Uncategorized – Page 4 – Data Pulses storytelling

Eight Paradoxical Habits of Wildly Successful People

leaders4 You know what they say about opinions—everybody has one. If you want to see that truth in action, just Google “characteristics of successful people.” Some of the results will undoubtedly point to the famous Marshmallow Study at Stanford, which demonstrated that the ability to delay gratification is a key component of success.

But that’s far from the only theory:

According to Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck, it all comes down to mindset. She conducted a series of experiments that demonstrated that, while the average person sees their abilities as fixed assets, successful people have, what she calls, a “growth mindset.” In other words, successful people focus on self-improvement and overcoming challenges rather than seeing their mistakes as the products of insurmountable personal flaws.
In another study conducted by Penn State and Duke, researchers assessed the social skills of 700 kindergartners. Twenty years later, they followed up and discovered a strong correlation between social skills and success. The children with the best social skills were more likely to have earned a college degree and to hold a full-time job, while the kids who struggled with social skills in kindergarten were more likely to get arrested, binge drink, and apply for public housing.

And the list goes on and on. So, what is happening here? Why are there so many different theories, complete with the science to back them up, about the traits that contribute to success? I think it’s because most wildly successful people are complex—so complex that many of their defining qualities are paradoxical.

Rather than an “either/or” set of static characteristics, they’re more likely to demonstrate both. This is a key to their success. Here are some examples of what I’m referring to.

They’re polite, yet completely unafraid to rock the boat. Successful people are, what I like to call, “graciously disruptive.” They’re never satisfied with the status quo. They’re the ones who constantly ask, “What if?” and “Why not?” They’re not afraid to challenge conventional wisdom, yet they don’t disrupt things for the sake of being disruptive; they do it to make things better. Still, they’re polite and considerate, and they don’t draw attention to other people’s mistakes just to humiliate them. However, that doesn’t mean they sit back and let people wander off in the wrong direction. They won’t hesitate to speak up when it’s time to change course.
They’re deeply passionate, yet rational and objective about their work. Successful people are passionate about their work, but they don’t let it skew their thinking. They have the ability to step back and look at their work with a critical eye and to accept their mistakes. If it’s a disaster, they’ll admit it, because they realize that it’s better to try something different than to put out something sub-par with their name on it. That sense of detachment also allows them to accept feedback from others without taking it personally.
They’re convergent and divergent thinkers. Convergent thinking is what’s measured by IQ tests: rational thinking that typically results in a single right answer. Divergent thinking, on the other hand, is less precise. It’s about generating ideas and asking questions that have no solid right or wrong answers. Both are important. No matter how high your IQ is, you’re not going to be successful if you can’t think outside of the proverbial box. On the other hand, you need rational thinking skills to correctly judge whether your ideas have merit. That’s why this particular paradox is so important.
They’re both energetic and calm. Successful people seem to have limitless energy when it comes to doing the things they’re passionate about, but they aren’t frantic. They can keep that energy under control. They work hard and focus on the task at hand with devoted concentration, but they’re so smooth that they make it look both easy and fun. Some people are so energetic that they’re hyperactive and unfocused and constantly bouncing from one thing to another. Successful people know how to harness their energy so that it works in the service of progress and doesn’t undermine it.
They like to work and play. Successful people personify the often-repeated quote, “Do what you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life.” Because they love what they do, they find brainstorming, problem-solving, and grinding out tough projects thought-provoking, engaging, and deeply satisfying. And though they take their work very seriously, the enjoyment and gratification they derive from it blurs the common demarcation between work and play.
They’re ambiverts. Successful people are comfortable acting in ways that amplify their introversion and extraversion, depending on what the situation calls for. They can sit in the back of a conference room and silently listen to what’s going on, or they can go up on stage, grab a microphone, and engage a huge crowd—and they look just as comfortable doing one as they do the other.
They’re naïve and smart. No one would argue that intelligence isn’t an important part of success, but many successful people also have a childlike lack of awareness (or maybe it’s a lack of respect) for the type of constraints that other people blindly accept. They’re not limited by what other people tell them is possible.
They’re both humble and proud. Taking pride in your work is absolutely essential for success, but successful people know they wouldn’t be where they are without the people who came before them and those they’ve worked with along the way. They know that they didn’t achieve their success all on their own, and because they’re OK with that, they don’t have anything to prove. That’s why so many incredibly successful people end up coming across as grounded and humble when you meet them in person.

Bringing It All Together

The reason that there are so many different opinions on what traits are necessary for success—and the reason that so many of them contradict each other—is that successful people are complex. They have a wide variety of paradoxical skills that they call upon as needed, like a mechanic with a well-stocked toolbox.

