Here is a picture of Martin Peterlechner (Marketing Director) on the left, and Karen Savva (Head of Customer Services) collecting the award.
MoneyVista recognized at the MoneyFacts Awards 2012
One of my clients, MoneyVista, was recently highly commended in the innovation category at the MoneyFacts Awards 2012, coming in just behind the winner, Governor Money. I am very proud to be associated with this success.
Here is a picture of Martin Peterlechner (Marketing Director) on the left, and Karen Savva (Head of Customer Services) collecting the award.
Here is a picture of Martin Peterlechner (Marketing Director) on the left, and Karen Savva (Head of Customer Services) collecting the award.
Choosing where to offer feedback
I've just finished providing some feedback to someone from whom I had just bought something. There was nothing unusual about it - I'd bought the product, they'd asked for feedback, and I'd given a small amount of my time to offer it.
At the end of the interaction (this was all online) they said "... And thanks for the feedback - I know it takes time and effort to give it - but we really appreciate it."
Suddenly my attention was focused on the amount of time I'd taken to provide feedback. Time, of course, is a very precious commodity these days, and so we have to choose where we spend it wisely. So how do we choose when to give feedback, when to just do nothing, and when (if the service was bad rather than good) to vote with out feet.
It struck me, after a moment's reflection, that my time is better spent offering feedback to people who are already doing a good job.
People who are already doing a good job have already gone to a lot of trouble to do so. And so, it is my view, they are much more likely to receive my feedback and to go to even more trouble to use it continue to improve their product or service. Conversely, people who are already doing a bad job will probably do a bad job of addressing my feedback as well. This is a gross generalisation, but as I said, my time is precious and I've got to make a call on how I spend it.
So, if you're doing a great job, enjoin your customers to help you do it better. But if you're doing a poor job, get your house in order and sort out the basics before you try and waste even more of your customers' time.
Finally, on a purely selfish note, it struck how much more I had enjoyed giving constructive feedback about good service than I would have enjoyed explaining to some under-trained call-center operator that they were the 5th person I'd spoken to at their company today who'd been unable to help me!
(Oh, and just in case you are interested, I'd just bought the Kindle edition of "Blackboards Bubbles and Cappuccinos" from Change Designs. Watch this space for the review.)
At the end of the interaction (this was all online) they said "... And thanks for the feedback - I know it takes time and effort to give it - but we really appreciate it."
Suddenly my attention was focused on the amount of time I'd taken to provide feedback. Time, of course, is a very precious commodity these days, and so we have to choose where we spend it wisely. So how do we choose when to give feedback, when to just do nothing, and when (if the service was bad rather than good) to vote with out feet.
It struck me, after a moment's reflection, that my time is better spent offering feedback to people who are already doing a good job.
People who are already doing a good job have already gone to a lot of trouble to do so. And so, it is my view, they are much more likely to receive my feedback and to go to even more trouble to use it continue to improve their product or service. Conversely, people who are already doing a bad job will probably do a bad job of addressing my feedback as well. This is a gross generalisation, but as I said, my time is precious and I've got to make a call on how I spend it.
So, if you're doing a great job, enjoin your customers to help you do it better. But if you're doing a poor job, get your house in order and sort out the basics before you try and waste even more of your customers' time.
Finally, on a purely selfish note, it struck how much more I had enjoyed giving constructive feedback about good service than I would have enjoyed explaining to some under-trained call-center operator that they were the 5th person I'd spoken to at their company today who'd been unable to help me!
(Oh, and just in case you are interested, I'd just bought the Kindle edition of "Blackboards Bubbles and Cappuccinos" from Change Designs. Watch this space for the review.)
How to tune and prune your portfolio of strategic initiatives
Once you've determined your portfolio of strategic initiatives, either as part of a new strategy you've developed, or just by listing out the initiatives currently underway within the organisation, you're in a a position to review them with a view to prioritising them and/or assessing their efficacy. The framework below provides a suitable basis for doing so. (You could, and probably should, also use a 4 Horizons analysis for this purpose.)
By mapping your strategic initiatives out in this way your are able to evaluate your portfolio of initiatives according to three success criteria.
Firstly, have you got an even spread from low hanging fruit to strategic transformations? If you have only initiatives in the strategic transformation quadrant, you organisation is likely to stagnate during the short-term as the strategic transformation initiatives are likely to take a long time to bear fruit. Unless your organisation has very deep pockets, such a short term stagnation could place a strain on its cash flow and customers' loyalties. By including some "low hanging fruit" initiatives, you're likely to see earlier gains. This is also likely to boost staff morale and buy-in to the overall strategic change programme.
