Nine Step process to Improve Customer Experience

As described in my earlier blog “Customer Experience and Organizational Excellence”, customer experience has a start (your current level) but no end point and it needs to be improved perpetually. If we do not improve the level of customer experience, it automatically degrades itself. The kind of experience we can provide to customer depends on how well we know the customer and our urge to provide customer with great experience during every interaction. Since it is proven that the top and bottom line gets affected directly by the experience a customer gets while interacting with our company directly or indirectly; it is natural that we want to give the best experience and the “urge” for the same is assumed to be given. So the manifestation of experience directly depends on how well we understand our customer. Do we understand their needs, wants and aspirations?, Can we really think like them?, Do we know how they will react or perceive us if we take a certain action? It is a complex, multidimensional, and nonlinear process due to multiple variables like changing environment, churn in customers, technology disruptions and competition to name a few. 

I have observed a nine step model in ancient Vedic literature to understand God (Nava Vidha Bhakti i.e. nine ways of devotion) and I feel that if we apply it to today’s corporate world, it provides us a great model for understanding our customer and provide a superlative experience during each of our interaction. I have presented the same in this blog.  The following diagram shows the real names of these nine steps and “Applied Names” when used in context of understanding customer.  

The first one is called “Shravana (Listening to/about Customer) Bhakti” which tells us to listen more and more about customer. Use any channel available at your disposal; be it reading print / digital media, go to different customer / industry forums, conduct some surveys, understand some success stories as well as failures etc. Everything collected predominantly from secondary sources. This gives us a level of perception where we can start visualizing what customer would expect from any interaction with us and we can start building our customer engagement mechanisms.  

The second and third forms namely “Nama Sankirtana” (Chanting about Customer) and “Smarana” (Remembering Customer behavior) are typically performed together after the one has achieved a specific level of perception about customer through secondary knowledge and listening about him from multiple sources. These two forms tell us that we should always talk about customer, keep customer in mind while taking any action or decision. Also remember customer’s behavior in different circumstances and situations, remember how customer has reacted to an intervention by us or competition.  This acts as a positive spiral refining our perception about customer and helps us improve our actions thus improving the experience customers would get in every transaction. 

These first three steps really talk about the homework that we need to do before interacting with customer in order to create a great experience during interaction. This homework prepares us for initiate a satisfactory transaction with customer.

We are now ready and waiting for an opportunity to provide a service to our customers in the most desired manner. The next three forms i.e. Pada Sevana (Waiting on customer), Archana (Worshipping Customer ) and Vandana (Saluting Customer) provide direction in terms of how do we create this opportunity. Pada Sevana (Waiting on Customer) tells us that be around your customer, visit places like trade fairs where your customer is present, observe your customer, take note of what customer is doing. This keen observation and presence will definitely get noticed and opportunity for interaction will present itself.  This when coupled with Archana (Worshipping Customer) and Vandana (Saluting Customer) the chances of improving the customer experience increase many fold. A simple thing like Saluting / celebrating success of an athlete in a large forum of budding athletes by a sportswear company brings this whole thing together. It creates a large group of customers at one place, it provides opportunity to interact and understand the customer base through informal interactions not related to any business transaction, it sends clear message that you value the customer as well as the success one of the customer has achieved and you are happy about the same. It also conveys that you listen to your customer and ready to do things which are not directly related to your business (go extra mile) if necessary.  A company can create multiple such opportunities using Archana (Worshipping Customer) and Vandana (Saluting Customer) to create a supportive background for a memorable customer experience when the actual business transaction takes place.

We have done a lot of hard work in getting ready for giving a great experience to our customer, we have done right things to create an opportunity to do so. I am certain that opportunity will present itself to perform a business transaction and thus provide superlative experience to customer. The next three forms i.e. Dasya (Serving Customer), Sakhya (Be friend to Customer) and Atma Nivedana (Complete Dedication) take us through process of superlative experience throughout the life-cycle of relationship with customer. In the initial phase of your business relationship, you serve customer without questioning, listen to the needs and service them without questioning and try and go beyond what customer is looking for. You fulfill anything that customer demands. This provides a very comfortable experience in the transactions and also provides a lot of insights about customer mindset. This triggers the next form I.e. Sakhya (be friending customer), which means you now start advising customer on what would be right for him based on your knowledge about customer, you start thinking for him and work for him for his benefit. This elevates the experience to a new level. The last one i.e. Atma Nivedana (Complete dedication) is the next phase where your thinking is changed in such a manner that there is no difference between you and customer and you deliver services in a manner that you feel would provide best customer experience without need for asking customer. The key transition that you find here is the extent customer has to drive the transactions and set the expectations. From Dasya (Serving Customer) to Atma Nivedana (complete dedication),  you find that need for customer to focus on what he needs in a business transaction reduces and he keeps of getting the same or more without asking which naturally ensures a great and lasting experience. 

A few questions come to our mind –

·         Are these steps sequential?

·         Do we have to do all these steps?

·         The environment, technologies are changing; so are the customer expectations, what happens to this framework?

