The Nuts and Bolts of Journey Maps

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Where People Go Wrong with Journey Maps

by Braden Kelley

Well-crafted journeys look at touchpoints not through the lens of what the organization has built, but through the lens of what the target individuals are looking to achieve. Touchpoints are central to a successful journey map because they are the places where the persona and the organization come together. They are conversation starters. As workshop participants identify touchpoints, they will often also identify pain points and experience improvement opportunities. If they don’t, consider probing to understand either why a particular touchpoint provides such a good experience or to find missed pain points or experience improvement opportunities.

When building the journey, if you find people jumping repeatedly to add ideas for experience improvement and your collection of identified pain points needs to catch up, try asking people to identify what is preventing the achievement of select experience improvements.

In general, it is best to begin a journey mapping session by:

  1. Verifying high-level journey stages
  2. Identifying steps and/or actions in each stage
  3. Finding related touchpoints that occur in each step/action
  4. Capturing where pain points exist
  5. Selecting where improvement opportunities lie

When you reach the end, begin again, and probe to find what is missing. The more complete the download from the group’s collective consciousness across these different categories, the higher the quality of the journey map and the base from which to identify the moments of truth and the persona’s emotional experience along the journey.

Moments of truth can easily be identified too carelessly and broadly, so beware! Moments of truth, by their very definition are those moments that drive purchase, retention, loyalty and word-of-mouth when done well, or their opposite when done poorly.

The Path Forward

Anybody can fill in an empty template and say they have created a journey map, just as anyone can brew beer at home if they buy the equipment and the supplies, but doing so doesn’t make them a brewmaster. Craft matters. Research-informed personas matter. Getting workshop participants deeply immersed into the mindset of the target persona matters. Going beyond what people are doing to what they are thinking and feeling matters. Understanding why we are gathering this set of information for the journey map and why people are adding these particular sticky notes matters. Digging below the surface of what someone has written to understand what they truly mean matters.

Remember, the goal is to build a holistic view of the experience. To do so, we must be exhaustive in our information gathering, intuitive in how we bring it together and deliberate in how we identify what is missing and how to get it. We must be insanely curious about our target persona and unapologetic about trying to make the journey map truly represent the experience of the people it is intended to represent. Tell a story. Bring it to life. And use it to make the persona’s experience great.

Continue reading the rest of this article on HCLTech’s blog

Where People Go Wrong with Journey Maps

Image credits: Pixabay

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Four Major Shifts Driving the 21st Century

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Four Major Shifts Driving the 21st Century

GUEST POST from Greg Satell

In 1900, most people lived much like their ancestors had for millennia. They lived and worked on farms, using animal power and hand tools to augment their own abilities. They inhabited small communities and rarely, if ever, traveled far from home. They engaged in small scale violence and lived short, hard lives.

That would all change over the next century as we learned to harness the power of internal combustion, electricity and atoms. These advancements allowed us to automate physical labor on a large scale, engage in mass production, travel globally and wage violence that could level entire cities.

Today, at the beginning of a new century, we are seeing similar shifts that are far more powerful and are moving far more quickly. Disruption is no longer seen as merely an event, but a way of life and the fissures are there for all to see. Our future will depend on our determination to solve problems faster than our proclivity to continually create them.

1. Technology Shifts

At the turn of the 20th century, electricity and internal combustion were over a decade old, but hadn’t made much of an impact yet. That would change in the 1920s, as roads got built and new appliances that harnessed the power of electricity were invented. As ecosystems formed around new technologies, productivity growth soared and quality of life increased markedly.

There would be two more major technology shifts over the course of the century. The Green Revolution and the golden age of antibiotics in the 50s and 60s saved an untold number of lives. The digital revolution in the 90s created a new era of communication and media that still reverberates today.

These technological shifts worked for both good and ill in that they revealed the best and worst parts of human nature. Increased mobility helped to bring about violence on a massive scale during two world wars. The digital revolution made war seem almost antiseptic, enabling precision strikes to kill people half a world away at the press of a button.

Today, we are on the brink of a new set of technological shifts that will be more powerful and more pervasive than any we have seen before. The digital revolution is ending, yet new technologies, such as novel computing architectures, artificial intelligence, as well as rapid advancements in genomics and materials science promise to reshape the world as we know it.

2. Resource Shifts

As new technologies reshaped the 20th century, they also reshaped our use of resources. Some of these shifts were subtle, such as how the invention of synthetic indigo dye in Germany affected farmers in India. Yet the biggest resource shift, of course, was the increase in the demand for oil.

The most obvious impact from the rise of oil was how it affected the Middle East. Previously nomadic societies were suddenly awash in money. Within just a single generation, countries like Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Iran became global centers of power. The Arab Oil Embargo of the 1970s nearly brought western societies to their knees and prolonged the existence of the Soviet Union.

So I was more than surprised last year to find when I was at a conference in Bahrain that nearly every official talked openly about he need to “get off oil.” With the rise of renewable energy, depending on a single commodity is no longer a viable way to run a society. Today, solar power is soaring in the Middle East.

Still, resource availability remains a powerful force. As the demand for electric vehicles increases, the supply of lithium could become a serious issue. Already China is threatening to leverage its dominance in rare earth elements in the trade war with the United States. Climate change and population growth is also making water a scarce resource in many places.

3. Migrational Shifts

One of the most notable shifts in the 20th century was how the improvement in mobility enabled people to “vote with their feet.” Those who faced persecution or impoverishment could, if they dared, sail off to some other place where the prospects were better. These migrational shifts also helped shape the 20th century and will likely do the same in the 21st.

Perhaps the most notable migration in the 20th century was from Europe to the United States. Before World War I, immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe flooded American shores and the backlash led to the Immigration Act of 1924. Later, the rise of fascism led to another exodus from Europe that included many of its greatest scientists.

