strategy – Say Yeah!

Disrupting with Digital June 2017 event recap: Talking organizational change.

Lee Dale — Wed, 09 Aug 2017 22:32:48 +0000

Transcript

Lauren Ledwell:

It’s really important in the beginning to figure out who can help you with your transformation goals and your organization. And so how do you find those early adopters, those keeners?

Shelisa Bainbridge:

You have to be able to say, “Okay, here is why.” And this is the piece that leadership tends to not do well at. They don’t do well at explaining the why. Again, they’re coming from more of a KPI perspective, and that stuff will just happen if you put some talent in the room, and then you create a plan.

Lauren Ledwell:

We’re all like, “Yay, we did it, we launched something!” And then we just moved on to the next thing. You can’t just launch something to market and expect that it’s going to survive and be a good client experience right off the bat. We’ve had to take a step back and say, “Okay, what can we learn from this launch, how can we do things better? How can we keep the team around that was actually working on that project?” Keep them there, after something has launched to market to ensure that they’re there to actually do the work around continuous improvement and following up.

Erika Bailey:

And you have to deal with people’s anxiety about having customers in the room. In every co-creation I’ve ever been apart of, customers are just so happy to be asked, they’re just so happy to be there co-creating with you.

Digital transformation can be daunting at times. It’s a path that has the power to accelerate organizational capabilities and radically improve customer experience, but it can often seem like it requires a monumental shift in capabilities and culture to achieve. That’s a lot of pressure for any individual, team, or organization to overcome, but the reality is there are much less daunting paths you can take to get there.

On June 20, Say Yeah partnered with Eighty-Eight and HoHoTO to kickoff the Disrupting with Digital event series to relieve some of that pressure and help get you started on the path to transformation.

The first event of the series, Disrupting with digital: talking organizational change sold out, welcoming individuals with a variety of expertise from across numerous organizations, organizational structures, and businesses with varying degrees of digital literacy and capability.

Speakers and attendees with brand and service provider expertise shared their experiences leading transformation initiative across the organizations they work for.

From frittatas to foresight

Guests started the morning networking while enjoying coffee, frittatas, and more delectable treats. Then the floor was open for keynote speaker Lauren Ledwell from RBC, who delivered a dynamic talk about overcoming challenges with organizational change.

Our key takeaway from Ledwell’s talk: success is not defined by launching a product. Meeting customer experience and product goals requires constant iteration, a dedicated team, and the willingness to learn and evolve.

“How can we keep the team around that was actually working on that project to ensure that they are there to actually do the work around continuous improvement and following up.”
~ Lauren Ledwell, Director, Digital Transformation, RBC

Uncovering transformational insight from large organizations

Moderated by Lee Dale, CEO of Say Yeah, a spirited panel discussion uncovered insightful conversation about transforming large organizations.

Joining our keynote speaker on the panel was Anne Matthews, Director, Business Readiness, Ontario Digital Service at Ontario Government, alongside representatives from two service providers who are dedicated to enabling client teams: Erika Bailey from The Moment and Shelisa Bainbridge from Agile By Design.

The panelists took turns sharing their perspectives on critical transformation steps and processes. Erika stated that transformation does not necessarily require the implementation of new technology or processes, but rather a shift in mindset.

Individuals make change

“You start at the behavioural layer of change,” said Erika. Effective organizational change requires identifying and working closely with devoted team members who have an eye for what the future of an organization may look like, and those who are open to new concepts and strategies for an organization.

“It’s really important in the beginning to figure out who can help you with your transformation goals in your organization; how do you find those early adopters, those keeners?”

~ Anne Matthews, Director, Business Readiness, Ontario Digital Service at Ontario Government

Leadership needs to set the tone

Shelisa Bainbridge says leadership needs to empower transformation. The goal of leadership should be to deliver the “why.” Why is change necessary? Why now? Why will this approach make a difference?

“They [leadership] don’t do well at explaining the why. They’re coming from more of a KPI perspective, and [think] that stuff will happen if you just put some talent in the room.”

