Performance Perspectives

Category Archives: Performance Measurement

A Simpler (and Faster) Path to Cx

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Regardless of whether you’re a racing fan or not, chances are you’ve seen the below video as it made its social media rounds last year. As a junkie for organizational agility and speed, I never get tired of watching it. And if you haven’t seen it, by all means take a look, as it speaks volumes about today’s topic.

Those of us who spend time in and around Customer Service organizations see our fair share of big investments—new IT deployments, reengineering of back-office processes, upgrading our contact centers … the list goes on. With the introduction of each new Customer Experience (Cx) program, the size of the investment portfolio grows even further through projects like enterprise-wide journey mapping, training initiatives, new service channels, and improvements to research and data analytics platforms. Big projects are a reality for CCO’s and their leadership teams, and justifiably so. Maintaining customer support infrastructure is undoubtedly key to our long-term success.

But are we putting too much emphasis on our customer infrastructure at the expense of the smaller and more actionable practices that could generate more immediate results?

When Smaller is Better…

When asked to describe their Customer Experience initiatives, many CCO’s point to the “small stuff” as being key to the results they’ve achieved. In a world where everyone talks about “Big”—big data, big projects, big commitments—it’s these small, seemingly insignificant, practices, with not-so-small impacts, that are becoming the poster children of their efforts.

I’m talking about practices that don’t require an “act of congress” to implement—the ones that are just good common sense and take next to nothing to implement, except a little foresight and follow-through. Simple and easy, yet, still, an overwhelming number of organizations focus on the big solution being implemented and, in doing so, miss the opportunities to make a difference today.

Consider call/contact centers for a moment, where “big stuff” always takes center stage. How often do we hear “When our new CIS is in place,” “As soon as we implement speech analytics,” “Once we get that new IVR,” etc. But the reality is that most of what we need to make incremental—and sometimes big—changes is already there for those with the creative energy to act on it.

Fix-it-Fridays

A past client (We’ll call her Sarah), one I still regard as a brilliant Customer Service manager, was excellent at demonstrating this concept, i.e., using what she had available at her disposal today, combined with a real action bias to catalyze big change. One of my favorites was a practice she called “Fix-it Fridays.”

During the week, she would mine a few recorded calls for good examples of customer interactions that were “less than optimally handled.” This could mean the rep simply misunderstood the customer’s issue and employed an ineffective solution, or that a good solution was just poorly delivered and/or executed.

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Each Friday afternoon, she would get small groups of reps together (voluntarily, but usually enticed with a bit of free food or cake) to brainstorm better ways of handling these customer situations. They would listen to a sample call together and discuss how the rep handled the interaction. Then they (not the supervisor, QA manager, or trainer, but the front line reps themselves) would talk about how they would approach the call differently. Challenge and debate were encouraged. But it was also a safe and rewarding experience that left everyone, including the rep in the “case study,” feeling better equipped to deliver on their Cx commitment. As this manager used to say, “it’s a little like looking in the mirror when you apply your own service standards to the responses we deliver day in and day out.”

Many organizations use some variation of this in their centers. Nearly everyone has a QA/monitoring process in place (although many place their focus on procedural and policy compliance rather than emerging Cx values and standards). Most have decent follow-up mechanisms for supervisor coaching when problems occur. And (most of the time) when broad themes emerge, they work them into their ongoing training.  But all of this takes time. And, increasingly, such efforts rely on technology and infrastructure to mine interactions, which often means more time and complexity.

Sarah’s approach was focused on “time to market.” It didn’t discount the value of the existing process or the opportunities new technology can offer. Rather, it simply looked for ways to act more quickly. Perhaps, more importantly, she used her weekly forums as a way to teach staff how their Cx standards really were being applied, by immersing them directly, and by letting the team explore those standards in real time. The focus wasn’t on developing new policies or approving new scripts. It was about learning and applying good Cx.

