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February 2006 March 2006 April 2006 May 2006 June 2006 July 2006 August 2006 October 2006 November 2006 December 2006 January 2007 February 2007 March 2007 April 2007 June 2007 July 2007 August 2007 September 2007 October 2007 November 2007 December 2007 January 2008 May 2008 November 2008 March 2009 July 2009
Yet, one simple "rule of business" remains constant. Your organization's ability to execute is the ultimate determinant of your success. And, when it comes to effective execution your potential roadblocks are many.
At Ford Business Consulting, our specialty is helping organizations overcome obstacles to superior execution by tuning the human system to support the business strategy.read more...
At Ford Business Consulting, our specialty is helping organizations overcome obstacles to superior execution by tuning the human system to support the business strategy.read more...
The Customer Experience and Culture
I often like to take care of an errand during my morning walk. It saves on gas and gives the walk a direction and purpose. This morning, I decided to walk over to the bank to close my account, having recently changed to a new bank. I looked on the web to see what time the branch opened - 7:30am. I arrived at the bank at 8:15 to find that only the drive-up opens at 7:30; the lobby opens at 9:00. Fine, I thought. The drive-up teller can probably close the account for me. Through a speaker that made it hard to hear with a video screen that showed only part of her face, the teller informed me that she couldn’t close the account. She didn’t apologize for my inconvenience; she just told me to come back when the lobby is open.
Part of why I am closing the account is that I’ve found this bank (like so many others) to be very inhuman. The people just don’t seem to care. My experience this morning validated that impression.
I’m just one customer and this is a large bank. I doubt I’ll be missed. But, how many of us are there, walking away from this bank because of the quality of our experience with the staff?
It’s all in the culture. This bank’s culture - that 800 Pound Gorilla that does whatever it wants to - tells employees that there is no need to bother with customer relationships. Their Gorilla cares more about the transaction than the relationship. This customer is taking her business elsewhere because of that Gorilla.
Is your Gorilla driving customers away or bringing them closer? Is your Gorilla costing you money or earning you higher profits?
For monthly tips on taming your 800 Pound Gorilla, subscribe to my free ezine.
read more...
Part of why I am closing the account is that I’ve found this bank (like so many others) to be very inhuman. The people just don’t seem to care. My experience this morning validated that impression.
I’m just one customer and this is a large bank. I doubt I’ll be missed. But, how many of us are there, walking away from this bank because of the quality of our experience with the staff?
It’s all in the culture. This bank’s culture - that 800 Pound Gorilla that does whatever it wants to - tells employees that there is no need to bother with customer relationships. Their Gorilla cares more about the transaction than the relationship. This customer is taking her business elsewhere because of that Gorilla.
Is your Gorilla driving customers away or bringing them closer? Is your Gorilla costing you money or earning you higher profits?
For monthly tips on taming your 800 Pound Gorilla, subscribe to my free ezine.
Labels: corporate culture, leadership, stakeholders
read more...
Crossing the Cultural Divide - Apple & Cingular/AT&T?
Hip and edgy Apple has decided to dance with Cingular (as in, stodgy old AT&T). The revolutionary meets the regulated monopoly. Will this be like "Bambi meets Godzilla?" Not likely, but there are some significant challenges in the alliance.
If you want a visual image of the difference, check out the story on Inside Bay Area. In the accompanying photo, you can just feel the difference between Jobs and Sigman (Cingular CEO).
Here are a few elements of culture that could trouble this alliance.
Decision making
Apple has demonstrated its willingness to move quickly to be the market leader, sometimes at the cost of putting the wrong product out in the market. (Anyone remember the Apple II?) AT&T (Cingular's parent) is more known for the slow, lumbering moves appropriate to a giant.
Customer care
Early customers may very well get caught in the middle as the Cingular service reps declare the problem to be an iPhone technical issue while Apple declares it a Cingular phone service issue. Which set of policies and systems will prevail as the inevitable early glitches occur? Will the customers survive the battle?
Innovation
AT&T's enthusiasm for investments in technology may not keep pace with Apple's. Steve Jobs built Apple on his willingness to invest in leading edge (and sometimes bleeding edge) technology. With product life cycles measured in months in the cell phone industry, that mismatch could spell trouble for the collaboration.
Brand identity
Apple rarely co-brands its products. Cingular is returning to the AT&T brand. What does all of this mean to the iPhone? To say nothing of the Cisco lawsuit over the iPhone name! Trouble ahead on this front for sure. How will these two very different cultures tackle this tricky tangle?
