<div class=”articleList thumbLeft outdentLeft related”>
<h2>Related stories</h2>
</div>
<p>Is this narrative true? Given the high rate and frequency of <a href=”https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucerogers/2016/01/07/why-84-of-companies-fail-at-digital-transformation/?sh=a9db087397bd” target=”_blank”>change failure</a> in organizations, can all of it be blamed on lazy managers freezing up their organizations?</p>
<p>My latest research suggests there’s a different story — one in which the roles are reversed. When change efforts are failing, I lay the blame not on lazy managers but on lazy leaders. And by <em>lazy</em>, I don’t mean they’re not working at all, but rather that they aren’t doing the right work: the heavy lifting of thinking and decision-making that lays the groundwork for a successful change that the managers under them can then deliver.</p>
<p>The narrative of heroic leaders and lazy managers persists because most studies of strategic change consider only the first few months of a transformation effort, rather than what’s needed to sustain it over time. Compounding this problem is the fact that most studies talk only to leaders about what they did; they don’t ask managers what they needed, despite the fact that it’s managers who are tasked with delivering the change that leaders want.</p>
<p>So, in my most recent research, I talked to managers rather than leaders, and I studied long-term change efforts from start to finish. This four-year project told a very different story. In this version, it’s managers who are having to be heroic and work much harder than they should because leaders haven’t done their job properly.</p>
<h3>The work leaders aren’t doing</h3>
<p>When we use this lens to explore why managers are routinely being asked to go above and beyond, we find that it’s usually because leaders have failed to do one or more of the following: First, they weren’t clear enough about what they wanted; second, they were not realistic about how long execution would take or how much it would cost; and third, they weren’t consistent enough in the signals they sent about what was important.</p>
<p>To some extent, these three issues build on one another: It’s hard for leaders to be consistent in their signals or realistic about the time or resources the change will take until they’ve clarified the outcomes the change will produce. That’s why the first issue — the failure to be clear about what is wanted — is where most problems start. Leaders would do well to adjust their approach in the ways below.</p>
<!– AWCDIV:hide:end:43500309 –>
<p><strong>Be clear about what you want.</strong> A new strategy needs to specify a target outcome — i.e., the change leaders want to produce — and, ideally, that target outcome should have three features. It needs to be outcome-based, not activity-based; it needs to have a financial target (such as improving operating margin by 20 percent); and it needs to be ambitious enough, with a sufficient time frame, to create fundamental, not merely cosmetic, change.</p>
<p>A target outcome with these three components enables managers to identify the projects, initiatives, and work streams that should be tackled — at different levels and in different parts of the business — in order to deliver it.</p>
<p>A margin improvement target, for example, might involve the human resources function delivering faster and cheaper hiring alongside the sales department improving its rate of converting prospects to done deals. When managers know what all of their individual activities need to roll up to produce, they can make much better choices about what these individual activities should be.</p>
<p>The trap leaders fall into is their desire to specify activities rather than the outcomes these activities will deliver. In my experience, they do this because they find this work is easier and more enjoyable. Their “laziness” here is that they prefer to default to this simple, enjoyable work — picking projects to work on — when they ought to be doing something very different: clarifying and selling the change.</p>
<div class=”pullquote” readability=”8″>
<p>The trap leaders fall into is their desire to specify activities rather than the outcomes these activities will deliver.</p>
</div>
<p>For example, the senior leadership team of a midsized technology company whose growth was plateauing had agreed the firm needed a radically different strategy. They’d asked me to help them develop the new strategy — including agreeing on the critical outcomes it should deliver and then making some clear choices about target markets and segments. But before these decisions had been fully discussed, let alone agreed upon, this senior team jumped to activities. One of the team members remarked: “There is one acquisition I think we should look at again,” while another said, “We need to work out the details of that China joint venture before the end of this quarter.”</p>
<p>These individual activities might well have turned out to be important, but they were just that — activities. They represented the “how” of the strategy, rather than the “what” or “why.” And until the team had clarity on what the strategy should deliver — in this case, we decided on a target of 12 percent return on capital within four years — it was premature to make any decisions about how that outcome might be delivered. Before deciding on the China joint venture or a particular acquisition, the team needed the 12 percent outcome nailed down.</p>