Your reaction to this may be that you achieve these results through your QA process and ongoing coaching. But before your discount Sarah’s practice as run-of-the-mill, ask yourself:

  • How long does it take employees in your organization to act on a solution once it’s identified?
  • Do you encourage bad practices to be changed on the spot, sometimes on the basis of good instinct or common sense, or do all changes have to go through your business improvement processes and protocols?
  • Once a new approach is identified, how quickly is it shared and institutionalized?
  • Do your managers and staff feel empowered to take risks and deploy changes quickly?
  • Are small “experiments” allowed, knowing that most can be “unwound” if they prove to be less effective than anticipated?

yesterday-tomorrow-nike

Examples like this abound throughout our customer service organizations—process fixes,touchpoint improvements, intelligence gathering techniques, and many more. And there is no doubt that the projects and initiatives we have in place to deal with these challenges will lead us to a more consistent and sustainable application of our Cx strategy. But without an equally ambitious focus on the smaller solutions, and a bias from the organization to support them, they simply won’t happen.

Commit today to making the small stuff an equal priority within your company. Ask for it, reward it, and manage to it. The wins may seem small at first, but stack up enough of them and you’ll discover stronger momentum and a faster ROI on your Cx investment.

Bob Champagne is Managing Partner at onVector Consulting. Bob has over 25 years designing and delivering performance management and governance solutions at the Enterprise and Business Unit levels of the organization. Bob can be contacted at bob.champagne@onvectorconsulting.com or through LinkedIn at http://www.linkedin.com/in/bobchampagne 
onVector’s Line of Sight solution suite has been utilized by its client organizations to establish the critical linkages between strategies, initiatives and KPI’s; enabling better alignment, higher levels of performance and a faster path to ROI. onVector’s Line of Sight methodology has been adapted to facilitate the unique management and governance needs of many strategic initiatives across the organization, including Customer Experience.

 To learn more about Cx Solutions available through onVector, including:

  • Cx Readiness Assessments
  • Cx Program Startups
  • Cx Alignment & Standards Development
  • Rapid Touchpoint Renewal
  • Cx Management & Governance Solutions

visit us at http://onvectorconsulting.com/cxsolutions

 

 

Governing Cx through Line-of-Sight

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line of sight gearsAn end-to-end approach for managing customer experience strategy and delivering on its promises...

Over the past 24 months, Customer Experience Initiatives (Cx programs, as they have come to be called) have climbed to the top of the radar screens of most leadership teams. Organizations are abuzz with projects to identify “touchpoints,” map “customer journeys,” and strengthen their customer-facing business processes. Alongside these initiatives are even larger investments in acquiring the data and analytics required to feed and sustain these service improvement strategies. >>Next>>

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Hitting Your Numbers in 2013

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As we said goodbye to 2012 last Monday night, many of us were already thinking about the year ahead. For some, thinking about the future and setting goals for the year ahead is just a natural part of their “wiring”—an annual renewal process, if you will. But for many, it’s a way to declare a fresh start—basking in the glory of the things we achieved last year, saying good riddance to things we didn’t achieve, and making those proverbial “resolutions” on the things we want to improve and our forward looking goals and targets.

Doing the same thing…and expecting a different result

As we all know, no matter what our new year’s declaration of improvement may be, whether it’s breaking a bad habit, adopting a good one, or just improving on something that’s important to us, many would concede that their success rates are fairly modest, with only a scarce few of these resolutions ever making it past the first couple of weeks.

But despite the fact that most achieve far less than what they set out to, we, nonetheless, go mind-numbingly through the same process year after year after year. You could say that the end of the year, and the state of mind that accompanies it (induced or otherwise), makes us a bit Pollyannaish about the future, which, in turn, causes us to overreach somewhat.

Reasonable behavior for a typical human, granted, but is it as reasonable to expect the same apparently irrational behavior pattern from a corporation, whose goals are presumably established in a more thoughtful (and usually sober :) manner. Is it surprising that these goals often realize the same miserable success rates.?

