The Customer Mission Podcast with Andrea Belk Olson

Becoming customer-centric isn’t a simple change. Simple changes are linear, predictable, and manageable. Traditional change management techniques work well in these contexts but are less effective in multifaceted, interconnected, and unpredictable ones. A customer-centric change is just that - where relationships, networks, and social influence from peers have a stronger impact on s...

When looking for growth, most leaders don't want to leave any stone unturned. Where can we find new customers? Maybe this segment or that segment? Why not both? The problem is, the broader the net, the more diluted the message. No matter how hard you try, you can't be everything to everyone. If you try, you lose distinctiveness and differentiation - a key competitive advantage.

There are all different types of leadership styles. Autocratic, Democratic, Laissez-Faire, Pacesetting, Authoritative, Coaching, the list goes on. There are also many articles about leadership styles, and how to find your own style that best fits your personality. But the bigger question is not about style, but about your leadership perspective default.

I've seen hundreds of customer and competitive research documents, with pages upon pages of excellent data, qualitative feedback, facts, and figures. These documents are often presented to organizational leadership, who skim through the pages and pull out a few key questions on specific points for clarification and discussion. Those meetings always go well, with the executive team complimenting th...

Organizational leaders aren't infallible. They make mistakes. They miss things. They have blind spots. Sometimes blindspots are easy to reveal, while others persist despite evidence to the contrary. Why is this the case? The problem is, some blind spots are baked in by organizational pressures, which in turn, perpetuate seemingly indefinitely. These chronic blind spots are the toughest ones to eli...

Great execution is essential to any business. You can have a wonderful plan in place, but if it doesn't manifest into action, it's not worth the paper it's printed on. However, with all of our focus on action, leaders often skip investing time in thoroughly examining why we're taking action in the first place. Are your tactics the right ones to achieve the organization's objectives, or is it just...

There are companies where culture is directed from the top down. While it's natural to assume that this vision will simply emerge throughout the organization, this alone does not create culture. Within every company there are sub-cultures. In other words, each department or team can have its own unique culture. For example, the culture of a product management team can be distinct from the culture...

Consider all the tools you would need to build a house. Labor aside, there's a ton of modern technologies out there to help you build a dwelling in a much easier, more efficient, and safer way than 10, 50, 100 years ago. However, if you've never built a house before, or only have done some small craft activities in the past, how equipped are you to actually build a house? This is the problem with...

Strategy isn't just an activity, but a way of thinking. It requires practice, focus, and time. It's not a thing that you can get done in a couple of weeks with a few leadership roundtable meetings. It's even harder when your team has never really developed a strategy before or has never been thinking strategically for the past few decades. No special process or technique will magically produce a s...

We all like to have data to support our decisions. But we tend to look at this myopically - a decision needs to be made, and we simply need some data to justify it. True, almost everyone, from retail companies to agricultural manufacturers, strives to make data-backed decisions, but what is the right way to use data to make better, more accurate decisions?

I've spoken with hundreds of executives, CEOs, and business leaders about their organizational challenges. Across all industries, many of the problems are the same. We need more sales/revenue/members. We need more innovation from our employees. We need to reduce costs. We need to reduce attrition (of customers/employees). Sound familiar? You've actually likely heard them many times over, possibly...

Strategy is a term bantered around a bit too much. We apply it to almost everything within business to subconsciously create an aire of legitimacy and value to our actions. Creating a marketing plan? No, it's a strategic marketing plan. Designing a hiring process? Hell no - it's a strategic hiring process. But the real question is - are these things actually strategic?

Our memories are time-bound - we often look back on something that we learned or experienced and frequently consider it to be fact, rather than examining if the circumstances have changed. This can significantly limit not only opportunities for growth and change but more importantly, getting organizations out of the status-quo cycle.

Doesn't getting something done feel good? Getting that checklist completed (or almost completed) at the end of the day? Oh, it's a joy. Yet, we can easily get swept up in this perpetual motion, which can inhibit the generation of new ideas, impede change, and cause burnout - especially within organizations. But first, why do we prefer doing something over doing nothing?

You've likely heard of Meatloaf - the American singer and actor known for his powerful, wide-ranging voice and theatrical performances. In 1993, he released one of his most popular songs, "I'd do anything for love (but I won't do that)". While there's a bit of ongoing discussion about what Meatloaf won't do for love, the song title actually has applications in the ways we think about and manage ch...

A friend of mine shared a story where she brought some important data to light to her C-Suite leaders. She had uncovered some concerning trends and felt compelled to bring up her concerns. However, the response was less than stellar: "Let's focus on where we are doing well rather than [focusing on what] we are doing poorly..." Really? I mean, really?? While I felt for her, this is not an uncommon...

Your CEO announces it's strategic planning season. Every department head is asked to develop and deliver their strategic plan and budget for the coming year. Because they all have proprietary subject matter expertise, each one brings their vision to the table. The presentations are reviewed, some superficial tweaks are made (often in the area of budget) and approved. Then the year continues on, wi...

Job interviews are mostly nonsense. According to Ron Friedman, a psychologist and author of “The Best Place to Work", 80% of people lie during their interviews — so if that's the case, the information you’re hearing is likely fiction, or at best, inspired by real-world events. Job interviews mean you may hire the best actor on the day — not the best candidate. So don’t do them.

I had a conversation with an organization who was needing to grow their membership numbers, and they were struggling to find ways to get things moving forward. They had just restructured their organizational processes, with a strong focus on performance metrics for each and every department. The thought was, with more transparency, they'd have more insight as to whether everyone was working togeth...

What's your job? Does it match the description? Does it make the best use of your skills and talents? Does your job diverge dramatically from the role you actually do to generate value for the organization? Here's the question - do we need job descriptions? More specifically, do we need job descriptions in the way we construct them today?

If you Google "Employee Engagement" and look for images representing it, you'll find groups of people in business attire smiling, high-fiving, laughing, or conducting some other staged behavior. While it may look a bit comical, somewhere in the recesses of our minds, we want to replicate this feeling with our own staff. We associated happiness with engagement, and often try to fill the void with a...

We all are faced with a myriad of business problems that every organization wants to be solved quickly and easily. We know not every problem is the same, and we know that some problems are more complex than others. We also know that some problems might be expensive to solve, and some might take a lot of time and resources. However, many organizations actually hinder their ability to solve these pr...

Executives say that cultural challenges — not technological ones — represent the biggest impediment around data initiatives. In a 2021 survey from NewVantage Partners, 92.2% of mainstream companies report that they continue to struggle with cultural challenges relating to organizational alignment, business processes, change management, communication, people skill sets, and resistance or lack of un...

While every company is always seeking to grow their business, it's quite interesting that a Lead Generation company sends out a generic email to a non-qualified mailing list about their services, claiming this is their specialty. Even more interesting is the fact that their message is not tailored to their audience, communicates understanding about the business they are targeting, nor provides a c...

We love numbers. We're quite obsessed with them. Everything we do in business has to be measured and tracked in a nice, neat metric, often color-coded with a red-yellow-green indicator. We also pick numbers that are easy to capture, typically pulled from a report already being generated for another purpose. And oftentimes, performance bonuses, raises, and other incentives are tied to these dashboa...