The Customer Mission Podcast with Andrea Belk Olson

The $64,000 question is what will things look like following the Coronavirus epidemic. More specifically, what will business look like, and how will customers change? Instead of focusing on specific tactics, we should look at how behavior will change and we can look to history to give us some insights. If we examine past generations that have experienced major events in their youth, we can glean a...

If the Coronavirus pandemic has taught us anything, it's that behavior is everything. The impact of the stay-at-home policies shows in the decline in new cases. But like a virus, behavior within organizations can be healthy or detrimental. Not only for individuals but for the success of the organization itself. Many companies emphasize their focus on strategy, financials, or even products over org...

It's an unprecedented time in our history. The COVID epidemic has turned virtually all business on its head. With virtually the entire world on partial or complete lockdown, this is the opportunity to examine what the business world will look like once we get through this pandemic. While many might believe that our world will dramatically change, it's more likely that many people and organizations...

The coronavirus has transformed our world virtually overnight. Companies have had to change on a dime how they operate and communicate. While this is an incredibly serious situation, it's an opportunity for businesses to re-evaluate their approach to managing change going forward.

Mutualism is the doctrine that mutual dependence is necessary for social well-being. Where fundamentally, helping each other is to everyone's benefit. Instead of simply competing for resources and market share, the ability to practice mutualism is critical to our business's short term and long term growth. Mutual partnerships come together because they solve a problem. Sometimes one half of the pa...

This is what might be deemed as the "old way" of doing business. Business owners and staff who had built deep, genuine connections with their customers. And for that effort, they had truly loyal customers. This deep connection wasn't built by sifting through immense amounts of data, tracking purchasing patterns, or even a series of special offers. It was built by truly knowing and caring about the...

Many legacy organizations are facing a crisis. What worked in the past, whether a product, service or even business model, is somehow not working anymore. The entire organizational infrastructure and operation - often built around this - is humming along as it did before, but incremental cost-cutting has been happening for years. First, it was seen as simply cleaning house and eliminating unnecess...

There's a constant push to differentiate in today's competitive climate. Companies often invest in new products, services, and technologies to help shrink the divide and get a leg up on the competition. It's a constant struggle and many organizations even create "innovation teams" and programs to discover that next "big idea". Most organizations focus on what might be considered the "low hanging f...

Most of us never get formal training on how to lead a team, let alone lead an organization. Many simply learn on the job and make their way through the ranks, picking up both good and bad traits along the way. Sometimes, new leaders get the opportunity to attend "leadership" training programs and learn some basics. However, there's still a preponderance of organizational leaders who don't empower...

We often think that organizational change requires a series of all-hands meetings, announcing a new set of company values, often accompanied by a pizza party or even a series of team-building activities. Then, we sit back and wait for the amazing organizational transformation, that never comes. What went wrong? We told everyone what we wanted, and it seemed like the team was positive and optimisti...

Behavior is what humans do, and it's observable and measurable. Whether it is to walk from one place to another or to crack one's knuckles, behavior serves some type of function, and provides a consequence or reinforcement for the behavior. When leaders successfully identify the function of their organizational behaviors, one can reinforce an alternate, acceptable behaviors tha...

Slow-moving problems are frequently overlooked inside organizations. They are usually ones that are very un-sexy, seemingly boring and often don't have a highly visible and shiny ROI attached to them. They are typically seen as 'just the way things are' and perceived as more pain and cost to change them, rather than simply let them lie dormant. The issue is that these problems will eventually turn...

We frequently assume that if we hire someone with a great resume and a strong background of industry and competitor experience, we've found a gem. That this person will bring to the organization a breadth of knowledge that will help provide new insights on industry best practices and secret sauces. If we can get them at a reasonable cost, even better. But is this really a great hire? I'd argue, it...

The problem is for most customers, they don't know YOUR process. Customers shouldn't have to know the "secret sauce" for connecting with the right person. They shouldn't have to know the "best method", whether it be web, phone or email, to accomplish what they're trying to achieve. Each and every person on your front line should be empowered to handle customer needs, without the customer needing t...

Every leader wants to fix the problems in their organization. The issue is, that most leaders have a hard time diagnosing those problems correctly. It isn't the case of a lack of seeing the problem, experience, or capability to correct it. The real issue is two-fold: being too close to the problem, and looking at the problem the wrong way.

It might seem that being a "leader" is this mystical thing. Something that you have to train for or simply be born with. And while there are many articles, videos and, training programs out there to help teach you to be a "better leader", there are often two key things that are overlooked. Most articles on the subject of leadership talk about skills and traits, such as "communication" or "adaptabi...

There's a big push in companies today to create healthy cultures. Many organizations go through detailed processes to identify where culture is going astray and dive into implementing tactics, including defining company values. The problem is too many companies create values without meaning. Written values are often vague and ignored. Many companies have nice-sounding values, such as "integrity",...

When we make decisions in business, there's often a lot of elements to consider. Whether it be economic climate, organizational culture, financial return, or simply competitive pressure, these decisions can be complicated. So we go to the "big data" to give us the answers. But data itself can't provide you with the right answer, but simply more elements to consider when making the decision. We hav...

When organizations examine ways to improve their culture and communications, they often look to the obvious. Simplifying overly complex processes, eliminating redundancies, encouraging people to be more collaborative and so forth. However, for some reason, many organization's cultures end up changing only marginally or even not at all. The company's leaders then search for alternative ways to incr...

American companies spend enormous amounts of money on employee training and education—$160 billion in the United States and close to $356 billion globally in 2015 alone—but they are not getting a good return on their investment. For the most part, the learning doesn’t lead to better organizational performance, because people soon revert to their old ways of doing things.

We look to leaders for many things. We have expectations of behaviors that reflect vision, confidence, and decisiveness, to name a few. However, the most important trait leaders need to have which is frequently less emphasized is courage.

There's a reason why the new Ford GT is amazing. It's not because there was an elaborate corporate initiative in place, nor because of an innovation incubator, or a consultant-recommended strategy. It's because Ford let people do their jobs.

We've all been in an organization that's been on the cusp of implementing change. There were some internal rumblings about addressing some challenges which were hanging around for a long time. Leadership conducted a few discussions on the issues. A study, review, or evaluation was conducted. Fantastic! We have momentum! These challenges will FINALLY get addressed! However, in the coming weeks, thi...

Strategy is an often misunderstood and underutilized thing. More frequently than not, strategy becomes either a list of goals or a conglomeration of tactics called "a strategy". I've heard organizations say that strategy is a waste of time. I've also heard that it's "too complicated" or that "it doesn't add value, as things change all the time". The problem is that too many strategies are garbage....

One of the hottest topics in business today is the concept of "diversity and inclusion". Many of the organizations we work with lament about their challenges in this area, stressing their need to "get more diverse" and struggle to build a more diverse workforce. They talk about needing "more representation of minorities" and ask about "recruitment techniques" to help bolster their ranks. One probl...