Never Stop Listening

Never stop Listening

As she’s scanning organic bananas or buckwheat kernels at the checkout the assistant at local health food store strikes up a conversation. She’s curious to know if the bananas are just for making smoothies and what the customer uses the buckwheat for. These seemingly insignificant interactions are hardly worth remembering and yet over time they spark ideas for new menu items to be introduced at the in-store cafe and give rise to opportunities to better serve her community of customers.

Good marketing starts with the customer’s needs and wants, not with the company’s emergency.

A great marketing strategy is geared towards creating lasting connections instead of simply being focused on reaching short term targets.

The gifted marketer doesn’t simply try to sell what’s in stock today. She strives to understand what her customer will want tomorrow and then creates the culture and momentum to deliver that.

If your success and profits are by-product of satisfied customers, it stands to reason that your priority is to matter, not simply to make and sell.

The challenge that many organisations have is understanding what matters to customers, and rapidly transferring that understanding into developing products and services that matter to customers. Don’t get me wrong, being on the shop floor and interacting with customers is a critical part of marketers and leaders’ role. Good retailers still spend a day or two a week out in shops, and Terry Leahey in Tesco formalized this with every leader spending a week in store: TWIST, Tesco Week In Store Together, starting with himself.

Using Data-driven technology can harness the power of your colleagues and customers to listen intensively to customers and anticipate their needs at even more scale.

At Coop we starting a Listen Act and Fix programme where we gathered ideas from colleagues and used these to understand and prioritise problems to fix.

At Sainsbury’s “Tell Justin” was a colleague crowdsourced ideas generation programme where 150,000 colleagues could write to Justin King the CEO with ideas. He saw every idea and they were passed to senior managers to review. Every Idea earned a certificate for the colleagues and a simple thank you from Justin. The best ideas when they were implemented were celebrated through the company.

At Starbucks in USA they have taken this idea further to crowdsource ideas from customers. My Starbucks Idea created a digital portal and crowdsources suggestions to improve service/experience and lets users vote for their favourite ideas. Every idea is responded to by management and customers are kept involved in development, through digital media or you-tube style updates. Ideas such as writing name on the cup, or even suggesting baristas taught the basics in sign language are being seriously reviewed.

Aligning Organisations around Transformation

data world Digital mastery in an ever increasingly digital world is one of the key priorities of an organisation. The road to travel on the journey to making your organisation more customer focused in a digital world is challenging and one that requires alignment and commitment from the CEO, the Board and Shareholders down.

There are 5 priorities for a chief customer officer / chief digital officer

1) Build a clear vision of a radically different future state and align it with Shareholders Board, CEO and Exec. ensure that they are involved in co-creating the vision and understand the elements of how it works. If you need to train them on Twitter, facebook, what’s app or programming, do it so they understand a digital world.

2) Engage Colleagues in a 18m-36m Goal and develop a clear action plan. Ensure that you have a detailed and well managed transformation programme with agreed outcomes. Engaging colleagues in building this will be critical. It’s amazing how digitally literate teens and twenty somethings in a retail organisation are!

3) Breakdown fear of data and digital across the organisation. Board-> Senior managers-> middle managers -> Colleagues. Communicate widely and use storytelling to engage at all levels. Be very pragmatic and engage people in learning by doing rather than telling ( run Twittter workshops, small projects designed to deliver quick wins, training by doing.) Focus on small wins early and let people tell these stories across the organisation themselves as their wins. Align objectives and remuneration to deliver the goal from Exec down to all colleagues.

4) Foster stronger bonds between technical and business people. This is a two way process to ensure the technical teams understand the commercial imperatives, and customer solutions you would like to build, and the business teams learn to trust the expertise of technical IT teams. It will also allow you to improve data quality through showing the business impact.develop a data strategy aligned to business goals , build tools as required to deliver commercial goals.

5) Steer the course through strong Governance. Digital Transformation should be governed through the EXEC as well as relevant touchpoints to ensure continual alignment.

These 5 priorities along won’t drive the transformation but applying them is a start that many organisations who are now Digital Masters followed.

Make Sure you take Holidays

Leadership Tip of the week #83

It’s important to encourage your colleagues to take time off.

Make it clear to them that this is a business issue — not just a personal one.

Use a few minutes in a team meeting to share some of the research on the benefits of holidayies, such as higher productivity and less stress. Then keep track of how many holiday days colleagues have taken, and periodically update the team so that they know this issue matters to you.

When people do take time off, tell them that you don’t want them checking email or voicemail, and that you’ll keep a list of things that come up for when they’re back.

And if someone on your team isn’t taking their vacation time, bring it up during their next development discussion.

Most important of all, be a good role model: Take full, disconnected holidays so that your team will, too.

Have a great Easter break….

Adapted from “How to Get Your Team to Use Their Vacation Time,” by Liane Davey

Clever Cars

clever cars 2

What can your driving habits tell us? A lot is the answer. In fact, where people drive can reveal a lot more than Google searches and this is what advertisers, startups, and car-makers are quickly realising.

