This article contains an unedited excerpt from our new book, Leading the Customer-led Revolution, due out on 24 May. We hope you enjoy it!
Vision – The Ultimate Tool for Aligning your Business
Aligning your organisation around your customer is where it all comes together. You can have the best knowledge of who your customers are + what their needs are, + what makes them tick.
You can have the best understanding of how they perceive your organisation + how you’re performing in their eyes.
But, unless you rally the team around the customer + put all of this into action, you’ll fail to get traction.
Check out an excerpt from our book, Leading the Customer-led Revolution, where we tackle the concept of vision, where your customer sits within that vision + how to bring together a strong customer-led vision to set you up for success.
What is a Customer-led vision? Your Purpose, Your Values/Principles
[Excerpt from Chapter 25 of our new book]
A customer-led vision is part of a bigger picture, with vision at the top.
The old-school view is to use the customer to achieve an outcome for the organisation. Therefore the customer is a means to an end. We challenge that there is a new + better way of thinking – that the customer IS the outcome. It’s seemingly small but it’s a radical change in philosophy.
In a customer-led vision, the customer is the vision, + helping the customer achieve their goals becomes the modus operandi of the entire organisation. As a result, the organisation is by default, successful.
A customer-led vision needs the following three components to be truly impactful, long-term + adopted within an organisation. Traditionally, these elements have been treated separately, but the power is in the combination, especially when it comes to customer.
Let’s look at the elements in the above diagram in more detail:
Vision is all about where you want to be.
The future state of your organisation. The island you’re rowing towards. What does that island look like, what’s happening there? The sharper + clearer you can be about this, the better + the more likely your team will connect with it.
Purpose is your why.
Why you exist in the world. Why you do what you do. It’s why you get out of bed in the morning. More heart-centred, it can be linked to your own personal purpose as well as your customer. The more emotional + clear your purpose can be, the better. In fact, one of the biggest hurdles for a lot of businesses we meet is their purpose – they’ve fallen out of love with their business or role, they’ve lost connection with their why – why they joined the organisation, why they started the business. We help them fall back in love with it by connecting with the ultimate reason they’re in business – their customer.
Principles are your how.
They’re what you stand for, what your values are. They are crucial to how you + your team deliver your offering to the world. Having a team connected with your why + your principles or values, will give you a much greater chance of success. + the how is where much of the gold (or when misaligned, sh!t) lies.
This article is an unedited excerpt from the upcoming book from authors Sueanne Carr + Peter Turner (aka the Dynamic Duo of Customer-led Transformation) titled, Leading the Customer-led Revolution, due out May 2023.
Written for courageous leaders who are in charge of or charged with making their organisation truly customer-led, it provides a simple + powerful roadmap to making it happen.
Secure your copy early, signed by the authors, at our pre-purchase page here.