Underachievement breeds underachievement

On a flight home last week I sat next to an individual who works as a planner/scheduler in a petrochemical plant in charge of maintenance practices. For him, one of the key measures of success is simply the percentage of PM’s and CM’s (preventive and corrective maintenance work orders) that are completed as scheduled. For most of us that don’t work in that industry, we would assume the goal to be fairly high, say north of 90%. But as it turns out, the industry average appears to be in the 80% range and at this particular facility, they were struggling to hit 40%!

I see this a lot with my clients, across multiple business processes. In fact, I’d say it’s more of an epidemic than a random set of occurrences. Call centers that plan for particular service levels, but end up in a huge “recovery” mode in the middle of the year based on changes to a handful of base assumptions. Sales targets that need to be dramatically adjusted based on lower than expected conversion rates. Employee churn that seemingly appears out of nowhere.  Not to mention runaway costs and budget overruns in capital projects and initiatives.

Yes, of course, these are business realities that will always occur. Many are unpredictable but can be reasonably well contained with good contingency planning and risk management practices, or by adjusting the portfolio to have an overperforming area compensate for an underperforming one. Either way, we have accepted the fact that there will always be some level of error or slippage in our planning. The key, of course, is to minimize it.

Strengthening your performance plan

It all starts with understanding how poor target setting occurs. Here are a few of the most common breakdowns:

  1. Failure to specify and declare accountability—Many mid- to upper-level managers have a tendency to set goals at only a high level, consistent with what they must accomplish for compensation metrics and bonus payouts. For example, we might set productivity and quality goals for a regional operating group, or a customer contact center, or a production facility, but not “cascade” the measures to the discrete parts of the operation. That causes two problems: 1) accountability remains with the senior manager/executive and never flows down to the level where it can be most directly affected, and 2) the goals themselves are often misinformed, or at least not crafted with the best insight available.  The result—all sorts of end-of-year juggling and balancing to make the sum of the parts hit the target number, which only works as long as there is enough slack to make up for one or more component shortfalls.  It also creates difficulty in terms of understanding and diagnosing downstream problems and trends.
  2. Weak basis/grounding for forecasts—One of the biggest frustrations I hear from executives is their organizations’ ability to produce valid and reliable forecasts. Without a good forecast, it is virtually impossible to set useful and achievable targets. Part of good forecasting is understanding the component parts of the forecast, which we already discussed above. But more important still is the ability to define and understand the drivers of what you are trying to forecast. For example, if we our goal is to forecast service responsiveness in the call center (say, % of calls within an acceptable hold time), we need to be able to understand call volume, staffing capacity, and assumptions about productivity (current levels, expected gains, etc.) at a minimum. Understanding those factors a level or two down the cause-and-effect chain (say at a call type level) would certainly increase the confidence in the forecast. But creating a really robust forecast requires that we go well beyond that and understand the “drivers” of the components themselves—what factors are correlated with the attributes we are trying to forecast and by how much? So what does this look like in practice? Instead of looking at total volume assumptions from the year prior, we actually create a zero-based (bottom-up) forecast based on predictive variables and leading indicators (e.g., change in the volume of local/regional building permits might be used to tweak our assumptions about the volume of new connection call types).
  3. Alignment gaps –-Even with the best planning assumptions and accountabilities in place, there must be strong alignment across the various stakeholders who make up the forecast. That may sound like “motherhood and apple pie” for some of you, but I’ve seen too many cases where Department A makes a change to a business process to affect a certain operating metric without a clue of how that metric might be relied upon in other downstream forecasts. A good example of this is the impact that operational or product changes have on customer service and support requirements. Sure, if we do well in defining the forecast attributes, and cascading accountability, we should be able to minimize some of this risk. But unless we take the time to help our cross-functional managers and peers understand the interrelationships and dependencies between operating metrics and forecasts, there will always exist significant room for surprises.
  4. Weakness in measurement and reporting—Last but not least, is the importance of good measurement and reporting practices that will help identify issues before they become problems that affect the performance of the portfolio or the business as a whole. We should measure not only the operating results, but also the performance against each variable that contributes materially to that outcome, as well as how effectively we predicted and forecasted the nature and impact that each has on our business performance.