These steps grouped in to three groups as described earlier and followed in that sequence. Most of the activities in a group are run in parallel. There are subtle differences, but they can run in parallel. This sequence is for a set/segment of customer/s once you start you can go to the end to ensure great experience. It is better to perform all the activities to reach the ultimate goal of superlative customer experience, if we do not perform certain activities, it may not give us the desired results.

The model has an inbuilt positive spiral to correct the changes which are happening in the environment and then modify the next steps on the go. We are continuously Listening to/about customer, talking about customer, understanding their feedback to firm up our understanding in order to prepare for next steps. This activity is continuous activity and any changes taking place in the environment, technology, customer expectations, etc., automatically refine our understanding of customer enabling effective next steps.    

We can use the two approaches described in my earlier blog, “Customer Experience and Organizational Excellence”, to implement various initiatives to ensure superlative customer experience.

1                     Reverse Planning for a Customer Experience thread

2                     Creating multiple pairs of supplier/customer within ecosystem

Leadership Circle

Have you faced a situation where many of the projects/ programs of the organization running on track because they are led by good leaders however these leaders were burning themselves due to lack of leadership / ownership type of support from the team under them and there are associates who want to lead but have no leadership experience and hence can not be deployed in leadership roles in projects. It is a time bomb ticking and one snap can lead to a major problem for a customer. You are looking for a solution to build the leadership capability at every level in the organization which is,

• Scalable to be used with large mass of consultants at medium to junior level,
• Has a good pull (It cannot be forced on to anyone),
• Is able to provide leadership experience beyond any theoretical knowledge,
• Is cost effective

“Leadership Circle” , which has inspiration from Quality Circle movement, is the solution for the same. 

  

Leadership Circle is a group people who want to become leaders in whatever work they are doing coming together. The typical size of a Leadership Circle is @ 7-8 people comprising at least one mentor. They meet once a week for an hour to discuss various topics like

• What it takes to become a leader,
•  See videos, listen to various leaders in person
• Discuss key learnings from various leadership books and how the team intends to use them or have used them
• Present various situations at their workplace and deliberate possible way to lead in these situations,
• Identify real projects to experiment the learning
• Execute the projects and present learning in the circle

There is no relationship between leadership circle and performance management system within organization. It is expected that results will automatically be seen in the regular work performed by these consultants and reflect in their performance review. This is a voluntary participation initiative and no special concessions accorded for participation.    

Key observations and experience from running Leadership Circle is collated in a few points:

• These are open and semi-structured meetings. The outcome depends on acceptance of this mechanism and participation. Typically the team participating in Leadership Circle is used to get the instructions from their leaders and execute them and not used to make decisions. Mentor needs to play a big role here to coach the team through different methods.
• One of the critical thing which takes a very long time is, to internalize the key aspects of leadership. It was very easy to describe what qualities a leader should have from various books, articles; however doing an introspection to check where one stands on each of them, accept shortcoming and consciously take efforts to build them, was very difficult for many. Mentor needed to take the team slowly on right path, once they understood how to inspire themselves to learn new capabilities; we have achieved a major milestone.
• Sometimes members are sensitive about identifying problems within them for the fear of adverse action from the organization as a result they find difficulty in their improvement. It is important from mentor’s side to provide that confidence that nothing disclosed in the circle goes in to any of the HR records. Once team gets this confidence, they start opening up and positive results start showing up.
• The success of this program depends on self-driven efforts by individual and each person progresses at his or her unique speed. There will be some drop outs and one needs to be prepared for the same.
• Providing some kind of experience of “leading” in everything the circle does is key. Devising simple rules like each circle meeting would be led by a different individual every meeting helped. He/she will have complete freedom to design the meeting and conduct the same within a base framework. He/ She will intimate others in advance if it is expected that team should be prepared in specific area for the meeting. Many members were confused how to do this, many of them continuously sought validation from Mentors, many were hesitant to establish protocol for their meeting. Mentors helped the specific individuals and after a couple of months this protocol started working nicely.
• Identification of projects for the team to experiment within organization was important and I want to talk about one project of conducting an organization wide competition. The project was assigned to one of the leadership circle team. They did everything from conceptualization, presenting the concept to management, get budgetary approvals, creating theme and detailed design for competition and popularize the same within the organization, generating some additional volunteers to help them run the competition, actually run the competition, identifying the right panel of judges, get the entries evaluated and finally organize a prize distribution for the same. This was a big challenge as none of the faces from this team were familiar to the larger audience (barring a small group of friends of each member) within the organization. Team worked hard, faltered a few times, mentors spent some good time with the team in terms of guidance only (no actual participation in any of the activities). There was significant hard work but the team had first hand experience as to when they own something, what all things they need to do to complete the same. Big change was observed in circle members in the way they started looking at things they are doing in day to day work life.    
• As a result of such successes, confidence levels of the members increased tremendously and aspirations for taking such challenges in professional life also increased. This was expected result and we were happy about the same.       

Many members were happy on personal level that they now understand what it really meant by “Leader” and they have experienced the same in some or other capacity. They also feel nice that they have a peer forum where they can discuss some problem they might be facing on the work front and find a solution.

