Leadership and Life Lessons Learned In a Pandemic – My Offer of Service
When lamenting unforeseen and adverse events, my momma Michelli was prone to say, “I would never wish this on anyone, but now that it’s here, what are we to do?” Not surprisingly, during the past week, my mind has searched for “momisms,” “dadisms,” and the wisdom of the ages, to cope with uncertainty like none…
VUCA, Coronavirus, and Tools for Human Experience Leadership [Infographic]
For years now, I have been equating leadership with managing in a VUCA world. During my work on training development at Mercedes-Benz, the company established a cadence of leadership training modules that focused on managing volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity by first leading oneself, then leading teams, and finally leading the organization. If my team…
Listening and Leading Customer Experience in Uncertain Times [Infographic]
I’m in the throes of difficult planning sessions with clients as they seek to communicate with and ready themselves to care for their team members and customers in a time of heightened uncertainty associated with the coronavirus. For some clients, these conversations revolve around possible disruptions in a supply chain; for others, it takes the…
Catching What is Right | The Art of Service Storytelling
American lawyer John E. Jones III is credited with saying, “What gets measured gets done, what gets measured and fed back gets done well, what gets rewarded gets repeated.” From my perspective, when it comes to customer experience excellence, what gets rewarded gets done and what gets talked about also gets done. After 25 years of consulting in what used to be called…
Customer Segments or Customer Needs States [Infographic]
Customer segments or customer need states? The answer is … both! It’s an important distinction in which I work with my clients to understand and leverage. To help make this distinction clear, I will use my son Andrew and myself as examples. I would love to hear about your efforts to understand your core customer segments.…
The Future of Customer Experience Delivery
My crystal ball says winning experiences will deliver. I lay no claim to my prognostic ability, but when it comes to the future of customer experience delivery, I’m willing to venture an educated guess. I predict future retail wars will involve online brands (whose value proposition will be an expansive choice, “best pricing” and quick delivery)…
Starbucks: Greatness Personified/Excellence Diversified – What About You?
I met him while working with Starbucks around the time I wrote my first book about the company titled The Starbucks Experience. I’d venture to say that Starbucks might have been little more than one man’s vision if it wasn’t for his leadership strengths. He was one of the original architects of the brand – a…