At the end of the year, or any reporting period for that matter, we all want to be in a position to declare success on our initial goals for the year. And where we haven’t been successful, we want to at least have had ample opportunity to course-correct to get back on track, or deliberately declare a different target. What we don’t want is to miss the numbers and not know why. Again, sounds like a no brainer, but those kind of questions and blank stares still plague many business and operating executives when it comes to missed performance goals.

Looking at how we performed as an enterprise, business unit, or function is an essential part of managing. But it is equally important to study the effectiveness and consistency with which we set our goals, targets, and forecasts throughout the business, as this will lead to more sustainable performance over the long run.

Let’s make that a goal for 2013.

-b

 

I’ve Got Your Number!!!- The simple touches that are redefining customer “WOW”

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Remember these guys?

Of all the business functions discussed in the arena of performance improvement over the years, Customer Service has certainly gotten its fair share. But lately, with the rapidly growing range of new enabling technologies, and an accelerated adoption rate that shows these technologies are starting to take root, we are now seeing some of the best performance “breakout” stories since the legendary FedEx, Nordstrom, and Toyota (Lexus) case studies of the 90’s.

What’s interesting about today’s success stories is that it’s no longer about what I call the customer “heroics”– the FEDEX guy who hires a plane to deliver a package that just “has to get there overnight”, or the Nordstrom sales clerk who agrees to sell a single shoe to a woman with only one leg. And it’s not about the technologies. It’s now about the little things–the refreshingly responsive, yet consistent, way in which everyday transactions get executed.

I’ve got your number

A few weeks ago I called Apple to check on a repair (self induced). I was in my car and didn’t have time to look up the number of the repair facility or the order number. I figured I could call Apple’s main number (which they apparently pre-program into your phone), and have them look me up via my email or phone number. If I was lucky, they’d transfer me directly to the repair facility.

I called the number, their system recognized mine, and without any IVR menus, speech requests, or human involvement, I heard “We recognize that you have a repair with us. It was completed yesterday and shipped at 5:23PM for Saturday delivery at your home address…If you need anything else, just say what you need.” Everyone these days has voice recognition and ANI capabilities in their call center. But in this experience, everything was placed exactly right, in the precise order required to produce a great experience

I had a similar experience last year with AT&T Mobile, when I received a text that read:

“Your bill is ready for $xxx.xx (which is my average bill amount). You can view it on ATT.com or by clicking here.—–Please respond “full” if you would like to pay in full, or a specific amount ‘XX.XX’ We will process your payment using the credit card on file”

Superman is still there- he's just not as conspicuous!

 These days, nearly every company I work with has a mobile strategy, or at least has one on the drawing board. But this is the best application of mobile service I’ve seen, again, largely because of how the process was designed and sequenced. Sure, I could go visit the website and see my bill, then go home and pay it like nearly every other system. Or I can simply respond “full.”

Of course, there is the Apple Store in your local mall that sells more per square foot than just about any retailer in your state. These stores are always packed, even at 1pm on a slow Wednesday. There are no cash registers. Cards are swiped by sales clerks using hand-held devices, which prompts someone in the back to quickly bring the product to you. They offer to print or email your receipt on the spot, and you’re off. I can remember distinctly the first time I experienced this, actually leaving the store feeling like I had forgotten something.

Truth is, I DID forget something– all the needless paper and annoyance that usually accompanies routine retail transactions!

So here’s the moral of those stories, and others like it—It’s no longer about the heroics. It’s no longer about the technologies. It’s about how well those things are understood in the complete context of customer experience drivers, and then deployed in a mass producible way.

