t reach for more effort.

Reach for the audit. Ask who wrote the rule. Ask if they’re still in the room. Ask if the rule ever deserved the authority you’ve been giving it.

Shift Happens when you stop treating the problem as permanent.

Read the full THINKRUPTCY™ framework, or start a conversation.

The post The Test Everyone Assumed Was Rigged appeared first on James D. Feldman, CSP, CITE, CPIM Shift Happens!®.

In January 2026, a $145 charge appeared on my UPS account that was not mine. Nine months later, UPS closed the account for non-payment of that same invoice — the one they had already agreed I never owed.

Nobody at UPS decided to lose me. That is the problem, and it is the reason this story is worth your time.

I have shipped with UPS for decades. Not occasionally. Constantly. Books, workbooks, kits for keynotes, materials for clients on three continents. If loyalty were a frequent-flyer program, I would have been platinum for life.

What Actually Happened

January. A $145 charge appeared on my account. It was not shipped from my address. It was not shipped to any client I have ever had.

So I called. And called. Dozens of calls, and an amount of time on hold I could have used to write another book. Every person was polite. Every person was powerless.

August. The charge was finally removed. You’d think that was the end. It wasn’t.

Without telling me, UPS had been charging interest on the phantom invoice the entire time. More calls. The interest came off too.

September. UPS closed my account. Reason given: non-payment of the January invoice. The one they had already agreed was never mine.

I was routed to a department. Twenty minutes on hold. The person who finally answered was not in my region and had no access to my account. Transferred again. On hold again.

Nine months. One wrong charge. Zero people who could fix it.

This Is Not a UPS Story

I could tell you UPS is broken. That would be satisfying and useless. UPS has good people, a great logistics engine, and a billing system that cannot see the customer standing behind the invoice.

Here is what actually happened. Five separate systems each did exactly what they were built to do. Billing billed. Collections collected. Interest accrued. Account status flipped. Routing routed. Every one of them performed correctly.

That is THINKRUPTCY™: when the thinking behind the process went bankrupt years ago, and nobody noticed because the process kept running.

So here is the question I want you to sit with. What about your company? Which of your systems is, right now, doing exactly what it was told to do to a customer who has been with you for twenty years?

You won’t find out by asking your team. They’ll tell you everything is fine. They told UPS that too.

Five Steps So Your Customer Never Lives This Story

These are not about being nicer on the phone. They are about changing what the system is allowed to do without a human in the loop.

1. Make the systems talk before they act

The billing system removed my charge in August. The collections system never got the memo. The account-status system never got the memo. Three databases, three versions of the truth.

Ask one question in your next operations meeting: when a dispute is opened on an account, does every downstream system know within the hour? Not by email. Automatically.

AI Sauce: This is the lowest-hanging fruit in the building. A simple agent watches for a “dispute opened” event and freezes interest, collections, and account-status changes until the dispute closes.

2. Weight the customer, not the invoice

My account was closed over $145 while my lifetime spend with UPS would buy a very nice car. No one weighed those two numbers against each other because no one was asked to.

Set a rule: any adverse action on an account — interest, suspension, closure — above a certain customer-value threshold requires a human to approve it.

AI Sauce: Your CRM already knows tenure, spend, and dispute history. Have AI surface a one-paragraph brief before any adverse action: “This customer has been with us 40 years. Are you sure?”

3. Give the first human the power to end it

Every person I spoke to could sympathize. None could act. That is not a training problem. That is a permissions problem, and permissions are a leadership decision.

Pick a dollar figure. Give every frontline person the authority to resolve anything under it on the first call. No transfer, no ticket, no callback.

AI Sauce: Use AI to draft the resolution note and log the credit in real time while the agent is still on the phone, so “I’ll take care of it” means done, not submitted.

4. Kill the region wall

Twenty minutes on hold to reach someone who could not see my account because I was in the wrong region. The customer does not have a region. The customer has a problem.

If your routing sends a customer anywhere that can’t serve them, that’s not a queue, it’s a trap. Audit every transfer path.

AI Sauce: Before the call routes, AI reads the account, identifies the issue type, and sends the call to the one queue that can actually close it.