For years car companies have been installing software and sensors that collect driving behaviour and location data from our cars. This is invaluable to advertisers & car companies alike.

Car companies argue this data will enhance the driving experience CX. It could help to predict flat tires, find parking spaces or charging spots, alert authorities to dangerous crossings & even track criminals fleeing from crime-scenes.

Advertisers are even more excited. Israeli startup, Otonomo, cleans up and organises data for carmakers. They let drivers select the information they’re willing to share with companies in exchange for rewards & discounts – imagine leaving work late and a £5 Dominos discount coming up on your display 🍕

This is only the start. Ford estimates that by 2020 their vehicles will have 100m lines of code and Gartner estimates 98% of new cars in the US & Europe will have an embedded cyber connection.

clever cars

What about BIG data?

The real interesting part is when all this data is aggregated. With all this data, companies can see trends that are linked to other events. For instance:

Hedge funds could use boot sensor data to see how much people bought when they went shopping which would show consumer spending
Banks could see how many people had stopped driving to work, thus suggesting they’ve lost their jobs, and if this number began to rise they could anticipate an economic downturn
3rd parties could track trips to the police station, domestic violence shelters, STI/HIV testing centres and infer sensitive information about drivers’ health and relationships.

Autonomous cars won’t stop us…

One of the most important big-picture outcomes here is that car manufacturers are not only hardware companies now, they’re also software companies. It’s often been suggested that traditional companies will die off with the coming of autonomous cars, but this shows they’re using tech themselves to find new sources of revenue.

People need to be aware of the level of privacy they’ll be giving away. Soon your car could know more about you than your family…

How to get through to a Bad Listener

How to Get Through to a Bad Listener

Leadership Tip of the week# 82

adapted from HBR

It’s frustrating to work with someone who doesn’t listen.

Whether your colleague interrupts you, rambles on, or seems distracted, the impact is the same: You feel ignored, and the chances of misunderstandings increase.

But you can encourage your colleague to listen better by emphasizing the importance of your message up front.

Before starting a conversation, say: “I have to talk to you about something important, and I need your help.”

This sends a signal to your colleague that they need to pay attention.

As frustrating as it may be, you may also need to make your point multiple times, in multiple ways. Be transparent about what you’re doing.

You might say: “I want to repeat this, because I want to make sure it’s understood.”

Then follow up with: “Does that make sense?”

That way you can know your message has been heard.

Adapted from “How to Work with a Bad Listener,” by Rebecca Knight

Data driven fitness community

data pulse #43

sweaty betty tamara

Now I’m not one into female fashion ( just ask my wife) , nor do I hang around the shops but I do love how Tamara Hill-Norton has used data to create a passionate community with Sweaty Betty since she set up the first boutique in Notting Hill in 1998 . Initially targeting “yummy Mummies” but now broadened out to connect fitness and fashion.

Sweaty Betty is a British retailer specialising in active wear for women, featuring in 50 from London to San Fancisco and selling significantly digitally. Sweaty Betty aims to ‘inspire women to find empowerment through fitness’.

sweaty betty 2

Sweaty Betty has a real distinctive difference to its potential competitor Amazon : It distinctively moves beyond traditional retail practices with added value services as well as great clothing and builds an active community. This is achieved through regular Sweaty Betty fitness classes that are actively promoted to its customers. These classes range from yoga, run clubs and boot camps right through to Pilates, and are held in Sweaty Betty stores around the world. For those who can’t attend in person, there are also online fitness classes.

Sweaty Betty Live was a event where 3000 Sweaty Bettys came to sweat learn shop eat & get pampered:

sweaty betty carnaby

sweaty betty 1

Sweaty Betty was very clear on their purpose and had a very clear story that was developed starting inside the organisation, and building out into their community. A data driven approach to brand building and creating community, loyalty and interaction meant people starting telling the Sweaty Betty story themselves.

checkout Tamara story:

http://www.sweatybetty.com/meet-tamara/

Sweaty Betty leverages a broad range of data-driven social tools – Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and Pinterest are all used. They also created ‘brand ambassadors’ and allowed customers to have a conversation, helping to underline the sense that Sweaty Betty is a ‘fitness community rather than just a sportswear retailer

Get Team Help to solve Difficult Problems

Leadership Tip of Week # 81

adapted from HBR

If you and your team are facing a chronic challenge, you might be tempted to take control and vehemently argue for the solution you think will work, or to offer ideas indirectly and let your team take ownership of the issue.

Neither of these extremes is optimal.

Instead, try an approach that combines conviction and openness — that way others can come up with solutions that build on your best thinking.

With your team, talk about the persistence of the issue, what solutions have failed, and why.
Explain that you want them to choose the solution with you.
Make it clear that you are looking for new ideas, not a defense of failed solutions or rehashed versions of what you’ve already tried.
Build a set of measurable criteria with which you can evaluate options.
Admit any biases you have for particular solutions, and ask the team to treat those ideas no differently than their own.
Rate all ideas, including yours, against the established criteria
Most important, be open about the assumptions underlying your views.

