Four Journeys

In my discussions with clients, the themes of integration, change, and initiation of a customer experience/customer relationship management come up again and again to the point that I can’t help but point out that they all fold back on each other. If you take the broad view, the defining image in all cases is that of a journey, and the dominant organizational need is for what I call dynamism. In other words, the organization needs to be fit to go on the journey. Let’s start with defining those two concepts.

Journey. We talk about change but what we’re really talking about is a journey. The concept of the journey is integral to every culture and is the enabling subtext to the concept of the hero, as in the heroic journey. The heroic journey—the change journey—has recognizable and predictable components: separate from the current state; immerse into the journey and all the trials and tribulations; emerge triumphant. In the words of Joseph Campbell,

“A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.” (The Hero With a Thousand Faces, pg. 30)

There is a more detailed discussion of the phases of the journey in the paper I wrote, Try vs. Do.

Dynamic Organization. The optimum blend of vision, commitment, energy, flexibility, creativity, systems, controls, execution, endurance, and culture. Too much flexibility or too much form/rigidity are pointers for organizational problems, pathology, and toxicity. The need is to blend, not necessarily equally balance the components. Stasis isn’t the objective either.

Depending on where your organization sits on its lifecycle curve, one or more of those attributes will need to be dominant. The organization needs the right mix or dynamism in order to deal with the problems of today in order to move on to more complex issues tomorrow (stay doing, stop doing, start doing). Think of this as a fitness to go on the journey. The ultimate set of attributes might look like this:

• There is a single motivating passion and vision driving the organization. That purpose is powerful enough to include what I call the Four Journeys (keep reading; it’s coming).

• The organization can deliver its vision and brand promise through a differentiating, seamless, integrated, branded customer experience.

• There are functional systems and a functional organizational structure.

• Vision and creativity have been institutionalized: it’s not just about the founder or leader.

• The organization is results oriented. The organization satisfies customer needs. The focus is on the Four Journeys, not on internal marketing and politics.

• The organization makes plans and then follows up on those plans. The organization drives opportunity, it is not driven by opportunity.

• The problems the organization is dealing with are appropriate to the organization’s stage of development. The organization is able to deal with the issues and problems. The problems aren’t toxic.

• The organization performs excellently and predictably.

• The organization has clearly defined and aligned go-to-market strategies and enabling operating strategies.

• The organization is a magnet for the right kind of people (disciplined; right for the organization) and is able to move the wrong people out of the boat: recruit, hire, onboard, train, develop, promote.

• The organization can afford growth in both sales and profitability. The need to sell hasn’t overwhelmed the need to run a good business. The desire for control and profit hasn’t overwhelmed the need to stay close to customers and to do.

• The organization regenerates: by spinning off new organizations, by creating new lines of business, by promoting its people, etc.

These concepts give rise to the obvious question, “journey to where?” In my mind, there are actually four journeys and they need to interoperate with each other.

The Four Journeys. The problem with many change initiatives or journeys is that they tend to be all about the organization, and not nearly enough about the folks that experience the change in a real and personal way. Your organization is on a journey, or it should be if you want it to survive.

The journey involves change. If you want the journey to be successful, the broad objectives and themes need to intersect with, and be relevant to, the other three key journeys: your leaders’, your employees’, and your customers. So the four journeys are:

• Organization: needs to stay dynamic, viable, and valuable.

• Leaders: need to be able to guide the organization’s journey and growth while living their own employee journey.

• Employees: want meaningful work, a feeling of belonging and security, integrity, and rewards commensurate with the risk you ask them to take.

• Customers: want great experiences that pay off a relevant promise and deliver value across dimensions that are meaningful to the customer.

There are more than a few paradoxes inherent in all these journeys. The needs of one group can easily overwhelm the needs of another, giving rise to the possibility of all sorts of unhealthy conflict. So the Four Journeys require a balancing act. Two touchstones help you do that. They are both a clarion call that tell people what to expect as well as an embedded compass that should remind you and them what is and isn’t inbounds. They are your purpose and brand promise.

Purpose: The big picture. The vision. The mission. This is the answer to the question, “why are we here?” This is the critical and motivating foundation to the first of the Four Journeys. The vision could be something prosaic like: own a segment of the market, reach a financial objective, be the best at something, etc. It could also be more profound like: improve the quality of life of our customers, establish a new standard of excellence, support our community, and so on. The vision should beget a vision map that could include the following elements:

• Picture the purpose and destination.

• Picture the Four Journeys.

• Why is this important?

• How much, how soon, how sure

• Organizational requirements.

• Principles and Strategies

Brand: A brand is nothing more or less than a “promise of consistent value,” both now and in the future. This isn’t just any random promise, but specific promise the brand owner wants you to associate with the brand’s unique and differentiating attributes. The kind of promise that would cause you to bypass a competitive offer and pay a premium. The ability to attach distinctive attributes and value promises to your firm and/or offers is the essential nature of branding.

Brand introduces the necessary component to translate customer experience into something differentiating and uniquely yours. This something is called the Branded Customer Experience.

Branded Customer Experience: The essence of a branded customer experience is bringing your brand promise to life through every customer interaction. Customers have a branded experience when there is a differentiated and unique promise and payoff associated with their interactions with your people, processes, premises (including physical and virtual), and products (services, offers, etc.). This comes from delivering your brand promise through a lifetime of personalized, valuable, branded interactions when, where, and how the customer wants. There are four components that need to be in place if you hope to deliver a branded customer experience:

• Involve the customer.

• Exchange information for trust.

• Adapt-to-enrich.

• Deliver the essence of the brand.

