Sometimes we talk in terms of rhetoric…
Very recently I found myself in a meeting with a very large client of ours. The meeting consisted of myself and several of the key decision makers within this organization. The goal of our meeting was to establish both a strategy for this year and quarterly tactics necessary to deliver their overall participation goals for their website program.
All of us in this meeting had great intentions when it came to helping retail businesses better market themselves online. Yet, when it came time to deliver a strategy we found ourselves engulfed in what I can only describe as useless rhetoric surrounding our industry. We were using terms like, “Our retailers are the type of people who do things this way…” or “Our retailers would never have time for that and besides that they wouldn’t see it as valuable…”. In a matter of 20 minutes, we had narrowly and negatively defined the target group of retailers we wanted to help in a way that was self-limiting. In other words, we had all convinced ourselves that the rhetoric that we had repeated to ourselves about our customer’s for years was the only truth. Our mental models and biases did not account for new generations, new consumers and innovation in our approach in spite of years of experience.
Then there’s reaction…
Here at Liquid, our business is the business of creating websites and technology solutions for independent retail operations. This is a very specific niche market that requires attention to detail in order to provide the best products and services. Early in my career I made a great many mistakes because I did not understand my market. I would anticipate levels of service that were far below the level that the customer actually needed. I would anticipate that a website project could be completed in a time frame that was much too quick for what the project actually required. I hate to admit it, but I reacted to what my customer was saying and underestimated the level of work that web management services and development projects actually required.
We’re all familiar with attempting to meet and exceed customer demands and requests. Many of us always strive to exceed the requests of our customers. However, when you pair an eagerness to exceed expectations with a lack of experience you often run into issues. When we make a decision with regard to our customer’s immediately and without planning, we are making decisions in a reactive manner.
The balance…
Somewhere between rhetoric and reaction is a balance. At Liquid, balance means the same thing as responsibility. A responsibility to react to customer desires, expectations and demand but only within the context of what’s reasonable, achievable and effective.
Decision Making Framework…
Involve those with experience in your decision making process but don’t exclude or marginalize inexperience. Often times we organize our companies so that those with the experience are no longer involved with customers while those with the least experience spend all day on the phone with customers. When this is the case, we can’t expect our decisions to be good ones. Those with little or no customer interaction only have rhetoric on which to base decisions. Those in the field only have their immediate reactions.
Cross structural collaboration is your key to grounded, yet sustainable strategy.