This initiative is like a movement and takes time to provide results. However when the results come, they are really beneficial to organization as well as individual.

Keys for Success of Leadership Circle:

• Visible support from Management for this initiative. Teams put in efforts on their own to build their leadership quality and demonstrate them through various projects they undertake; this should be recognized and supported
• It is a voluntary initiative and the results depend on the drive each person has. So it is critical to have at least 5-6 persons out of 7-8 with passion to lead while beginning a circle.
• The success of this initiative depends on the “Mentor”. Higher investment from mentor’s side better are the results. It is important to have a mentor for this Circle from business (not from HR) who is somewhat recognized as leader within the organization at least at some level and understands that he/she needs to “mentor” and “not to lead” this team. A battery of good mentors is critical for success.
• Organization should help this initiative with identifying various projects that these teams can take and execute to gain experience of leading. There is always an apprehension to use any customer projects for experimenting so all the internal initiatives could be run through these circles and can bring in the experience portion to the team.
• Based on the observed performance, some of the team members should be assigned to some leadership roles within the project world to provide a clear signal that organization is serious about this initiative and if they find some good talent, they will pick it up for better roles. Few members do start aspiring for a better role as their confidence improves and there is always a risk of they looking out for leadership opportunities if not provided in-house. This aspect needs to be managed well and business leaders becoming mentors helps in this aspect.
• It is important to remember that the idea of this initiative is not to create more project managers but to create a leader who in any capacity can lead when needed and measurement of its success should be with the same yardstick. It is more like a movement and not a focused training.
•  Leadership Circle takes some time to see results and it is important to have patience from mentors as well as team members

Leadership Circle is the right movement that every organization should embrace to build the leaders within. 

Delivery Excellence a new approach

When any organization thinks about “Delivery Excellence”, it is always a top down approach and using a guiding framework like ISO, CMMI, ITIL, Malcom Baldridge, Deming’s principles, etc. Many a times a special department or authority is created to run this program. This authority creates all the necessary processes and supporting templates and tools. These are implemented through training, coaching, and auditing to ensure uniform progress and results across the organization. There are several measurement criteria defined to measure the progress along the way to final destination. There are external audits/ assessments carried out to understand the progress made and results achieved through an unbiased view. The whole structure works like a uniform machine and each person knows the expectation from him/her and performs to that expectation in anticipation of good results. I have observed that organizations try to maintain the highest level of certification/ assessment throughout and it is herculean effort on both employees and organization every 3/5 years to undergo an external audit. There is no roadmap beyond this certification for further improvement, there are still stray cases where things fall through the cracks but the life goes on.

In my earlier blog on Delivery Excellence on Auto Pilot*, I had discussed how to make this top down process more effective and lasting in terms of results. However I am going to discuss a different approach here which will remove all the pitfalls of the top down approach and provide a fresh outlook to achieve the delivery excellence.

Organization is made up of people. Each person is responsible for several activities and part of several teams for whom these activities are performed. These teams are also part of some larger teams and so on. Finally all the teams form one team at organization level which is responsible to achieve organizational excellence. In this new bottoms-up approach we keep the definition of excellence in mind i.e. “Excellence is the commitment one makes with one self to continuously do better than what one has done previously in the entire activities one performs on personal and professional life. The benchmark is oneself and it is continuously moving upwards. There is not end as to final level of excellence” and encourage each person to the following; we are sure to have a positive result

• Self Question* the way he/she is doing a specific activity and see how it can be done better and how it can help the team he/she is working for to achieve its objective
• Experiment* with new way of operation and see the results. If the results are encouraging, then implement the new way of working and share this improved way of working along with results with others in team. A new and improved way of doing a specific activity has been found and registered in the repository for reference by others in the organization. A small step in achieving delivery excellence has been taken and multiple such steps create a momentum necessary for big result
• Repeat this process from individual level to team levels up the hierarchy

One question comes to mind; - If everyone in the organization starts thinking and implementing his/her own improvements then will it not be chaotic and uncontrolled delivery?  The answer is NO

The definition of excellence guides the individuals that their improvement actions are required to achieve better results than their current level and thus all the new improvements will direct the results in positive direction. We can build a common high level metrics for each team (which we already have) and performance be measured based on the same. As long as we are able to measure the performance through these metrics, the teams can have freedom to do their improvement journey as per their thought process. Building certain individual metrics like Say-do ratio* and Ownership Quotient* will help teams to monitor themselves on regular basis. In the beginning, the process may look un controlled as there is a significant level of freedom available to the teams on ground, however it enables teams to contribute better in achieving overall results. Allowing people to perform* provides a great motivation and ensures results.