It was largely through the efforts of immigrant scientists that the United States was able to develop technologies like the atomic bomb and radar during World War II. Less obvious though is the contributions of second and third generation citizens, who make up a large proportion of the economic and political elite in the US.

Today, the most noteworthy shift is the migration of largely Muslim people from war-torn countries into Europe. Much like America in the 1920s, the strains of taking in so many people so quickly has led to a backlash, with nationalist parties making significant gains in many countries.

4. Demographic Shifts

While the first three shifts played strong roles throughout the 20th century, demographic shifts, in many ways, shaped the second half of the century. The post war generation of Baby Boomers repeatedly challenged traditional values and led the charge in political movements such as the struggle for civil rights in the US, the Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia and the March 1968 protests in Poland.

The main drivers of the Baby Boomer’s influence have been its size and economic prosperity. In America alone, 76 million people were born in between 1946 and 1964, and they came of age in the prosperous years of the 1960s. These factors gave them unprecedented political and economic clout that continues to this day.

Yet now, Millennials, who are more diverse and focused on issues such as the environment and tolerance, are beginning to outnumber Baby Boomers. Much like in the 1960s, their increasing influence is driving trends in politics, the economy and the workplace and their values often put them in conflict with the baby boomers.

However, unlike the Baby Boomers, Millennials are coming of age in an era where prosperity seems to be waning. With Baby Boomers retiring and putting further strains on the economy, especially with regard to healthcare costs, tensions are on the rise.

Building On Progress

As Mark Twain is reputed to have said, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.” While shifts in technology, resources, migration and demographics were spread throughout the 20th century, today we’re experiencing shifts in all four areas at once. Given that the 20th century was rife with massive wars and genocide, that is somewhat worrying.

Many of the disturbing trends around the world, such as the rise of authoritarian and populist movements, global terrorism and cyber warfare, can be attributed to the four shifts. Yet the 20th century was also a time of great progress. Wars became less frequent, life expectancy doubled and poverty fell while quality of life improved dramatically.

So today, while we face seemingly insurmountable challenges, we should also remember that many of the shifts that cause tensions, also give us the power to solve our problems. Advances in genomics and materials science can address climate change and rising healthcare costs. A rising, multicultural generation can unlock creativity and innovation. Migration can move workers to places where they are sorely needed.

The truth is that every disruptive era is not only fraught with danger, but also opportunity. Every generation faces unique challenges and must find the will to solve them. My hope is that we will do the same. The alternative is unthinkable.

— Article courtesy of the Digital Tonto blog
— Image credit: Pixabay

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How to Make Your Customers Hate You

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One Zone at a Time

How to Make Your Customers Hate You

GUEST POST from Geoffrey A. Moore

My most recent book, Zone to Win, lays out a game plan for digital transformation based on organizing your enterprise around four zones. They are the:

  1. Performance Zone, where you make, sell, and deliver the products and services that constitute your core business.
  2. Productivity Zone, where you host all the cost centers that support the Performance Zone, functions like finance, HR, IT, marketing, legal, customer support, and the like.
  3. Incubation Zone, where you experiment with next-generation technologies to see if and how they might play a role in your future.
  4. Transformation Zone, which you bring into existence on a temporary basis for the sole purpose of driving a digital transformation to completion.

The book uses these four zones to help you understand your own company’s dynamics. In this blog, however, we are going to use them to help you understand your customer’s company dynamics.

Here is the key insight. Customers buy your product to create value in one, and normally only one, zone. Depending on which zone they are seeking to improve, their expectations of you will vary dramatically. So, if you really want to get your customers to hate you, you have to know what zone they are targeting with your product or service.

To start with, if your customer is buying your product for their Productivity Zone, they want it to make them more efficient. Typically, that means taking cost out of their existing operations by automating one or more manual tasks, thereby reducing labor, improving quality, and speeding up cycle time. So, if you want to make this customer hate you, load up your overall offer with lots of extras that require additional training, have features that can confuse or distract end users, and generally just gum up the works. Your product will still do what you said it would do, but with any luck, they won’t save a nickel.

Now, if instead they are buying your product to experiment with in their Incubation Zone, they are looking to do some kind of proof of concept project. Of course, real salespeople never sell proofs of concepts, so continue to insist that they go all in for the full Monty. That way, when they find out they can’t actually do what they were hoping to, you will have still scored a good commission, and they will really hate you.

Moving up in the world, perhaps your customer has bought from you to upgrade their Performance Zone by making their operations more customer-focused. This is serious stuff because you are messing with their core business. What an opportunity! All you have to do is over-promise just a little bit, then put in a few bits that are not quite fully baked, turn the whole implementation over to a partner, and then, if the stars align, you can bring down their whole operation and blame it entirely on someone else. That really does get their dander up.

But if you really want to extract the maximum amount of customer vitriol, the best place to engage is in their Transformation Zone. Here the CEO has gone on record that the company will transform its core business to better compete in the digital era. This is the mother lode. Budget is no object, so soak it to the max. Every bell, whistle, doo-dad, service, product—you name it, load it into the cart. Guarantee a transformational trip to the moon and back. Just make sure that the timeline for the project is two years. That way you will be able to collect and cash your commission check before you have to find other employment.

Of course, if for some reason you actually wanted your customer to like you, I suppose you could reverse these recommendations. But where’s the fun in that?

That’s what I think. What do you think?

Image Credit: Pexels

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Spotting a Good Leader

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Spotting a Good Leader

GUEST POST from Mike Shipulski

When the team can get things done without the leader, that’s the sign of a good leader.

If the organization bypasses the leader and goes directly to the subject matter experts, that’s because the leader trusts the subject matter experts.

When subject matter experts are trusted, they do amazing work. Good leaders know that.

When a team leader tells you they made a mistake and take full responsibility for it, they make it safe for you to do the same.

When the team can write a good monthly report while the team leader is on vacation, that’s good for the company and the people who can write a good report on their own.

