Be Different or be dead

February 27, 2017

7 easy ways leaders can think creatively to achieve their goals

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It’s not good enough to rely on traditional methods; leaders must think differently to create value for their organizations.

The “silver bullet” for leaders is to loosen up on the process for setting business goals and tighten up on execution required to achieve them.

Organizations are trapped in the traditional business planning process of lengthy analysis, subject matter expert presentations and application of theoretical strategy-building precepts promulgated by consultants and academics.

What theoretically makes sense rarely works in the real world where people, technology, changing priorities, regulations and the unpredictable all collide in a “perfect storm”.

I come from the practical side of business.

I believe that if you can’t execute the strategy in a world of imperfection, the strategy is useless. After all, results are more interesting than the theoretical brilliance of the plan and the extent to which it conforms to pedantic norms.

Here are 7 ways leaders can think differently to achieve their strategic goals.

▪️Spend 20% of your time on WHAT you want to achieve; 80% on how you intend to achieve it. Execution detail is generally given the short shrift.

For some reason leaders assume they can pronounce a new strategy to the organization and miraculously it will get implemented. Nonsense. The granularity of your implementation plan will determine your success.

▪️Get comfortable with not getting it exactly right. We have this phobia about getting the business plan perfect. We spend an additional 4 weeks of planning time trying to make it more perfect.

It’s a ridiculous notion for two reasons: first there is no such thing as a perfect anything so stop trying to chase the illusion; second, as soon as your strategy is put to bed, it’s obsolete as unpredicted environmental events are felt.

▪️A strategy really understood is one that can be broken down into a handful of objectives intended to successfully execute it.

An action plan with 25 things to do suggests that the team that created the strategy doesn’t clearly understand it well enough to focus on the critical few actions necessary as opposed to the many possible actions that could be taken.

Focus on the must not the possible.

▪️Beware of the yummy incoming. Yummy is my way of describing over-the-transom demand that might be fun to chase, but it’s off strategy.

Ignore off-strategy demands on your time and resources, you can’t afford them. Stay on strategy and have the guts to turn away opportunities that suck you dry.

▪️Establish role clarity for everyone in the organization in terms of what they have to do execute flawlessly.
Dysfunction occurs when direct line of sight for people hasn’t been defined and included in performance plans.

▪️Cut the Crap! Stop doing the unnecessary so you can execute the necessary. It’s impossible to take on the new stuff when you won’t let go of the old stuff.

You don’t need more resources, you need to get rid of stuff that may have had relevance yesterday but not today.

▪️Kill the stupid policies that make your customers and employees go nuts. Customers won’t engage with dumb rules in their face which frustrate them when they engage with you.

Cleanse your inside with policies made to control customers; free them to transact with you on their terms.

Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead Book Series

• Posted 2.27.17 at 05:31 am by Roy Osing
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February 20, 2017

Why real passion is key to delivering amazing service

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Why real passion is key to delivering amazing service.

Many organizations today declare they are in the business of providing memorable customer experiences; they believe that delivering an amazing experience to their customers is the vital strategy to gain a competitive advantage over others in their markets.

And there are a plethora of opinions of how to build a customer experience (CX) strategy, for example this is one of many takes on it.

If customer experience refers to the sum of every interaction a customer has with an organization, both pre and post sale, the customer experience strategy defines the actionable plans in place to deliver a positive, meaningful experience across those interactions.

And a number of inputs to building the strategy are mentioned including competitive insights, customer research, customer behaviour facts, market data, and the service strategy of the organization which is necessary to define context for the CX piece of it.

This sounds like a complicated (and expensive) piece of work for any organization who believes a ‘meaningful experience’ is the key to building a successful and sustainable service organization.

I don’t think it’s all that complicated; I believe there is a special ingredient to mixing a brew of remarkable customer experiences. And I don’t think extensive studies of your competitors, customer behaviour and the market are required to do it.

In fact I believe you can have a mediocre service strategy and know absolutely nothing about what your competitors are doing in the CX space and still deliver mind-blowing experiences for your customers.

Experiences happen with engagement — I believe that at its most fundamental level, experiences in any organization are created when an employee engages with a (potential) customer.

There are other moments of engagement that are facilitated by technology. People calling into a call center who have to engage with an Integrated Voice Response (IVR) system, who are on a website and need to use the chatbot, search or cart-building functions all come face-to-face with a piece of technology substituting for a human.