Communication
I know - this is a communication device. But can the executives who have to hold the deal together make it work? The possibilities for miscommunication and misunderstood expectations are boundless. All of the things that are left unsaid in the course of normal business communication are possible sources for misunderstanding. Executives on each side of the deal will make their own assumptions about what was and wasn't said, likely without even realizing they are making assumptions.
This whole affair calls to mind cartoons from the 1950s showing a flustered telephone switchboard operator with wires all tangled and crossed. Can't you just picture the iPhone caught in that tangle of wires? However, all of that said, this is an exciting step in the media and communications world and it could be the start of some interesting developments.
By Linda Ford, PhD
read more...
If you want a visual image of the difference, check out the story on Inside Bay Area. In the accompanying photo, you can just feel the difference between Jobs and Sigman (Cingular CEO).
Here are a few elements of culture that could trouble this alliance.
Decision making
Apple has demonstrated its willingness to move quickly to be the market leader, sometimes at the cost of putting the wrong product out in the market. (Anyone remember the Apple II?) AT&T (Cingular's parent) is more known for the slow, lumbering moves appropriate to a giant.
Customer care
Early customers may very well get caught in the middle as the Cingular service reps declare the problem to be an iPhone technical issue while Apple declares it a Cingular phone service issue. Which set of policies and systems will prevail as the inevitable early glitches occur? Will the customers survive the battle?
Innovation
AT&T's enthusiasm for investments in technology may not keep pace with Apple's. Steve Jobs built Apple on his willingness to invest in leading edge (and sometimes bleeding edge) technology. With product life cycles measured in months in the cell phone industry, that mismatch could spell trouble for the collaboration.
Brand identity
Apple rarely co-brands its products. Cingular is returning to the AT&T brand. What does all of this mean to the iPhone? To say nothing of the Cisco lawsuit over the iPhone name! Trouble ahead on this front for sure. How will these two very different cultures tackle this tricky tangle?
Communication
I know - this is a communication device. But can the executives who have to hold the deal together make it work? The possibilities for miscommunication and misunderstood expectations are boundless. All of the things that are left unsaid in the course of normal business communication are possible sources for misunderstanding. Executives on each side of the deal will make their own assumptions about what was and wasn't said, likely without even realizing they are making assumptions.
This whole affair calls to mind cartoons from the 1950s showing a flustered telephone switchboard operator with wires all tangled and crossed. Can't you just picture the iPhone caught in that tangle of wires? However, all of that said, this is an exciting step in the media and communications world and it could be the start of some interesting developments.
By Linda Ford, PhD
Labels: corporate culture, leadership, stakeholders
read more...
Supply Chain Management - That's so yesterday!
Supply chain - what an outdated concept! It's not a chain, it's a web. And that's a difference of much more than just a label.
A chain has a beginning, middle, and end. A web's form is not linear or precise. A chain is a static, mechanical entity. A web is a living, organic entity. A web is much more fragile and easily disrupted than a chain. And, most importantly, when you touch a web anywhere, it moves everywhere instead of lying inert as a chain would. Which of those descriptions fits your company's reality - a web or a chain?
If you are still focused on your supply chain instead of your supply web, you're missing your chance for a competitive edge.
When you think in terms of a supply web strategy, it helps you turn your culture outside in. By looking at the whole web, your organization will develop an increasing awareness of your customers' customers, your complementors, your competitors - the entire ecosystem of your industry.
This outside in awareness in your culture will enable you to feel the tremors in the web sooner rather than later. And that's key to staying ahead of the cure as the dynamics of supply and demand affect your business.
To learn more about what it means to have a culture that thinks outside in, download the free e-book, "You Can't Ignore the 800 Pound Gorilla: Making Corporate Culture a Strategic Ally" at www.FordBusinessConsulting.com/GorillaBook.html
read more...
A chain has a beginning, middle, and end. A web's form is not linear or precise. A chain is a static, mechanical entity. A web is a living, organic entity. A web is much more fragile and easily disrupted than a chain. And, most importantly, when you touch a web anywhere, it moves everywhere instead of lying inert as a chain would. Which of those descriptions fits your company's reality - a web or a chain?
If you are still focused on your supply chain instead of your supply web, you're missing your chance for a competitive edge.
When you think in terms of a supply web strategy, it helps you turn your culture outside in. By looking at the whole web, your organization will develop an increasing awareness of your customers' customers, your complementors, your competitors - the entire ecosystem of your industry.
This outside in awareness in your culture will enable you to feel the tremors in the web sooner rather than later. And that's key to staying ahead of the cure as the dynamics of supply and demand affect your business.
