By 
Colin Shaw Influencer
Renowned Global Influencer | Customer Experience & Growth | Selected by FT
as a Leading Consultancy | Training & Coach
Welcome to Why Customers Buy, my weekly LinkedIn Newsletter series that
explores how customers make decisions. It reveals ways to unlock what
customers really want with new concepts and practical tips that drive value.
You can have a great philosophy, deliberate strategy, and cunning tactics to
inspire customer-driven growth, but if you don’t change your culture, they
won’t work. Changing the culture within your organization is vital if you want to
deliver a Customer Experience that fosters customer loyalty and retention.
Culture change is not easy. I was running a workshop with a utility client many
years ago about the concept of Customer Experience. There were 20 people in
the room, and we were kicking around ideas of what changes could deliver an
improved experience. One young lady, much younger than her surrounding coworkers, had an idea, several actually. However, with every one of her
suggestions, one of the others would say, “We already did that; it didn’t work,”
implying that it wouldn’t work now, either. This cycle happened many times
before she gave up. It was clear that changing the culture at this utility was
going to be challenging.
It still happens today, too. I was talking to a chief marketing officer (CMO) of a
multinational company the other day who wants to change the organization
(and believe me, I know this organization; he’s right). I started to talk about
how people within his organization needed to understand customer emotions
and focus on customer-centricity. The CMO stopped me because he knew right
away that it wouldn’t work for their company. I challenged him on this,
explaining that if he took that view, the organization would never change. We
will see what he decides.
However, I don’t think his situation is unique. We know this process is a
challenge. To help prepare you mentally for it, we comprised these five rules
for affecting real culture change.
- Create or define a burning platform.
- Recognize this is a long-term go8l.
- Be clear on your vision for the future.
- Remember that “you don’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.”
- Lead from the top.
Let’s take a closer look at each of them.
Rule #1: Create or Define a Burning Platform.
Essentially, this first rule is for you to make it clear why the organization should
change. If everybody thinks business-as-usual is working, no one will bother to
make any changes; itʼs too inconvenient and uncomfortable. It’s the classic
idea that to effect change, one must realize that the pain of change is less
than the pain of staying where you are. If you don’t believe me, consider the
fate of these previously successful brands: Circuit City, Sears, Blockbuster,
Kodak, and probably soon, J.C. Penney. Moreover, with the pandemic and the
recession and everything else that will follow looming, we could see some more
big brands take a fall. However, if these former brands had a more customercentric
culture, they would probably be here today bec8use they realized that
the market is moving on and appropriately adjusted.
To illustrate what I mean, consider how diets work (or don’t work, as the case
may be). Weight loss is a common goal for many people, but they often fail to
do so over and over again. However, some people succeed. The difference
between those that fail and those who lose weight is that people who lose
weight have the go8al of losing weight for a specific event, e.g., a wedding or
class reunion. The special event is the burning platform, which creates a sense
of urgency.
I have talked about Loss Aversion before, and one of its implications is that
when you are in a gain frame, which is what most companies are in most of the
time, you tend to be risk-averse, meaning you don’t want to change. However,
when you get into a loss frame (aka, there is a platform on fire and it threatens
to burn the whole enterprise down), your risk preferences flip, and you become
more risk-seeking. In other words, you are more willing to take a chance
because you can see that the status quo threatens to destroy your success.
Rule #2: Recognize that this is a long-term goal.
I’ve been in many organizations where people want to make a culture change
in the next six months. In my experience, it takes a lot longer than that. You
may be able to start it in six months, and even make progress, but you will still
have a way to go. Cultural changes usually range from three to five years.
If you think you will achieve culture change in six months, my advice would be
don’t even try it. You’re not going to see it through to completion in six months.
Rule #3: Be clear about your vision of the future.
Your articulation of the vision, the philosophy, is vital. However, it is equally
crucial th8t you know what you want it to do. Break it down into all the new
things you want to do and all of the old stuff you want to stop. Also, include
how you want to measure it.
In my early career in corporate life, the philosophy flavour of the month at that
particular time was Total Quality Management. I was with a big corporate
telecom at the time, and we went on a training course for Total Quality
Management. One of the remarkable things that came out of the training was
the idea that you should have a plan and objective for every meeting. It would
be best if you also articulated those things beforehand, estimate the time
needed for the meeting, and then stick to it. What I like about these concepts
is that these are solid, definable things you can do. Moreover, if you don’t do it,
it is obvious you aren’t doing it. This level of clarity for your vision will help you
achieve the same.