Adapted from “Stress Leads to Bad Decisions. Here’s How to Avoid Them,” by Ron Carucci

Starbucks data driven coffee

starbucks cup

Starbucks have adopted a data driven mobile first approach to making the customer journey simpler and easier in its coffee shops world-wide.

Innovating and transforming the Customer experience by leveraging data-driven analytics and technology is critical for success in a 21st Century convenient foodservice retailer. 21% of Starbucks transactions are now completed via mobile … in store at the till using Apple Pay via app or using Starbucks Mobile Order and Pay . What’s more is Starbucks processes more than 6million Mobile Order and Pay transactions a month globally.

Mobile Order & Pay is available on iOS and Android . It’s an established of the popular Starbucks mobile app that allows customers to place and pay for an order in advance of their visits and pick it up at a participating Starbucks location. Mobile ordering is emerging as the fastest and easiest way for Starbucks customers to order ahead , then pay and pick up their purchases, providing on-the-go customers a simple and quick alternative to get their favourite coffee.

The Mobile Order and Pay feature allows customers to choose a store from a (Google) map view , browse , select and customise drinks, view the estimated time the order will be ready and pre-pay the order. All within the Starbucks app, and integrated into the existing Starbucks app, and my-Starbucks Rewards loyalty programme. A simple easy way to sign up and earn Stars

PROBLEM: It’s Too popular….

The Mobile Order & pay is creating some problems, that Starbucks are working hard to fix. Customers expect not to wait at all, but at busy times the queue is building up and customers are waiting and creating a headache. Starbucks being Starbucks though is working it through operationally and using data driven technology ahead of its rivals to improve the customer experience

They have launched an AI driven Starbucks Barista where customers can text through their orders: Check out below

Starbucks are leading the way as Tech leaders in convenience foodservice, using data and technology in a way that McDonald’s , are starting to respond but need to respond rapidly if they want to meet customer needs.

Ask these Questions to foster your colleagues Sense of Purpose

Leadership Tip of the week # 80

adapted from HBR

We all want to find meaning in what we do. As a manager, you can help your team members foster this inner sense of purpose by asking them a few simple questions:

What are you good at? What do you take on because you believe you’re the best person to do it? What have you gotten noticed for throughout your career? The idea here is to help people identify their strengths.
What do you enjoy? In a typical workweek, what do you look forward to doing? These questions help people find or rediscover what they love about work.
What feels most useful? Which work outcomes make you proudest? Which of your tasks are most critical to the team or organization? The answers can highlight the inherent value of certain work.
What creates a sense of forward momentum?How is your work today getting you closer to what you want? The point here is to show people how their current role helps them advance toward future goals.

It’s not always easy to guide others toward purpose, but these questions can help.

Adapted from “5 Questions to Help Your Employees Find Their Inner Purpose,” by Kristi Hedges

Be a better you….

Be a better you rather than worse them

As vulnerable humans, we’re brilliant at paying attention to threats in our midst. We are experts at mitigating against failure, which we trick ourselves into believing is the way to optimising for success. This tendency might explain our willingness to devote our resources to averting risk, solving problems and fixing mistakes.

When we focus on getting a near perfect score we sometimes overlook the opportunity to do more of what we already do well.

It’s possible that regularly amplifying delight can produce better results than trying to avoid the random missteps that inevitably happen.

It’s just as important to pay attention to what makes your customers happy as it is to get to the bottom of complaints.

What do you customers thank you for?

Make a list. Then do more of that.

Rolling back Prices at Asda
Good Food at Sainsbury’s
Community stores at Coop

When leading a turnaround , focus on the future

When Leading a Turnaround,

Focus on the Future, Not the Past

Leadership Tip of Week #79

When you’re brought in to turn around a team or business unit, the deck might feel as if it’s stacked against you.

If your predecessor failed, how will you succeed?

First off, to effectively lead a turnaround, resist the temptation to emotionally distance yourself from the situation — you are part of this team, so embrace it. And minimize references to your past successes; while you should draw on what’s worked for you before, no one in a struggling organization likes to hear “This is how we did it at my old company.”

To help keep your colleagues’ anxiety down, be transparent about how you’ll make changes and on what kind of timeline.

But don’t be afraid to push back if they offer ideas that you don’t believe will lead to positive change. You want to clean up the mess, not create another one.

Cashless Starbucks

starbucks shop

Starbucks is experimenting with cashless restaurants at a posh location in downtown Seattle. Since January, your money is no good at the cafe inside the Russell Investments Center unless it’s in the form of plastic.

There is no sign announcing the policy, but a barista on Wednesday declined to take a $20 bill in payment for a short latte and a piece of lemon cake, explaining that the store is not accepting cash.