5. Tell the customer before the customer finds out

I found out about the interest by accident. I found out about the closure by trying to ship. Every surprise was UPS’s to prevent and mine to discover.

Any change to a customer’s account status, any new charge, any fee, gets communicated proactively, in plain language, with a name attached and a way to reply. Silence is not neutral. Silence is where loyalty goes to die.

AI Sauce: An agent drafts the notice the moment the status changes: “James, we’ve applied interest to a disputed charge. If you believe this is in error, reply here and we’ll pause it.” Human reviews, human sends. Ninety seconds. Nine months of my life saved.

The Takeaway

UPS did not lose me on any single call. They lost me in the space between systems that were never asked to think about the same customer at the same time.

Go find that space in your company. It’s there. It’s quiet. And right now, it’s doing exactly what it was told.

Shift Happens!® The only question is whether you see it coming.

James D. Feldman, CSP is a keynote speaker, business strategist, and AI implementation consultant. He doesn’t explain AI. He solves your problem with it. This account describes his own experience as a UPS customer.

Read the full THINKRUPTCY™ framework or start a conversation.

The post The $145 That Cost UPS a 40-Year Customer appeared first on James D. Feldman, CSP, CITE, CPIM Shift Happens!®.

AI SAUCE DIGEST #1,313 

For Hospitality, Tourism & MICE Professionals

Thursday Edition  •  Shift Happens!®  •  James D. Feldman, CSP

Not because your property wasn’t right for the group.

Not because your sales manager didn’t work hard.

Because the competing property knew things your team didn’t. They knew what room rates the market was running. They knew the client had been burned by a similar venue six months ago. They knew the meeting planner’s top priority was F&B flexibility, not square footage.

They walked in with intelligence. You walked in with a brochure.

That gap has a name. It’s called competitive blind spots. And it costs properties millions in lost group business every year.

Meet the Research Tool Your Competitors Aren’t Using Yet.

It’s called Perplexity. And right now, it’s the most underused competitive advantage in group sales.

Here’s the simplest way to describe it: Perplexity is what you’d get if Google and ChatGPT had a smarter, more honest child. You ask it a research question. It searches the live web in real time, reads the actual sources, synthesizes the answer — and then shows you exactly where every piece of information came from.

No hallucinations. No stale training data. No wading through twelve pages of search results hoping to find the one paragraph that matters.

Just answers. With receipts.

Why Not Just Use Google? Or ChatGPT?

Fair question. Here’s the honest answer.

Google gives you links. You still have to click, read, synthesize, and decide what matters. For a quick search, fine. For competitive research before a high-stakes RFP? You’re spending two hours you don’t have.

ChatGPT is brilliant at synthesis — but its knowledge has a cutoff date. Ask it about a competitor’s current group rates or a recently renovated ballroom and it may confidently give you information that’s a year out of date. In a market moving as fast as hospitality, that’s a liability.

Perplexity does what neither does alone. It pulls live data from the web, synthesizes it the way ChatGPT would, and cites every source so you can verify anything that matters. It’s faster than Google. It’s more current than ChatGPT. And for competitive intel, it’s in a different league than both.

Here’s What This Looks Like Before Your Next RFP Response.

Picture this: A meeting planner sends you an RFP for a 200-person corporate retreat. Three competing properties are already on the short list. You have 48 hours to respond.

The old playbook: pull your standard proposal template, fill in the dates and room counts, maybe tweak the F&B package, and hit send.

The Perplexity playbook: spend 20 minutes doing what your competitors won’t.

• Ask Perplexity what the competing properties have been promoting for group business in the last 90 days.
• Ask it what recent reviews say about their event execution — specifically from meeting planners, not leisure guests.
• Ask it what that client company’s recent events have looked like — themes, locations, headcounts, any public coverage.
• Ask it what group travel trends are dominant in that client’s industry right now.

Now you’re not just responding to an RFP. You’re responding to this client, at this moment, with real awareness of what they’ve seen before and what your competition is putting on the table.

That’s not a marginal improvement. That’s a different conversation entirely.

Your Copy-Paste Competitor Research Prompt

Go to perplexity.ai, start a new search, and paste this in. Replace the brackets with your specifics.

Run that once. Read what comes back. You’ll know more about your competitive landscape in 20 minutes than most properties learn in a month.

