Business and Corporate Training

Customer Centricity

2006-10-30T13:29:00.000+11:00

I have just heard that this week's economic forecast for Australia in 2007 is very positive indeed. How strange is it therefore that discussions in NSW seem to be avoiding the "R" word. The powers that be have admitted we have a rural recession but it seems to me that the "Premier State" is not far off this itself. Must be something to do with the lack of natural resources compared to the boom states of WA and Queensland ... or is it the recent end to the long surge in property prices that is at last having an effect?.

One sure sign of economic reality in NSW is in the training market. It has been nearly a year since other trainers started to make overtures about networking - a sure sign they were short of work. Now clients are asking for Customer Focus training and Negotiation training. Not something they undertake when order books are full I think! Hmm! maybe things are not as rosy in the most populous State after all.

Customer Focus is not new, nor are the techniques for achieving it, however, there are precious few companies out there who really understand it and even fewer who live by it. Yet the opportunities are enormous. If you can really understand customers and their needs, concerns and prospects, you are able to fashion a relationship with them and solutions for them that no one else can replicate. In short, you become free of competition.

I was at a seminar given by Robert Kyosaki when he said that only fat, dumb and stupid people have competition (or was there a lazy in there somewhere). He explained that people who were active thinkers and used their brains commercially were able to find a market niche that others had not yet found. One of the best is to be so customer focused that instead of being reactive to market changes, you are pre-empting or maybe even leading them. Just imagine, being so in tune with your customers that you have precisely what they need just as they discover that they want it. No hard sell, no quibbling on price, no competition to worry about.

Sounds too good to be true? If so, the chances are you do not have a true customer focus ... or to use the new buzz words, you are not Customer Centric. Of course when I worked for Jardine's we did not call it that but we created whole new markets by living it. In the 70's and 80's Insurance companies were arrogantly offering products across the board that they thought their customers wanted. One size to fit all. We understood that different groupings of clients had different insurance needs ... maybe professional cover, text books, or, in the case of doctors, not having to remember which family car was covered for medical emergencies. By understanding real needs, we carved out a significant niche that should have never been open to a mere broker.

The steps to Customer Centricity are simple, the rewards are amazing for those who have trodden the path, however, the will to make the cultural changes needed defeat all but the most determined. Having just completed our latest Manager Tool Kit module on this very topic, we have found great demand emerging even before the ink has dried. Now what was I saying about having precisely what customers need when they discover they want it? ....

Innovation

2006-09-21T11:52:00.000+10:00

As winter turns to spring in Sydney, we have been hard at work reviewing an area that has become so important recently that The Business Council of Australia commissioned a special report on it. Innovation. A simple word and we all think we know what it means. But the truth is that you only have to read the BCA report to realise that everyone means something different when they apply Innovation to their own business and markets.

Undaunted, we looked at our own clients and experience. The outcome was the same, they all defined Innovation differently. One client even had declared next year to be their year of Innovation only to cancel it when it was pointed out to them that Innovation involved risk and their whole culture was risk adverse!

So, let's look at the experts we thought ... again they all approached it differently and each seemed to have something missing in the mix. Undeterred, we went back to basics and started with a clean sheet of paper. What is this thing called Innovation? Just about the only thing that everyone agreed on was that Innovation meant doing something differently ... and hopefully better.

Now, most models end up as simple 4 quadrant affairs, and much of the text on the subject attempted to make Innovation models fit this matrix. Try as we may, we could not get this quite right. Then it hit us, Innovation is driven by 3 elements, not the usual 2 in the 4 quadrant model.

The drivers as we concluded are

Focus - internal (changes inside the business) or external (mostly changes to the interaction with customers);
Orientation - past/current or future (is the business predominantly looking back and making changes based on past experience or looking forward and creating a brand new future) and
something we call Chunk Size - the scale of the change and therefore the degree of risk involved.

This six segment matrix allows us to be clear about what Innovation means for any client and address their needs accordingly. We have written 5 Manager Tool Kits (self help guides) that collectively set out the processes involved in these segments, as for some the process is very much the same.

Using the tool kits, we can

help clients reduce their risk,
keep everyone on track and
identify the culture changes necessary to support innovation - whatever that means to them. (We have a culture change tool kit module too!)

Three different training programs have also been outlined, with 14 new activities, so that our unique brand of experiential learning covers all the ground implied by the matrix.

Ah well! Back to the writing. The next step is a complete Innovation Inventory Check List, so whether we are supplying our clients with the tools to do it themselves, or facilitating the process for them, we have a complete package to help them make Innovation a success on their own terms. This in itself is an innovation!!

Using Games in Training

2006-08-31T13:55:00.000+10:00

A Light-Bulb Moment
In 1992, after years of success, I was in a real mess. A good friend encouraged me to attend a training program that was to literally change my life. Up until then training programs to me had been boring or ineffective. Even with the most engaging presenter, I had found that the information just did not stick. I would leave the program with my notes which I then filed unread and, hopefully, a desire to put at least 5 things into action. By next morning I could possibly remember one of them, which I may or may not have used.

My friend told me that this program would be different, and it was! It introduced me to the power of games, what I now know as experiential learning. One fun 15 minute game just blew me away. It showed me clearly why I was in my mess and what I needed to do to change it. Just 15 minutes to solve a problem I had struggled with for more than 2 years!

A day or two later and wham! A second fun, engaging game provided another one of those light-bulb-in-the-head experiences. I subsequently changed my behaviour, my results and, not surprisingly, my beliefs about training.

The program that began my journey was not all fun and games. There were huge chunks of data interspersed with relevant games and exercises. I found that my data retention soared. 10 years on, I can still remember most of the key points, but it was the games that were the difference that made the difference.

How WorldGAMES Began
I started to think about the purpose of training. In a nutshell, it must be to encourage a change of behaviour. After all, if people are already doing things the most effective way, why would you train them? I already knew that bored people learn very little, very slowly. I knew that good training games and exercises are fun, engaging and encourage learning. What I did not know is whether games, exercises and simulations could be used as the primary building blocks to create highly effective training programs.

WorldGAMES began as an experiment to see if they could.

Very soon two things became obvious. On the positive side, initial results were excellent. The learning processes WorldGAMES created were fun, active and very effective in terms of learning outcomes and retention. The bad news was that there were very few games around that had learning outcomes relevant to the workplace. That was the start of our games designing process, the task of creating games that were fun, simple and safe yet are powerful business metaphors.

The rest, as they say, is history. WorldGAMES now has over 600 games, exercises, simulations, management tools and programs that are all workplace relevant. Participants in our programs are in action for themselves about 95% of the time and they love it.

So, I am sure, will you.