JumpbyDesign

Please see JumpbyDesign to find my recent and current posts and follow me @davidpachter .

The last mile: "Customer Centricity"

For many young companies the first sign of success and confidence is "sales traction". Successful companies turn sales traction into customer satisfaction. As companies mature (or experience exponential growth as we are) they need to swiftly become customer-centric and deliver on the promises made by the sales and marketing teams. 

The connection I made from the quotes excerpted below (from a long blog post by Maz IqBal), struck me as very consistent with the biggest challenge and opportunity – To provide the type of insight and knowledge to our clients that will influence their success and behavior:

 “No matter how good you look, no matter how good you’ve gotten your family to look, and no matter how much wealth, fame or power you have amassed, (you will at some point) experience a profound lack of fulfillment….. expressed by the commonly asked question: Is This All There Is? Dealing with the crisis of “Is this all there is?” lies in having a commitment to the realization of future (a cause) that leaves you with a passion for living… 

...A point about discipline, about sticking to one’s stand. Why does this matter? Because we swim in a culture that is about ease, convenience, comfort, finding the short-cut and focusing on the short-term...You might be wondering why I have dived into leadership given that this is The Customer Blog. Because the move to customer-centricity requires leaders to show up as leaders and exercise leadership… And without this kind of leadership organizations can talk as much as they like, put in as much technology as they like, redesign processes etc and they will still not show up as customer-centric as experienced by the customer.  

The shift to customer-centricity requires a genuine shift to being a company that stands for creating superior value for customers: enriching their lives, improving their welfare, helping them with the issues that they are grappling with… As such it requires a commitment to something bigger than one’s need to make the short-term numbers to collect the bonus cheques. It requires integrity – keeping one’s promises including those that customers can reasonably expect you to keep even if you have not explicitly promised that promise. And it requires authenticity.” 

Link to the post http://t.co/iK45BOZ1 - about the Author: Maz Iqbal - Dynamica Consulting Group: I define myself as a ‘customer based strategist’. My focus is on helping organizations to generate-define-design-execute customer based strategies that create superior value for customers and competitive advantage for the enterprise. You can access my thinking at The Customer Blog (www.thecustomerblog.co.uk).

Personal Branding

"Who we as leaders are - and how we're perceived by just about everyone - is our personal brand."

Your opportunity to make greater organizational impact is certainly influenced by the value of your personal brand as recognized by your peers. I often think of an entire career as a personal narrative and plan to expand on that. In the meantime, here's a link to a post from Management-Issues on the subject that resonated with me.

Embracing Risk and Creativity

Really thoughtful talk by Eat, Pray, Love author Elizabeth Gilbert. In the process of finding herself by leaving home and writing the memoir she recognized that society links "creativity" and "suffering" much to the detriment of achievement. Her thoughts captured at the TED conference are worth the 19 minutes.

My best take away: Creative genius is not something bestowed on an individual for a lifetime but more likely something that passes through so... If you don't keep at "it" you won't ever be able to attest to the possibility of success.

www.ted.com rocks.

"Two Weeks Notice"

Chris Dixon's post "12 months notice" reminded me of an experience I had a few years back. Dixon writes about the two ways todo business - He calls them "legalistic based or "trust" based. I prefer to call it trust or not.

We had hired a very talented young exec a few years out of school. I enjoyed having him in the office, appreciated his dedication and helped him develop his business. Regardless of his future career choices, I considered our relationship a nice addition to my network.

I always expected he would either go back to graduate school or want more industry specific experience. We had discussed this and I was prepared to help him in either of these endeavors. I anticipated that when he was considering his next steps that we would discuss his options openly. It was a very surprising to me when he came to tell me that he had accepted a position with a client and was giving his 2 weeks.

I don't know where/when "two weeks notice" became a status quo expectation but when you as an exec/manager are entrusted with client relationships and ongoing long term projects "two weeks notice" can be a fast way to damage your credibility. If you are not on your way to a competitive position, and you value your relationship with your co-workers, then consider that giving only "two weeks notice" can be a very effective way to damage those relationships and your professional reputation.