The test will help Starbucks understand how cashless forms of payment may impact our customer experience,

Starbucks says its mobile payment and ordering app is a fast-growing success — to the point that last year it blamed slow sales growth a stores on crowding by people who had ordered from their phones.

The second-floor Russell Center cafe, dominated by armchairs, couches and at least one chaise longue, is reached from the lobby of the 42-story building, which is the corporate home of the online real-estate company Zillow as well as Russell, an international financial firm.

The cashless test is an opportunity to make Starbucks Better Simpler Cheaper, by removing the need to keep Cash in the Till, speeding up transactions, removing a hygiene issue and removing the need to go to the bank to cash & change.

Employee theft is also less of a concern in a cashless system, And the move may help in “positioning themselves as a very innovative company.”

“If we can shave another 10 seconds per order, over a day or over a year, that’s a lot of savings.

A box at the sales register made clear, however, that tips are still accepted in cash.

starbucks tip jat

Talk about skills to develop colleagues

Talk About Skills When Talking About Promotions

Leadership Tip of the week #78

adapted from HBR

Conversations about promotions can be tense — both for the person asking and for you, the manager.

Your first instinct might be to consider whether the employee is a “good fit” for the new role, but it’s better to focus on their skills.

Ask yourself, What will the person need to do the job well? Then communicate the answer to your employee. For example, you might say: “You would need to develop expertise with Tableau,” or Excel, or giving presentations.

That is a far simpler message to deliver than “I don’t know if you’re equipped to be a manager yet.”

By breaking down the role into the required skills, you’ll demystify the promotion and make it more attainable for the employee.

Plus, a request to learn new skills is much easier, and quicker, for you to grant.

Adapted from “How to Support Employees’ Learning Goals While Getting Day-to-Day Stuff Done,” Nick Gidwani

Amazon Go-Go

amazon go

In January in Seattle, queues formed around the block for the first glimpse inside Amazon’s latest retail offering – Amazon Go.

Luckily, I had a colleague in Seattle checkout what it looked like on launch day to see what the future of retail (might) look like; overall impression was that it was remarkable at how unremarkable it was…

Inside, the atmosphere was calm – erring on the “good side” of downright boring, in fact, given the ease of the experience.

Before entering, everyone is required to download the Amazon Go app, the digital counterpart to the physical shopping experience. Downloaded over a phone network on the walk to the store, the app provides a short animation on how to navigate Amazon Go, followed by a QR code to identify yourself at the entrance. For a digital-first company such as Amazon, it was curious to see the digital elements function largely as invisible enablers of the physical experience.

There is no interaction with the app required while you shop, and a fully itemised receipt appeared as a push notification upon departure several minutes after leaving.

There is a “Discover” section on the app, where you can browse products by category, but this is the extent of its intersection with the physical experience.

The store itself was small, reflective of the limited selection of products – largely a curated, premium selection of pre-prepared healthy fare, perfectly placed to meet the needs of time-poor Seattle office workers. Interesting to see how that can be scaled….

However, the limited space posed a problem for the few store employees tasked with re-stocking; the crates were unwieldy and large enough to block some of the shelves and were a noticeable inconvenience. This though may have been due to the anticipation of higher demand on the first day or the fact that amazon don’t ( YET) understand retail operations

Purchases are tracked by an impressive, dense array of cameras mounted on the ceiling that follow your journey around the store. While the cameras don’t use facial recognition, there were rumours that the original launch was delayed as the tech couldn’t distinguish between shoppers with similar body shapes – suggesting there’s a certain level of personal, visual data that customers are handing over.

It seems likely they’ll be comfortable doing so, however, as it’s this “computer vision” which enables customers to ‘Just Walk Out’, without having to go through a traditional check-out.

It’s savvy too – despite various attempts by my colleague to fool the system, it was able to correctly identify who should pay for what.

This was the case when comparing products as well; while in the store, I tested it by continually picking up and replacing two different products and was pleasantly surprised to find my final choice was indeed the one on my receipt.

Known online for its relevant and contextual suggestions, Amazon’s Go has rudimentarily translated this digital capability into the offline world with signs in the wine section with suggestions based on your previous purchases (“If you bought X, you’ll like Y”).

It’s easy to see how they could quickly expand this using their wider digital infrastructure, perhaps with decisions or indecisions in Amazon Go showing up on Amazon next time you log into your account.

The “computer vision” element of the cameras is another indication of how Amazon could potentially layer this real-world data onto the digital profiles of customers. In the near future, we’ll see the computers in these cameras not just process information but also react to the world around them.

With facial recognition software in a retail context approaching, it’s not a stretch to imagine that soon these cameras could react to our disappointment at limited stock, for example, and serve us a prompt to purchase the missing item through Amazon Fresh.

It feels unquestionably odd to simply walk out with the items you’ve picked up – it truly felt like shoplifting.