<p>The problem here is how a lot of leaders define work. A member of this same team asked me at the end of one strategy session, “When are we going to decide what we’re actually going to do?” — by which he meant deciding on which activities to pursue. That is what too many senior leaders still consider to be “work” — when what they should be doing is the work of clarifying and articulating the outcomes a change will produce. If leaders are primarily using their time to choose activities, not only does that deny managers — the people closer to the operations and the customers — the opportunity to choose how the strategy will be delivered, it also invariably means that leaders don’t have the time to work on clarifying and selling the change, which is work that really only those executives can do.</p>
<p>Leaders also need to be clear about the extent of change the new strategy will require. This means they need to set a big, multiyear target. Without this, managers could be forgiven for interpreting the new strategy as one that will be easy and quick to deliver — whereas anything that asks for a material improvement on current performance over a three- to five-year period signals a serious change that will require the business to fundamentally reinvent what it does or how it does it.</p>
<p>And that means that the ever-popular “quick wins” won’t cut it, so managers know they should spend their time scoping, sequencing, and resourcing work on the fundamentals — data, systems, capabilities, and innovation. Such efforts take time to produce a return. Without a long-dated target, these kinds of projects simply won’t ever get started.</p>
<p><strong>Be realistic about timelines and cost.</strong> One of the biggest complaints from the managers I studied — especially in the second and third years of a change — was that leaders were unrealistic.</p>
<p>They expect too much too soon. They focus on what’s been delivered so far, and fail to learn the lessons this progress has revealed about what the firm can and can’t do well. This impatience for results signals that short-term results matter most, and that there isn’t much tolerance for the numerous iterations new processes invariably take. This pattern, in turn, reduces the chances of that big improvement being delivered.</p>
<!– AWCDIV:hide:end:43500315 –>
<p>Impatience is compounded when leaders fail to devote sufficient financial and human resources to the change. The well-known project delivery triangle has three sides, after all: time, resources, and outcomes. If leaders do not provide adequate time or resources to the initiative, yet still demand the original outcomes, that tension has to be absorbed somewhere. Cue heroic managers — and usually the very best managers — stretching themselves and their teams to make up the shortfall.</p>
<p>Carving out both time and resources for the new strategy takes work. It means agreeing to stop some existing initiatives in order to free up the budget — and explaining why this is being done. It means building coalitions to get these changes through finance, HR, and all the other functions or business lines that need to sign off on it. And it means creating and selling a compelling argument that the firm is capable of delivering a long-term change, and so should be afforded a generous time frame by its investors.</p>
<p><strong>Be consistent in all the signals you send.</strong> When managers receive inconsistent signals, it’s hard for them to work out what the real priority is. Mixed signals can happen right at the start of the change — for example, when a leader says she wants a particular improvement but doesn’t share any metrics or rewards linked to the desired change. Adjusting metrics can be complicated, but making a change would signal that the new strategy is the priority.</p>
<p>Inconsistency can also creep in over time. This happens when leaders aren’t disciplined enough (another form of laziness) in how they talk about the “new” strategy — even when it is a few years old. Given how often people need to hear something in order to properly understand it, message discipline is required from leaders. Anything short of constant repetition risks being interpreted as inconsistency — when in reality it may simply be that leaders don’t think they need to continue to emphasize the importance of the change beyond the first year.</p>
<p>Leaving managers to make sense of a strategic change is lazy leadership, in my view. And whenever we allow leaders to be lazy, we create more of a need for heroic managers. If a business routinely requires heroism from managers in times of strategic change, it’s incumbent on leaders to step up and do more. Specifically, by working to clarify the outcome the change will deliver, by being realistic about the time and resources the change will take, and by keeping the message consistent until the change is complete, leaders will set up their managers — and the change — for success, with much less need for heroism.</p>
<div class=”profiles”>
<h2>Author Profile:</h2>
</div>
<p><strong><a href=”https://blockads.fivefilters.org”></a></strong> <a href=”https://blockads.fivefilters.org/acceptable.html”>(Why?)</a></p>
<div class=”articleList thumbLeft outdentLeft related”>
<h2>Related stories</h2>
</div>