On the other hand, if you have only initiatives in the low hanging fruit quadrant, your organisation may be lured into a false sense of security, only to be toppled as significant environmental changes occur or your competitors implement step changes in their own strategies.
Secondly, are you continually challenging the innovators within your organisation to imagine the golden opportunities - those opportunities that produce disproportionately high benefits relative to their costs, risks and difficulty of implementation? By continually challenging your organisation to do so, your will hopefully move your portfolio upwards and leftwards on the grid over time.
Thirdly, are you successfully avoiding projects with a low cost-benefit ratio? These tend to be the pet projects of key decision makers and/or resource allocators - although they are sub-optimal relative to the rest of the portfolio they are pursued on irrational grounds based on personal agendas. These should be eliminated. This may need to be done carefully so that the people with vested interests in these initiatives do not become alienated from the rest of the strategic change programme. However, it is important that this entire analysis is done on the basis of sunk costs - that is sunk costs should be ignored from the costs side of the analysis. A project that started out as a pet project but which has already spent 90% of its costs may now be low hanging fruit if you believe all of the benefit are still attainable for the cost of only 10% of the initial costs. Clearly you can't get the 90% of costs already spent back, but you should consider them a valuable lesson in the importance of avoiding these kind of projects in the future.
As you get ready to kick of your strategic planning process for the year, this may be a great opportunity to evaluate your existing portfolio of strategic initiatives with a view to pruning it and developing it forwards. Please let me know how you get on in the comments below.
Firstly, have you got an even spread from low hanging fruit to strategic transformations? If you have only initiatives in the strategic transformation quadrant, you organisation is likely to stagnate during the short-term as the strategic transformation initiatives are likely to take a long time to bear fruit. Unless your organisation has very deep pockets, such a short term stagnation could place a strain on its cash flow and customers' loyalties. By including some "low hanging fruit" initiatives, you're likely to see earlier gains. This is also likely to boost staff morale and buy-in to the overall strategic change programme.
On the other hand, if you have only initiatives in the low hanging fruit quadrant, your organisation may be lured into a false sense of security, only to be toppled as significant environmental changes occur or your competitors implement step changes in their own strategies.
Secondly, are you continually challenging the innovators within your organisation to imagine the golden opportunities - those opportunities that produce disproportionately high benefits relative to their costs, risks and difficulty of implementation? By continually challenging your organisation to do so, your will hopefully move your portfolio upwards and leftwards on the grid over time.
Thirdly, are you successfully avoiding projects with a low cost-benefit ratio? These tend to be the pet projects of key decision makers and/or resource allocators - although they are sub-optimal relative to the rest of the portfolio they are pursued on irrational grounds based on personal agendas. These should be eliminated. This may need to be done carefully so that the people with vested interests in these initiatives do not become alienated from the rest of the strategic change programme. However, it is important that this entire analysis is done on the basis of sunk costs - that is sunk costs should be ignored from the costs side of the analysis. A project that started out as a pet project but which has already spent 90% of its costs may now be low hanging fruit if you believe all of the benefit are still attainable for the cost of only 10% of the initial costs. Clearly you can't get the 90% of costs already spent back, but you should consider them a valuable lesson in the importance of avoiding these kind of projects in the future.
As you get ready to kick of your strategic planning process for the year, this may be a great opportunity to evaluate your existing portfolio of strategic initiatives with a view to pruning it and developing it forwards. Please let me know how you get on in the comments below.
Alternating between divergent and convergent processes
A strategic process alternates between divergent and convergent processes.
Divergent processes are about harnessing diverse opinions and perspectives to generate new options, alternative, scenarios and insights. In divergent thinking, within limits, more and more different is better. Convergent processes, on the other hand, are about evaluating, prioritising, making choices, and ultimately aiming for one single and clearly defined answer.
Too little divergence results in bland, undifferentiated, ‘me-too’, magnolia strategies. Too little convergence results in lack of focus and alignment, and ultimately in failed execution.
When you are constructing your strategic planning process, it is important to understand which parts of the process are divergent and which are convergent. You can do this at the micro level or at the macro level. For example, you could pursue some months of divergent thinking followed by some months of convergent thinking, or you could facilitate divergent thinking in the first have of a meeting and convergent thinking in the second half of the same meeting. Part of the process facilitator's role is to know which process to apply when, and to manage the transition from one mode to the other. It can be incredibly frustrating for everyone involved if some people are being divergent while other people are simultaneously being convergent. It is also worth considering that some people are better at divergent thinking, whilst others are better at convergent thinking - at the risk of stereotyping, we might think of these as creatives or implementers.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)