~ Shelisa Bainbridge, Associate, Agile by Design

Organizations need to align with market needs

Ultimately, Disrupting with digital: talking organizational change revealed that a huge part of implementing digital transformation is understanding organizational limitations alongside customer goals, needs, and desires.

Erika encouraged the room of attendees to ditch data, and strive to initiate meaningful conversations with their customers.

Connect with your customers, colleagues, and peers

“[Customers] are just so happy to be there co-creating with you.”

~ Erika Bailey, Innovation Designer, The Moment

What you learn from customer and staff engagement is far richer than what data tells us. Get out there, talk to people in your office, at other locations, or on the streets. And connect with your peers at the next Disrupting with Digital event for more actionable insight.

The Disrupting with Digital event series continues

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Customer journey maps: Why your digital team should be using them

Janavi Vengatesh — Mon, 25 Jan 2016 10:47:05 +0000

Customer journey was one of the dominant buzzwords of 2015, and rightly so. For marketers and product owners, understanding the customer journey is the key to delivering effective digital products. By tailoring digital properties to the needs of the customer based on where they are on their purchase and retention journey, you’re able to focus and streamline digital products, ultimately delivering a superior customer experience.

With knowledge of this key tool for driving customer experience across channels accelerating throughout the past year, you can expect customer journey mapping to be among the biggest digital marketing buzzwords of 2016.

As Chris Risdon at CapitalOneLabs said in 2011: “their importance exceeds their prevalence.” That’s finally starting to change.

What is Customer Journey Mapping?

In a sentence, customer journey mapping is the process of defining a comprehensive and actionable step-by-step path of your customer’s complete journey in addressing a problem or need they have identified.

From awareness of the product to customer retention, including sales touch points, engagements with your product or service, and any other customer interactions which fall in between, customer journey maps help to give a better understanding of customer motivations, goals, and behaviors.

From Joel Flom’s UX Matters article comes this example of someone looking for broadband service in 2010 (click to view full size):

Why Should I use Customer Journey Maps?

Whether you are launching a new digital product or updating an existing site, app, or other digital property, Customer journey maps provide valuable insight, informing: strategy, design, and content.

Customer journey maps help to better define the who, what, why, when, where, and how of customer decision-making by taking an in-depth look at customer personas, timelines, emotions, touchpoints, and channels, throughout the customer journey.

Well-considered customer journey maps enable you to:

determine the ideal channels to reach customers at different points of their journey;
work with sales, marketing, and support to identify the content necessary to drive users to action across those channels;
focus each of your digital properties around the role they fulfill within the customer journey.

This example highlights the key media required across various touchpoints in a sales funnel (click to view full size):

Ultimately, your customer journey map is the key tool you’ll use to increase conversions and improve customer retention.

So why should you use customer journey maps? Because they inform successful and profitable digital properties.

Get Mapping

Do you need help creating your customer journey map and understanding how your digital properties can be better aligned to your customer’s journey?

Get in touch.

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Running a startup is like being punched in the face repeatedly

Lee Dale — Mon, 21 May 2012 17:57:00 +0000

Running a startup is like being punched in the face repeatedly.

That’s a lovely quip from Paul Graham, but it really isn’t as dramatic as it sounds in the context of Ragnar Sass’s 5 Accelerator Lessons.

Still, there’s valuable insight there, so dig in.

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George Lois on creativity.

Lee Dale — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 19:14:55 +0000

This month’s Vice magazine has a tremendous interview with the deliciously outspoken George Lois, who dates back to the early days of DDB, around the time Bill Bernbach had the epiphany of forming a creative team that consisted of a writer and designer. This standard served the ad industry well throughout the 60s and well beyond.

Lois:

Now it’s all about eight people sitting in a room, picking things together. What the fuck? Are you crazy? People think the way to be a successful executive is to get the right people around them and listen to their thinking and pick the best of their thinking. I don’t get it…everything that’s great in this world gets done by one or two people together.