<p>For all companies, such shifts underscore the need to attract, retain, and build loyalty with customers. Yet in the <a href=”https://hyken.com/2020aca/” target=”_blank”>2020 Achieving Customer Amazement survey</a>, U.S. companies across a variety of industries fell short of customer expectations by 38 percent, and 96 percent of customers said they would leave a company because of a bad customer experience. As a chief customer officer, I have found that such findings often reflect an approach that seeks to plug the hole before more water can escape. For example, many leaders have increased spending on digital capabilities and digital infrastructure. Although critical, these investments alone will not help create the scale companies need. Leaders are also investing heavily in customer support or other customer-facing teams, but this results in costs that increase linearly alongside business growth, impeding scale.</p>
<p>Instead, company leaders need to craft a long-term solution that will enable them to deliver great customer experience at scale, in ways that drive profitable growth. They should start by reexamining their underutilized assets and thinking creatively about how they define and sustain their customer relationships. Consider, for example, how a revived online community — led by motivated power users — could invigorate a customer base. Or how a well-articulated menu of options could make service expectations clear to both employees and customers. Or how a focus on lifetime value rather than short-term profits could improve retention. With a mix of old and new approaches, companies can compete in an experience-driven world.</p>
<p><strong>▪ Engagement: Help customers help themselves.</strong> When it comes to customer experience, companies will often encourage teams to go above and beyond. Unfortunately, this approach can be uneven; customers have different experiences at different times or touch points. It can also overwhelm and overburden employees, creating fractures in customer-facing teams. When the inevitable issues occur, companies often throw money at the problem, expanding these teams to manage the overflow. This offers leaders a momentary sense of relief, but the issues are likely to reoccur.</p>
<div class=”articleList thumbLeft outdentLeft related PwCrelated”>
<h2>PwC insights</h2>
</div>
<p>Some problems simply don’t require an over-the-top response and in fact may be issues that customers can resolve without company support. To bolster self-sufficiency, companies need to help the customer learn about their product or service. For example, Starbucks has “trained” its customers over the years to use its own language and system when ordering beverages. When we walk into a Starbucks, most of us know to use “tall” in place of “small.” And customers are rewarded for their knowledge with experience: By learning and using the Starbucks language, they can place their order quickly, and the baristas are able to efficiently deliver custom beverages.</p>
<p>Of course, ordering coffee is different from troubleshooting a software issue or helping a customer understand how a new product feature can help improve his or her business outcomes. Even companies with complex products and services need a way to give customers information and support that encourages self-service. The good news is that most companies have channels developed for just this purpose. However, they may be judging the utility of such channels on metrics such as volume of interactions. But are they quality interactions? More important, are those interactions enhancing their customers’ knowledge of the company’s offerings?</p>
<p>If they take a closer look, leaders will often discover that they are not making the most of these channels. For example, companies often underleverage their online customer community. Many companies diligently put content on their website’s help center but may not take the time to integrate that content with an online community that operates in another silo. This is a missed opportunity, because an online customer community can help bring content alive by enabling “power users” — users who both feel that they have, and are considered by others to have, a voice of authority — to share their knowledge. And a well-integrated community enables the company to provide personal touches, for instance, by giving customers detailed product information or access to Q&As with product managers.</p>
<p>The challenge with online communities is that making the content available is easy, but finding the right incentives is hard. To promote regular use, companies should offer benefits or rewards, such as giving users social recognition (for example, “engagement badges” indicating their expertise that customers could add to their social media profiles) or giving them exclusive access to product managers for direct feedback.</p>
<!– AWCDIV:hide:end:43457634 –>
<p>Online music streaming service Spotify encourages its users to engage in its online community and to provide product ideas via its Idea Submissions page. Here, Spotify customers can submit suggestions on how they want the product to evolve, and other customers can vote on these ideas. Spotify then takes the critical step of closing the loop by letting its online community know which customer ideas have been implemented, which are under consideration, and so on. This engagement energizes power users, who will often provide answers to questions that other customers post or redirect them to the help center.</p>
