During the pandemic year, the customer consumption pattern has changed dramatically. Does your business keep up with customer trends?
First of all, find an honest answer to the question: Is it convenient for the customer to buy and use your product or service? You should search for it by looking around and using your own daily customer experience. There are already enough excellent cases of new products and multi-channel customer service both in B2B and B2C. Remote banking, professional and educational services is already a new business standard.
The next logical question would be: How can I change my work with clients so that, at least, I don’t lose business efficiency, but, in addition, I use all my resources most effectively? Here, you will not be able to directly apply the experience of your competitors. To initiate and trigger transformation of the company, to come up with ideas for changes is not so difficult. Putting this into practice and achieving meaningful results is a challenge not only for the leader, but also for the team of specialists who will help structure the ideas and bring them to life.
That is why the question of the need for qualified project managers who will not allow plans to remain “on the table” is so acute. After all, to implement any transformations, the leader will have to break many working processes, will have to see dissatisfied employees, to conflict or negotiate with some of them, will have to delve deeper into the operating system. You will have to spend energy on unusual and not always pleasant things.
Companies that have already learned how to convene permanent and temporary project teams are perfectly able to do this task, making point-by-point and global changes on their own. To do this, it is enough to have a staff of professional managers focused only on this. For them, the project is already a lifestyle, and not “something subjective”. Nevertheless, if you don’t have any experience working with cross-functional teams, it’s time to start acquiring it.
However, if you do not have a strong in-house team of such specialists, although it seems logical and economically feasible to develop a plan for changes, and then gradually implement them based on the principle “more haste, less speed” — the answer here is not on the surface. Time to hit Start!
In any project, even the most complex, everything starts with the first step. Encouraging employees not to be afraid of changes and the boldest ideas, as well as to rethink routine processes, is the first difficult but interesting task of a leader on the path of transformation. Time to hit Create!
There can be many great ideas of changes generated by employees — interesting and not very interesting, effective and not very effective, easy and not very easy to implement. At the development stage, you can afford even the most ambitious ideas, but then the leader should match them with the values and mission of the brand. Time to hit Analyze!
After the development stage, there is always a risk that this will remain on paper. After all, there are cases where everyone is enthusiastic during strategy sessions, but when they return to implementation and the flow of current business, they put it off until the right time, which is always “tomorrow”. This is why it is so important to have a specialist who, without being completely immersed in routine tasks, will oversee the transformation. Time to hit Responsibility!
If the company structure is functional, then the team includes specialists who are focused on performing work within a single function. Therefore, in cross-functional processes, the person previously responsible for the “piece” of the process shall now look at the process as a whole, understand it from beginning to end and understand how the execution of one step affects the result of the process as a whole. At the same time, each participant in the process will consider their own step the most important and will not pay attention to the steps of their colleagues. Disputes and conflicts are inevitable. Time to hit Communicate!
Changes, in fact, almost always require new knowledge and skills. In such situations, at least, there is a question of the need for training in project management and teamwork. Time to hit Learn!
The mode of the quick launch of products and services, optimization of processes, structures, and revision of strategies usually requires an outside view. An independent perspective allows you to get to see new facets of what is built with love every day, and how this fits into the external environment. The process of involving an external independent expert will become more conscious and effective if the request sounds like this: “There is a problem. We are ready to solve it. Are we doing the right thing?”
Out of all the previous factors, a new trend is emerging – a long-term collaboration between the client project team and an external consultant, in which the consultant does not generate changes in the team, but observes, analyses and asks questions. Time to hit Collaborate!
However, the leader is always at the helm, as well as his or her involvement and vision for the future of the company. After all, every leader is a visionary and an administrator, a conductor and a DJ. Time to hit Play!