*- There are separate blogs for each of the idea mentioned here and can be referred for detailed information 

Customer Experience and Organizational Excellence

“Customer Experience” is the current battle ground for the industry to win new customers as well as retain customers and drive better revenue and profit. Simply defined, Customer Experience (CX) is the product of an interaction between an organization and a customer over the duration of their relationship. This interaction includes a customer's attraction, awareness, discovery, cultivation, advocacy and purchase and use of a service. Forbes say that customer experience is the "cumulative impact of multiple touch points" over the course of a customer's interaction with an organization. It involves hard aspects like physical experience during interactions at stores to softer aspects like interaction over digital media, perception, social, psychological impact, etc. With the developments in technology, significant changes have been introduced in the way customer is engaged and experience is measured and improved. Significant investments are being planned in this area and many companies have appointed Customer Experience Officers (CXO) to spearhead the activities around it. One very important characteristic of the CX is; it has a start but no end point, it needs to be improved perpetually. If we do not improve the level of customer experience it automatically diminishes in terms of customer perception.

This characteristic is very similar to how we define Excellence;  i.e. “Excellence is the commitment one makes with one self to continuously do better than what one has done previously in the activities one performs in personal and professional life. The benchmark is oneself and it is continuously moving upwards. There is a starting point (where you are currently) but no end point / final level of excellence. It is a journey which typically has view of only next milestone or two and remaining milestones emerge as we move forward”.

“Customer Experience” and “Organizational Excellence” are two aspects which have similar characteristics and can be designed to feed each other in a positive spiral giving dramatic benefits to an organization

Author James Allen mentions that although 80% of businesses state that they offer a "great customer experience”, only 8% of customers express satisfaction with their experience. This throws light on the gap between what is perceived great by industry vis a vis by customers. This pushes companies to work hard on understanding customers better and provide them a better experience. One of the mechanism organizations can adopt is to drive organizational excellence initiatives based on the customer experience needs. This will improve the excellence levels of various activities performed by the organization and drive the customer experience automatically. This cycle of achieving higher and higher levels of Customer experience through different innovative excellence initiatives will drive the ultimate objective of better revenue and better profits. A quote by Steve Jobs, “You have got to start with customer experience and work back towards technology-not the other way round” vindicates the approach mentioned here.

There are two approaches to build Excellence initiatives which will be fed by the needs of better customer experience and move the needle in the right direction.

1                     Reverse Planning for a Customer Experience thread

2                     Creating multiple pairs of supplier/customer within ecosystem

1              Reverse Planning for a customer Experience thread

As we know there are multiple aspects / avenues where companies connect with their customers such as in retail stores, on web site/ mobile/social media, through service desk, through advertising campaign, special interest groups, etc. In this approach we pick up one thread and create connecting activities backwards till the raw material sourcing / design stage. Identify critical activities in the same which will have impact on the final customer experience. Analyse each one of them and identify initiatives to improve the excellence level of the organization unit performing these activities. The activity should be analyzed holistically from multiple angles covering People, Process, Technology. Each activity needs to be questioned as to can it be performed with higher level of excellence and what changes / amendments that need to be brought out to do the same. You get a comprehensive set of initiatives which are linked to a specific improvement aspect of customer experience.

Let us take a simple example: “Customer needs help in locating certain merchandise and wants to know some more information about it and she asks an employee on the floor of the store”. How do we enhance the experience customer gets during this interaction?

At the basic level, the employee on the floor must have the information about merchandize, where they are located?, how to reach there?, how much stock do they have in store right now?, are there any similar products which customer can consider?, are there any deals going on the product requested by customer or a similar product?, are there any related products that could be suggested to the customer?. We can assess each of the area and see what is the level of excellence we are working with, identify changes that we want to bring in with respect to people/ process/technology so that we can bring it to higher level of excellence and this have an opportunity to create a better experience. In this case, we can check

•         Is the information available with employee?
•         What is the mechanism of making this information available to the employee on the floor
•         Is it available to a few employees (category wise information distribution) or any one would have this information?
•         How intuitive is the mechanism to provide information?
•         Is the information accurate?
•         How current is the information?
•         How fast is the access to the information?
•         How easy / fast search capability available with person on the floor?  

Look at each and every aspect of information with focus of how are we doing today and is there any better / faster / efficient way to do it. Identify such areas as excellence initiatives and start implementing them

This experience could be further enhanced, if the person on the floor is well trained in engaging customer in an effective manner. Every up sell /cross sell happens through a better engagement.

The third level of enhancement to experience comes when you reach to the location specified by employee on the floor and you find your merchandise, it is not out of stock and has the same deal as mentioned by the employee on the floor. This leads to other aspects of business like store lay outs, stocking as per lay out, matching physical layout and electronic information, stock levels, logistics aspects of merchandise movement etc.  We have started the thread for customer experience for a simple transaction customer has with an employee on the floor and how it traces backward to various activities which need to be performed at a higher level of excellence in order to provide a better customer experience. Analyzing and creating excellence initiatives in each area will help improving the customer experience systematically.     