<p><strong>▪ Expectations: Promise and deliver.</strong> In marketing their products and services, companies frequently focus on how much they value and how well they treat their customers. This can lead to a vicious circle of increasing and then falling short of customer expectations. Dissatisfied customers may not return, or, worse, they may take their grievances to social media.</p>
<p>Clarifying expectations starts with aligning internal teams, including sales and support teams. Each team tends to interpret the top-line objective — delighting customers — differently. This may start at the earliest stage, when companies define their customer segments. At one company, it turned out that the billing team used the Fortune 500 list to determine critical customers, whereas the customer service team used revenue. This invariably led to customers being treated differently depending on the issue they were reaching out to the company about.</p>
<p>Companies also need to ensure people know what to expect once they sign on and become customers. One way that companies can set meaningful expectations is to provide a comprehensive menu of services. Many companies provide a list of product features, but what I am suggesting goes further, to also include the terms of the services that will be provided. This provides transparency for customers, and also for employees. More important, the menu establishes the minimum threshold for operating all customer-facing teams, enabling them to deliver a consistent experience. Additional guidelines can be constructed on top of the minimum service delivery expectations to empower team members to deliver additional support if needed.</p>
<p>These minimum thresholds can serve as important “floors” for ongoing investment in customer experience. By clearly outlining expectations for both features and customer experience, companies can invest the right level of resources and help internal teams deliver the right level of service. And when the company sets customer expectations reasonably and consistently, customers have a calibrated baseline for the experience they receive. In many cases, companies may choose to charge for premium-level services that come with faster issue resolution or increased availability — and this will be more palatable to customers when the company has been transparent about it from the outset.</p>
<div class=”pullquote” readability=”9″>
<p>By clearly outlining expectations for both features and customer experience, companies can invest the right level of resources and help internal teams deliver the right level of service.</p>
</div>
<p>Consider Atlassian, a software development and collaboration tools provider. The company starts with a typical menu of services, which is made up of product features, and then includes a comprehensive list of support options. But Atlassian also spells out the details, for example, noting specific hours when support is available and the initial response time when there is a service disruption. Customers can pay for higher levels of service and availability. And customers know when the company has gone above and beyond to solve a problem, for instance, if a representative responds to an issue over the weekend even though weekend support was not on the services list. Atlassian also offers service credits and is transparent about how to request these credits if the company fails to meet its stated service-level agreement for uptime.</p>
<p><strong>▪ Empowerment: Maximize lifetime value.</strong> When companies think about providing value, the initial instinct may be to provide more bells and whistles. On the one hand, providing too many choices can be overwhelming for customers, especially when the customers are not able to connect these choices with their own success. On the other hand, companies may sometimes provide choices that make it easier for the company to deliver its products and services, but that are not optimized for customer needs.</p>
<p>To empower customers and give them the best options, companies have to deeply understand the customer journey and the customer’s business need or the problem that the company is attempting to solve. It is important to note that meeting customer needs is not only about offering the right product features but also about providing the right end-to-end experience, including services offered along the way.</p>
<p>For example, Peloton reports high retention rates; 93 percent of its members renew their subscription monthly. When a customer buys a Peloton bike, he or she receives a white-glove installation. In addition to performing the standard setup, the technician assists with the bike’s calibration and settings. The whole installation takes about 15 minutes. Peloton understands that the first-time experience matters in its customers’ journey and makes it easy for them to activate their membership and start exercising. And it aims to keep them exercising through features such as personal leaderboards that create peer-to-peer engagement and competition. (The company also considers the needs of those who want to exercise with their own equipment, offering a monthly subscription that can be used without owning a Peloton.)</p>
<p>In the case of business-centric products such as software or hardware, companies will also often try to bundle more product features so that customers are getting the biggest bang for their buck. If customers assume more is better, the company maximizes revenues from every sale. This may be a tempting approach given the continual pressure companies face to deliver on short-term revenue goals. In many cases, companies may pivot to subscription models to offer these product bundles and offset the cost of immediate ownership.</p>
