Break the Glass – Listen
If you’re like me, these unusual days are starting to run together. As this health and economic crisis widens and endures, many of the business leaders reaching out to me are becoming increasingly anxious and, in some cases, immobilized. I don’t want that to happen to you! So, I’m starting this series, which I call…
Leadership is NOT Waiting to Follow – Be Thoughtful, Proactive, Humble, and Courageous
As I start this blog, let’s take a collective breath. No really let’s pull the air in through our diaphragm, fill-up the lower lobes of our lungs, and continue that process into the upper lobes. Now let’s be thankful that we can! Ok, on to lessons from the most challenging week of my career (and…
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…
VUCA, Coronavirus, and Tools for Human Experience Leadership
For years now, I have been equating leadership with managing in a VUCA world. While the acronym VUCA has origins in Warren Bennis and Burt Nanus’ 1985 book titled Leaders – The Strategies for Taking Charge, the first use of the acronym occurred a couple of years later in Army War College documents. As you likely…
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…
Customer Segments or Customer Need States?
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. It is the difference between creating experiences based on customer segmentation versus customer need states. To help make this distinction clear, I will use my son Andrew and myself…
The Agility of Ownership – Lessons from South African Entrepreneurs
This is the 3rd and final installment in my series on customer experience lessons I gained from a recent trip to Africa. The first two blogs involved insights from the African Bush and from the informal townships. As you may know, I work predominantly as a consultant to senior leaders in Fortune 500 companies but occasionally…
Your Keys to Outstanding Experience Design
Experience design keys for the future. My work in customer experience design has spanned decades, industries, and continents. That said, there are certain sectors where my team and I have spent a lot of time –not least of which are automotive, hospitality, financial services, building trades, retail, and restaurants. When it comes to the restaurant sector,…
The Starbucks Experience | Challenges and Opportunities in Philadelphia
As you might expect from someone who has worked with and written a couple of books about Starbucks (The Starbucks Experience and Leading the Starbucks Way), I have had my share of media asking me to opine on what happened in that Philadelphia Starbucks when 911 was called and the police placed two black men in…
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