Once outside though, this feeling swiftly fades into the realisation that this store has undoubtedly set a new bar for consumer expectations at retail.

As we now jump out of Lyfts and Ubers without paying, or giving it a second thought, it’s quite easy to see this retail model becoming the norm as well.

Amazon Go is certainly a glimpse into the future of retail, and the focus on eliminating queues does not do justice to the scope of change this store could usher in.

More than convenience, the store has fundamentally altered the emotional experience of shopping. For retail incumbents, it’s a look at a new way of doing things – and they’ll have to quickly decide whether their service should adapt, or remain differentiated to survive.

Check Out the Amazon Go YouTube Film :

H2 solve problems :wrong think

Solve a Problem: Think About Worst Possible Solution

Leadership Tip of the Week #77

Adapapted from HBR

If you need to come up with a new idea, stop trying to think of the best one.

Instead, imagine the worst idea possible:

What would be the wrong way to solve this problem?
What do our customers absolutely not want?
How could we make all of our stakeholders angry?

Try to come up with ideas that would get you laughed at (or maybe even fired), and then work backward from there to find new ways of solving the problem.

This process, called “wrong thinking” or “reverse thinking,” isn’t always easy to do. You can start by trying to see the problem as a beginner would. What would someone who knows nothing about the context suggest?

When you give yourself permission to have bad ideas, you often come up with the best ones.

Adapted from “To Come Up with a Good Idea, Start by Imagining the Worst Idea Possible,” by Ayse Birsel

Keep colleagues engaged: be curious & challenging

Keep Your Colleagues Engaged…

Be Curious and Challenging

Leadership Tip of the week #76

Leaders play a significant role in helping colleagues understand why their jobs matter, but it’s not just about connecting their work to a larger purpose. ( ref :

You can also do it by demonstrating curiosity: Explore, ask questions, and engage people on their ideas about the future.

Make clear that there is a wide range of possibilities for how work gets done and that you want your employees to try new things. At the same time, keep them focused on meeting goals and making progress.

Remain ambitious in the face of both failure and success, and push your people to continually accomplish more.

You want colleagues to feel a sense of progress, reinvention, and growth, which results in a more meaningful and positive work experience.

Adapted from “How to Make Work More Meaningful for Your Team,” by Lewis Garrad and Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic

Loose Lips cost Lives

strava military

I use Strava to map my runs & cycle rides but a recent article caught my attention on the importance of keeping your data private vs public.

Last November, Strava released a global user-activity heat map showing the running and cycling routes of people wearing fitness trackers. Some of those people work for the military & intelligence agencies.

Their data, which they neglected to opt out of sharing, reveals their daily routines and the contours of previously secret bases for anyone with a Strava account who might be looking. “A modern equivalent of the World War II-era warning that ‘loose lips sink ships,’ writes Jeremy Hsu, “May be ‘FFS don’t share your Fitbit data on duty.’”

So far, the breach hasn’t hurt anyone, and militaries and intelligence services will update their facilities (and personnel training policies) to render this particular vulnerability moot. But the unexpected risks of modern geolocation technology remain. “These digital footprints that echo the real-life steps underscore a greater challenge to governments and ordinary citizens alike,” Hsu writes. “Each person’s connection to online services and personal devices makes it increasingly difficult to keep secrets.”

Read the full article here

https://www.wired.com/story/strava-heat-map-military-bases-fitness-trackers-privacy/

The story behind your Metrics

The Story behind your metrics

data pulse #36

Lines out the door. An email list that is growing at breakneck speed. Likes on Facebook. More users, subscribers or members all adding to the value of your platform. These are the stuff entrepreneurial dreams are made of.

Measuring growth and how it happens feels important. But ‘more’ isn’t the only metric of a good business, and it’s not the only thing that defines success.

Be clear on what your commercial & customer end goals are and then measure what will deliver that end goal. Focus on few things that really matter and don’t let the list get too long.

There is usually a way to find data that supports a worldview and nobody is immune to using data to confirm previously held assumptions. Qualitative data measures the things that align with the values we care about, those we want our employees to embrace and our customers to sense. When we measure in this way we take into account the story behind the data. The number of meals sent back to the kitchen, staff retention, customer referrals and on and on.

Questions that will set you on the path to measuring what matters

How do you track how business is doing? Make a list of everything you measure.
Which numbers do you want to go up? Why?
Which numbers need to go down? Why?
Why are each of these particular metrics important? Create a rationale for each one.
What story do the numbers tell you about how your customers and colleagues feel?
What story do you want them to tell?

It’s tempting to want to scale, that’s what businesses do after all. As you grow it’s equally important to understand what metrics are sacred and why they matter.

Building Delegations Skills

What Can You Delegate Today?

Leadership Tip of the Week #75

adapted from Harvard Business review

Many of us know the benefits of delegation: It helps teams share the workload so that managers focus on the work only they can do.