Good leaders know that they make mistakes and know you will too. And, they’re okay with all that.

When a leader won’t tell you what to do, it’s because she believes in you and knows you’re the best person to figure it out.

When a leader says “I don’t know.” they make it safe for team members to do the same.

When a team leader defers to you, that leader knows the limits of their knowledge and yours.

When a leader responds to your question with a question, the leader is helping you answer your question so you can answer it next time on your own.

Good leaders know that sometimes good people don’t know the answer. And they’re okay with that.

When a leader is comfortable with you reaching out to their boss without their knowledge it’s because that leader has told you the truth over the last several years.

Good leaders don’t celebrate failure, they celebrate learning.

When a leader asks you to use your best judgment, that’s a compliment.

When leaders show their emotions in front of you, it demonstrates that they trust you.

Judge a leader by the performance of people on their team.

Image credit: Pexels

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Meeting Expectations Versus Managing Hope

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Meeting Expectations Versus Managing Hope

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

At a recent customer service presentation, the speaker who preceded me said that we must do better than simply meeting our customers’ expectations, and he shared some stories of truly amazing service experiences. Then it was my turn to speak. I didn’t want to contradict him, but I needed the audience to understand that it is impossible to go above and beyond with customers at every interaction. Sometimes meeting expectations is a perfect experience.

In my customer service keynote speeches, I talk about ‘Managing the Moment’. The idea comes from Jan Carlson, and if you’ve been following me, you will recognize this concept. Every interaction customers have with you or your company gives them the opportunity to form an impression. Understanding this simple idea is a good start to developing and/or maintaining your customer service and CX strategy.

I believe you must manage expectations, and if you are even the tiniest bit above average in doing what customers expect, your customers will love you, give you high ratings, and refer you to their colleagues and friends. The key to being successful with this idea is to be consistent. You want customers to say things like, “They always are knowledgeable,” or “They are always so helpful.” The word always followed by something positive, typically an expectation is what you’re going for.

Shep Hyken Expectations Cartoon

So back to the idea of just meeting expectations. Some people confuse expectations with hope. Here’s what I mean by this. If I call someone for help and leave a message, I expect them to call me back, and I hope they will return the call sooner rather than later.

Let’s say I’m called back within an hour. I’m pleasantly surprised because the person met my expectation of the callback and did it in the timeframe I hoped they would – maybe even a little sooner.

Most customers won’t analyze the experience quite this way, but it is exactly what they want – or hope for. They will, however, notice that the call was returned quickly and may say, “Thanks for calling me back so quickly.” The returned call was expected. The comment about “quickly” indicates their expectations were met or slightly exceeded. And if you do that every time, the customer will use the always when they talk about you and describe the experience by saying, “They always call me back quickly.”

Let’s flip this around. I believe most customers hope for a great experience, but not necessarily an over-the-top or above-and-beyond experience. And based on their typical experience with service laggards, they, unfortunately, don’t have high expectations. So, whenever you meet or just ever so slightly exceed what your customers hope for, you’ve created a positive experience that gets them to say, “I’ll be back!”

Image Credits: Shep Hyken

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The Paradox of Innovation Leadership

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GUEST POST from Janet Sernack

Most of us are aware that both the organizational leadership and cultural paradigms have shifted, due to the accelerating demands of the current global VUCA/BANI operating environment. Requiring us to make sense of and navigate the paradoxical nature of innovation leadership. By developing multiple perspectives to re-think how to respond positively and creatively to the high levels of tension and range of massive disruptions we collectively face in our current high-speed, constantly changing, global operating environments.

According to Otto Scharmer in a recent article for Resilience Magazine, we are facing a looming paradox – “we know almost everything that is necessary to prevent civilizational collapse – we have most of the knowledge, most of the technologies, and all the financial means necessary to turn things around – and yet we are not doing it”.

To truly differentiate ourselves and do the “right things” as adaptive and agile 21st-century leaders, and coaches, it’s crucial to learn the “soft skills” required to cultivate true, and relevant multiple perspectives. To better serve people and unlock and mobilize their collective genius to co-create a future that is regenerative, peaceful, and just, for all of humanity.

What is a paradox?

In a White Paper – Managing Paradox, Blending East and West Philosophies to Unlock Its Advantages and Opportunities from the Center for Creative Leadership, authors Jean Brittain Leslie, Peter Ping Li, and Sophia Zhao, use the term “paradox as a general term to describe the tensions individuals face due to the coexistence of conflicting demands”.

That a paradox can also be described as tensions, dilemmas, conundrums, polarities, competing values, and contradictions, and have these principles in common:

  • It is often difficult to see the presence of paradoxes in organizational life and in a VUCA and BANI world.
  • They are not problems that can be solved, as they are often unsolvable.
  • They are of cyclical or recurring nature.
  • They can polarize individuals into groups.
  • They are potentially positive when managed.
  • Managing paradox involves developing a mindset (and perspective) beyond “either/or” logic (A is either B or not B).

Polarity is the preferred term used in long-time practitioner Barry Johnson’s work. Duality is also used, referring to the yin-yang perspective on a paradox – a pair of opposite elements that can be both partially conflicting and partially complementary.

Mastering the paradoxical nature of innovation leadership requires developing the soft skills to hold two trains of competing or complementary thoughts, or perspectives, simultaneously. This enables innovation leaders to connect to, explore, navigate, and discover new territories to sense possibilities, seize opportunities, and simultaneously solve complex systems and challenging problems differently – in ways that add value to the quality of people’s lives they appreciate and cherish.

Why is it important to navigate a paradox?

Innovation leadership involves cultivating a paradoxical mindset that enables us to work outside of the “either/or” binary and logical perspective and work within the “both/and” non-logical and multiple perspectives, by knowing how to see both the:

  • Perspectives clearly,
  • Positive and negative consequences of each perspective,
  • Interrelationship and interdependence between each perspective.