DIY is becoming a larger piece of the human-organization pie and has been given a major boost by COVID-19 which stripped most organizations of employees and has created a burgeoning online transaction business.

Technology facilitated interactions are on the rise, no question about it and that are likely to continue to increase in the future.

The critical ingredient in human-to-human contact is emotion.

But I believe, however, that they should be architected from the human-human connection in any event — how humans engage with other humans should be the benchmark for designing technology-human engagement.

Of course this is a very contentious point because the main driver behind technology-human substitution is cost reduction.
Technology is used not to create human based experiences for people but to replicate what people do at lower costs. And the problem has always been that costs are reduced but it drags the CX down with it.

Emotion defines the experience — So what is at the heart of the human-human moment that influences the experience?

If the moment is replete with descriptors like caring, politeness, respect, understanding, patience, responsiveness, trust, interest, feelings, and empathy on the part of the moment provider chances are the customer will have an amazing experience in contrast with a moment characterized by words such as frustration, anger, dominated, ignored and unfulfilled.

Emotion is the common denominator of both delightful and painful moments so the challenge for any organization who covets the most amazing CX provider award is to architect every moment with emotion.

Every customer moment must be infused with emotion.

What emotion element(s) should be infused into call center moment, the server moment in a restaurant, the complaint-handler moment, the website chatbot moment, the website buy moment, the website search moment (one of the most frustrating moments for me personally), and the product return moment?

Emotion is the strategy — If customer moments are infused with emotion, it really doesn’t matter what your competitors are doing or what the textbooks say about consumer behaviour. Your customer will love the experience.
Nor does it matter what the strategy of the organization says.

Emotion-infused moments will keep customers committed to you; they’ll come back for more moments and will encourage their friends and family to do so as well.

A vague imperfect strategy fuelled with emotion moments will deliver amazingness involuntarily.

If you want a mind-blowing CX strategy, focus on emotion and nothing else. It should be a single driving force behind your recruitment strategy, not just for positions that interact with customers, but also for positions that design technology moments.

I would recruit someone for a web design position, for example, who gets emotion infusion over someone who doesn’t have the perspective of trying to make a technology moment as human as possible.

Final thought — be careful of those who suggest that you need to pump up your customer service training program as a solution.
The fact is that you can’t train someone to deliver customer emotion-moments; honest emotion and care for their fellow humans can’t be taught.

It’s something that people are born with and the challenge is to find more of them than your competitors.

Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead Book Series

• Posted 2.20.17 at 05:44 am by Roy Osing
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February 6, 2017

5 simple ways employee incentive programs can work more effectively

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5 simple ways employee incentive programs can work more effectively.

Incentive programs are capable of achieving not only improved operating and financial and performance, but also “fun” in the workplace with an accompanying boost in employee morale.

But there’s a HUGE caveat: to be effective incentives must be driven by the strategy of the organization; they should never have a “life of their own”.

To make incentives an effective tool, follow these 5 rules:

▪️Introduce a strategic filter to evaluate the worth of any incentive proposal. If a proposal can’t pass the strategic alignment test, modify it so it complies or don’t introduce it.
An incentive plan not directly linked to the business plan will create dysfunction and confusion in the workplace.
Incenting sales to flog products, for example, when the strategy is to build intimate customer relationships might make sales happy but it produces zero return on investment as a tool of strategy.

▪️Don’t copy what others do. Me-to incentives are boring and show employees that your not really interested in creating something special for them.
Morph what “the incentive herd” is doing into an approach that ONLY you provide.

▪️Use one-time contests liberally in the workplace. They surprise employees and encourage greater participation. I introduced ‘dumb rules’ contests to identify internal rules and policies that customers hated. It worked; employees had a blast, we made significant progress “cleansing our internal environment” and customer service results improved.

▪️Communicate the achievers far and wide in your organization. You want to maximize involvement and realize the corresponding benefits.

▪️Measure and track the benefits of each incentive program. Learn from how they perform; eliminate the losers and keep the winners.

Avoid jumping on the incentives bandwagon unless you put the discipline in place to reap the benefits.

Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead Book Series

• Posted 2.6.17 at 05:27 am by Roy Osing
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