Expert interview with Shaun Smith
One of the World’s Leading Experts on Branding and Customer Experience
Part 2
Posted on February 4, 2008 - Filed Under CSA - Celebrity Speakers, Expert Interviews |
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3. How can an organization plan a change strategy in order to bring its brand to life, if there is this RTC phenomenon (Resistance To Change) in many companies today?
The problem for many organisations is that they are constantly changing direction and so their employees get change fatigue.”Oh, not another new initiative” is the cry we hear in many organisations hence the resistance that comes from the news that yet another one is about to start. So I recommend that organisations focus on their long term strategy for winning rather than their strategy for change’
For example, I was speaking at a large Customer Service Management conference. Senior executives from Disney, Southwest Airlines and Ritz-Carlton gave presentations and the audience were clearly enthralled with how these organisations operate. I am sure many of the delegates went back to their organisations with the intention to adopt some of these best practices. Yet this is dangerous.
One of the first principles of business strategy is to differentiate rather than be “me too”. Professor Michael Porter, probably the most famous strategist alive today, says that strategy is about making a choice; of what to do, but even more importantly, what not to do. To attempt to copy other organisations runs the risk of your being second rate, at best and totally inappropriate at worst. Instead what we must do is to focus on our customers and stay true to our strategy for delighting them.
For example, Sir Terry Leahy, CEO of Tesco the global supermarket chain, told me that the key to Tesco’s success was “The day we stopped following Sainsbury (the market leader at that time) and started following our customers”. In other words they focused on differentiation and meeting the needs of their target customers rather than simply copying competitors in a knee-jerk reaction. Since then the brand has focused on creating value for customers to earn their life-time loyalty. Tesco’s slogan of “every little helps” describes the enormous attention to detail that enables them to ensure that processes, people and products operate seamlessly to deliver value.
Today Tesco is the market leader and has declared a 2 billion pound profit for the last year and has now entered the US market. Tesco has stayed true to its strategy over a number of years so that it becomes part of the culture. When your people understand that they are being asked to deliver what customers want and that management are fully committed to sustaining the effort over the long term then the resistance will fade away.
end of the interview with Shaun Smith
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