Shifting perspectives – Taking a skills-based approach

A recent MIT Sloane article “Taking a skills-based approach to culture change” reinforces how important it is to support digital, cultural, and other transformation initiatives by developing people’s “soft skills”, through innovation leadership learning initiatives, specifically to develop the thinking skills required to hold multiple perspectives:

 “Unlike most types of culture initiatives, a skills-based approach can more effectively infuse new culture components into scale-ups and international incumbents alike. This approach is particularly effective for developing what many refer to as soft skills, such as perspective-taking. This ability to step outside one’s own perspective to understand another person’s point of view, motivations, and emotions helps build a psychologically safe environment in which people dare to share ideas and unfiltered information”.

  • Developing perspective-taking skills is fundamental to mastering the paradoxical nature of innovation leadership. It enables leaders and coaches to connect to, explore, navigate, and discover new territories to catalyze and harness people’s collective genius and shift perspectives differently.
  • Developing the 21st-century leadership superpowers necessary to reimagine, reinvent, design, and deliver innovative solutions to complex and challenging problems.

Making the shift – Taking the first steps

Barry Johnson’s work states that:

“Managing paradox involves moving from focusing on one pole as the problem and the other as the solution (either/or thinking) to valuing both poles (both/and thinking)”.

This is supported by a recent article “The Six Paradoxes of Leadership” by PWC:

 “Paradoxes are not new to leaders, but they are becoming have become increasingly important for leaders to navigate”.

Drafting six key questions for leaders and coaches to consider by hitting their “pause buttons” and directing their focus and attention:

 “The most urgent in today’s context and will remain important in the future. The paradoxes should be considered as a system; they impact each other and all need to be balanced simultaneously. To truly differentiate yourself as a leader, learning how to comfortably inhabit both elements of each paradox will be critical to your success.”

These multiple perspective-shifting questions include:

  1. How might you, as both a leader (and coach) learn how to navigate a world that is increasingly both global and local?
  2. How might you, as both a leader (and coach), learn how to navigate both the politics of getting things to happen and retain your character and integrity?
  3. How might you, as both a leader (and coach) develop the confidence to act in an uncertain (and BANI) world and the humility and vulnerability to recognize when you are wrong?
  4. How might you, as both a leader (and coach) learn how to execute effectively whilst also being both tactical and strategic?
  5. How might you, as both a leader (and coach) become increasingly tech-savvy and remember that organizations are run by people, for people?
  6. How might you, as both a leader (and coach) apply the learnings and successes of the past to help guide and direct you in the future?

Making the shift – Learning the innovation leadership fundamentals

At ImagineNation™  we have accredited more than 100 leaders and coaches globally as professionally certified coaches for innovation in our global bespoke online coaching and learning products and programs has validated three key poles innovation leadership requires.

Which is to know how to effectively move from focusing on one pole as the problem and the other as the solution (either/or thinking) to valuing both poles (both/and thinking) and developing multiple perspectives:

  • Both Push and Pull: noticing when people are neurologically stuck in a flight/fight/freeze mode and are reticent and unable to make the shift toward a desired future state. Leaders and coaches can safely push people towards what is urgent and “necessary” to change to survive, and simultaneously pull them towards both the benefits, rewards, and desirability of the future state and towards mobilizing them towards energetically engaging and enrolling in it.
  • Both Strategic and Tactical: noticing when people are so busy that they “can’t see the forest for the trees”, or are caught up and lost in tasks, and activities involved in getting things done, quickly, and often thoughtlessly. Leaders and coaches can focus on both what they are trying to achieve, and why they are trying to achieve, it whilst simultaneously engaging people in completing the task and observing and considering it strategically and systemically.
  • Both In the Box and Out of the Box: noticing what are peoples’ core operating systems, and being present to what is true and real for them, without judgment and with detachment. Leaders and coaches can focus both on “what is” the person’s perspective, situation, and current reality, whilst simultaneously evoking, provoking, and cultivating “what could be possible” and eliciting unconventional multiple perspectives that catalyze creative thinking differently strategies.

Grappling with the future is paradoxical

Today’s strategic landscape is like nothing we have ever seen before, which makes innovation leadership and innovation coaching skills more important than ever.

To re-think for a new age, how to courageously confront and solve serious dilemmas and complex problems, how to adapt to complex systems, be creative in transforming time, people, and financial investments in ways that drive out complacency and build change readiness.

To then deliver deep and continuous change and learning to equip and empower innovation leadership to develop the multiple perspectives required to deliver valuable and tangible results, whilst simultaneously opening new pathways to a future that is regenerative, peaceful, and just for all of humanity.

Image Credit: Pixabay

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Are You an Innovation Leader or Manager?

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Are You an Innovation Leader or Manager?

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

“Leader” is a word that gets thrown around A LOT.

Senior Management Teams are now Senior Leadership Teams.

Business schools no longer train managers. They “educate leaders.”

Training programs for specific skills are now “Leadership Development Programs”

If “innovation” is a buzzword (and it is), then “leadership” is the grand poo-bah of buzzwords.

Let’s get one thing straight.

“Leadership,” as it is commonly used, is the “extra-ordinarization of the mundane.”

But it’s not meant to be.

If you are a leader, you use your personal qualities and behaviors to influence and inspire others to follow you because they choose to (not because the org chart requires them to). Any person, anywhere in the org chart, can be a leader because leadership has nothing to do with your position, responsibilities, or resources.

If you are a manager, executive, or senior executive, you have positional power, usually earned. These terms put you in a particular place in the org chart, define your scope of responsibility, and set guardrails around the human and financial resources you control.

There is nothing wrong with being a manager (or executive or senior executive). Those positions are earned through hard work and steady results. They are titles to aspire to, be proud of, and use in a professional setting.

But if you run around telling people you’re a leader, well, to misquote Margaret Thatcher, “Being a leader is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren’t.”