Build in the “small stuff” where it matters most

Next time you are getting ready to deploy one of those myriad of “must have” or “way cool” technologies for the sake of customer satisfaction or productivity improvement, think about the following in terms of HOW and WHERE you will deploy it within your process:

  • Will it help me produce a faster TTE (Time to Engagement)? –- That’s the time it takes from the customer’s initial call arriving until they actually feel that the agent or system understands and is engaged in solving the problem (rather than the incessant and often redundant asking/probing/clarifying about why the person is calling). How long does it take to get past all that script-based validation, authentication, menu choices, long-winded greetings, survey requests, transfers, redundant requests, etc.)?
  • Will it improve the speed of the transaction? Will it mean more or fewer steps for the customer? This sounds simple, but in most applications of CS technology — IVR, ANI, Voice Recognition -– the pain factor for the customer usually goes up, even though cost for the company may be going down.
  • Does it improve customer convenience? What I liked about the AT&T bill text experience is that the entire solution took place in real time, rather than as three separate transactions (viewing text (on the run), viewing bill (at your desk), paying bill (at home).
  • Is it respectful of the customer’s time? New technologies like Virtual Hold allow a caller to forego waiting in queue by having the system maintain the caller’s place in line and call them back when an agent becomes available (or at a time agreeable to the caller).
  • Will it quietly steer the customer to a better solution if one exists? I like the IVR hold schemes that offer tips or better calls to action, whether or not they actually produce one on the spot. Even better if the solution is unique and “smart” enough to warrant a “wow” reaction. I had this experience where I was attempting a complicated installation, and the hold narrative mentioned a site that there were video tutorials available. That was better than another instrumental version of “Just the Way You Are,” and far better than “you can visit our website”.
  • Will it produce a notable distinction between what occurs and what a customer was expecting? I know that sounds trite, but very few actually do. Remember, it’s not only the magnitude of the distinction, but how meaningful the result is as well. Significantly reducing the wait time on-hold isn’t going to buy you much good will if the service the customer receives remains inadequate. I use the term “refreshingly responsive” (implying responsive, but with a useful but unexpected touch — the service equivalent of lagniappe).

One of my clients uses the term “smart value” when describing a product transaction that is reinforcing to the customer (I made a good choice, and I feel smart for having done so). I would argue that the same dynamic is possible with transactions. Admittedly, it’s very challenging to make a customer feel good about making a call to resolve an issue. But I’ve gotta tell you, when it happens, it certainly carries a loyalty premium.

And that’s how we redefine WOW!

-b

Bob Champagne is Managing Partner of onVector Consulting Group, a privately held international management consulting organization specializing in the design and deployment of Performance Management tools, systems, and solutions. Bob has over 25 years of Performance Management experience with primary emphasis on Customer Operations in the global energy and utilities sector. Bob has consulted with hundreds of companies across numerous industries and geographies. Bob can be contacted at bob.champagne@onvectorconsulting.com


2011- Year of the Squirrel

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What 2011 taught us about strategic distractions, and their impact on business value…

A few months back, I remember having a good chuckle while watching a Jon Stewart parody on the Republican candidate field.  The monologue poked fun at the media’s tendency, during its seemingly relentless coverage of the leading candidate on that day, to completely shift direction the moment a new contender entered the picture.In this case, Bachman was the leader du jour, the media was the dog in the Pixar movie “Up”, and the part of the squirrel was played by none other than Rick Perry, who these days appears to be succeeding only at distracting himself.

“Squirrel moments” happen all around us, and with greater frequency than we’d care to admit. As flawed human beings, it’s easy for us to get sidetracked from what we should be doing, by some urgent new distraction that seems terribly critical in the moment. Yet most of us eventually manage to refocus, once we become aware (through our own cognitive skills or because a friend or colleague points it out to us) of how badly the squirrel moment has driven us off-course. Typically it is the speed with which we are able to re-calibrate ourselves that ultimately determines the degree of damage, if any, that is caused by the distraction.

Some “squirrel moments” have far reaching impacts…

But for organizations, the challenge of refocusing after a significant distraction is far greater. Unlike individual distractions, those in organizations often require refocusing entire workgroups, business units, and processes that may have strayed far from the core focus and strategies of the business. It’s a bit like comparing a fighter jet to a large commercial airliner. While both are capable of course correction, larger aircraft don’t react “on a dime” and require a lot more time and space to maneuver.  The magnitude of the corporate distraction, the breadth of areas it touches, and the duration of the distraction, are just a few of the variables that determine the organization’s ability to react and readjust quickly.

