My partners Chris Mahai and Sue Gillman penned this terrific article for Industry Week, and it got me thinking about the conversations we’ve had here about the link between customer experience and financial performance.
Chris and Sue challenge you to “Tame Your Performance Chain” and offer five lessons from the animal kingdom to do just that – and boost performance. The piece is focused on IW’s readers – many are operations and supply chain leaders – but these five lessons apply to any business. From cheetahs to monkeys, elephants to ants, there are lessons in the animal kingdom for us all. I’m guessing you’ll find the translation to yours to be very easy.
Can you see your Performance Chain?
Imagine all the things and people and ideas that have to move from the moment you trigger demand until you have cash in the bank. That’s your performance chain. Chris and Sue are challenging you: Can you see it?
How healthy is your performance chain? Is it fast? Flexible? Predictable? Do you get the most from your staff and from your capital resources?
Pay special attention to lesson about aligning your performance chain to a clearly defined target customer and need to be solved. Think about your ideal, or target customer experience. Once you know the fitness of your performance chain, what guides where you invest time and money in your performance chain? To find the money trapped in your performance chain, you must know what you’re solving for whom.
How fast is ‘worth it’ from your customer’s point of view? To solve your customer’s needs and deliver on your target experience, should you be infinitely flexible….or not so much? Remember it’s not what customers accept but what they’ll pay for that matters most.
