LISTEN AT: https://www.ofm.co.za/article/business/304970/-ofmbusinesshour-read-of-week-finding-top-talent-cannot-be-left-to-hr-alone-

Business success isn’t only reserved for large corporations with seemingly unlimited budgets. There are countless stories of small businesses that have grown to incredible heights simply by treating customers in a way that made them want to share their experience with family, friends, colleagues and on social media and encourage them to try it for themselves.
 
Customer experience can no longer be treated as an afterthought delegated to a single department. It has to be central to the entire organisation as it is a key ingredient to being exceptional: one of the four fundamentals of winning in the new game of business.

Exceptional organisations offer products or services that exceed all industry averages and customer expectations. Having a great product or service is however only one dimension of delighting customers.

With all the options they have available these days, customers simply don’t want to work hard to figure out how to give you their money. They don’t only want exceptional products and services; they want to deal with organisations in a way that is easy, efficient and memorable for all the right reasons. This is the second dimension of customer experience.

The third dimension is the "what else" bit. The over-and-above part of the entire experience that changes it from acceptable to memorable. This is where organisations can be really creative.

Great customer experience isn’t just something that happens – it has to be designed. Exceptional organisations pay at least as much attention to designing the customer experience as they do designing products and services – often even more.

A well-designed customer experience is an incredibly valuable business growth tool that keeps customers coming back and bringing others with them.

The four questions any business of any size in any industry must ask when it designs its unique customer experience are:

• How will this set us apart from our competitors?
• How will this influence and equip our customers to share their experience with others that might then become our customers?
• How will this add value (fun, relaxation, relief, time savings, etc) to our customers?
• How will we ensure that our customers have the same experience every time they buy from us, wherever it is that they buy from us?

It was rainy.

It was a Monday morning.

One of the kids' last clean pair of school pants had a hole that needed mending NOW, eating into the precious minutes of a highly orchestrated morning routine.

But it was still OK.

And then I found that all my gym clothes seem to have made their way to the "next load of laundry" pile.

Enough legit excuses to skip gym 🎉🎉🎉

Except for a mantra from purpose proponent Richard Wright that popped into my head to ask: "How much do you want it?"

And that's how I ended up at the gym in an old scruffy pair of jodphurs left over from my horse riding days.

Winning in business requires constant innovation, and innovation rarely starts with having or buying "the right" equipment/tools/tech.

Innovation is all about using what you already know and have and applying it in a way that it might not have been intended or designed for.

"I can't get a loan."
"I'm not tech savvy."
"My employees/colleagues don't want to change."
"Our customers like it the way it is."


"How much do you want it?"

--

#newgameofbusiness

Our internal reward system drives us to do what we like to do. What we need to do to fulfill our chosen purpose is however not always what we like to do. That’s why it’s so important to plug our “purpose fulfilling activities” into routines; behaviors driven by habit, not by choice.

My morning routine sets me up to WIN according to my chosen purpose: making success simpler for my fellow business leaders.

To fulfill this purpose, I need to have enough mental, emotional and physical energy available. The problem with this is that I don’t like any of the healthy habits that secures the necessary energy!
 
If I choose to do only what I like every day, I will never end up where it is I’ve set out to go. And if I choose what to do only what I need every day, I’ll eventually run out of willpower.
 
So instead of having to choose between what I like and what I need every day, I’ve built the things I need to do to fulfill my chosen purpose into a simple morning routine: wake up when alarm tells me to, drop the kids off at school, do about 40 minutes of weightlifting at the gym, and chug down a protein shake as soon as I get home.
 
Whatever I then do during the rest of the day takes care of what I need to do in the short term to fulfill my chosen purpose, like running my company, taking care of clients and colleagues, and securing new opportunities.
 
Routines connected to purpose are powerful tools for helping us do things that will reward us over the long term. But routines not connected to purpose are powerful tools for keeping us doing things that give us a false sense of control and security.

Which routines are helping you to WIN in business and which routines are just keeping you busy?

• Is there a weekly meeting that doesn’t add the same value that it did when the routine of a weekly meeting was started?
• Do the agendas of your meetings serve protocol or purpose?
• Do you habitually answer emails in a way that serve only the “now” money (current operational imperatives) instead of also creating “new” money (future opportunities)?
• Do you accept every calendar invite just because it might be important, or do you view your time as your greatest asset?
• Do your staff get into the office on time and then spend an hour making coffee and chatting with colleagues?
• Are your managers so fixed on getting the job done that those in their charge are feeling disengaged and demotivated?

Do you remember what life was like right before you received the message that confirmed your appointment as executive? Or before you started your own business? Or before you took over the family business?

Opportunities lay ahead like an orchard of fruit trees ripe for the picking and everything that frustrated you about your career up to that point seemed like it was finally going to change for the better. Right?

If your journey was similar to that of most business leaders, that feeling only lasted for about a year or two. Leading a business does not become easier the longer you do it, even though you become better at doing it.

It's easy to spend unlimited time reacting to things others highlight as urgent or important.

It's much harder to figure out how to get - and stay - on top of the things that will truly influence the sustained profitable growth of a business: purpose, products, processes and progress.

To be able to effectively choose where to spend time, effort and resources it is of utmost importance that business leaders understand what the core purpose of their organisation is.

Running a business to sell it requires a completely different approach than growing it for long-term success. If the purpose is to grow the business then the owner or appointed executive (CEO or MD) need to be crystal clear on:

• how the business will go about generating the finances needed to secure that growth,
• what impact the business wants to have on society, and
• the role the business wants to play in the lives of its customers.

Knowing the answers to these three questions will help any business leader to make decisions based simply on the test of "will this move us towards or away from our core purpose?".

The products and services offered by a business should not just align to its core purpose; it should also be hyper-relevant in a fast-changing world.

Business leaders have to keep an eye on developments across various markets to stay ahead of the curve. Being too busy maintaining the current offering and making no time for exploring (or assigning and monitoring) product or service innovation is a massive risk for any business.

As leader you've got to become highly skilled at making sure the business earns "now" money while simultaneously preparing to generate "new" money.

And of course, the process of buying these products and services should be as frictionless as possible for clients.

A fantastic product that can only be bought through a cumbersome process will always be under threat. The buying process must be designed to delight the customer. Too many processes seem to serve only the convenience of the business.

In a world filled to the brim with options, customers will often buy something that might be a little bit inferior but a lot more convenient for them to buy.

Just because a buying process exists doesn't mean it should be left to carry on. Continuous process improvement must remain high on the proactive priority list of any business leader.

Progress in either products/services or processes should not be allowed to just sprout and grow in any direction. It should be strategically driven by the business leader in a direction and pace that supports the financial, social and brand purpose of the business.

Progress for the sake of it often ends up just increasing the busyness of the business leader, rather than the business they need to be working on.