2              Creating multiple pairs of Supplier / Customer within the eco system

This approach handles the customer experience at a different level. Instead of picking up a thread and going back till the design stage, it works on a chain of Supplier / customers within eco system and improvement in the specific experience at each pair level will automatically improve the overall customer experience that the company can achieve. Some of the pairs could be

•         Customer and Store team
•         Customer and IT Team
•         Customer and Customer Service team
•         Store team and Warehousing team
•         Store team and IT team
•         Warehousing team and Planning team
•         Warehousing team and Production team
•         Production team and Procurement team
•         Production team and Design Team
•         Production team and Sales team
•         Sales team and Design team

Each pair has one service provider and one service receiver and set of activities through which they interact and customer experience of this interaction is noted. This interaction when analyzed gives clues for excellence initiatives to be undertaken.  

So, in summary, road to higher revenues and profits passes through the focused excellence initiatives around customer experience. 

Applied Excellence

As we know that Natural / Pure / Basic sciences define principles / develop information to predict or understand a specific phenomenon occurring in the world and applied science is the discipline of science that applies this existing scientific knowledge to develop more practical applications, like technology or inventions. Physics is a pure science; however Applied Mechanics is the science which uses laws of physics for the applications to design structures and appliances. Multiple Applied sciences emerge based on the nature and area of application of principles of pure science. Continuing with example of Physics; the disciplines of optics, quantum physics, materials science, applied mechanics, nanotechnology, micro-fabrication, mechanical engineering, biophysics,  electrical engineering,  control theory, aerodynamics, energy, solid-state physics, etc. are all applied sciences emerging by applying specific principles of Physics in different areas.

Excellence is also kind of basic science, which can be applied to various aspects and provide us process or methodologies to be adopted in the specific areas. E.g. Baldrige Excellence Framework has been created by applying excellence principles to overall business performance. This framework coupled with methodologies, processes, measurement KPIs, etc. has emerged as one of the Applied Excellence Science called “Business Excellence”. Several corporations have taken cue from this and built their own global excellence frameworks to be followed creating a number of flavors of this.  Deming applied principles of excellence to product quality and defined 14 principles to be followed for achieving excellence in Product Quality which ultimately became a TQM movement still in practice. This is another example of Applied Excellence. Henry Ford applied the principles of excellence to assembly style of manufacturing giving rise to Manufacturing Excellence stream of thinking. There are several such examples of application of excellence principles to build a new science altogether.

I have made an attempt to apply some of the key principles and aspects of excellence to an Individual and define certain signs to identify if one is progressing on the path of excellence or not. The idea is to keep them simple to understand, simple to apply and simple to measure. Ideally one should be able to do it in “self-service” mode without any external intervention or help.  

First and foremost thing about excellence is, that it has a start point, which is when one realizes and takes up this journey consciously, but no end point. It is a continuous process of going to a better state / stage of performance level from where you are today in any aspect of life. When this aspect is applied to an individual, it means one needs to learn something new every day, one needs to do things better and better as the days pass, one needs to move forward in the achievement of current goal of excellence on daily basis. If one asks three simple questions to self before sleeping and answers them with honesty to oneself; one can provide a clue as to if he/she is on the journey of excellence or not; these are  

Have I done anything today to improve myself?

When we talk about an individual, it could be relationship with spouse / Children on personal side or Boss / Subordinate / Customer at work. or it could be reading a new technical article to improve your knowledge about specific technology or it could be doing some experiment to learn or it could be something as simple as complimenting someone for good work. The key here is to identify proactive actions which we have initiated and executed to seek an improvement in the desired area/s during the day. We might face a little trouble in the beginning to differentiate between proactive and reactive/ suggested actions but once we start getting hang of this, each action identified creates a positive feedback to us and pushes automatically to do more of these actions driving us ahead in the excellence journey.   

Have I done anything NEW today to improve myself?

This question is different than the first question. One word “NEW” differentiates both. We can do things which we have done in past again and again to improve the situation and we would be achieving some results. But it is important if we are trying something NEW which can give us different results and with a possibility of better / faster improvements. A person trying new things is positioned better to receive better and differentiated results than a person using the things which he / she has been using for many years. If you are taking certain actions again and again, you expect the similar results again and again and after a while the effectiveness of the actions and results starts diminishing. So, one needs to ask this question separately.

What I am going to do tomorrow to improve myself?

This question provokes oneself to do something new, different for improvement. It also allows oneself time to think about it in advance and assess if there is anything different one can try the next day for areas where one wants improvements or one has to continue what one is doing currently to ensure results. It also helps one to plan for the next day which is a key in getting things accomplished.

What is my SAY-DO ratio?

Last and most important question one needs to ask is what is their SAY-DO ratio? Many a times we make plans when we are thinking but are not able to act on the same as planed and do not realize that we are really not acting as we desired. Our SAY-DO ratio is poor. We realize this when some external source points out that results are not changing. Normally it is too late for any correction and we might have missed the bus. So it is important to consciously assess one self using this question which will help us to ensure that we do what we plan.

When we ask these 4 questions to oneself before sleeping, we apply some of the basic principles of Excellence and create a Applied version for improving Personal Excellence.  