And because Perplexity cites its sources, if something looks off — or critically important — you can click straight through to the original article, review, or press release.

The Bigger Picture: Intelligence Is Now a Sales Skill.

The best group sales people have always been the best-prepared ones. They knew the client. They knew the competition. They walked in with context.

What’s changed is the cost of that preparation. It used to take hours. A skilled researcher, a dedicated pre-sales process, subscriptions to industry intelligence tools.

Now it takes 20 minutes and a free account at perplexity.ai.

The properties that figure this out first aren’t just going to win more RFPs. They’re going to win the ones that matter — the high-value groups, the repeat clients, the planners who remember who showed up prepared.

AI isn’t replacing your sales team. It’s making the good ones unstoppable

Want to Know Where Else Your Team Has Competitive Blind Spots?

I work with hospitality and MICE teams to identify exactly where AI tools like Perplexity can plug into your sales process, your RFP workflow, and your pre-event research — and build a plan to make it stick.

If you’re curious what a 90-day AI implementation roadmap looks like for your property, let’s talk.

➡  Reply to this email to book a consulting call with James.

jfeldman@shifthappens.com  •  www.shifthappens.com

Know a group sales manager who’s still doing comp research the old way? Forward this.

A little AI sauce enhances everything. Too much ruins it.

— James D. Feldman, CSP  |  The AI Concierge  |  ShiFt Happens!®

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There are a plethora of “best practices” to accomplish the journey to bright ideas, however, leaders are often puzzled as to how to tackle this work and where to begin. Experiential learning moves participants from conversations about the topic to practical solutions.

For decades organizations have struggled with creating a culture of sustainable productivity. How do you tie strategy, vision, mission, goals, metrics, and employees all together to create a culture that thrives?

Most organizations have put all their eggs in one of these baskets; however, the answer lies in integrating them all. Our ultimate goal should be to create something sustainable long after we leave. It has to be woven into the fabric of the organization.

It requires a “cultural shift” transformation. So, let’s talk about the RECIPE for success and how each ingredient integrates with the others to form a well-baked, highly productive, sustainable organization.

Servant Leadership

The first ingredient is usually assumed and taken for granted but is essential to a healthy organization. I call it “Servant” Leadership. Servant leadership is a leadership philosophy in which the primary goal of the leader is to serve. This is different from traditional leadership, where the leader’s primary focus is the thriving of their company or organization. Organizations that embrace servant leadership operate with the client, customer, and employees’ needs in mind. They recognize that serving their “constituents” develops loyalty and trust that ultimately creates positive vibes and an environment of success.

Vision

Every employee must have a clear understanding of where the organization is headed. Without a Vision, the people perish. Establish a clear, precise vision that is the “north star.” I often ask organizations if your 5-year idea was across the room and you walked into it, what would it look or feel like? Develop a vision without regard to any restraints. What would you like the organization to look like five years from now ultimately?

Mission

Most organizations have mission statements. However, they cover an entire page, and often most employees do not know what it is. The mission statement is the call to action. It tells the organization what it is committed to doing. For instance, “Using our portfolio of brands to differentiate our content, services, and consumer products, we seek to develop the most creative, innovative and profitable entertainment experiences and related products in the world.” – Walt Disney. The mission statement is the most critical piece of information that each employee should be given. I encourage organizations to put it on the back of their business cards, open each meeting with the mission statement, and include it in email signatures.

SWOT Analysis

The one area where many organizations fail is understanding their Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. Organizations need to do an open and honest assessment of what’s working and what needs improvement. Success is when organizations leverage their strengths, address weaknesses, seize opportunities and mitigate any threats.

Strategic Priorities

Based on the assessment of the organization’s results, the vision, and the mission of the organization, strategic priorities should reflect the top areas that need to be addressed. Usually, 5 to 6 strategic priorities enable the organization to achieve its mission. These priorities provide the marching orders for all departments to collaborate and serve as a check and balance on where budget and resources should be applied.

Performance Management Scorecards

Measuring success is critical! I often tell organizations that you have to be willing to get on a scale if you want to lose weight. Organizations have to be ready to measure their performance based on data. Balanced Scorecards of Key Performance Indicators tell you if what you are doing is working. It also highlights areas of concern and allows organizations to take action quickly.