The culture of your organization reflects on the experience your customers
have. For example, we were working with an airline that wanted to improve
their experience. We discovered in getting to know their culture that internally,
they referred to passengers as “self-loading freight.” In essence, this alone
tells you everything you need to know about this airline. As we worked with the
airline to develop a Customer Experience Statement, which defines the
experience they wanted to deliver, the airline wanted to improve punctuality.
However, we explained that being late was a company culture for them; they
had been late to every meeting we ever had with them. While starting meetings
on time has nothing to do with how quickly planes are loaded and unloaded,
being late to meetings can send a powerful cultural signal within an
organization that being late is acceptable.
The ability to articulate what you want people to do and what you don’t want
people to do is essential here. You want to make these actions definite and
measurable, too, so it’s obvious when somebody is doing it—or not doing it.
Another cultural signal I always like to check is where Customer Experience
falls on the meeting agenda. If it is at the end, then that tells me a lot. What
you put at the end of the list is rarely the number one priority. If you always do
customer metrics last, it sends a subtle message to everyone in attendance
that it is not that essential to the organization or not as critical as all the other
items on the list.
Rule #4: Remember that “you don’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.”
The reality of culture changes is that they are tough, and some people will not
want to go on the journey. You will encounter resistance to your plan, and it
won’t always be forthright. Ultimately, you might have to sack individuals that
aren’t on board with your planned cultural change.
The last corporate organization I worked at was implementing a change
program involving six sectors. One sector was not on board. The guy running
even placed a bet that the change program wouldn’t work. It should come as
no surprise that when it was time to go live, their sector wasn’t ready because
that senior person convinced everybody that it wouldn’t work.
If you consider the teachings from Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, you have to
choose your battles. You can’t win every battle, so you need to select the
crucial ones. From a business perspective, that can mean breaking a few eggs
to make your Customer Experience omelet. In other words, you might have to
fire someone who isn’t on board, particularly if that person is a high-profile,
senior person. If you remove them, that sends a signal that you’re serious
about your program for change. I wouldn’t fire people just as a matter of
course, but if they’re undermining what you’re doing, you do have to get rid of
them. Which leads me to…
Rule #5: Lead from the top.
Good leadership provides an excellent employee experience and the employee
experience you provide is essential. In fact, my book, Happy Employees Make
Happy Customers explains in great detail how this works. Regarding culture,
one of the points I make in the book is that people often stay in jobs because
of great managers, and leave because of poor ones.
Your words and actions have to be the same. If you want to make that cultural
change, you have to live it and demonstrate to people that you live it, even
when (and particularly when) it’s causing you some pain. Principles are great,
but they mean nothing unless you sacrifice something for them. Make sure that
you’re doing what you’re asking your teams to do.
A vital part of that is to look at your schedule. If you say the organization
needs to be more customer-centric and spend more time with customers, look
at your schedule and see where you’re doing that. Otherwise, your words ring
hollow to those who follow you. It goes back to the importance of these subtle
signals. If you say one thing and do another, it undermines that culture change.
The first call center I managed many years ago had 550 people in Bristol,
England. The call center was in one building, but their manager before me h8d
his office in another building entirely. The effect was that the team never saw
their manager in person at all. There were offices at the call center building; he
just wasn’t in them.
When I took over, I wanted to make the point about being accessible. I would
sit out on the floor with everybody else. From a cultural perspective, I was
saying I was equal to everybody else. Moreover, I stayed as long as the call
center was open. I wanted to make myself available to the team and these
tactics were my way of sending that signal to people. In a way, the most
essential signal we can send is how we use our own time.
These five rules can help you in your efforts to effect change at your
organization. By creating urgency with a burning platform, you prioritize the
need for change. Then, working with the long-term in mind, you can present a
clear vision for the culture you envision for your organization and work out
what you should (and shouldn’t) do in that new environment. Recognize there
could be some battles, and maybe some people you need to move on because
they’re not going to be part of the new culture. Perhaps most importantly, you
must match your words and actions because the little things matter and will
resound around the organization.
Colin Shaw Influencer
Renowned Global Influencer | Customer Experience & Growth | Selected by FT
as a Leading Consultancy | Training & Coach