But in reality, you (like most managers) probably hoard tasks and become a bottleneck.

To fix that, start with baby steps.

Ask yourself regularly, even daily: “What can I, and only I, do?”

If a certain task could be done by someone else, maybe it should be. Try to delegate small tasks that add up to something bigger, or projects that are relatively simple. Also consider time-sensitive work that competes with your other priorities.

If you’re still struggling to delegate, try this: For two weeks, make a list of tasks that you might delegate, writing them down as you think of them. This exercise will get you one step closer to handing off the work you need to.

Adapted from “How to Decide Which Tasks to Delegate,” by Jenny Blake

Data driven Easyjet flys easy

Data Pulse # 434

Removing Friction in the customer journey to make it easier is critical for future success, and is important as a way of telling your Brand story , particularly if you are called EasyJet. Digital transformation can accelerate this change if applied with a clear focus on the commercial goals combined with deep understanding of the customer journey .

Carolyn McColl at Easyjet made great strides at using digital technology to transform the organisation making it easier for their customers to travel, simpler for their colleagues and cheaper for the organisation. They started with a clear understanding of the commercial goal: More customers flying more often on Easyjet, and developed a series of customer propositions that made it easier to fly driven around the key hardware that most travellers provide themselves: The Smartphone.

Easyjet app developed with key functionality

easyjet2 (2)

1) Book Flight

2) My Flights Booked

3) My Flights Tracked

4) Mobile Check-in and Mobile Boarding Passes.

5) Option to book HireCare & Hotel.

All personalised through MyEasyjet traveller registration , that uses customer data held, (including passport, address credit card details ) geolocation of all data, previous flights searched and taken to make it easier for booking.

I have just headed off skiing flying Easyjet:

The email alerts prior to travelled felt timely & relevant: adding personal information, and checking.
The mobile boarding pass removes friction in finding a printer to print a boarding pass and then not losing the boarding pass as you travel through the airport .
The Flight Status monitor is an easy way of seeing ahead of leaving for the airport if flights are delayed or reassurance.

Easier Self Serve Baggage Drop.

Easyjet now have self serve baggage drop in Manchester as well as Gatwick , which makes it easier and quicker to drop off baggage rather than queuing

What Friction Points Next?

TO AND FROM THE AIRPORT

I would appreciate Easyjet helping me get to the airport and then to my onwards destination. It would be easy to partner / connect with Google or Citymapper to provide live travel options on drive times, Trains/ buses to catch, or even a link to Uber to get a ride to and from the airport.

WALK THROUGH AIRPORT STRESS FREE.

I would really appreciate being walked through the airport with digital alerts that help me understand which gate to go to , the time to gate, and alerts on how busy it is at anyone time. This technology is available and has been piloted in London City Airport by Dan Byles and the team at PlanetIT. So watch out for a digital concierge helping you through the airport and ensuring you have enough time and and not be rushed.

Eat, Drink and Shop at your pace.

I’ll even be able to order ahead and have my Starbucks coffee and porridge waiting for me as I arrive through security !

I am a demanding customer but I am really just like everyone else just more vocal.

Good Luck to Johan Lundgren , new CEO easyjet in accelerating the use of data even further to make easyjet even easier.

Don’t Solve Your Team’s Problems for Them

Leadership Tip of the week

adapted from HBR

If your team is constantly bringing issues to you rather than addressing them on their own, you aren’t doing your job as a manager.

So only let problems get escalated to you thoughtfully and occasionally.

To make sure you’re not stepping in when you shouldn’t, ask yourself several questions. For example, don’t ask “How do we solve the problem?” until you’ve paused and considered “Who should own this problem?”

Balance the need to resolve the issue with consideration for how your actions will influence future behavior.

In your desire to help your team, you might be tempted to do more than you should.

If others are struggling to solve problems they should rightfully own, always ask “What is the least I can do?” Find the lowest level of initiative for yourself, while requiring your team member to act in ways they are capable of.

Adapted from “When to Solve Your Team’s Problems, and When to Let Them Sort It Out,” by Joseph Grenny

H2 ensure Analytics drives commercial success?

digital masters

There are three simple steps to ensure Customer Analytics drive commercial success in an organisation

Strive for excellence in customer analytics matters (vs merely good average).
Establish a culture that values fact-based decision making and analytics
Secure senior management involvement in customer analytics.

Strive for excellence in customer analytics matters (as opposed to a merely good average).

More than 85 percent of companies that report extensive use of customer analytics (in terms of IT, analytics, and its execution) claim their company achieves a significant value contribution from customer analytics. This compares with around 20 percent for low users of the function, and some 30 percent of moderate users—suggesting that companies start to reap substantial benefit from customer analytics only when they achieve excellence, i.e., when their function can be considered state of the art. Just moving from a low to a medium level of maturity will merely generate limited success

This has particularly important implications for managers and their decisions on what needs to be invested in their organisation’s customer analytics to be competitive in the future. They need to determine the performance gap between their current customer analytics and state-of-the-art customer analytics in their industry, and to ensure that their additional spending on customer analytics stands a fair chance of bridging this gap. Otherwise the additional spending will—despite the best of intentions—turn out to have been a sunk investment right from the outset (because it will not pay off eventually).

