When a customer, employee, or vendor conducts a transaction with your business, they arrive with a predefined set of expectations about how that event will occur. These expectations are shaped by any number of prior experiences they might have had, either with your business or other businesses or people interactions. They can even be things totally out of both your and their control, such as the weather or personal items going on in their lives.
Speak with just about any business leader about their team, and you will get some disconcerting dialogue about their impression of how some of their employees don’t seem to be as engaged as they used to be. Some will tie it back to the pandemic and how once staff returned from working at home, they just don’t appear to have the same interest in their job. Others will associate it with the generational differences between this group or that group. Still, others try to look past it and push forward, hoping it will somehow magically disappear if they don’t acknowledge it.
In a marketplace bombarded with product and service offerings, differentiating your organization’s items can be very daunting. Years ago, it was all about identifying the unique difference your products or services had in the marketplace compared to the competition. Some of this is still needed, but…
Most leaders have heard the framework of “Plan—Do—Check—Act.” It has been around for many years and has been reworded to fit into a variety of approaches to helping organizations be more successful. It has been used and applied over the years because it is straightforward at its core.