While 80% of executives know that their companies’ success depends on introducing new products and services, the term “innovation” is often associated with geniuses turning start-ups into gold mines. Private equity firms place hundreds of little bets on start-ups hoping for the next Skype, Twitter, or Amazon. These bets on the next growth engine often depend on luck more than insight as many companies invest in or buy them, unsure what they’ll yield. What do you think happens if these companies dedicate insufficient resources to support innovation in the start-up phase? Contact me via e-mail for a deeper dive into the subject.
Simple is hard
People can explain away numbers, but anecdotes tell the emotional story. I think that it’s a good idea to have cross-functional teams sit in on interviews to hear feedback first-hand and include their questions to ensure customers dig into areas that matter to your team. Whenever possible, have some of the executive team join in as it can be jaw-dropping for someone in the C-suite to hear from a customer that the program they relentlessly pushed for creates a negative experience.
“The more you rehearse, the less rehearsed you sound.”
Do you know the difference?
Demographics are an old-fashioned method and is only used by people who don’t want to understand psychographics. Demographics is all about what do you look like on the national census form, whereas psychographics are about what do you believe? What do you want? What do you dream about? I think that if I know that you drive a cabriolet, this far more informative for me than knowing that you are 45 years old and a woman. We need to find the choices people are already choosing to make and then help them make their dreams come true.
The power of goal setting
According to psychological research, written goals are much more powerful than unwritten ones. I think by writing down goals we start to anticipate how we will achieve those goals and start to build our way power as our brains just does not have enough working memory to do all that without committing the goals to paper.
There are three types of goals: process goals, performance goals and outcome goals. As a former athlete, I think process goals are the most valuable since practising reaching a process goal is demanding and if you fail, it will not be as public as failing to achieve an outcome goal.
“Plans are irrelevant; planning is everything. ”
Leadership thoughts
c/o Getty Images
Do you remember the first time you were seen as a leader?
I think that maybe I had some natural leadership skills as I was chosen as the Form Captain in my first week at secondary school. I’ve always been looking at problems and finding solutions.
How has your perspective on leadership changed over time?
I see my role as providing continuous support and vision to the team, but I don’t think that I need to be involved in everything.
What have you enjoyed most about leadership?
For me, it’s not about power! It’s about the working process and making sure the wheels are smoothly turning around. I have been described as a decisive leader, very good at making strategic decisions and at the same time I’m very good at getting things executed and building the right team.
“To whom much is given, much will be required.”
Reflecting in London
Remember, life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness.
Decisions making process
“Know your options and then make your choices.”
Create, test and revise
I’m in London and have been reminded that future proofing your business facilitates scalability, flexibility and provides a fertile bed for transformational activity. I have a passion for leading business process improvement and transformational initiatives through smarter use of technology, high performance teams and customer engagement. I think that business value is achieved by delivering outcomes that provide an excellent customer experience and a product or a service that aligns with the customers’ need. I believe one must also remain diligent regarding current business needs, the processes, the systems, and the technology, and these needs are *iterative, and the channels of delivery must evolve in response.
* The iterative process is the practice of building, refining, and improving a project, product, or initiative. Teams that use the iterative development process create, test, and revise until they're satisfied with the end result.
Align your company focus
The North Star has been used for the purposes of navigation for centuries, acting as a guiding light, people have used its brightness and prominence in the sky to ensure they are travelling in the right direction. The principle of the North Star works as a fantastic analogy in the world of business. Are you and your colleagues clear about whether your business is travelling in the ‘right direction’?
I have been involved in the world of business improvement and customer experience for over twenty years. For the past six years, I have had the opportunity to see and experience organisations across a variety of industries all over the world. Whilst I observe a number of similar issues and opportunities to improve and become more customer centric, one of the most common observations I make is on the subject of ‘clarity of purpose’. Contact me via e-mail if you interested in me facilitating a ‘North Star’ workshop for your organisation.
Cultivating the field
I’m just shining a light, I’m not telling people what to do, and if you knew what I know, you would want to do this. I have a story which holds up to scrutiny that often people want to hear – and you cannot make anything that everybody wants.
Breaking down the art of customer experience with a farming analogy. I come from a farming family and farmers have a choice of which field they plant things; they water them and patiently wait for them to grow. Farmers don’t use words like targeting, they use words like fertile territory as this is where they can add actual value. Do you understand?
Trial and error
In today's business environment, sustaining growth and profitability is never a guarantee. Technological and scientific advances shorten life cycles of products and services, business models change, and new competitors appear from outside the industry. This constant instability makes it necessary to seek new business opportunities. Once I have a good understanding of company goals and areas of expertise, the next step is to analyse the market, assessing consumer needs and how they are being met by yourself today.
“The harder you work, the luckier you get.”
First, I hold a discovery workshop and then define a framework to help you search for opportunities, the third step is the development phase and afterwards delivery (4 D’s). Remember, the best planning can be replaced by good luck.
How to test your North Star metric?
