Change Management x Business Transformation
The old saying “the customer comes first” certainly rings true when successful businesses execution comes to mind.
However, being a customer (or consumer) centric organisation is not new to corporate mantra. Amazons customer obsession has been a driving principle since the late nineties and successful frameworks such as Lean Six Sigma and Design Thinking born from the same era have been widely and successfully leveraged in business.
When implementing change within an organisation, whether it is people, process or technology change, it is critical that the impacted customers within the organisation are identified and taken on the entire journey.
Here are 4 strategies to ensure that you take a customer-led approach to your change initiatives.
1. Definition of the problem statement (need for change).
Here we want your customers in scope understand why the need to change.
Strategy: Collect broad input from target customer groups, synthesise inputs with customer groups during team-based workshops and leverage organisational consensus to achieve stakeholder alignment on the problem/s that need to solved.
2. Solution development & proof-of-concept.
Here we want to build engagement and desire for potential solutions
Strategy: engage your customer groups with brainstorming and prioritisation of solutions during team-based workshops. Develop prototype solutions and then invite your customer groups to test in real business situations and provide improvement feedback.
3. Implementation of the change.
Here the customer demonstrates / practices the change, highlights barriers
Strategy: appoint change-agents from your customer groups who will lead the change from within. The changing customers are more-likely to take direction from an influential peer who faces the same problems that they do, than an external change manager who does not.
4. Sustain the change.
The customer re-enforces their intention to continue the change.
Strategy: create a community of customers who have all faced the change. Recommended sessions to stimulate conversation amongst customers, have them share their experiences around what’s worked/what hasn’t with the change. Provide support when required, collect improvement feedback.
Transform your organisation to new heights! eutopos consulting leverages international organisation experience and industry best-practice frameworks to successfully deliver the expected results from the most complex change/transformation initiatives. Make contact today contact@eutopos.co