This is where the concepts we’ve been discussing start to come together into either a paradox or opportunity, depending on your point of view. Brand is by definition company-centric or offer-centric. Yes, there’s a customer in there somewhere, but fundamentally, it’s your promise to the market. Back in the old days, whenever they were, that was enough. Today, customers want that promise, but they also want to be able to assemble their own experiences within the context of that promise. To cite just one example, in the case of financial services, the customer might think of that as creating “the bank of me.”

It’s an appealing notion, but the truth is, most firms struggle to make these circles come together.

Instead, they usually wind up with something that looks more like this:

 

Operationalizing the brand, the branded customer experience, and all the other high-tone visions we’ve just laid out requires leadership, management, and followership. Turning visions and brand promises into operating principles, hedgehogs, go-to-market strategies, and operating strategies are a good next step.

Operating Principles: These are the culture building or culture derived rules that govern the four journeys: how the organization will be; how leaders will interact with employees, how colleagues will interact with each other, and how your people will interact with customers. There can be any number of these principles, but somewhere between ten and twenty-five is probably about right. For example, consider this list developed by one of my clients, Wells Fargo Bank (LA Metro Division):

• What, where, and when is driven by the customer.

• Don’t create rules that don’t allow you to service the customer.

• Make an unhappy customer happy.

• Build competence in yourself so that you can act with confidence and communicate with courtesy.

• If the customer chooses you, you own it.

• Do what you say.

• If you can’t help the customer, then you need to find the person who can.

• If you have to hand the customer off, then the handoff has to be flawless.

• If the customer needs to find a way back to you, he or she should be able to do it easily.

• If nobody can do it, the customer needs to hear it from you, understand the reasons why, and feel like they really got treated well in the process.

• If you can do it, do it extraordinarily.

Hedgehog. This comes from James Collins and his work on Good to Great companies. It is the intersection of three circles:

• Something you can be best at.

• Something you’re passionate about.

• Something that drives the economic success of the organization (thought of in terms of a key economic driver).

Go-to-market strategy. A single, integrated strategy for delivering the desired customer experience through people, processes, products, and premises. The factors that need to be aligned are as follows:

• Brand: Your functional, emotional, social, and spiritual promise of consistent value.

• Demand Side: Everything you do through Sales, Customer engagement, Marketing, Advertising, PR, Pre-sales, Education, Sales Partners, and Analyst Relations to influence targeted segments and customers to purchase and repurchase.

• Supply Side: What you do in Engineering, Manufacturing, Services, Service, and across your Supply Chain to deliver your go-to-market strategy(s)

• Infrastructure: The choices you make around human factors, information management, finance, procurement, legal, admin to support your go-to-market strategy(s).

• Customer Experience: The guiding principles that govern how you’ll deliver your brand promise through a lifetime of personalized, valuable, branded interactions when, where, and how the customer wants

• Value: How you want your customers to denominate the value of what you sell and the method by which you make money.

 Operating Strategies. These are the key plays the organization runs in order to deliver its vision. The organization needs many strategies, for example”

• YILO: Year in the life of. Strategies the link to the rhythm of the year. You don’t do the same things in the first quarter that you do in the fourth.

• MILO. Month in the life of. Strategies that link to the rhythm of the month.

• WILO. Especially relevant in a retail setting. Weeks break into days and days into Day parts. Each may require its own plays.

• Inbound vs. Outbound. These could be stand alone strategies or could be part of a YILO, MILO, etc.

Customer Experience Ladder. This is a customer assembled experience: the people, processes, products, and premises the customer chooses. The trick is to be able to price and deliver how the customer wants to interact in order to make an acceptable return.

The problem with thinking strategies, tactics, and processes is that attention is too quickly drawn inward to operational and efficiency considerations. Customers don’t necessarily want to follow our rules; they want to make up their own. The customer experience ladder is optimally a shared journey. It specifically references two concepts:

• Seamless deliver of the customer experience through all touch points.

• Regardless of what order the customer wants to interact.

All of this sounds like a lot of moving parts and a lot of work. It is. If you’re a start-up or intraprenuerial venture, most of this is irrelevant. You need a vision, a ton of creativity, and a lot of do, do, do. The rest will follow in turn.

As you begin to transition to an adolescent organization, or if you’re already an established enterprise, you’re going to need to think about all of these elements. You’re going to need to make choices which give rise to our final point. Quality, dynamic organizations make quality decisions.

Decision Quality. There is a difference between good outcomes and good decisions. You could drink like a fish and then drive home at 2:30 in the morning and get there alive. That would be a good outcome but a lousy decision.

Disciplined, dynamic organizations make good decisions. Usually the outcomes are good as well, but if they’re not, two things are true: 1) there is no second guessing the decision because it was well made; and 2) it’s possible to now make better decisions because the process promotes learning. The factors that support decision quality are as follows:

• An appropriately framed decision. What are you deciding and why? What shouldn’t you be deciding and why?

• Creative, doable alternatives. Are they real alternatives or just the same old, same old? This is where you want some constructive conflict.

• Meaningful and reliable information. What you want is insight that will be meaningful and relevant in judging alternatives.

• Clear values and tradeoffs. Values define our preferences among outcomes. Values can be expressed by “attributes.”   Attributes are characteristics of the outcomes that we find desirable or undesirable. They typically occur over time and may have some degree of uncertainty associated with them.

• Correct Reasoning. Reasoning is how you combine your alternatives, information, and values to arrive at a decision. Good reasoning requires an explanation, or rationale.

• Commitment to Action. A decision without action is futile. Commitment to action means that you are set to act and have the ability to direct your action in a purposeful manner. This is where you want no conflict.