Achieve Excellence by jumping from your Hamster Wheel

I was discussing with one of my friend in sales function and he was explaining me his secret sauce of his success in winning a deal. Since he was a close friend of mine, we were discussing various aspects and during discussions he mentioned that offlate, when he was trying for little bigger deals for improving his play and he was not able to win the deals using the same formula; he did everything that needs to be done which used to win him deals but he was not getting results, he was working like crazy but results were alluding him.

Many a time we also get in to such situation, where in we plan to do big things, make significant efforts in the manner we know and still do not achieve results. We came across same types of hurdles, we came across similar types of team members whom we need to teach the process from scratch and get them to speed, we get similar types of disagreements within the team, we get in to same type of last minute frenzy at every toll gate and many a times result does not show any co-relation with the efforts that we put in or the team size that we employ.

I have seen many people who move from one organization to another and miraculously they face same type of people everywhere and same type of interactions (+ve as well as –ve) and same types of reasons to make a decision to find another job. This cycle goes on, they really do not move upwards in the career through the jobs they undertake one after other.

All these people are on HAMSTER WHEEL of their own creation. The Secret Sauce for selling deals for my friend in sales function was his hamster wheel. It will allow him to win the deals only in that segment and whatever efforts he puts using the same sauce, they remain only as efforts and quantum of efforts does not have any relation with the results so even if he runs fast or for long duration, he remains at the same place. Same is the case with the project manager who gets in to same types of troubles in every project; the “Project Management Method” ingrained in to his mind is his hamster wheel and he is running on the same to get a predictable result with no improvements.

So if we are on our hamster wheel, we behave in the same manner every time; we do the things in exactly the same way again and again; and we typically get the same kind of results. We do not improve ourselves nor we deteriorate. We remain stationary. It does not allow us to improve our excellence levels. It actually deteriorates over a period of time and we realize it when the deterioration is significant. Result is we change job and try our luck at next. We really do not pay attention to our Hamster wheel; we actually are oblivious of the same so the cycle repeats.

So how do we check if we are on any sort of hamster wheel?

We can start asking some questions to oneself like Am I connecting with customer in the same manner as I used to connect a few years ago? Am I planning my projects in the same manner for a while? Do I conceptualize & build the presentations to customers or management in the same manner for some time? Do I delegate work to my team in the same manner for all my life? Do I review work of my subordinates in the same manner as I used to do two years ago? If the answer is yes, then you are on your hamster wheel and will need to dig deeper in to things like, have you been getting similar results or have you been observing a cyclical pattern in any of the areas to get a better clarity on your hamster wheel. Another easy way to put it across is IF YOU ARE COMFORTABLE IN YOUR JOB, YOU ARE ON YOUR HAMSTER WHEEL. Your comfort levels will not allow you to change or do things differently, thus you do not improve.

Once we get an understanding about our hamster wheel, the things become easier for us. We just need to jump from the hamster wheel, get in to doing things differently, experimenting with new things, take up new challenges beyond your comfort zone, learn new things and deploy the learning in to your work even though it might contradict your earlier beliefs. There are several ways to improve your excellence levels as explained in my earlier blogs on “Simplify for Excellence”, “Just Do it for Excellence”, “Questioning”, “Excellence through Say-Do ratio”. First step out from hamster wheel is the most difficult and most important step; once you take it, rest is simple.

Simple + Relevant = Excellence

We have been discussing a lot of things about excellence in this blog and trying to build a mechanism which can become a second nature for us to help ourselves become excellent in whatever we do. I have come across two more things that will help us in this transformation.

If one is trying to excel at something, it is critical that he/ she understands what it is completely and is able to define it in simple terms. He/she could remember even in sleep and does not have to refer to some powerpoint or some book or some notes stored in. This will also help in explaining the same to others easily to help them understand what you are trying to do and they too can remember these things themselves. It also becomes easy for one to assess if these simple things that one is trying to do are moving in the direction one wants and take the necessary course corrections. If you observe many successful people, you will observe that they follow this principle knowingly or unknowingly. Each one of them manage their operations with just 3 or 4 or 5 key parameters / strategies / thoughts which they will be able to remember every time and the organization can work around these 5 strategies and build the details. So the important thing to build excellence is make it SIMPLE – Simple to define, Simple to understand, Simple to monitor and Simple to do midway correction. Anything you initiate which required more than few bullet points to explain, will be difficult to achieve.

Now that we have been able to define what we want to do or what approach we want to take etc. in simple manner, it is necessary to keep all the activities true to what we have set to achieve. There are several actions we or our teams might initiate which may not be directly RELEVANT to the objectives and although these actions might be defined in a few simple bullets, it will not regally give the results we desire.

So Keep it Simple and Relevant to achieve anything in Excellent manner.

This looks very beaten down thought but try and observe yourself if you are really following this rule. You will find more times when you are not following than the times when you are following this rule and the results you achieved would tell you the story.

