Dick Lee
Customer-Centric Process Design is Clashing with Organizational Design: Which is more likely to “give?”
Most organizations are designed from the top down: determining the management structure first, typically using traditional silo roles; divvying up among silos responsibility for classes of activities next; then letting silos determine specific activities (processes). Things have worked this way seemingly forever. Today, however, competitive...
Is Putting Customers First Disruptive Change?
Based both on a macro view of today's markets plus lots of ground-level observations, I'd estimate 95% of companies say they put customer interests first; 10% understand what that means; and perhaps 3% actually do so. With potential competitive gain in migrating from company...
Do we pay enough attention to emergency processes involving customers?
I confess – I often don't. But responding to emergencies requires thoroughly thought out process that mobilizes the right resources the right way at the right time. If you don't plan out responses beforehand you get BP in the gulf coast or Toyota stomping...
What’s the consequence for marketing, sales & service of poor business/IT communication?
For sure, communication has improved over the past 10 years. The "cold war" has ended, and the two sides are talking. However, this dialog can often be described by one of my son's tee-shirts, which says: "I can see your lips moving, but all...
Should we strike a balance between giving customers what they want and giving them...
Giving customers what they want the way they want it often does them no favors. In particular, providing customers immediate gratification often comes at a cost to actual value delivered. Customer empowerment complicates this issue. Not that I would ever say a bad...
Why Can’t Business Streamline Front & Back Office Operations?
The latest McKinsey Quarterly reports new data that should upset those designing organizations and managing operations in O/S (office/service) settings. While manufacturing managed to reduce its expense-to-sales ratio by 2.7% over the past year, despite 90& 0f cost-cutting initiatives failing to last beyond 3...
What’s the “Secret Sauce” that Lets Only Some Companies Go Outside-In & Put Customers...
Lior Arussy from the Customer Experience side of business just relayed an interesting observation in a Customer Experience Group (Linkedin) post?that executives frequently claim only new organizations can go customer-centric because you can't change the DNA of more mature companies. He was asking for...
Why Would Wells Fargo Betray Its HSA Customers?
As business professionals, you must recognize that building and maintaining customer trust creates more value for the corporation than any product or service. That's particularly true today, in markets with more supply than demand. So I have to assume that the pain you're inflicting...
How Do 60 Minute Wait Times & 10% Unemployment Relate?
Believe me, I'm not trying to use Wells Fargo as a whipping boy. But when customer service gets this intolerably bad, someone in San Francisco needs to wake up. Or are they dead? My wife & I had an HSA (Health Savings Account) with Wells...
The Lunacy of Cost-Cutting by Cutting Costs
A new McKinsey study reports: "Only 10% of cost-reduction programs sustain their results three years on." What goes wrong? Two things. Companies either: 1.) ignore process and just cut bodies; or, 2.) redesign "how" work is done for cost-cutting purposes. The first approach should...
A Threat to Outside-In (Customer-Centricity): Left intact, inside-out organizational design can undo it all
Companies that achieve a significant measure of Outside-In, customer-centricity are at constant risk of "organizational memory" snapping them back or pulling them back to bad-old company-centric operations. And it's not just internal organizational memory, but new management only familiar with inside-out settings pulling their...
When Jules Verne Wrote “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea,” Did He invent the Submarine?...
Through my travels across Linkedin groups, I've read (and received) innumerable comments saying this approach or activity or that was started by ____________ in year ____ because they wrote about it in their book, "______________." I even had someone seriously claim our Visual Workflow...
Are Outside-In Practitioners Becoming Overconfident of Their Future?
Hey – I’ve been through this entirely too many times. At the start of the relationship marketing movement; when B2B database marketing got serious; when “micromarketing” started; with TOC (Theory-of-Constraints); and in spades with CRM. All sure bets practitioners could take to the bank....
Eight Reasons You Should Never, Never, Never Buy Anything From HP
We used to be a 100% HP office. Now we're down to 1 multi-function printer (that we'd ditch if it was used more than once in a blue moon) and an oversized 90 degree pivot monitor (only HP makes them) for process mapping on...
Can You Lump Customer-Centric, Outside-In Process Together with BPM?
The first question back from most will be: "How do you define BPM?" True to my proclivity for defining terms including "BPM" by their real world use, rather than aspirational musings by thought leaders, I define BPM as: "The totality of formal, structured business process...
Redesigning Customer Process Requires Cross-Functional Teams… Including HR
For a long time, process redesign consisted of process experts reviewing work; going away and redesigning the work; then returning to tell workers how to work. But that was in the days when concern for process was limited to manufacturing, where rote workers did...
What Happens When New Thinking Threatens the Value of Your Marketing or Process Skill...
When business conditions and contexts change in ways that require significant professional adaptation, most managers go in one of two directions, with a small minority taking a third path: DISPUTE: They acknowledge change but claim their training & skill sets are immutable. What...
In Office/Service Process, Can You Focus on One Customer-Related Activity or Function at a...
I'll be uncharacteristically direct expressing my opinion. Here's an example of why you can't. A new financial services client had invested lots of effort improving process one function at a time. But the whole place was running out of sync with high defect quotients...
Can We Measure the Outcomes of Improving Customer-Facing Process?
Please, no comments like "You can't manage what you can't measure." That's bunk. Always has been. Always will be. And to support my harsh stance on this ridiculous statement, I'll cite none other than Albert Einstein, who kept a sign on his Princeton office...
Pragmatically speaking, which plays the dominant role: customer culture influencing work or work influencing...
We're all schooled to think of culture as something instituted top-down – just as we're schooled to think that our inner psyche drives our behavior. But some psychologists are now using a "what if behavior" model that doesn't start with the psyche, but first...