Throughout Strativity’s 17+ years, we’ve developed fundamental principles and frameworks to help our clients avoid roadblocks and accelerate success with their customer experience initiatives — and now we’re sharing what we’ve learned with CX leaders like you.
With this fifth post in our ‘CX Consulting 101’ series, we look at how to accelerate organizational transformation, broaden your reach, nurture engagement, and inspire your people.
If you’d like to start at the beginning, see part one of our lessons from CX consulting series on How to Align Your Organization to Activate Change.
How to build momentum during organizational transformation
You and your team have been steadfast and rigorous in your commitment to the transformation process, from the first brainstorming sessions through co-creating your ideal CX, and educating your leadership and staff. After months of planning and design, you have thorough alignment with your team and a detailed roadmap.
You’ve ticked all the boxes, but how do you make sure your organizational transformation activities don’t lose traction or focus just as they’re taking off?
Keep your people top of mind
Pick any powerful movement and you’ll find a group of deeply committed people at its core. These people — fearless early adopters, change agents, your A-team — are your Champions. They will be a crucial element of your transformation program and will help accelerate all relevant activities.
In order to maximize the skills and energy of your Champions, you have to identify them first. Hint: they are the people at all levels of the organization who have been helping you along the way, pitching in at events, speaking up for the transformation activities completed to date, making suggestions, and generally being awesome!
Begin recruiting these folks, but also talk to your leadership and mid-level managers. They may know others who would be great assets to your Champion team — forward-thinking employees who are positive role models, team players, well-connected relationship builders with an optimistic mindset.
Build a support system for your CX Champions
Now comes your opportunity to more formally structure their role as CX Champions. Every group needs to feel connected, and you might consider creating a Champions Community to enable this group to share ideas, collaborate, plan activities, and generate momentum around the transformation program. You can help your Champions by offering:
- Additional training and guidance on what being a Champion means and where to focus their activities.
- Support from their direct manager and department head to ensure they have the resources necessary to make a positive impact.
- Recognition for their commitment to the program and for taking on such an important extra set of responsibilities.
Bottom line, if everyone is truly committed to transformation, your organization will recognize the value of Champions. Just be sure to set them up to succeed.
Use success stories to fuel transformation
Once you’ve built a foundation with your Champions, look beyond to all employees in your organization as a whole.
For example, we’ve helped many clients set up a mechanism for employees to submit stories that exemplify the goals of the transformation program. One client received over 200 stories in just the first week, including dozens of amazing tales of team members going the extra mile, living the company’s values, and wowing customers and colleagues alike. The client shared these stories across their organization to inspire their people.
A ‘Stories Competition’ can help you create awareness, amplify the success and impact of your program, and inspire others with great ideas to try themselves. When employees hear what their colleagues are doing and see that it’s being recognized, it not only inspires them, but gives them permission and encouragement to get involved too. It’s an ideal way to drive collective action.
And the competition part? Why not select a few winning stories’ every week or month and reward the author of each with a meaningful token of gratitude and cross-company recognition? You’ll find that even more people will want to be part of the action!
Communicate throughout the process
Communication is crucial during a transformation. If your program is having the right impact, you’ll start to see evidence in your operational performance, employee engagement and retention, and customer satisfaction. You’ll certainly see the impact on your company’s overall health.
It’s vital that you remember to communicate these inspiring developments and embrace opportunities to reinforce the value of your transformation activities. Share the wins with everyone. It takes a team to succeed and everyone deserves to be recognized for their contributions – big and small.
Takeaways for accelerating organizational change
Remember these points as you seek to amplify your transformation program activities and impacts:
- Transformation is a marathon, with lots of little sprints along the way. Remember to pace yourself. Keep your nerve and try not to lose your verve!
- It’s important to identify and activate a network of Champions to help with program implementation and development throughout your organization. Be sure to give them the support they need along the way.
- Don’t forget the power of a success story. The more the better. Leverage a Stories Competition to collect wins you can share with everyone.
- Communicate, communicate, communicate. Then communicate some more!
- Be generous in your recognition of others – teamwork makes the dream work!
Keep these pointers in mind to ensure that your organizational transformation activities don’t lose traction and that you sustain a healthy momentum throughout the process.
All stakeholders, even those looking on from the sidelines and wondering if this too shall pass, need to feel confident that your organization is committed to change. By communicating regularly, you might convince even the skeptics to become cheerleaders.
Be on the lookout for the final installment of our CX Consulting 101 series exploring how to institutionalize your transformation and sustain focus.
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