I think that every single person in your organisation SHOULD have a very clear sense of understanding the reasons why the organisation does what it does AND why the organisation exists. The problem is that I do not think there are many organisations where this simple understanding actually exists. You can easily test the theory, go and seek ten employees at random in your place of work and ask them these two questions:
1. What does our organisation do?
2. Why does our organisation exist?
It will be fascinating to see what responses you get. If the responses are very similar, then it is possible that there is clarity of purpose in your business. If the answers are varied and different – perhaps not. Contact me via e-mail if you interested in me facilitating a ‘North Star’ workshop for your organisation.
Give good service
There is no substitute for good customer service! The real work begins after you have made the sale, now is the time to render good service. I have found that excellent service leads to multiple sales as one good customer properly taken care of, will open doors for you, you can’t open by yourself. Take care of all the details: Sales, service, follow up, contact, etc. Ensure that you keep in contact after you have made the sale as this will make a tremendous difference in your results.
Watching brief
Whilst there is a need to keep a watching brief on the changing customer environment, their needs, and technologies, the benefit of a good education is the ability to think on your own. In effecting other people with words, I found something very interesting about communication, you have to learn to be nice as your attitude will make a huge difference to how you are received. Communication is 80% what you feel and only 20% what you know, I think it’s not so much what you say as how you say it. Your attitude will make the difference in both your sales results and in the quality of your life as most people are interested in how you feel not just in what you know.
“Once you’ve accepted your flaws no one can use them against you. ”
Psychological safety
Yesterday I wrote about research from Carnegie Mellon, M.I.T. and Union College that showed the number one factor that influenced team effectiveness was psychological safety. In other words, for teams to work well together, team members must feel comfortable enough to be themselves, then, and only then, will they contribute to their full potential.
Here are some tips on how to build a psychologically safe culture in your workplace:
· Listen more, talk less.
· Praise generously.
· Reframe negative feedback.
· Pay attention.
And if you cannot do these things, I know someone with the skill set you require, contact me via e-mail for details.
Please don't silence your team
Researchers from Carnegie Mellon, M.I.T. and Union College discovered that good teams generally did two things:
1. When working on tasks, teammates all got the chance to speak, and no single person dominated the conversation.
2. Teams had high "average social sensitivity." In other words, individual team members were able to correctly interpret fellow teammates' expressions, tone of voice, and nonverbal cues. This led them to be more sensitive to teammates feelings during communication.
Contact me via e-mail if you would like to know how you can apply these findings to your workplace.
Team culture
Leaders need to connect, challenge, build a culture, clearly communicate, and commit to where they are going. It’s teamwork that makes the dreams work, and you are not a team because you work together, you are a team because you trust, respect and care for each other. I think it’s the peer to peer connection in a low trust world that leads culture to change. Are you part of a really engaging culture?
“Culture eats strategy for breakfast.”
This quote means that the culture of your company always determines success regardless of how effective your strategy may be. Our tribe need to get so engaged in what we do that they tell their friends and that’s what changes culture. It’s important to understand that culture beats everything! Culture beats strategy, culture beats pricing, culture beats technology, culture always wins. So, our job is to change the culture and we do that 10 people at a time who then tell 10 people and so on.
Trust the process
Have you ever been in the situation where you are presenting to potential client and you can see that they just don’t seem to “get it”?
Would you like to know how to share your story in a way that builds trust and interest with your ideal clients without sounding like you’re just bragging about yourself?
Would you like to know how to teach in a way that opens up your listeners to new perspectives and helps them visualise what it’s like to be successful with you?
Would you like to how to talk about your products and services in a way that gets your audience taking notes and leaning in, instead of feeling like you’re being pushy and selling them?
Would you like to know exactly how to structure a great talk and stories within that talk so you can create sales with confidence every time you speak?
Contact me via e-mail to schedule a meeting about the right framework for driving growth for your business.
Hard work pays off
Hard work is about risk. It begins when you deal with things that you would rather not deal with, for example, fear of failure, fear of standing out, fear of rejection. Hard work is about training yourself to leap over this barrier, drive through the other barrier and overcome whatever obstacle is placed in front of you. And after you’ve done that, to do it again the next day. I think the biggest influence in life is habit.
To get better results, adopt better habits. I ask myself everyday:
1. How will I create value for my customers?
2. And how will I make money doing so?
What fuels you?
Introducing new ideas is hard and most of us think the best way to win people over is to push harder. Organisations and individuals tend to focus on understanding behaviours in terms of internal forces, things like motivation and intent. Therefore, when attempting to launch a new product, and maybe people aren’t buying, the way the mind understands that is to assume that it is because the appeal or should I say the allure is insufficient. When you want to grow and sell to more customers, you usually say: “I need to improve my product, I’ll give the customers a better deal by way of discounts or market yourself better.” And if that’s the problem you imagine, the way you solve it is by elevating appeal. Organisational psychologist, Loran Nordgren says a more effective approach is to focus on the invisible obstacles to new ideas.
“People don’t engage with us for our reasons, they engage with us for their reasons.
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