Are you a leader?

There are thousands of books on leadership, millions of articles, and hundreds of experts. I am not a leadership expert, but I know a leader when I meet one. The same is true for the people around you. 

What do we see that helps us know whether or not you are a leader?

If the dozen articles I skimmed for this post are any indication, everyone has their own list, but there are some common items. To find the most frequently mentioned, I asked ChatGPT to list the qualities and behavior distinguishing leaders from managers and executives. 

Here’s what I got:

Here are my reactions:

  1. Uh, ok. This leadership list feels like what an executive should do, but I guess the difference between the two (executives focus on strategy, and leaders inspire and connect) proves my point (which is a bit discouraging)
  2. It feels like some leadership qualities are missing (e.g., empathy, fostering psychological safety, inspiring trust)
  3. Kinda surprised to see other leadership qualities (do you need to “foster creativity and innovation” to be a leader?)

That 3rd thought led to a fourth – if “fostering creativity and innovation” is a quality shared amongst all leaders, then is there a difference between business, operational, and innovation leaders?

Are you an innovation leader?

I’ve worked for and with leaders, and I can say with absolute confidence that while each of them was a great leader, few were great leaders of innovation.

Why? What made them great leaders in business and operations but not in innovation?

Do you even need to be good at leading innovation if you’re good at managing it?

What does it even mean to be an “innovation leader?”

What do you think?

Off the top of my head, qualities specific to innovation leaders are:

  1. Patient for revenue, impatient for learning and insights
  2. Oriented to action, not evaluation (judging)
  3. Curious and questioning, not arrogant and answering

What am I missing (because I know I’m missing a lot)?

What characteristics have you experienced with innovation leaders that make them unique from other types of leaders?

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Where People Go Wrong with Journey Maps

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Where People Go Wrong with Journey Maps

by Braden Kelley

When it comes to doing great customer experience work on behalf of HCLTech clients, journey maps are foundational. But it is harder to create meaningful, actionable journey maps than people might think. Here are a few ways people stray from the optimal path when it comes to journey maps:

  1. Not creating meaningful personas first
  2. Not talking to their chosen group of people before building personas and journey maps (do your research)
  3. Not validating the high-level journey phases internally and externally before beginning to map
  4. Building a journey map for multiple personas without consciously identifying and understanding the risks
  5. Accepting sticky notes during journey mapping sessions as-is — don’t probe to make sure meanings are clear
  6. Failing to cluster similar sticky notes and request permission to combine where appropriate
  7. Not having workshop participants vote on the importance of touchpoints, the intensity of pain points, and impact of experience improvement opportunities

A journey mapping workshop is an incredible opportunity to surface assumptions, uncover the hidden and build alignment, motivate action and create long-term momentum and commitment for people-centric improvements.

Creating Journey Magic

Improving customer experiences is an investment with real returns. These returns can go beyond the financial into the realm of psychological and social benefits. If you didn’t care about these people, you wouldn’t invest the time (and money) to go beyond your marketing or process funnel-based understanding of them and dive deep to understand what their experience and interactions with your organization really look like in a journey mapping workshop.

A well-researched, lovingly crafted journey map can be a thing of beauty that many organizations share far and wide and even print poster-sized and mount in the hallways of their headquarters so that everyone can remain anchored in the experience of those they serve and laser-focused on the latest experience improvement projects.

Continue reading the rest of this article on HCLTech’s blog

Where People Go Wrong with Journey Maps

Image credits: Pixabay

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Four Transformation Secrets Business Leaders Can Learn from Social and Political Movements

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Four Transformation Secrets Business Leaders Can Learn from Social and Political Movements

GUEST POST from Greg Satell

In 2004, I was managing a major news organization during the Orange Revolution in Ukraine. One of the things I noticed was that thousands of people, who would normally be doing thousands of different things, would stop what they were doing and start doing the same things all at once, in nearly complete unison, with no clear authority guiding them.

What struck me was how difficult it was for me to coordinate action among the people in my company. I thought if I could harness the forces I saw at work in the Orange Revolution, it could be a powerful model for business transformation. That’s what started me out on the 15-year journey that led to my book, Cascades.

What I found was that many of the principles of successful movements can be applied to business transformation. Also, because social and political movements so well documented—there are often thousands of contemporary accounts from every conceivable perspective—we can gain insights that a traditional case studies miss. Here are four principles you can apply.

1. Failure Doesn’t Have To Be Fatal

One of the things that amazed me while researching revolutionary movements was how consistently failure played a part in their journey. Mahatma Gandhi’s early efforts to bring independence to India led to the massacre at Amritsar in 1919. Our own efforts in Ukraine in 2004 ultimately led to Viktor Yanukovych’s rise to power in 2010.

In the corporate context, it is often a crisis that leads to transformational change. In the early 90s, IBM was nearly bankrupt and many thought the company should be broken up. That’s what led to the Gerstner revolution that put the company back on track and a similar crisis at Alcoa presaged record profits under Paul O’Neil.

In fact, Lou Gertner would later say that failure and transformation are inextricably linked. “Transformation of an enterprise begins with a sense of crisis or urgency,” he told a groups of Harvard Business School students. “No institution will go through fundamental change unless it believes it is in deep trouble and needs to do something different to survive.”

What’s important about early failures is what you learn from them. In every successful transformation I researched, what turned the tide was when the insights gained from early failures were applied to create a keystone change that set out a clear and concrete initiative, involved multiple stakeholders and paved the way for a greater transformation down the road.

2. Don’t Bet Your Transformation On Persuasion

Any truly transformational change is going to encounter significant resistance. Those who fear change and support the status quo can be expected to work to undermine your efforts. That’s fairly obvious in social and political movements like the civil rights movements or the struggle against Apartheid, but often gets overlooked in the corporate context.