High-Performance Teams

Lastly, an essential component of any organization is its people. Many organizations take for granted the need to engage employees. Statistics show that organizations thrive when employees are engaged. Also, employees who are engaged perform better. So how do we engage employees and get them committed to the organization’s vision, mission, and strategic priorities? I recommend High-Performance Teams. The standard definition of a high-performance team is a group of people who share a shared vision, goals, and metrics and challenge and hold each other accountable to drive results. They have a clear picture of where they are headed and what they want to accomplish.

I encourage organizations to build teams that work on goals that tie to the strategic priorities. At Palm Beach County, we have created “Stat” Cross-Department and Cross-Functional teams that use data to analyze processes, review metrics, and propose solutions. Crews are using the principles of Lean Six Sigma to reduce waste, make processes lean, and drive a culture of continuous process improvement. Best practices for developing these teams include ensuring cross-discipline representation, using data to define problems and solutions, leaving titles at the door, and relentless follow-up and accountability.

So there you have the recipe: Servant Leadership, Vision, Mission, SWOT Analysis, Strategic Priorities, Performance Scorecards, and High-Performance Teams. The integration of these ingredients will drive sustainable and, lastly, productivity and a culture of continuous process improvement to ensure that Shift Happens.

The post Shift Happens When Your Create Sustainable Productivity appeared first on James D. Feldman, CSP, CITE, CPIM Shift Happens!®.

Every company will face that crossroad when innovation forces a discussion about how or when to shift. I was part of many discussions from market leaders that were anxious about change management and start focusing too much on short-term financial results, think about Kodak, Fotomat, Blockbuster, Sears, K-Mart, and Polaroid.

Customer experience transformation requires engaged board oversight. If executed correctly, it will change your business model. It should! That means you redefined yourself successfully and you found innovative ways to meet changing customer needs and expectations. To meet the needs of the empowered 21st Century consumer, most companies, especially larger enterprises, need to embark on a customer experience transformation.

Imagine a car manufacturer that does not allow any vehicle customization or a retail bank with no app-based self-service. Customer experience transformation is an expensive, years-long journey. But for companies who want to serve the customers of the future, it is imperative.

While this sounds like a daunting task (and a risky business case), you cannot afford to avoid it. Especially if you are a large firm, the time is now to figure out the how-to of a customer experience transformation.

Remember Kodak? The now hardware and software company invented digital photography. However, it failed to make the difficult decision to transform, invest, and innovate. As a result, their name disappeared from the landscape of the new-age film and photography industry. I was the keynote speaker to a large group of Kodak executives during the time they made the decision to ‘ignore’ digital and continue to FOCUS on film.

That shifted the future of Kodak from which there would be no return to ‘normal.’

Introduce Your C-Suite to Customer Experience Transformation
Start with the C-Suite because difficult choices accompany transformation, you need their buy-in and support. In many cases, transformation forces your organization to stop doing things that have worked in the past. This is the most difficult step of a successful customer experience transformation. It is also the most important.

So, when you get anxious about change management and start focusing too much on short-term financial results, think about Kodak. Customer experience transformation requires engaged board oversight. If executed correctly, it will change your business model. It should! That means you redefined yourself successfully and you found innovative ways to meet changing customer needs and expectations.

Executive Owner Engagement
Customer experience transformation is exactly that – transformation. With transformation comes responsibility. And the need for a deep understanding of two essential elements: the current state of your experience, and the desired future state of your business.

A well-executed transformation retains elements of your core brand that made you successful up to the point of transformation. Then, you are able to bring those core elements into the new version of your organization, enriching your overall experience and brand ethos.

Of course, one of the more challenging pieces of the puzzle is identifying those evergreen, competitive elements of your strategy and brand identity in order to safeguard them and carry your brand into the future. Knowing you need this is not the same as being able to execute it. To do so, you need an executive-level strategic thinker with cross-industry experience to own your customer experience transformation.

Think Customer, Think Transformation
So, when is the right time for customer experience transformation? We present this question with the understanding that investment in transformation is a significant financial risk and a real disruption. So, while the answer is not simple. This advice holds: the time for customer experience transformation is when the trends of how we live reveal a new environment (a new reality) that is entirely separate from your brand experience.