You need a team for production, but a team for creating ideas? Get the fuck outta here! That’s impossible. It really is. People say, “Well, if you get together, if there are 20 people…” I say the more talented the 20 people, the more trouble you’re in. If there’s one talent in the 20 and the guy has conviction, he can beat the shit out of the other guys. But if the entire group is talented then you’re in trouble. It’s impossible!

Read the full interview here.

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Timeliness means being on time, not before the time.

Lee Dale — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 02:53:20 +0000

Timeliness means being on time, not before the time.

Sage advice from The Atlantic which, in a business context, is well worth following when you’re developing new products and services. Being before the time brings a sales battle you’re bound to lose. Capture the zeitgeist; don’t attempt to reinvent it.

Of course, that doesn’t mean don’t innovate. And it surely doesn’t mean you should trust focus groups with a revolutionary product (they’ll always prefer the status quo). Just make sure you’re tapped into an immediate need, and not going to market with something that solves a need that won’t be realized for another 2-3 years. You need to be solving problems today, not tomorrow.

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Image vs understanding.

Lee Dale — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 22:15:00 +0000

Ottawa based designer Steve Zelle contributed a great article to LogoDesignLove last week titled: Logo warehouses, crowdsourcing, and a lack of understanding. He begins with:

Logo design should not be approached with the goal of filling that blank spot on the top of your letterhead. It is not the time to recklessly do something trendy and cool. Most importantly, it is not about getting a task off your to-do list so you can move on to selling widgets to your customers.

The logo design process should provide value far beyond the delivery of a symbol.

The trouble with looking for a low or no cost, easy and quick logo isn’t that you get designers barking at you about spec work or that your fans jump down your throat (I’m loathe to reference the Gap again, but the reality is they saw both of these reactions by being lazy with their logo development). No, the issue is this attitude leads to you, your designers, and your customers neglecting your brand and, by extension, your company.

Let’s jump back to Steve’s article, as he expresses this point visually:

When you cheap out on process, you yourself spend less time on research and planning, your design team spends less time getting to know you, your product, your needs, and what drives your consumer, and this neglect inevitably leads to consumer disinterest because the end result is not as suited to you as it should be. None of which is healthy for your company, short term, long term or otherwise.

Steve continues:

While a graphic designer can help with the nurturing, a logo alone is not the solution to developing a strong brand. This strength can only come from understanding. The company must understand their business, competition, market space, preferences, trends, strengths, weaknesses, and most importantly why customers should care about them.

Understanding goes the other way, too. If their customers can’t understand what it is that makes the company unique and why they should care, then they cannot develop a connection. No connection, no strength.

One of the greatest values a graphic designer can provide is the ability to successfully translate this understanding into a visual brand.

Here’s the full article. A great read!

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What’s in a name.

Lee Dale — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 03:51:42 +0000

Naming can be a complex beast. Whether for a product, company, or service, you want to come up with something that resonates with your target, and relates to your offering, all while giving you credibility in the face of your competitors.

We’ve done well to develop an internal naming process where we gather details about product, target, corporate personality, and competition before mapping out concepts which lead to related, suitable name options.

Even this process, however, invites surprise. Emotion can sometimes take the lead, as it did with Say Yeah, or you can find yourself staring down well-considered metaphoric, literal, and other options while someone comes in from left field with new party suggestions, as with Kipu.

Yet, in both of these cases, by understanding the product and recognizing the strategy behind it, we’ve been able recognize when we find a name that resonates with the company and product culture. In the end, it means we’ve settled on a name that makes it all the more easy to share our passion around the product. That’s really exciting!

Beyond that, you’ve got your due diligence to do. Trademark searching, domain registration (the most difficult area of compromise for any new product), along with linguistics and other research which is dependent on target and geography.

Marty Neumeier, who wrote the exceptional book, The Brand Gap, shared this slide a few years ago, highlighting key naming styles:

Descriptive
Suggestive
Metaphorical
Neological
Historical
Arbitrary

Once you’ve gathered product, target, marketing strategy, and competitive info, this is a good starting point for naming discussions. And if you want any help in this area, give us a shout. We love collaborating on such creative and fun challenges.

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