<p>But this strategy can backfire: Customers may not buy because they may not want the additional product features, they may not think the additions justify the price, or they may have only sporadic need for the product. They may also be repelled by what they perceive as a bait-and-switch tactic. Many companies offer free services to source new customers and then convert them to paid members or subscribers. But this can ultimately create churn, as the customers end up paying for features they don’t use, canceling, and running to a competitor.</p>
<!– AWCDIV:hide:end:43457643 –>
<p>Canva, a graphic design platform that enables users to design professional content, provides a variety of choices to maximize its customers’ outcomes. The company understands that many customers may be timid about design software or may have tried other products only to feel frustrated or unsuccessful. Canva offers a free plan so that anyone can try out its platform. Some customers have greater needs and ultimately upgrade to a paid membership, but many users are satisfied with the core functionality of the free subscription. Still, the latter users may want to access other high-quality design assets such as stock photos, music, and videos. Rather than requiring these customers to purchase paid subscriptions, Canva allows users to buy virtual tokens that they can cash in for these assets as needed.</p>
<p>By engaging customers in ways that encourage them to help themselves and one another, by being clear about what they can expect from the company’s products and services, and by offering them options that will enable them to achieve their desired outcomes, leaders can respond to today’s challenges and position themselves for future success. Companies cannot simply invest in customer experience initiatives without showing results. The stock market and investors are rewarding profitable growth — and businesses will need to learn how to keep their customers first in a sustainable and scalable way.</p>
<div class=”profiles”>
<h2>Author Profile:</h2>
<ul>
<li><strong><a href=”mailto:dutta@berkeley.edu”>Dutta Satadip</a></strong> is the chief customer officer at ActiveCampaign. Previously, he built scalable customer experience organizations at Pinterest and Google.</li>
</ul>
</div>
<p><strong><a href=”https://blockads.fivefilters.org”></a></strong> <a href=”https://blockads.fivefilters.org/acceptable.html”>(Why?)</a></p>
<div class=”articleList thumbLeft outdentLeft related”>
<h2>Related stories</h2>
</div>
<p>In turn, leading influencers can earn <a href=”https://www.forbes.com/sites/veenamccoole/2018/07/29/behind-the-scenes-of-instagrams-million-dollar-influencer-brand-deals/?sh=40898c2c329b” target=”_blank”>millions</a> of dollars a year spreading hype about new products, apps, and services. And marketers seem to think the investment is worth it: A 2019 <a href=”https://mediakix.com/influencer-marketing-resources/influencer-marketing-industry-statistics-survey-benchmarks/#gs.0xjefn” target=”_blank”>survey</a> found that 80 percent of marketers were pleased with their influencer campaigns, and 89 percent reported that the return on investment from influencers was better than or comparable to that from other marketing channels.</p>
<p>But how can companies best wield this new promotional tool? The authors of a new <a href=”https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S000768132030032X?via%3Dihub” target=”_blank”>study</a> reviewed the latest research on consumer psychology and analyzed case studies of high-profile influencers; the study provides a framework for marketing managers who are considering whether influencers would work for their firms. Finding the right type of influencer (or mix of influencers) for the target market is the key to success.</p>
<p>The fact that people consume more media online has fundamentally altered how advertising appeals work, the authors write. Online consumers tend to be goal-driven, meaning they <a href=”https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00913367.2004.10639175″ target=”_blank”>don’t</a> want to be interrupted by intrusive ads; instead, they’re more likely to respond positively to conversational and authentic <a href=”https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0743915618818576″ target=”_blank”>approaches</a> (twin hallmarks of influencer engagement). And unlike traditional media, social networks like Twitter or YouTube thrive on users’ 24/7 interaction and shared interests, which makes it hard for ad agencies geared at mass audiences to penetrate them, but ideal for influencers targeting specific niches.</p>
<!– AWCDIV:hide:end:43491664 –>
<p>Because an influencer’s audience consists of followers who’ve opted in, influencers connect with consumers organically — and allow their sponsors to do the same, minus the costs associated with an ad campaign. Consumers often closely identify with the influencers they follow in terms of age, location, and life phase (going through pregnancy or college, for example). As a result, posts by influencers tend to be <a href=”https://www.researchgate.net/publication/305694058_Transforming_celebrities_through_social_media_the_role_of_authenticity_and_emotional_attachment” target=”_blank”>viewed</a> as candid and real expressions of their opinions, and are likely to garner more <a href=”https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0007681314000937″ target=”_blank”>attention</a> — in terms of engagement and response rates — than ads from the company itself.</p>
