By Sherif Attar
In a world of ever-changing ambiguity and uncertainty, executives have to face two challenges: excellent performance and people development. Where many managers think those endeavours are “competing”, this author believes they are “completing”. GET DOWN TO BUSINESS argues.
How to compete on personal transformations
Adapted from Lance A. Bettencourt
The end goal of people who go to fitness centres isn’t access to the equipment or trainers; it is to get in shape. The overriding reason people go to their doctor or check into a hospital is not to obtain drug prescriptions, a medical examination, or therapeutic procedures; it is to get well. But all too often fitness centres, medical providers, and organisations seek to distinguish themselves only on the quality, convenience, and experience of what they sell. It’s not that those things aren’t important. But they matter only as means to the ends that people seek.
Even though we’re all filled with hopes and ambitions, significant change is incredibly hard to accomplish on our own. Enterprises should recognise the economic opportunity offered by the transformation business, in which they partner with consumers to improve some fundamental aspect of their lives – to achieve a “new you.”
How Transformations Are Unique
Creating economic value from transformations requires first a full understanding of what it means to be in the transformation business. It entails:
Selling a distinct economic offering.
Companies create more and more value as they shift from selling commodities to manufacturing goods to delivering services. Transformations extend this progression to the fifth level, where companies help customers achieve major change.
Focusing on customer’s success.
The goods and services matter only in how they help customers achieve results. Each customer’s definition of success must, therefore, be the North Star that guides what a company does to compete on transformations.
Having a solutions mindset.
True transformations require complete solutions. But most companies provide only a small part of what customers need – exercise equipment to become more fit, a spa retreat to reconnect with one’s spouse – and largely leave the actual change customers seek to their own efforts. As a result, customers often fail. By contrast, companies that compete by providing transformations offer everything that customers need to succeed.
That outcome depends on a commitment from each customer to achieve an aim on which he or she and the company agree. This is the approach of Profile by Sanford, a franchiser unit of Sanford Health of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, which guides people to achieve weight loss. Researchers at Profile by Sanford cite studies suggesting that their approach is more effective than others.
Defining a Successful Transformation
Drawing on our work in understanding customer needs and how to design innovative offerings and meaningful experiences, we have created a three-step process for learning what customers in general would consider to be a successful transformation. Armed with this knowledge, a company can design a transformation offering.
Ascertain the jobs to be done.
Executives must understand what customers want to achieve – their jobs to be done. Those jobs fall into four categories:
1- Functional jobs represent a goal or a task the customer is trying to accomplish, or a problem the customer needs to resolve.
2- Emotional jobs address the feelings that people want to heighten or diminish in any given moment or future circumstance.
3- Social jobs concern how an individual wants to be perceived or relate to others.
4- Aspirational jobs sit at the highest level of what motivates people.
Businesses can use several methods to understand customers’ jobs to be done, including interviews, observation, and ethnography. Data alone won’t uncover what motivates people or what goals they have.
Define success along the way.
Companies must spend time interacting with customers to understand what success looks like at every point along the transformation journey. Success at each stage typically involves getting things done in a timely manner without issues and with a positive outcome.
Identify the barriers.
Once a company knows what success means for a customer, the final step is identifying the barriers that stand in the way and figuring out how to assist in overcoming them. These barriers exist in three primary domains: resources (available offerings, time, budget), customer readiness (skills, motivation, clarity), and context (when and where things are done).
For questions or suggestions, please send your comments.
Sherif Attar, an independent management consultant/trainer and organisation development authority, delivers seminars in the US, Europe, Middle East and the Far East.
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