To learn more about what it means to have a culture that thinks outside in, download the free e-book, "You Can't Ignore the 800 Pound Gorilla: Making Corporate Culture a Strategic Ally" at www.FordBusinessConsulting.com/GorillaBook.html
Labels: stakeholders
read more...
CEO Pay and Other Board issues – What was Verizon’s mistake?
Which of the following statements do you believe?
1. My company's Board should be a strategic asset to the company.
2. Diversity of thought and background helps a Board approach problems more creatively.
3. The reason my Board looks pretty homogeneous (in terms of professional background, ethnicity, gender, age, etc) is that those are the folks who have the qualifications we need.
If you believe statements 1 and 2, you may have created a logic conundrum for yourself with regard it statement 3. Take a look at the article in the Wall Street Journal (“Verizon Tries to Mute Criticism of CEO Pay,” May 3, 2006). The article points out that, for a variety of reasons, “board members sympathize with management” even though they are supposed to look after shareholder interests.
Key reasons for the sympathy are cited as
- They are former CEO’s or senior executives
- They have served with the CEO on other boards
- They have worked at companies that had a business relationship with the company
These “chummy connections” (as WSJ refers to them) are often the very qualifications CEO’s cite when recruiting new directors. I’m not saying that the CEO wants to “stack the board” with his buddies, simply that he feels these connections can be assets to the company. However, the same CEO will then bemoan the lack of diversity in thought and experience on his board (if he’s paying attention).
Here’s what I think has happened. We’ve left these “chummy connections” as an unquestioned qualification for board membership, not realizing the ways in which they may make the board too homogeneous to be optimally effective. In spite of independent director requirements, boards are still full of “middle aged white guys” (as one CEO regretfully described his board).
What does this mean in the real world?
Let’s say you are the CEO of a semiconductor company. What if your board included someone with no connections to that industry and no CEO experience? Maybe at her first board meeting, she barely understood the barrage of acronyms that filled your presentation. Could she ask some unique questions, throw the discussion “off course” just enough to stimulate some creative thought? Maybe even raise issues about shareholder reactions to a CEO pay raise that the rest of the guys wouldn’t think about till it hit the papers? Or possibly see a market trend coming before all the “middle aged white guys” saw it because she looks at the world in a different way?
Don’t get me wrong – this is not a pitch for diversity for its own sake. It’s a warning that when boards are blind-sided, it may be because the board members are all part of the “same club”. Boards who truly want to connect to shareholders (and other stakeholders) need to reconsider the implications of their implicit recruiting criteria through this lens.
read more...
1. My company's Board should be a strategic asset to the company.
2. Diversity of thought and background helps a Board approach problems more creatively.
3. The reason my Board looks pretty homogeneous (in terms of professional background, ethnicity, gender, age, etc) is that those are the folks who have the qualifications we need.
If you believe statements 1 and 2, you may have created a logic conundrum for yourself with regard it statement 3. Take a look at the article in the Wall Street Journal (“Verizon Tries to Mute Criticism of CEO Pay,” May 3, 2006). The article points out that, for a variety of reasons, “board members sympathize with management” even though they are supposed to look after shareholder interests.
Key reasons for the sympathy are cited as
- They are former CEO’s or senior executives
- They have served with the CEO on other boards
- They have worked at companies that had a business relationship with the company
These “chummy connections” (as WSJ refers to them) are often the very qualifications CEO’s cite when recruiting new directors. I’m not saying that the CEO wants to “stack the board” with his buddies, simply that he feels these connections can be assets to the company. However, the same CEO will then bemoan the lack of diversity in thought and experience on his board (if he’s paying attention).
Here’s what I think has happened. We’ve left these “chummy connections” as an unquestioned qualification for board membership, not realizing the ways in which they may make the board too homogeneous to be optimally effective. In spite of independent director requirements, boards are still full of “middle aged white guys” (as one CEO regretfully described his board).
What does this mean in the real world?
Let’s say you are the CEO of a semiconductor company. What if your board included someone with no connections to that industry and no CEO experience? Maybe at her first board meeting, she barely understood the barrage of acronyms that filled your presentation. Could she ask some unique questions, throw the discussion “off course” just enough to stimulate some creative thought? Maybe even raise issues about shareholder reactions to a CEO pay raise that the rest of the guys wouldn’t think about till it hit the papers? Or possibly see a market trend coming before all the “middle aged white guys” saw it because she looks at the world in a different way?
Don’t get me wrong – this is not a pitch for diversity for its own sake. It’s a warning that when boards are blind-sided, it may be because the board members are all part of the “same club”. Boards who truly want to connect to shareholders (and other stakeholders) need to reconsider the implications of their implicit recruiting criteria through this lens.
