The changes and culture shifts driving innovation in CX and EX

You probably have to think quite hard to remember a noticeable and consistent improvement in your experiences with those that provide products and services to you – I know I do.

The focus on experience is supposed to have been around for years, yet it seems business are satisfied by tinkering with the status quo rather than investing in paradigm shifts or real noticeable changes.

Don’t get me wrong, when I mention a paradigm shift, I still preach evolution not revolution in terms of execution – i.e. hundreds of tiny changes – but it is possible to drive significant innovation that is achieved through a carefully curated series of smaller scale changes.

There are multiple reasons why businesses should adopt this approach. For experience change to work the actual team delivering it must believe it is achievable and that they have the authority, time and resources required.

You do not want to fire all your shots at one time. It is better to give your customers time to absorb and appreciate changes; the outcome you want is to be seen as market-leading and progressive and it is harder for the competition to react if the changes and end outcomes are not obvious at the get-go. You will encourage a culture where change for positive reasons becomes part of its DNA, and you will build confidence in the belief that change is achievable.

Finally, although I could continue, if you have engaged your team in end-to-end experience design, evidence shows they are more likely to stay. According to research by Microsoft, the most important parts of work for employees are positive culture, mental health/wellbeing benefits and a sense of purpose or meaning.

Why is it then that so few companies embody and embrace the clear commercial differentiator that an innovative customer and employee experience can deliver?

Maybe we are just lazy; the old adage of it isn’t broken, so don’t fix it? Maybe we lack the vision and the will to see it through? Maybe we lack the skills and capability to think differently? Maybe we are too ‘afraid’ in cultural terms to challenge fundamentals to ask why?

Let me address the last of these first. ‘Why’ is a word rarely used in a work environment when it comes to CX and EX. Despite this, in conversations with senior managers I am often told that despite actively putting it into job descriptions (another area ripe for fresh thinking) they are looking for ‘people without boundaries, willing to question, learn and absorb, challenge without fear’.

They struggle to find such candidates and when they do, they quickly lose them on entry to the business. While one can be sceptical about the sincerity of the desire to actually have such people in the business – and wary that there is a fine line between creativity in both culture and experience design that does not lead to anarchy – the ambition is a worthy one.

Of course, while perhaps harder to find, these people do exist and indeed we were all that person at one point in our lives…namely when we were children. Infants are a blank canvas, conditioned over a long journey into young adulthood and then further influenced by the world of work, peers and group behaviours.

All of these factors have a huge impact on your perception of what it takes to navigate the world of work. Kids ask ‘why’ to the point of distraction for their parents, what that did for me was make me realise that I accepted too much at face value because I often did not know the answer to their questions. It made me ever more curious and had a really positive impact on the way I think, but clearly it can have the opposite impact and usually does.

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When to ask why

Let’s start asking why in the work environment, but in a constructive way. This means senior leaders and managers taking the lead and it means genuinely and actively looking for reasons to evolve. This talks to my point about it not being broken. In businesses you only ask why or give permission to ask why about day-to-day processes or activity if something has gone wrong, it is a response to failure rather than because your culture demands it. What that produces is a tactical fix, but it does not create an environment where CX and EX is subject to continuous improvement that is a pre-requisite for creating a true and sustainable competitive advantage.

Being afraid to put your head above the parapet is a symptom of two fundamental drivers: culture and behaviours role modelled by leaders, and fear of failure. The source of these fears is seated deep in the way the company manages its people. To take just one example: how you induct and mentor new team members has a deep impact on future behaviours. Whether it is an early careers or experienced hire starting at a new company or merging an acquired company it is as close as you will probably get to that childhood blank page. Early impressions and influences carry an exponential value in terms of the future. Take a moment to think about your career to date, what, or more likely who, has been a real influence on how you think, behave, and engage?

Although we all have negative experiences, try hard to think of positives. I certainly have, and unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) if you are strong minded enough to take the view that you would never act in that way or say those things, they tend to lodge deeply.

One that I still recall to this day was early in my career more than 30 years ago. One of my mentors took me to one side after I had shared some information with another team and said “Alan, you need to learn that knowledge is power, you need to be much more careful who you share it with”. How do you think that impacted my future behaviours and views on the company culture?

If you want to encourage the question ‘why’, think hard about those early days for the new starter and how you select mentors – just because someone volunteers first does not mean they are the right choice. Even mentors need guidance on dos and do nots and a clear view on what the intended outcome for a business actually looks like. The experience they give is important and should be by design not by accident.

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Recognising and addressing the capability gap

Putting culture to one side there is the fundamental issue of having the skills and capability to think differently. To me this comes naturally, and it took me a while to realise that this is not the norm; maybe my childhood conditioning programme failed. But ask me, for example, to be a project manager and I could not turn my mind to it. In reality, you do not want or need to have too many people like me in the business. The goal is to unlock the hidden potential in others as well as to generate new thinking. Recognising that the capability gap exists, however, is a critical insight.

Apple is so successful because of Steve Jobs’ obsession with CX and his attention to detail where it mattered most. Such attention to the right details of experience design is a talent, I could not function with the attention to detail required to run a complex project but absolutely can in terms of experience design. Finding your person, or team that can bring that thinking allied with structure and methodologies can unlock the latent potential in the wider colleague base. This will reduce the fear of failure and positively influence those underlying cultural and behavioural drivers.

The final point on my example list is about understanding how this questioning and asking why can make a positive commercial contribution. My approach is to think less about what can sometimes feel a bit ethereal – a vision – and instead focus on the CX or EX-based outcomes that we aspire to and that will deliver tangible commercial success.

I would argue that this ensures you focus on more tangible and therefore addressable gains. The larger the business, in my experience, the harder it is to achieve this at a corporate level because there is too much history and too many vested interests. Often it can be made to work in larger organisation at a business unit level where there is more autonomy of thought, and this can be a more reasonable early target. For those who have embraced the potential this is great news as the field is open for significant competitive advantage and commercial success that is very hard to replicate in the short term.

So, you all have permission to ask why and if you do want to embrace this thinking, just find the right catalyst whether that is an individual, a team or maybe an agency – and do not be afraid to challenge the status quo in a positive and commercial way.