<div class=”pullquote” readability=”9″>
<p>Because an influencer’s audience consists of followers who’ve opted in, influencers connect with consumers organically — and allow their sponsors to do the same.</p>
</div>
<p>The authors break influencers down into five types. <em>Celebrities</em> are people who were famous prior to joining social media and have an enormous follower base. The rest are categorized according to their follower count. <em>Mega-influencers</em>, the so-called internet famous, are recognized because they have a million-plus following on social media, but they have little currency outside of that realm. <em>Macroinfluencers</em> have between 100,000 and 1 million followers and typically concentrate on one subject area. In contrast, <em>microinfluencers</em> may be able to make a career out of their work on social media, but they operate on a smaller scale, with between 10,000 to 100,000 followers, focusing on specific geographic markets or brands. Finally, <em>nanoinfluencers</em> have fewer than 10,000 followers but are perceived as approachable and highly authentic.</p>
<p>Indeed, influencers play many roles — product endorser, content producer, social media manager, marketing strategist, and PR representative — that are simply outside the scope of an ad agency. Accordingly, the authors offer some words of advice for marketing managers as they consider whether handing over some (or all) of these functions to an influencer would be more effective than traditional ad campaigns.</p>
<p><strong>Use influencers as a one-stop shop.</strong> “The interplay of deep audience insight, creative expertise, and experience managing social media make for a powerful combination,” the authors write. Whereas ad agencies typically focus on a single aspect of a marketing campaign — such as market research, social media outreach, or content creation — influencers do it all, and, by tapping into their deep knowledge of your brand, do it quickly.</p>
<p><strong>Get the most bang for your buck, but don’t undervalue what they do.</strong> Number of followers can act as a <a href=”https://digiday.com/marketing/what-influencer-marketing-costs/” target=”_blank”>proxy</a> for an influencer’s popularity, the authors write, but this may fail to account for the full impact of the influencer’s organic reach, engagement, and post quality. Some assessments <a href=”https://www.forbes.com/sites/barrettwissman/2018/03/02/micro-influencers-the-marketing-force-of-the-future/?sh=588e2f186707″ target=”_blank”>suggest</a> using micro- and macro-influencers may be more cost-effective than celebrities or social media stars, because smaller accounts tend to have higher engagement rates. (And celebrities’ relatively low engagement rates come with a hefty price tag; some <a href=”https://digiday.com/marketing/what-influencer-marketing-costs/” target=”_blank”>charge</a> $250,000 per Instagram post.)</p>
<p><strong>Pick and choose.</strong> The whole point of influencer marketing is its targeted appeal to a specific audience. So, the authors advise marketing managers to use different types of influencers in the same campaign, offsetting celebrity charisma and mega-influencers’ expertise with the more intimate and personal appeals of a nanoinfluencer.</p>
<p><strong>Be aware of the risks.</strong> Of course, turning over some (or all) of a firm’s marketing campaign to an influencer is not without peril. The most obvious danger is a scandal associated with the endorser; brands that associate closely with tainted figures can be <a href=”https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/abs/10.1287/mnsc.2013.1749″ target=”_blank”>caught</a> in the backlash themselves.</p>
<div class=”articleList thumbLeft outdentLeft related PwCrelated”>
<h2>PwC insights</h2>
</div>
<p>On a more prosaic level, performing cost-benefit analyses on influencer campaigns can be challenging. Many influencers have been known to purchase bot accounts to inflate their follower counts. People can, however, look for suspicious patterns in follower counts. Marketers must also make sure influencers properly disclose their relationships with the firm, in line with trading guidelines.</p>
<p>Influencers represent the latest step in the evolution of marketing into a collaborative industry, wherein consumers and companies alike share in the branding efforts of new products and services. “Marketing managers should be prepared to use influencers within even their broadest marketing campaigns,” the authors write, “and to consider how this emerging marketing phenomenon may improve their overall brand strategies.”</p>
<p><strong>Source:</strong> “<a href=”https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S000768132030032X?via%3Dihub” target=”_blank”>More than meets the eye: The functional components underlying influencer marketing</a>,” by Colin Campbell (University of San Diego and Swinburne University of Technology) and Justine Rapp Farrell (University of San Diego), <em>Business Horizons</em>, vol. 63, no. 4, July–Aug. 2020</p>
<p><strong><a href=”https://blockads.fivefilters.org”></a></strong> <a href=”https://blockads.fivefilters.org/acceptable.html”>(Why?)</a></p>
Published at
