One of the almost infinite challenges facing businesses today is understanding the system of customer engagement and who is responsible for executing the process to support it. The digital age has disrupted everything and one of the most significant outcomes is that customer expectations regarding their experience and level of service has changed the ways companies need to react to customer engagement.
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As I’ve shared previously in our live learning engagements and in these blog posts, one of the best parts of my job as a leader of Business Acumen, Business Leadership, and Strategic Business Selling skill development engagements for our clients is that I am continuously meeting new people at a variety of different types of companies with great and innovative ideas. Last week during a call with a potential new client, who I instantly clicked with because we have similar approaches to learning and more importantly similar values to business and people, he introduced me to a new concept that I’m quite intrigued by and has stuck with me for several days; “Outcomes Skills.” He defined Outcomes Skills as:
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And just like that it’s July, 2017 and the 3rd Quarter is now underway.
In the USA, this week of July 4th is much like the first week in January where many business professionals take some time after a major holiday to reflect back and look ahead. For business leaders focused on learning from the challenges of the first half of the year so they are able to produce the results needed for the second half, they will be thinking about the business skills needed to close the business gaps and the skills needed when hiring and onboarding new talent. But what are the gaps and how do they close them?
Based on my experiences over the past 25+ years working in the corporate training and develop market we have to look no further than a landmark survey by The Economist just a couple of years ago. The reason I like this survey so much is that it takes an unbiased perspective of the US market from experts outside of the US market. Chocked full of valuable data and insights, there is one question which I think is appropriate to visit this week and that is:
Several times a year Advantexe’s Research Department conducts focused surveys to gain a pulse of the market and to understand the voices of our customers. The most recent survey ran for 14 days in June and focused on Business Leadership topics to help us prioritize the continued building of our micro- business simulation portfolio. In the survey, we explored current topics of leadership that are challenging organizations and which need further skill development. The topics we asked customers to prioritize includes things such as Executing Strategy, Leading Innovation, and Managing Conflict. All these topics scored high, but one topic scored the highest and clearly is still difficult to most managers; Coaching and Having Difficult Conversations.
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The man sitting at New York’s Penn Station talking into his Smartphone on a dreary, humid, rainy Monday night about to catch the 10:10 pm train home could have been the Googled image for “forlorn.” I could hear the exasperation in his voice as he was sharing with the person on the other end about the terrible day he had and his feeling that “Retail as we knew it is dead” and the “this next generation of consumer wants to buy clothes from an app just like they ride around in Uber town cars.”