Ownership Quotient

As we know Excellence is the commitment one makes with one self to continuously do better than what one has done previously in the activities one performs in personal and professional life. The benchmark is oneself and it is continuously moving upwards. There is no end to reach final level of excellence. It is a journey and results depend on how one undertakes it.  In one of the previous articles in the blog, we saw how “Say-Do ratio” of a person affects the results one achieves in this journey. We also discussed about “Just Do it” mantra which helps in getting definite results. We also deliberated on “Allowing the people to perform” to achieve effective results. These are various tools and approaches which are available for usage in the journey of excellence.  However there is one critical thing which determines the quality of results i.e. what kind of ownership you have accorded to the actions when you have initiated them.

Whenever we talk about the excellence journey, it always involves assessment of certain aspects of oneself / organization and identify an intervention which, when implemented, will take oneself / organization to the higher level of excellence. Key here is effective implementation of the intervention. There is a possibility that you take certain actions because either you believe in them or it can be because your superiors believe in them or you might just want to be politically correct or something similar. Your ownership towards the need of specific action is different in each case and thus the effectiveness of the execution; which gives a specific result. It is seen that the ownership level of action is directly proportional to the results one achieve in this journey.

When you own certain decision / action, your commitment towards its successful implementation increases automatically and you try to find solutions to the problems anticipated during implementation in contrast to give reasons or finding rationale to say why certain hurdle can not be surpassed. The ownership level determines the attitude that you would be taking in performing any task that you set to do and higher the ownership more positive attitude you will adopt resulting in more effective results. So ask yourself, what is your “Ownership Quotient”; i.e. the ratio of key actions that you take with complete ownership to total number of key actions you take. Higher the ratio better will be effectiveness of your actions and you will be travelling at a good speed in the journey of excellence. We should mentally calculate our ratio and every time we find that it is coming down, it is time for us to look at how we are deciding the key actions that we take as intervention. 

Excellence - Innovation - Transformation

Excellence, Innovation and Transformation; these three words we hear everywhere irrespective of the forum we are attending. It can be somebody selling a new real estate project or it can be a start-up company trying to garner some funding or be it a political party talking about their plans for future of the nation or it can be just talking about a gel pen; these three words pop up in some shape or form almost everywhere. Are these just high sounding words used by copywriters to create differentiation or it has something more to it? Let us look little closer in to these three.

Excellence is the commitment one makes with one self to continuously do better than what one has done previously in the activities one performs in personal and professional life. The benchmark is oneself and it is continuously moving upwards. There is no end to reach final level of excellence. It is a journey which typically has view of only next milestone and remaining milestones emerge as we move forward. We have seen many corporations who have undertaken a journey from “manufacturers of shoddy products” to “icons of manufacturing products with highest quality” over a period of time. If one observes their journey closely then it becomes clear that when they started their journey, they had some idea of next state of quality of their products which they could visualize at that time and they devised different tools and methodologies to reach the level of quality they had envisaged at the start of journey. But by the time they reach this destination, the next level of Quality (next milestone) emerges and organization devises different tools / methodologies to reach this next milestone and the journey continues; it does not stop even when the organization is known as icon. 

An innovation is something original, new, and important in whatever field that breaks in to a market or society to create a new or better or faster or more effective way of doing things. Innovation could be in terms of development of new product or a new way to use the technology or a new / modified process but the ultimate aim is to do things in better manner; e.g. you implement a different customer engagement program (innovation) so that your satisfaction rating jumps from “Satisfactory” to “Delight”. In other words we can say that Innovation is an intervention with a clear focus on improving the level at which the organization / individual is operating. It surely is selected for implementation based on its potential to achieve the desired change and multiple innovations are deployed by any organization in multiple areas at different times in tune with the improvement desired. As we know the innovation can be either “incremental” which changes the organization in small bits without too much disturbance or it can be “disruptive” which brings in significant changes with big benefits. However one thing is certain that every innovation intervention acts as a booster rocket and takes organization to the next orbital level.

Oxford dictionary defines Transformation as “A marked change in form, nature or Appearance”. In the business parlance it means either organization has changed the way it operates and/or the processes it uses and/or the tools it adopts, to achieve its goals in more effective and efficient manner. We call the organization as transformed when the changes are significant to be noticed by outsiders. The organizations typically define the transformed state to be achieved and a journey is undertaken. Many a times there are interim milestones defined and achieved as they pass through the journey. Typically the transformation objectives are defined based on anticipated future needs of business and is expected to be valid for a period of time depending on the pace at which industry and technology are moving. So by the time organization is transformed to its desired state and becomes stable in this state, a need for new state arises and organization needs to assess and plan for next transformation. So Transformation is a journey where the organization moves from one state of operation to another better, effective and efficient state of operation (which is noticeable to external world) in a continuous manner.   

We see that there is a common thread of improvement / betterment runs through Excellence, Innovation and Transformation. The factors that are prominent in each of them are slightly different but ultimate motive is same. They might be different theoretically but when you use them in practice they run in parallel with significant overlap. The diagram below provides a glimpse of one such excellence journey in manufacturing 

I was trying to build a relationship between these three and came up with the following.

Excellence is a continuous journey which uses innovation as one of the vehicles to reach desired stations of one Transformation after another.