All too often change management efforts seek to convince opponents through persuasion. That’s unlikely to succeed. Betting your transformation on the idea that, given the right set of arguments or snappy slogans, those who oppose the change that you seek will immediately see the light is unrealistic. What you can do, however, is set out to influence stakeholders who can wield influence.

For example, in the 1980s, anti-Aparthied activists activists led a campaign against Barclays Bank in British university towns. That probably did little to persuade white nationalists in South Africa, but it severely affected Barclays’ business, which pulled its investments from South Africa. That and similar efforts made Apartheid economically untenable and helped lead to its downfall.

In a corporate transformation, there are many institutions, such as business units, customer groups, industry associations, and others that can wield significant influence. By looking at stakeholder groups more broadly, you can win important allies that can help you drive transformation forward.

3. Be Explicit About Your Values

Today, we regard Nelson Mandela as an almost saintly figure, but it wasn’t always that way. Throughout his career as an activist, he was accused of being a communist, an anarchist and worse. When confronted with these accusations, however, he always pointed out that no one had to guess what he believed in, because it was written down in the Freedom Charter in 1955.

Being explicit about values helped to signal to external stakeholders, such as international institutions, that the anti-Aparthied activists shared common values. In fact, although the Freedom Charter was a truly revolutionary document, its call for things like equal rights and equal protection would be considered utterly unremarkable in most countries.

After Apartheid fell and Mandela rose to power, the values spelled out in the Freedom Charter became important constraints. If, for example, a core value is that all national groups should be treated equal, then Mandela’s government clearly couldn’t oppress whites. His reconciliation efforts are a big part of the reason he is so revered today.

Irving Wladawsky-Berger, one of Gerster’s key lieutenants, told me how values played a similar role during IBM’s turnaround years. “The Gerstner revolution wasn’t about technology or strategy, it was about transforming our values and our culture to be in greater harmony with the market… Because the transformation was about values first and technology second, we were able to continue to embrace those values as the technology and marketplace continued to evolve.”

4. Every Revolution Inspires A Counter-Revolution

After the Orange Revolution ended in 2005, we felt triumphant. We overcame enormous odds and had won. Little did we know that there would be much darker days ahead. In 2010, Viktor Yanukovych, the man we took to the streets to keep out of power, was elected president in an election that international observers judged to be free and fair.

While surprising, this is hardly uncommon. Similar events took place during the Arab Spring. The government of Hosni Mubarrak was overthrown only to be replaced by that of Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who is possibly even more oppressive. Harvard professor Rita Gunther McGrath points out that in today’s business environment, competitive advantage tends to be transient.

The truth is that every revolution inspires a counter-revolution. That’s why the early days of victory are often the most fragile. That’s when you tend to take your foot off the gas and relax, while at the same time those who oppose the change you worked to build are just beginning to plan to redouble their efforts.

That’s why you need a plan to survive victory from the start rooted in shared values. In the final analysis, driving change is less about a series of objectives than it is about forming a common cause. That’s just as true in a corporate transformation as it is in a social or political revolution.

— Article courtesy of the Digital Tonto blog
— Image credit: Pixabay

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From Sticky Notes to Digital Transformation

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How to Properly Leverage Kanban Boards

From Sticky Notes to Digital Transformation

GUEST POST from Dainora Jociute

Whether it’s a bunch of sticky notes on an office wall or a clever digital tool with color-coded boxes, most of us are familiar with the ingenious concept of a Kanban board.

Perhaps that’s not the name you use. Maybe for you and your team, it’s Trello or simply a whiteboard, yet at the very core of it all, hides a little neat Japanese invention that sparks joy – Kanban.

It is not exactly a new concept, however over the years Kanban remains largely unchanged and its popularity unwavering. In this article, I will try to take a deeper look at what it is and how to make it work for you.

A Short History of Kanban

The word Kanban translated from Japanese means sign or signboard. Back in the day, and I am talking way back – 17th century – that was exactly what Kanban was. It was a signboard signaling to passersby what services or products a business offered.

In a more recent chapter of history, in the wake of the Second World War, the Japanese automotive manufacturer Toyota was in a pickle. The company struggled to make any profit, and they realized that something must be done. This is where Taiichi Ohno, the so-called founding father of Kanban comes into the picture.

A budding industrial engineer, Ohno was sent to the US to scout and gather inspiration for improving manufacturing back at the Toyota plant. The revelation hit Ohno in the most inconspicuous place – a grocery store. He noticed that some supermarkets stocked their shelves based only on customer demand. Customers would pull products they need off a shelf, and the store would restock them only once it was gone, avoiding unnecessary overloading of the shelves with excess products in advance. This system ensured that the store only sold products with real demand.

This pull approach (on that a little later) clearly reduced waste: it saved the time wasted on restocking, resources spent on overproduction, produce thrown out, and much more. Aiming to eliminate waste without sacrificing production back at the Toyota plant, Ohno introduced the pull system in the shape of paper cards that he later named Kanban.

Each Kanban card contained a clear description of each step in the production line, be it the number of materials needed or a particular task of the production chain to be done. It controlled amounts of production ensuring that only what is needed will be created. These cards moved systematically along the whole manufacturing process and guided what must be done throughout the journey. It became a simple yet ingenious tool for managing the whole manufacturing process ensuring that no waste will be created along the way.

Later down the line, other brilliant minds realized that the same approach can be applied to other industries too, not just manufacturing.

One of the key figures responsible for this adaptation was David J. Anderson. He is known for adapting Kanban principles from their origins in manufacturing to knowledge work, particularly software development and project management.

Although there were other prominent advocates of Kanban in software development, Anderson’s 2010 book on Kanban gained significant popularity, leading him to gain widespread recognition as one of the main proponents of the Kanban we all know today.

What is Kanban?

With all that said, it is time to go into more detail about what Kanban actually is.

In the simplest words, Kanban is a visual tool, a signboard for mapping and tracking planned work, work in progress, and work done.

