Streamlining the core of your business
To achieve true success in any field you need a clear identity and vision about who you are, why you are and where you are going. You also need an excellent understanding of the lives and needs of your customers. In such a company every employee knows why the company was created, what are the values and principles that guide bigger and smaller choices and the desired destination everyone is working towards.
It is like a foundation, or the strategic DNA of a company, on which more detailed action plans and concepts can be built.
Being not just aware but also part of carving out this DNA, can inspire the team members to take their contribution and collaboration to the next level. Creating a truly effective and fulfilling working environment.
In order to offer our customers the service or a product that they really need, in the right way. In order to talk to them in the right tone and language, through the right messages and at the right time and place, we need to really know our customers.
One of the most common basic mistakes that can be made in business is to treat your customers based on assumptions rather than knowledge. We often think we know more than we really do, or we assume that things work like they worked before but the reality is that the environment, our customers’ lives and needs are perpetually changing. In order to provide our customers with the kind of service they really need, to speak to them in the tone, language and arguments, at the time and through the channel that they are truly comfortable with, we have to really get to know them. We need to build check-points into our processes and feed-back systems, to keep in touch with the reality at large and in touch with the reality of our customers.
How do we get there?
Any self-knowledge, be it individual or collective, starts with mapping the baseline values. By looking at how team members’ personal core values resonate, where common ground lies, and whether and where there are potential conflicts of values, it is possible to take a kind of X-ray of the team, showing us both its core structure and strengths, as well as potential areas of risk. From this, it is possible to move towards a clear common understanding of what the common core values are and how potential value conflicts are resolved on a day-to-day basis. Then, moving on to the founding principles – the big questions of mission and vision.
Knowing your customer, his or her basic characteristics, attitudes, lifestyle and needs starts with using all the data available to us. In addition to the data, the observations of the company’s employees and the perception of the customer based on past experience come into play, as well as the possibility of creating additional surveys, focus groups, conduct client interviews etc. We need to approach it like a detective compiling all the information to arrive at a complete picture, creating the sample customer portraits that give us a well-defined understanding of the complexity of the key target groups (their lifestyles, attitudes, needs etc). This serves as a very practical knowledge database that will help the company make strategic and more detailed decisions with great precision.
A team that wants to activate its full potential must trust in the wisdom and power of collaboration. Only when each member of the team is involved in mapping out shared values and setting the desired goal will the team become whole and start to work in synergy.
Package: mapping the DNA of your business
I can help your company or team to identify and put in place all the basic organizational strategic DNA elements necessary – core values, mission, vision and the resulting collaboration agreements.
Our standard process consists of preparation work and calls with the leading strategy team and then four larger team brainstorming sessions (each lasting 4h) and intermediate homework that team members do between the sessions. As this process usually involves the whole team and the personal contribution of each team member, it maximizes the input from your team and helps to bring your team members much more in touch with their own motivation as well as with the shared values and goals. This process helps to strengthen team spirit and collaboration skills and genuinely involves each participant as a co-creator.
Ideally, a month or two could be devoted to this process – this means brainstorming every week or two and independent homework by team members in between.
The package includes in-depth pre-, mid-term and post-workshop consultation to identify the most appropriate choice of group work methods for you, support in analysing the homework results and in preparing the final summary and formulating the key findings.
Package: Deep-mapping your key client base
I’ll help your team gather and holistically view all the information and knowledge you have about the customer groups that matter to you. We will use a ‘personas’ methodology to create sample portraits of all key customer groups.
Our process consists of five team brainstorming sessions (each lasting 4h) and intermediate homework sessions between the meetings. During this process, we bring together the existing data and empirical knowledge that is currently only in the heads of individual team members and combine it into a clear and humanly perceptible whole that the whole team can use as a basis for their work. We also map the customer journey based on this knowledge, so that your team can use it to further develop products, services, advertising and marketing strategies, and customer communication.
Ideally, you could devote a month or two to this process – this means brainstorming every week or two, with independent homework by team members in between.
The package includes in-depth pre-, mid- and post-workshop consultation to identify the most appropriate choice of group work methods for you, support in analysing the homework results and in preparing a final summary and formulating key findings.