Excellence = Beyond the Obvious

I was discussing with a few of my friends and the expression “Beyond the Obvious” came in to discussion in some context. But after the discussion was over, the expression stuck in to my mind as a very simple yet effective description of Excellence. Excellence can be described as continuous process of doing better than the level at which you are doing a specific thing. If we perform at level at which we are expected to perform we are doing the obvious thing. When we incorporate things into our routines so that we showcase improvements and we reach next level of excellence. So when we go beyond the obvious, we are on path of improving excellence.

Let us check with a few real life examples

If you are meeting your SLAs with customer you are good but when you surpass SLAs and showcase different level of value adds to customer without incurring any additional cost, you have reached a new level of excellence and you will definitely see a positive vibes from customer. You are expected to deliver to SLA, which is obvious state, but when you go beyond, you see the difference.

I was in Tokyo for work and travelling in a taxi from hotel to Office. Unfortunately the driver took some wrong turn and he had to do some additional zig-zag to reach to the destination. We observed that he has missed the route but kept quiet as we were new to the country. After reaching the destination, the driver apologized for little detour that he had to take and reduced some money from the total bill. We were expecting a sorry from him being in Japan which was kind of obvious for us but the driver went beyond and we still remember him. He simply had raised the bar for himself.

We were supporting multiple applications of a customer and during discussions; we came to know that customer desperately needs a specific application to be developed but had no money to do the same. So the Project manager from our company took entire team in confidence and they all chipped in a few hours daily for a period of time and built the application without the knowledge of customer and presented the same to customer as a Christmas gift. Customer was so happy and overwhelmed with this nice gesture of going beyond the expectation of keeping the lights on for the applications where we were supporting. Customer not only paid for the efforts spent by the team, but always remembered this gesture.  The relationship with customer moved to a much higher level.

We can remember several such examples from one’s life which reinforces the thought that when one goes beyond what is expected from him / her individually or collectively; he / she reaches a new level of “expected” and in the process benefits immensely with the positive responses which are received during this process. This is nothing but raising one’s level of excellence.

So please look at what is expected from you at any given task / activity in the personal or professional sphere; try to go beyond and raise your level of excellence automatically.

Stay “Within the system” or “Break it” to improve the level of excellence in the Organization

When an organization decides to increase the level of excellence at which it operates, it becomes a tricky situation as to how to make it happen in all the relevant areas covering all the people involved and ensuring the sustenance of the new level achieved through vagaries of business. There are two high level approaches undertaken; one, staying within the system, i.e. to do a POC at smaller level and slowly adopt it in the remaining areas in systematic manner over a period of time and second one, breaking the system, i.e. change the whole system in one shot through some intervention and push it to the entire organization. There is a classic debate about correctness and effectiveness of each approach. The first approach is a collaborative approach which moves from lower middle level upwards and second approach is from top to bottom. It is also seen that there is no guarantee of success in any of the approach and there are almost equal number of successes and failures in each approach.

Let us take an example of “Six Sigma” framework, which is one of the frameworks used by many organizations to improve their excellence levels in delivering the defect free product. Since its origination in Motorola, we have seen that many many organizations have adopted this framework but only a few seem to have really benefitted at organization level and there is hardly any organization other than GE which could really raise its level of excellence significantly using this frame work. Do we know the reason for this? Will this reason solve our problem of “within the system” or “breaking the system”?

Let us look at this from a different angle; what happens when level of excellence at which the organization is operating moves from level A to level B (B being higher than A) ? first and foremost thing which happens is the organization starts performing at level B, the expectations from each unit and individuals match with the needs of performance at level B, the interactions within and outside the organization gets modified from supporting level A to level B, People behavior and HR policies are tweaked to support level B. In short the system which was operating in the organization when it is operating at level A is broken and completely new system supporting level B gets created. Once the system at level B is created and established in the organization successfully, the organization starts operating at level B. This gives us a clear clue as to why only GE was significantly successful than many other organization. GE was able to create awareness of Six Sigma at all the levels; it was able to create framework as to how to use Six Sigma within organization; it trained the employees at all levels in the framework, it also involved its suppliers to be part of this framework to raise the overall level of performance; it created dashboards which measured the improvement of performance at all levels and leaders like Jack Welch reviewed them on regular basis. Very clearly GE created a complete new system of operation for their expected level B of performance and implemented across the organization to reap the benefits. Many organizations who failed to create this level of change failed to reap benefits comparable with GE.

It is becoming clearer that when we move from level A of excellence to level B of excellence, we actually break all the systems which are operating at level A and create a set of new operating systems to support level B. It is now the question of how this journey to be traversed?.

I think that if any company follows any one approach then they will not have a success at the end of the journey but the organizations which use both the approaches in tandem, get the best results. First to decide what framework or system change that is required, a “within system” approach could be followed and various experiments could be done without changing anything in the broader organization wide systems. Once the decision is made regarding what change that will need to be made, a new paradigm for the new level of excellence need to be defined and announced. This is breaking the current system to move towards new operating model. This should be followed by again by systematic change in small chunks to reach the new paradigm in planned manner. The key in this systematic change is deep commitment of leadership for the new paradigm and their continuous involvement during the journey.