Kanban is a visual tool for mapping and tracking planned work, work in progress, and work done.

While Toyota mainly used the original Kanban system to track inventory in their manufacturing processes, today’s Kanban can be applied to a much broader range of work areas.

Today, Kanban is widely used in knowledge work to visualize and map the value stream. It helps teams and individuals self-organize and minimizes the need for constant supervision.

However, it takes a bit of time to reach that harmonious sync with your team and squeeze the full value from the board. There are key things in the process that should be known before kicking one off, so let’s break the Kanban down.

Kanban, the Pull System

Now, you read it in this article and most likely you heard it before: Kanban is based on the pull process. But what does that entail?

In Kanban, the concept of “pull” means that tasks or projects are pulled into the process based on the team’s skills, readiness, and capabilities. Similarly, to the pull that Ohno observed in American grocery stores, in Kanban, you take action when there is a need and capability. This approach ensures that tasks are not imposed on individuals who might not have the time but are instead taken up by those who are more likely to complete them.

This enhances efficiency and effectiveness, prevents bottlenecks, increases the completion rate, and prevents waste. In the end, by pulling tasks based on readiness, the team can maintain a sustainable workflow and deliver outcomes within the expected timeframe.

Elements of the Kanban Board

When it comes to Kanban, the true beauty hides in its simplicity, and here, less is truly more. All you need is just a few elements to have a working Kanban board:

  • Column: an element indicating the stage of the process (most commonly to be done, doing, and done.
  • Card: an element visually representing a work item. This is where you write what has to be done, when, how, and who is responsible for it.
  • Work-in-progress (WIP): a number indicating the number of tasks in the respective column. Having a WIP limit set for each “active” column helps with workload management.
  • Swimlane: horizontal lines that split the columns, used to indicate the team responsible for the tasks, urgency, or just differentiate other relevant categories. The swimlanes are particularly useful for larger projects that involve multiple departments.
  • Commitment point: a step in the process that signals when a task is ready to be taken to the next step of the development process. For example, when a team member selects a task from the backlog and moves it to the next column, the task crosses the commitment point. This means that the responsible person is committed to completing the task to the best of their knowledge.

Kanban Board

Kanban Board


In addition, it is worth knowing the following definitions:

  • Cycle time: This is the time need to complete a work item or progress a card from the backlog to the done column. Cycle time starts from the moment the work item crosses the very first commitment point and ends at the moment the work item is completed. It measures the actual time spent working on a task and is an essential metric for understanding how long it takes to complete individual items within the workflow.
  • Lead time: It is the total time taken for a work item to move through the entire workflow, starting from the moment it is requested or initiated until it is completed and delivered to the customer. It includes not only the time spent actively working on the task (cycle time) but also any waiting time or delays while the task is in progress or in queues.

Cycle time measures the actual time spent working on a task.

Lead time measures the whole time spent on a task, both active work time and inactive waiting time.

These elements, paired with a clear process policy are all you need for the Kanban process to work.

How to Make Your Kanban Work

So, while the elements of Kanban are simple and straightforward, the success of the Kanban process and results heavily depend on the implementation of policies and effective communication practices.

There are a few of those that should be set in place before you start your Kanban initiative:

  • Process policies. Essentially, this is a set of rules, guidelines, and agreements that will define how work needed to be done will be executed by the team. Having policies set before you start managing projects with Kanban will ensure that the team knows how to handle different types of tasks, and how to tackle possible issues along the way, it will assist in prioritization of work. Process policies act as the standard of your Kanban process.
  • Commitment. Tasks should not cross commitment points because a member was bored or had extra time on their hands. Goals and expectations for each task should be communicated clearly. Assigning a responsible department or team for certain tasks helps to keep track and ensure that tasks remain in competent hands.
  • Defined workflow. This refers to the specific stages (columns) through which work items move as they progress from initiation to completion. By defining your workflow in Kanban, you create a clear and visible representation of how work progresses through your process. This allows everyone to have a shared understanding of every step involved and the sequence of work.
  • Limited WIP. It is a crucial aspect in reducing the cycle time for each project. By placing a cap on the number of tasks in progress, teams can allocate their capabilities and resources more effectively, avoiding the inefficiencies of multitasking. Having a smaller number of WIPs enables rapid identification of bottlenecks and prevents overburdening the team.
  • Feedback. It helps to make iterative adjustments to optimize workflow, catalyzes learning, and promotes a culture of continuous improvement. Feedback in the Kanban process can be provided in many different ways, for example, daily stand-up meetings or code reviews done after the work item moves to a respective column (i.e. from doing to testing).

Benefits of Using the Kanban Method

Kanban is flexible, easy to use, and quick to master and there are plenty of benefits of using the method. To name a few: 

  • Workflow visualization. Visualization allows transparency, immediate feedback and real-time updates. And Kanban is an excellent way to visually represent and manage workflow, no matter how simple or complicated it is. By visually breaking down the process into small steps and putting it on a board, you can get a great view of who is working on which tasks and the overall progress of your project.
  • Improved communication and collaboration. The possibility to see everyone’s progress with each task and who is responsible for what fosters more transparent communication. Regular meetings and check-ins on the board allow teams to provide feedback and leave comments. Knowing who is responsible for certain tasks improves collaboration by making it easy to give feedback or suggestion.
  • Bottleneck identification. By leveraging the visual nature of Kanban, teams can proactively identify and address bottlenecks in the workflow. This helps optimize the flow of work, reduce delays, and increase efficiency and productivity.
  • Reduced waste and increased productivity. Kanban allows gathering information about the processes quickly and changes might be made on the spot eliminating time for rework needed. Visualizing work and identifying bottlenecks enable streamlined processes, while work-in-progress limits prevent overload, leading to faster task completion.
  • Continuous improvement. All the best aspects of Kanban culminate in Continuous Improvement. It is the most significant benefit of using Kanban in project management. With a clear and visual representation of the workflow, teams can easily identify areas in need of improvement and address issues quickly. By making incremental changes based on real-time feedback, teams can enhance their workflow, deliver higher-quality outputs, and be more responsive to customer needs.

