Liozu Value Mindset

Accelerate Your Value Transformation By Changing Your Mindset
1. Auflage 2017
ISBN: 978-1-945815-03-4
Verlag: Value Innoruption Advisors Publishing
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 196 Seiten

The most important factor in a successful business transformation is mindset. It's more important than any tool, any process, any training session, or any single financial incentive. But you can't will a positive mindset into existence. No one can snap their fingers or hypnotize a team into believing in the mission, believing in the transformation, or ultimately believing in their team and in themselves.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Liozu, Stephan M.

Leseproben

1

What Is Customer Value Transformation?

GET READY TO CHANGE!

Those may be the scariest four words in the English language, at least for a business conversation at this stage of the 21st century. It’s scary, because without details the phrase is ambiguous at best. What could it possibly mean?

Let me put your mind at ease.

At its broadest level, the type of change I focus on in this book is very specific. It is a customer value transformation. This puts the customer at the center of the business, precisely the way Peter Drucker meant it when he said “the purpose of business is to create and keep a customer.”

If a business wants to do that, it must answer a few questions: What do our clients or customers hold dear? What keeps them up at night? What do they value, and how can we use those perceptions and desires to better engage them and offer them products and services they benefit from? These fundamental questions are the very basis for why we create companies and products.

We are here to create more value for each other.

The term customer value addresses what your clients and customers consider important. Buying your product involves more than just an exchange of money. Your customers have choices about what to buy and where to buy it, and what they value will guide how they make those choices. So it seems logical that the company that aligns itself with its customers, and that takes care to preserve that alignment, will prosper. To reach that prosperity in your organization, you will need to tailor your own particular actions to focus on what the customer values. That is what makes a customer value transformation necessary.

From the CEO to the line employee to the salesperson on the road, every individual will also undergo a transformation, because each needs his or her own customer focus. An enormous positive side effect is that ultimately everyone will be more motivated, more productive, and more satisfied with the company. They will be proud of where they work because they’re serving customer needs. This attitude becomes a state of mind and penetrates deeply into the DNA of the organization. As a result, it will manifest itself in the company’s top line and bottom line.

This is the essence of a value mindset.

The transformation you undertake will not happen overnight. It will occur through consistent training and retraining, through being open to new approaches, and through embracing the new tools you will receive. This transformation must permeate all levels of management, not only the rank and file, so that all levels of the company are aligned. The transformation will be both challenging and exhilarating. You’re undertaking a journey, a journey with vast intrinsic and extrinsic rewards.

Please remember that the transformation in some form is unavoidable. The saying from the last chapter about learning as a competitive advantage rings in my ears the same way Peter Drucker’s comment does. We need to make learning our habit and customers our mission.

Understanding the journey

Each customer value transformation is different. Putting customer value at the forefront of everything you do is a journey and a process. No two paths or methods are quite the same, just as no two people or companies are the same. This journey is influenced by the traveler, the choices available, and the decisions you make, such as the reward you seek for serving your customers so well and how you will define success. It also depends on where you begin and where you want to go. While transformations can take some time, you need a starting point and a general roadmap to make you see and appreciate the destination. In between, there might be peaks and valleys, like in any journey!

The journey of a customer value transformation has different steps, or mechanics if you will. The outset of the journey—the front end of the transformation—is all about putting the tools in place, the core or systemic values, the standardized approaches, and the aligned structure within the company. The transformation plan gains support as practices are adopted and people adapt. Value-focused actions are reinforced and slowly become habit.

It is at this point that you as a manager should be prudent. This is most often where a transformation breaks down. It might happen because of a lack of reinforcement or a lack of support from top management or from peers and co-workers. That is how this book’s approach to a customer value transformation differs: we will delve into additional communication, additional coaching, and additional training on the use of tools throughout the journey. This will guide and support you to ensure the success of your transformation journey.

Later in the journey—toward the back end of the transformation—the commercial processes, pricing plans, and competitive responses will have been practiced and polished, but they are never perfected. They might not have been fully assimilated into the fabric of the organization. You always have room for improvement and refinement, but you will also have a unified group of people equipped with the tools, the system, the direction, and the strategy to get things done and hold themselves accountable.

Standards of a value transformation

Champions are on board.

You have built some internal capabilities.

You have designed tools and deployed systems.

Your value management process is in place.

Your value experts are “pumped up.”

Your value propositions and models are tested.

Anyone can begin a journey. Anyone can get the right tools, the super consultants, the best people, and the attention of the CEO. Many companies get started fast, do well, and then stall. It’s hard work. It’s more than a standard change management project or strategic initiative. So I’d like to help you not only finish it, but finish it with a level of success and change that may pleasantly surprise you. I want you to experience the level of flow that the value masters realize when they achieve their goals. The key difference between a good value transformation and a great one is the value mindset.

Stay focused and find your allies

Over the course of an arduous journey, people may come and go as they decide whether the trip appeals to them and the mission is worth the effort. It’s inevitable that some won’t like or accept the changes you’re trying to implement. They may disrupt, they may impede progress, or they may leave.

This may be unfortunate, but it shouldn’t cause you to second-guess your decisions. Doing so would send the wrong message to the people, probably the majority, who have made the effort and seen the merits of the transformation and a value mindset. I would urge you to replace those who depart with new people who have the right mindset, the right affinity for the culture, and a refreshing willingness to experiment. It will offer you a unique opportunity to find people with the right attitude and behavior.

You can’t cherry-pick your way to success

Remember while reading this book and undertaking your transformation that this is the basis for a program that you design and implement. There are no shortcuts. Putting only one or two of the easier steps in place is not an option if you want to achieve a value transformation. The steps all work together to achieve the desired result. So, yes, it takes time to go through all the steps and successfully transform. But if you can adopt 100 percent of the ideas in this book, you can save two to three years on the typical value transformation, which can last up to six years. Adopting this mindset will offer intensity, an acceleration of change, and a higher quality of change.

Your reality will fall between 0 percent and 100 percent, but I hope you get as close to the higher number as possible. That will determine where you end up on the pricing capability grid. Simply put, pricing power is only possible with the combination of two things: value-based pricing backed by strong implementation. Having one without the other costs you money and may ultimately cost you customers and even the business. Value-based pricing without execution is like getting an A in a business school classroom. You’ve learned a lot, but you haven’t done anything.

Execution without value-based pricing means that you’re selling your customers, your products, and yourself short.

Doing both requires learning and commitment, and that third component many people may find elusive until they start learning more about it: the value mindset.

The shift from a pricing transformation to a value transformation encompasses so much. It accounts for the different needs in a customer and a market, and it also aligns your organization....