"The law of unintended consequences pushes us ceaselessly through the years, permitting no pause for perspective." --- RichardSchickel
Looking back over my 35 years in the industry, I recently realized that this past decade has given us a ride like no other. A technology boom that looked like it might last forever, followed by a bursting bubble, exacerbated by a horrible terrorist attack that changed us all forever; the long, slow economic rise in the mid-90’s, followed just recently by the current credit crunch and debilitating “stagflation” changing our business and personal economics yet again.
As business leaders, our stakeholders expect us to immediately address every arising issue with an immediate shift in strategy to assure “continued shareholder growth”.
These sudden challenges are not predicted to settle anytime soon, so we had better prepare ourselves for the fact that the “only certainty is uncertainty”. So be it.
It’s a tired old saw, but businesses cannot be sustained without addressing the development of their people. Leaders and teams will need to embrace certain skills in order to thrive in tomorrow’s --- not to mention today’s --- world.
1. Radical Innovation: Is your organization structured for innovation? Seriously? I suspect not. How “free” is communication? Open debate without regard for hierarchy? I have yet to be exposed to an organization in foodservice that does not deal daily…hourly…with reporting hierarchy and “chain of command” issues. In such organizations, it simply takes too much work to make sure that all levels candidly voice their opinions, and offer freely developed ideas without fear of being ignored. Consequently, ideas are quashed; the messenger is often executed. Does this sound familiar?
If your company is truly innovative, its culture has communicated that it is psychologically safe for both employees and customers to voice not only their suggestions, dreams and goals; but their concerns, complaints and frustrations.
A recent article in Harvard Business Review (www.hbr.org) called The Customer-Centered Innovation Map is a must read for any business that wants to thrive in the future. It takes the perspective that when a customer buys a product or service from your company, they are actually hiring you to “get a job done.” At each step of the process, both your employees and customers are going to experience successes as well as challenges. By carefully mapping the customer’s “job request”, an organization can find opportunities to improve the customer’s journey through your process. Along the way, you will want to ask questions such as “How can we do this much more efficiently?” and “What barriers and inefficiencies are our customers experiencing?” and “How are trends affecting the way the job gets done?” and “What causes execution to go off track?” As you move through the life cycle of working with a client, looking at each encounter can often open the door to a new product idea or a new service offering that will differentiate you from your competition. But you have to look (and listen) for it…it’s not always so obvious. Are your “business senses” tuned to discover them? Or closed to feedback?
2. Intellectual Horsepower: It will be increasingly difficult to stay ahead of competition if your team is not the best and the brightest in your industry. Intellectual horsepower includes not only IQ, but transferable skills: the ability to understand and break a complex situation into logical steps. It also includes the ability to embrace paradox and ambiguity, as well as the ability to function effectively in the midst of opposing ideas or forces. And of course, we all also want sharp, intuitive, and agile team members as well. Easy enough, eh?
By considering the customer-centric mapping discussed above, you will be better able to identify any skill deficits in your organization. Each time a customer voices a success, ask yourself “Who worked with this client, and what skills were at play to make this customer experience outstanding?” By the same token, if a customer’s job is not getting done, it’s time to step back and ask “What skills are missing from this process that we need in place?” From there, you can provide the training and development needed for your team (or individuals) to create outstanding customer experiences. Make sure that everyone on your customer teams “get it” or are encouraged to move on. “There’s no whining in baseball.”
3. Employee Development: In my decades in junior and senior levels of organizations, as well as in my current role as a business consultant, there are two issues that commonly arise in customer relationship management: (1) The organization relies on the “heroism” of a few employees to keep customers happy, or (2) Customers constantly run to the highest level in the organization to get things done…because that works.
Both of these scenarios should trigger that there are problems in your organization. The “team” is not functioning as a team, but as individuals; and a majority of those individuals are not performing. Plain and simple. There needs to be some immediate “team development”, as well as setting a path toward a “Learning Organization.” (By the way, there is another excellent HBR article from about ten years ago under this name. Find it and download it from their site, noted above.) Individuals and teams are evaluated and “development plans” are installed to assure a constant flow of training, information, ideas, and communication to fully expand your team’s effectiveness.
4. Strategic Agility: Your customers may know what they want, but often they have no insight into exactly what your organization specifically can offer in the way of creative ideas to meet their stated (and sometimes unstated) needs.
Consider Apple. One reason Apple is so successful is because Steve Jobs has an uncanny ability to know what customers need and want before they request it. We didn’t ask for the iPod, but when it was introduced, we realized we couldn’t live without 10,000 songs in our pocket.
By fine tuning your strategic thinking, you’ll be able to notice trends, and eventually anticipate how future conditions might affect these trends in the future. If your team is likewise alert, you can begin to plan the breakthroughs you will need to compete, and begin to envision what your company might need to look like tomorrow. This not only imbues a sense of inspiration and optimism into an organization, but better prepares your entire organization for what is on the horizon. “We can only fear the unknown; the known is our friend.”
5. Technological Savvy: There are some amazing things available to us today that only a few years ago we couldn’t even envision (remember the iPod? How about TiVo? Satellite radio? GPS in our pocket? Google?).
Gen Y --- also referred to as the Millennials --- hold the key to a tech savvy organization. Facebook, My Space, even Google, were conceived and built by Millennials…generally considered those born after 1980. Don’t discount what they can bring to your company. The technology industry has discovered their capabilities and has harvested their insight and perspective. Make sure you make an effort to “plant” some of those seeds into your organization as well.
On a business level, the tools that technology can bring your organization should have already transformed how you do business. The web, instant access to information, social networking, and the power dynamic analysis you can achieve with the IT infrastructure. SAAS (Software as a Service…also called “Cloud Computing”) is the hottest initiative right now. What if you always had access to the latest software, file access from anywhere, and could manage your business needs on a PDA? It’s already here, only not yet fully developed and implemented. How will your organization need to change to best use this breakthrough? Be ready for it.
Some things to chew on. As mentioned at the beginning of this posting, we have all seen more transformation in the last decade than our parents saw in their business career. Don't be afraid of it...PREPARE...EMBRACE...and USE it to your advantage.
“Stupidity comes from having an answer for everything; wisdom comes from having a question for everything.” --- Milan Kundera