    The transparency provided by Kanban fosters a culture of ongoing optimization, making it an amazing tool for driving continuous improvement.

From Sticky Notes to a Digital System

Some years back, I worked in a company where we used a real, physical Kanban board. And I don’t mean a whiteboard, I mean a full wall, covered from top to bottom in sticky notes (big organization, big team, and a huge process). And part of me loved it.

We all worked like busy bees, with our individual tasks, tied to a common goal. Kanban was the place where everything fell into place.

Every morning we would hover over that wall, with a cup of coffee in our hands, checking where those stickies are traveling. It was a whole story unfolding in front of our eyes.

People with Sticky Notes

However, everyone agreed that tracking each sticky note took a big bite of our mornings.

Was the task I worked on approved by legal and moved to the next stage, or was it sent back to be reworked?

That’s why I see the digitalization of Kanban as a blessing. It makes things easier to track and increases readability, which reduces waste.

Also, think about the analytics and reporting. Our manager used to take pictures of the wall and show them during the Monday team meetings. Zooming and deciphering individual handwriting… yeah, not the best. Luckily, digital tools save us from this burden.

Pros and Cons of Digital Kanban Board

There are some obvious benefits of a digital Kanban board:

  • Remote collaboration. Digital Kanban provides coherent communication and coordination among distributed teams. The team can access the Kanban board from anywhere, enabling real-time updates, tracking, and smooth communication. This fosters a sense of unity and efficiency, even when team members are geographically dispersed, ensuring that projects move forward cohesively and productively.
  • Security. Digital Kanban tools often provide encryption and secure data storage, protecting sensitive information from unauthorized access, and in case of unexpected issues, you can often rely on automatic data back-ups and easy data recovery. Finally, such tools eliminate the risks of post-it falling off, being removed without a trace or simply getting damaged. In addition, it allows you to keep all the possible sensitive data hidden away from the curious eyes of office visitors.
  • Automation. Most of the tools come with certain automation features. For example, notifications and email reminders ensure that Kanban stays active, deadlines are not forgotten, or finished tasks progress automatically. All relevant data is just a few clicks away, and integration with other relevant tools makes reporting and process improvement much easier.
  • Document management. Most digital tools provide one safe and easy-to-access place to gather information, supporting files, and leave comments and feedback by the team.
  • Customization. Most of the tools allow flexible customization, you can adapt the Kanban to your unique workflow, limit WIPs, add swimlanes, or add additional columns. As a secondary bonus, customization gives a chance to create a visually appealing board or a board that perfectly fits your brand.

However, as with most tools, there is no one right way. Digital Kanban tools has some disadvantages too:

  • Lack of communication. Digital tools allow us to check information when we want, from wherever it is comfortable for us, meaning that we can finish the whole process barely ever meeting our team.

    So, without a physical board, people might end up working in isolation. While it might sound like a dream for an introvert, in the grander scheme of things, lack of communication might cause an array of issues like misunderstandings, misalignment, delayed issue resolution, and others.
  • Unfiltered input. The digital board might open the gate to idea dumping. While shooting as many shots as possible can be a good thing in a brainstorming session, only planned and discussed tasks should end up on a Kanban board to ensure that planned projects are finished efficiently.
  • Dependency on third-party vendors. Using digital tools means relying on third-party vendors, and if the vendor faces issues or discontinues the product, it could disrupt the team’s workflow.

With that said, if you will look deeper into the pros and cons of digital vs physical, you might find a lot of contradicting information. Some articles might argue that digital tools can be time-consuming, requiring people to navigate additional applications, while others claim that physically going to a board might take extra time. 

Similarly, some articles highlight concerns about communication issues and working in silos, whereas others praise digital tools for facilitating communication, especially among remote teams. The contrasting viewpoints can lead to different interpretations and opinions on the impact of digital tools in the workplace.

So, physical, or digital? As predictable as my answer will sound – it all depends on your unique way of working.

Going Digital

There are a lot of tools that could be used as a digital Kanban board. From the good old Excel to a dedicated digital Kanban tool such as Kanbanize, you have plenty to choose from. However, such tools are not necessarily equal to one another. If you were to take the digital route, here are some points worth considering before committing: 

  • Integration: i.e.: does the tool work with systems and other tools you already use?
  • Visualization: i.e.: does the allow easy visualization of the workflow?
  • Customization: i.e.: can you change and add elements as columns, WIPs, etc?
  • Automation: i.e.: are you able to get reminders, or do finished tasks move automatically to the next column?
  • Analytics: i.e.: can you extract data on cycle time or lead time?
  • Ease of use: i.e.: how steep is the learning curve?
  • Price: i.e.: does additional features, like the number of users, or analytics cost extra?

Conclusion

Kanban has come a long way from its inception as a simple manufacturing process management tool to the project management tool that it is today. And while Kanban is often associated with development, software, Lean, Agile, and Scrum… do not get tricked. Kanban can be used to manage wide-ranging projects with multiple stakeholders and at the same time, it can be used to help with organizing and managing personal projects.

As discussed earlier, it is obvious that the simplicity, flexibility, ease of deployment, and effectiveness in visualizing workflows, promoting collaboration, and continuously improving processes make Kanban an attractive tool for a variety of industries. It brings a myriad of benefits such as the reduction of bottlenecks, enhanced productivity and efficiency, improved communication and so much more. So, it is a no-brainer when it comes to giving Kanban a shot.

As to why it remains mostly unchanged, the good old rule of if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it applies here perfectly. From the 1940s to 2023, from automotive manufacturing to software development, Kanban has been and still is a simple tool that simply works.

Image credits: Viima, Unsplash

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