MUSINGS ON EXPERIENCE, TRANSFORMATION, STRATEGY AND MORE
 These days, every leadership team wants to see a mindset change in their people. They need to be more customer-centric. More digital. More agile. More innovative. More sustainable. More lean. More in love with the colour blue.
To make this happen, companies unleash so many transformation programmes that merely mentioning the T-word makes employees roll their eyes in despair. Only this year, I’ve had multiple executives tell me “what ever the content, let’s not call what we are doing a transformation.”  As a customer, would you prefer fashion created by an AI or by a human? A month ago, I would have not given computers much thought. But now I’ve played with the latest generation of AI design tools, I’m not so sure anymore.
I feel we need to radically review the design and product development cycles in creative industries like fashion, graphic design, furniture, and more… In this issue of Level Up, I summarise the experiment that changed my mind and make the case that if you want to stay in tune with your customers, you should do some tech immersion of your own.  In a recent video, I suggested spending more time on getting customers who ‘would’ recommend to actually do so. As I received some ‘how to?’ questions on the topic, I’m using this issue of Level Up to outline three practical steps you can take. I hope you find them useful.
PS. While the below may sound like a B2C topic, it is even more relevant in B2B.  Leaders regularly say that they want to ‘change the mindset’ of their people. But can that really be done? And if you were to persist, what are the implications?
In another element to the transformation algorithm I’m building, I explore the concept of mindset change. The post isn’t as clearly written as I would like, but I’m told that ‘done is better than perfect’. So, if you see opportunities to improve, ask, comment, complement or (constructively) disagree. I'm sure we'll both learn from it!  Some time ago I briefly took part in a UN project on sustainable fashion. In the early part of my career, I have been part of (building) the fast-fashion system, so amends were (and are still) in order.
Covid cut short my involvement. But the project made me hyper-aware of both the challenges and opportunities in making the fashion industry sustainable. In which the good news is that ‘it can be done’. Yes, systems change is hard, but once the change momentum reaches its tipping point, developments can go exponentially. So in this article, I’d like to share four customer experience (related) initiatives that caught my eye. I’m curious about what you think of them.  When was the last time you were truly ‘immersed’ in an experience? Was it a movie? A walk in the woods? An absorbing conversation? A bag of crisps?
While we all know the feeling of being immersed, I’ve seldom seen customer experience teams deliberately design for immersion. At least among mainstream B2C brands and B2B vendors.  I’m working on a ‘next level experience’ concept studio. So I’m asking myself some deep questions about the customer expectations of 2027 and beyond. Like whether meaning will be the next (premium) consumer experience frontier?
What do you think? Would you agree I am onto something? Or am I being a bit fluffy?  This Summer is turning out to be hot in more ways than one.
In the past 7 days I’ve been to Milan, Vienna and Stockholm while having a dozen digital and in-person meetings in-between. After 2 years of Covid-induced digital scrambling, corporate mind-space is returning to get real about customer experience. 6/16/2022 In Leadership, Bias is a B**ch What if I told you that - as a leader - you were delusional, prejudiced and unable to make any kind of objective decision? You would probably take offence.
And yet, these adjectives apply to me on an almost daily basis. Is this where you worry about me? 
Predictions are a funny thing.
Ever since I started in retail 30 years ago, people have been telling me that physical stores are dying. As the metaverse is about to merge with the world of ecommerce, this prediction is louder than ever. |
AuthorAlain Thys is an experience architect who helps organisations drive profit and transformation through experience. Archives
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10/6/2022
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