Labels: inclusion, leadership, stakeholders
read more...
Sam Decker (Bazaarvoice) on customer centricity and culture
I recently had a conversation with Sam Decker, Vice President of Marketing & Products for Bazaarvoice, about culture, customers and marketing. Sam is a thoughtful businessman who's been involved with both startups and large companies. He has a good eye for the business side of things as well as the human side. See what he has to say.
You have some experience with pushing at culture from a marketing perspective. For example, when you have tried to get an organization to become more customer-centric, what culture barriers have you bumped into?
Each person, each group, each function you interact with has their own perspective and paradigm which likely represents a gap to the customer perspective. These perspectives are usually driven by internal metrics which are lagging indicators of the group's definition of success. Ultimately this perspective and the measures lead to their functional success in a silo as defined by themselves. But if you add up the functional performance of all silos they don’t necessarily translate into the most customer friendly company.
The barrier to overcome is to bridge how individuals or functions measure your performance to how customers measure your performance. Ideally you identify their WIIFM (What’s In It For Me?) and bridge the performance measurement of internal processes to performance measurement that is success in the eyes of customers. The win/win is when you can marry the two into a new process and measurement. Then, customer centricity is part of employees’ day to day concerns.
I’m excited about what Bazaarvoice is doing. Seems to me the potential goes way beyond customer reviews for products. Tell me what you envision in the bigger picture of customer-centric organizations and how that will change the culture of your client companies. (No, Sam didn't 'plant' this question. It's just where I wanted to take the conversation when I understood what Bazaarvoice is doing.)
Ok, you’re the first to uncover the exciting truth of Bazaarvoice. Product Ratings and Reviews are just the beginning, fortunately that pays for itself as a marketing strategy. But here is the macro-view of putting customer conversations on your own site. It is a Trojan horse strategy for bringing operational customer oxygen into the company.
I describe it this way because the customer voice will be alive on the site that you, your employees, your executives, your peers, suppliers and partners will view every day. This has far more impact than a one time customer research study, because it is operational. It can become part of multiple functions’ day to day reality. They can gather qualitative and quantitative insights from authentic customer conversations – not from customer to company (sometimes tainted), but their truthful opinion of your products as published on your site.
Product Ratings and Reviews (and similar strategies) are what I call an operational customer centric strategy – balancing a healthy day to day diet between the under-consumed customer perspective to the over consumed internal measures of a company processes.
As VP of marketing, how do act as a change agent, both inside Bazaarvoice and in the marketplace?
Within our company and with our clients I try to broaden perspectives and widen the impact our solution can make in a client company, as well as push the impact each of us can make within our company. We also need to eat our own dog food, bringing a steady diet of our clients' and markets' perspectives into our product roadmap and be as transparent as is prudent to our market. We host client webinars, a blog (perhaps the first blog for an Austin Ventures company!), and are in constant communication with our clients through product management and client services. I also participate in discussions at a CMO-level with our clients on multiple ways to leverage customer conversations in a strategic way, understanding their issues in driving customer-centric culture change and how our solution can help them. I can help them bridge between what our solution can do and the language of the executives and business systems.
read more...
You have some experience with pushing at culture from a marketing perspective. For example, when you have tried to get an organization to become more customer-centric, what culture barriers have you bumped into?
Each person, each group, each function you interact with has their own perspective and paradigm which likely represents a gap to the customer perspective. These perspectives are usually driven by internal metrics which are lagging indicators of the group's definition of success. Ultimately this perspective and the measures lead to their functional success in a silo as defined by themselves. But if you add up the functional performance of all silos they don’t necessarily translate into the most customer friendly company.
The barrier to overcome is to bridge how individuals or functions measure your performance to how customers measure your performance. Ideally you identify their WIIFM (What’s In It For Me?) and bridge the performance measurement of internal processes to performance measurement that is success in the eyes of customers. The win/win is when you can marry the two into a new process and measurement. Then, customer centricity is part of employees’ day to day concerns.
I’m excited about what Bazaarvoice is doing. Seems to me the potential goes way beyond customer reviews for products. Tell me what you envision in the bigger picture of customer-centric organizations and how that will change the culture of your client companies. (No, Sam didn't 'plant' this question. It's just where I wanted to take the conversation when I understood what Bazaarvoice is doing.)
Ok, you’re the first to uncover the exciting truth of Bazaarvoice. Product Ratings and Reviews are just the beginning, fortunately that pays for itself as a marketing strategy. But here is the macro-view of putting customer conversations on your own site. It is a Trojan horse strategy for bringing operational customer oxygen into the company.