Establish a culture that values fact-based decision making and analytics.

It’s vital that the culture that is not focused purely on IT and analytics topics, but approaches customer analytics holistically. Although investments in IT and skilled employees are important, these investments alone will not deliver value. Leadership that expects fact-based decisions and an organization that can quickly translate those decisions into action are qualities more likely to lead to success than companies focused exclusively on IT.

a) the execution and organizational aspects of customer analytics (such as a culture of fact-based decision making, analytics valued by the front line, management attitude and expectations) correlate most with the value contribution of customer analytics . This suggests that it is the culture and organizational setup that moves the needle even though IT and analytics expertise are obviously necessary to create value from customer analytics.

b) Having pragmatic and actionable foundations with the right cultural mind-set in place within the organization is more important than the perfect solution. Within execution and organization, for instance, fact-based decision making and management expectations are more important than the speed at which these insights are put into action. Within analytics, the focus is on delivering the right actionable insights, and less on the fast development of new models. Looking at IT, a similar pattern emerges: a pragmatic 360° data mart that builds the foundation for customer analytics is more important than the complete (automated) linkage of all IT systems.

A key success factor is therefore to examine customer analytics holistically, including IT, analytics, and execution/organizational setup, and to pragmatically improve on all dimensions.

Secure senior management involvement in customer analytics. High-performing companies are led by data-savvy C-level executives who understand the importance of and involve themselves in customer analytics. Companies where senior management is not involved extensively, only 28 percent report a significant value contribution of customer analytics, versus 69 percent of companies with senior management involvement in customer analytics that say that customer analytics drives value

Specifically, looking at the level of management that should be involved, it becomes clear that what drives the value contribution is top management/board involvement. If the company has established a role within the top management team (TMT), such as via a chief commercial officer, more than half of the respondents (53 percent) stated that customer analytics contributes significantly to value creation. If only senior management is involved but not the TMT, this drops to just 29 percent, close to the value of no senior management involvement at all (20 percent).

In summary: three factors to drive Analytical Success:

Strive for excellence in customer analytics matters (vs merely good average).
Establish a culture that values fact-based decision making and analytics
Secure senior management involvement in customer analytics.

Celebrate small wins , when changing company culture

chicos-600

Leadership Tip of the week

adapted from Harvard Business review

Celebrate small wins to change company culture

If you’re trying to implement a new culture in your organisation, colleagues are more likely to buy in if they see that the change is already sticking.

Demonstrate small wins early on and showcase examples of how the new culture will help the company achieve its goals.

Here’s an example. Before the pharmaceutical company Dr. Reddy’s rolled out the company’s new mission, “Good health can’t wait,” leaders redesigned the product packaging to be more user-friendly and recast its sales reps as knowledge hubs for physicians.

When the cultural shift was introduced, leaders could point to projects already under way to show how it was succeeding.

Celebrating the first small steps toward a new vision helps your employees understand what the new culture should accomplish — and gives them models to follow when making their own contributions to the shift.

Adapted from “Changing Company Culture Requires a Movement, Not a Mandate,” by Bryan Walker and Sarah A. Soule

H2 Accelerate growth using data

data-driven-marketing-4

Accelerating growth through data is challenging and requires commitment and alignment from around all the organisation to be successful, but there are 7 steps that make the journey more successful

Identify the commercial & customer Goals in next 18m-36m
Build a clear vision of a radically different data-driven customer experience, working across digital & bricks & mortar and align across the organisation.
Remove Silos of data use creating a single version of the truth, with a data strategy linked to business goals e.g. Unified View of customer data, GDPR ready and tools developed to meet commercial goals.
Breakdown the institutional fear of data & digital at all levels through training & doing: it’s a tool that anyone can use to do what you have been doing better
Use Data Analytics to Map & Prioritise customer journeys & personalised experiences across human & digital touchpoints and align organisation capability to deliver for customer.
Identify & Build the capabilities (Process, Tools People) that will be required to transform process design from efficiency focused (cheaper) to customer focused (better simpler cheaper) , specifically putting in place an analytics capability to enable data-driven, personalised journeys
Foster stronger bonds between technical and different business people. This is a two-way process to ensure the technical teams understand the commercial imperatives, and customer solutions you would like to build, and the business teams learn to trust the expertise of technical IT teams. It will also allow you to improve data quality through showing the business impact.

Using Data & Advanced Customer Analytics to put the customer at the heart of an organisation is a transformation that future looking organisations need to start implementing now.

Transformation to ensure data is part of the DNA of an organisation takes time and a holistic approach.