Turning Strategy into Action - English

The promise of customer experience design leaves people full of hope. It surfaces all these great ideas about taking a business to the next level, learning about ways of attracting more customers, strengthening the brand, and invigorating the customer experience.

In fact, practitioners quickly start to amass pages of notes about strategies they need to try and practices you should put into place. It’s all great stuff that can make a world of difference.

So, why is it that so many of the good ideas never see the light of day? How come when you walk through the front doors at work, those great ideas get lost, ground up, or simply ignored? What does it take to win attention and alignment around the ideas that can define your company’s future, make an impact on people’s live, and make shareholders smile? Why do over 70% of projects that involve change fail?

There are two questions to answer:

What are the causes?
What can be done about it?

Many other writers and thinkers have answered #1 quite well. You can check out articles by:

I’m more interested in what we can do about it. Here’s what I’ve learned in the last fourteen years…

When you envision a new customer experience, it’s incumbent on you to also design the story about that experience. The story that will introduce potential new adopters and followers to the future state you wish to create. Here are some really good examples of ‘stories of possible experiences from the future’. These are videos. Depending on your skills, timeframe, and budget, yours can be words or simple storyboards.

Corning’s Gorilla Glass

IBM’s Retail Store of the Future (RFID, circa 1999)

There’s also a case study on IBM’s Innovation Center.

Wingate Inn’s Hotel of the Future (my work at IBM, circa 1999)

Here’s a case study on this project.

Lastly, I’m offering a half-day workshop in London on May 24, 2012 aimed at helping practitioners move from Strategy to Action on their projects–and avoid the 70% failure rate! The focus will be on creating the story that hints at the experience.

It’s at European Customer Experience World (an event put on by The Focus Group).

Hope to see you there!

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