I describe it this way because the customer voice will be alive on the site that you, your employees, your executives, your peers, suppliers and partners will view every day. This has far more impact than a one time customer research study, because it is operational. It can become part of multiple functions’ day to day reality. They can gather qualitative and quantitative insights from authentic customer conversations – not from customer to company (sometimes tainted), but their truthful opinion of your products as published on your site.
Product Ratings and Reviews (and similar strategies) are what I call an operational customer centric strategy – balancing a healthy day to day diet between the under-consumed customer perspective to the over consumed internal measures of a company processes.
As VP of marketing, how do act as a change agent, both inside Bazaarvoice and in the marketplace?
Within our company and with our clients I try to broaden perspectives and widen the impact our solution can make in a client company, as well as push the impact each of us can make within our company. We also need to eat our own dog food, bringing a steady diet of our clients' and markets' perspectives into our product roadmap and be as transparent as is prudent to our market. We host client webinars, a blog (perhaps the first blog for an Austin Ventures company!), and are in constant communication with our clients through product management and client services. I also participate in discussions at a CMO-level with our clients on multiple ways to leverage customer conversations in a strategic way, understanding their issues in driving customer-centric culture change and how our solution can help them. I can help them bridge between what our solution can do and the language of the executives and business systems.
Labels: change, corporate culture, interviews, stakeholders
read more...
Customers, suppliers – what’s the difference anyway?
Customers, suppliers – what’s the difference anyway? Here are some thoughts from the March, 2006 Harvard Business Review.
Sure, you know you need a customer value proposition so your sales force sells into the customer need. Have you asked your customers what your value proposition really is? How about your customers’ customers? In the March, 2006 Harvard Business Review, James Anderson and his colleagues draw some useful distinctions between various kinds of value propositions. They suggest that you undertake “customer value research” to determine the value proposition.
So, now you’re going to rush out and do research on your customers, right? What if you turned that idea a little sideways – instead of research on your customers, you could do research with your customers. Bring your customers truly into the fold, make them part of your endeavor.
Gee, that sounds a lot like the theme from another article in the same issue – “Connect and Develop.” Proctor and Gamble are proactively looking in all kinds of places outside their own four walls for promising ideas. This isn’t innovation outsourcing, strategic alliances or joint ventures. It is a very leveraged R&D model that has great promise.
For example, the Proctor and Gamble folks have build a secure IT platform specifically for sharing technology briefs with suppliers and allowing suppliers to respond in a secure environment. In other words, they are using technology to bring suppliers into the fold as collaborators, much as I suggested above for customer research. The article warns of challenges with company culture and rewards systems but also sites many facts and figures to support the success of this project.
So, why do I ask “Customers, suppliers – what’s the difference anyway?” Because in both of these articles, the authors are hinting at moving from the enterprise to the Outerprise. In the Outerprise, you shift how the company relates to its stakeholders. You bring key stakeholders into key processes to add value to the organization. For more on the outerprise concept, read “Connect and Develop” in the March, 2006 Harvard Business Review.
read more...
Sure, you know you need a customer value proposition so your sales force sells into the customer need. Have you asked your customers what your value proposition really is? How about your customers’ customers? In the March, 2006 Harvard Business Review, James Anderson and his colleagues draw some useful distinctions between various kinds of value propositions. They suggest that you undertake “customer value research” to determine the value proposition.
So, now you’re going to rush out and do research on your customers, right? What if you turned that idea a little sideways – instead of research on your customers, you could do research with your customers. Bring your customers truly into the fold, make them part of your endeavor.
Gee, that sounds a lot like the theme from another article in the same issue – “Connect and Develop.” Proctor and Gamble are proactively looking in all kinds of places outside their own four walls for promising ideas. This isn’t innovation outsourcing, strategic alliances or joint ventures. It is a very leveraged R&D model that has great promise.
For example, the Proctor and Gamble folks have build a secure IT platform specifically for sharing technology briefs with suppliers and allowing suppliers to respond in a secure environment. In other words, they are using technology to bring suppliers into the fold as collaborators, much as I suggested above for customer research. The article warns of challenges with company culture and rewards systems but also sites many facts and figures to support the success of this project.
So, why do I ask “Customers, suppliers – what’s the difference anyway?” Because in both of these articles, the authors are hinting at moving from the enterprise to the Outerprise. In the Outerprise, you shift how the company relates to its stakeholders. You bring key stakeholders into key processes to add value to the organization. For more on the outerprise concept, read “Connect and Develop” in the March, 2006 Harvard Business Review.
Labels: innovation, stakeholders
read more...