However, the time for transformation can be even more obvious than that. Again, remember Kodak. When a new set of customer expectations exists for a product or service that you do or can provide, but you have not designed your business to meet those expectations, it is time to transform your experience.

Banking Experiences
Let’s imagine you are a money manager, and your client base is age forty and younger. If you lack a digital, intuitive self-service experience that enables investors to see and manage their portfolios, start your customer experience transformation.

Ten years ago, we built trust with phone calls and drinks in the clubhouse. People had personal relationships with their investors. The business of moving money was done in person. It may be hard for an old, established bank to face the shift towards the self-service digitally-enabled movement of money. But the truth is, today, we build trust with seamless, intuitive digital experience, as well as in-person interactions.

I am not suggesting you stop building personal relationships. Rather, I am saying do not miss the boat on digital experience. Digital experience can build trust because it gives your customers flexibility and independence in any situation. They can rely on you anywhere in the world to help with transactions and problems. So, no need to worry about the digital experience being impersonal. Digital is personal. It empowers you to be there for your clients wherever they are.

Travel Experiences
If you are an airline in the post-COVID world and, historically you have catered to the business traveler, it is time to start your customer experience transformation. A business traveler travels with fewer bags, works on the plane, and knows their flight attendant by name.

The post-COVID leisure traveler has more bags, more anxiety (that you can address with entertainment in flight), and asks more questions in order to feel reassured that travel is safe.

If, historically, your experience prioritized business traveler needs, now is the time time to look at your experience through the lens of a leisure traveler. Give yourself honest feedback on how well you are meeting those needs.

The New You
Remember, the New You retains the essence of your brand and the evergreen competitive features of your business.

It also has new processes, technology, and product mix. And it brings in new people. Unfortunately, customer experience transformation brings organizational restructuring and culture revitalization. In other words, you will likely lose approximately 20% of your staff. I know it is hard to read (and even harder to execute), but keep in mind that with new ways of thinking, you will contradict the old way of thinking.

There will be people who will resist the change. There will be people who will not be willing to reskill, there will be people that will resent your new culture and will not let the change you need happen especially if they are in leadership roles. Make the right leadership calls for your business, no matter how hard they are because a customer transformation for the thousands of employees is more important than the 15-20 uncomfortable conversations you will need to have with the leaders that are not coming on board.

Customer Experience Transformation is not always necessary. However, when it is, there is no substitute for it. So, embrace transformation, structure it well at the top, fund it well, and let it take care of you for the long haul. And remember, consulting firms like ours exist so that you are not alone on this exciting journey of success and growth.

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As we return to our ‘new normal’ many will consider whether or not to return to the ‘old’ job or shift to another. Certainly, telecommuting has shown us that working from home may be more productive, offer more freedom, and allow for more flexibility than returning to the office. Most of us are evaluating the old way or the new way as we ask ourselves, What If? What’s Next? What’s Possible? and Why Not?

Job transitions can be stressful—whether they’re due to the pandemic, layoff, a new job, or working extra hours because others workers were laid off. If you’re facing one, consider the following tips to help you to ensure that a successful shift happens.

1. Take an honest look at yourself. What are your strengths, weaknesses, skills? How did those influence—positively or negatively—your transition?

2. Step up your self-care. Major changes are physically and emotionally taxing. You need self-care now more than ever.

3. Engage your curiosity. What went wrong, or right? What could you have done better? What worked really well?

4. Focus on what you want, and less on what you don’t want. Keep your eye on the prize.

5. Find support. Since your transition affects your family as well, it may be better to seek the outside support of friends or professionals.

6. Work on your thoughts. Calm your fears and reinforce your sense of hope and happiness.

7. Reassure (or avoid) those who are threatened by, or jealous of, the change.

8. Create your own rite of passage. Ceremony and ritual help with all transitions.

9. Let go of how things were “supposed to be” and accept “how things are.” Find appreciation for what is.

10. Keep things in perspective. Or try on a new perspective. Don’t get stuck. Remember, the only constant is change.

For more suggestions or a complimentary advisory call please reach out to me. http://jfa.tips/MyBizCard http://jfa.tips/MyBooks

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