change

You know you need to make changes in the business, but there are competing forces, those that help to drive the change and those that impede the change. How do you identify and then solve for each of those and, ultimately, bring everyone together?

The following is a modified excerpt from my book, Customer Understanding: Three Ways to Put the “Customer” in Customer Experience (and at the Heart of Your Business), available now on Amazon in paperback and Kindle formats.

I’ve written about change and change management several times over the years, especially last year. After all, customer experience management really is (all about) change management. Change is hard. Well, it can be. But it’s especially hard when not everyone sees or agrees with your change vision.

Change is hard. We know that. But it’s even harder when we hear nothing but excuses for why something can’t be done or why it shouldn’t change.

I’ve written about change and change management many times over the years. Last year was also and especially a big year to talk and write about change and the challenges and disciplines required to execute change.

Over the years, I’ve written a lot of posts about change and change management. In a post I wrote earlier this year about change and some of the learnings and takeaways from the pandemic and the business crisis that created, I noted that that we had/have a lot to learn.

I originally wrote today’s post for CCW Digital. It appeared on their site on March 18, 2020. I’ve updated it to reflect some things we’ve seen and learned since then.

I challenge you think about things differently in 2019.

What got us here won't get us there, right?

I recently came across The Tribal Wisdom of the Dakota Indians, a 1999 article in the Guardian, that I felt needed to be resurrected. I had never seen this before.

You can read the article by clicking the link above, but here it is in its entirety. I guarantee that you'll nod your head and chuckle embarrassingly as you read it!

It would be a devastating mistake of executives to believe that their organizations are well prepared for what’s coming; that the shift of their current management thinking is just another phase of a cycle of looking outward and inward, or a natural evolution of industries.