2011 offered numerous examples of companies adversely affected by a loss of focus.

  • The enormous value that Netflix had created, based on a simple and straightforward product offer embraced by scores of customers, was severely jeopardized by the company’s ill-advised decision to migrate to a more complex, two-tiered pricing model driven largely by a short-term desire to justify an overinflated stock price. The outcome was both predictable and horrific, as customers departed in droves, destroying an enormous amount of company value in very short order.
  • Bank of America, arguably one of the better banks in terms of customer satisfaction and experience, watched much of that brand value evaporate following announcement of a pricing move (its now infamous $5 charge for debit card use) that evoked a similar customer outrage. While perhaps necessitated by financial realities (debatable), its positioning, execution, and ultimate response were painful to watch play out.
  • Research in Motion, maker of the Blackberry, whose loyal business following was predicated on its operational and reliability advantages, suffered a huge blow to its value on the heels of a long and poorly managed  network outage—a network on which it had based much of its service differentiation.
  • Berkshire Hathaway, a company whose entire business is based on the prudent, sober, and wise investing of its founder, ended up the subject of one of 2011’s stories of financial impropriety–an insider trading scandal the likes of which we’ve come to expect from the industry, just not from these guys.
  • HP announced another redirection of its product portfolio, and yet another shift in its leadership team–a true “squirrel moment” with a healthy dose of “been there, done that.”

S*** Happens! You just have to manage it…

Sure, one might argue, “bad things happen to good companies”, and in these and a myriad of other examples from 2011 there is certainly some truth to that. Sometimes, these blunders cannot always be attributed to bad strategies or failure to stick with a good one. Sometimes, it’s the tactical decisions that are “far removed” from the C-suite and its strategic decision making. Sometimes these decisions, as we saw above, are undertaken because of a financial necessity that in the short term might trump a marketing strategy.

But, by the same token, those seemingly small disconnects may, in fact, be symptomatic of the problem itself. While management may not be able to control ALL of the drivers that lead to negative consequences, effective development and MANAGEMENT of strategy can not only limit the damage caused by veering off course, but can play a very important role in course correction after the fact. For many companies the words “MANAGEMENT” and “STRATEGY” connote different, and often conflicting, disciplines. But for those successful at avoiding and responding to distractions, these are highly related and often inseparable competencies.

 Great strategy management is about the WHAT and the HOW…

So, how can you ensure that corporate distractions are kept to a minimum, and effectively refocus and re-center the business when they invariably do occur?

  1. Define and clarify your business strategy — This sounds like motherhood and apple pie. It always does. But it remains the preeminent cause of breakdowns during times of distraction, because the strategy is either too complex to begin with, or it lacks sufficient clarity to engender the necessary alignment and commitment to continue keeping the firm focused in times of distraction. Your strategy is more than simply a restatement of a vision or broad ambition. It is a specific answer to a specific question: What do we need to do to ensure success within your existing business environment? One of Apple’s most effective demonstrations of strategic clarity was Steve Jobs’ insistence on collapsing their previously expansive product portfolio into four clear product families that would redefine its future. Clear, compelling, with an easily-understood line of sight to renewing the value of the business.
  2. Do more than just communicate it — Management 101 preaches “communicate your strategy.” But communication alone is insufficient to create the alignment necessary to avoid distractions. One of the most rewarding aspects of this job is watching clients challenge ideas and recommendations (even from yours truly) based on an automatic and often deeply-felt narrative of how the suggested change(s) might conflict with their core strategy. For them, it’s more than just “talking points.” It’s a compelling narrative they have embodied through words and examples. Sure, these too can be misinterpreted occasionally, but just like a pilot who is expected to react with some degree of muscle memory, we must develop and nurture that level of alignment as a first line of defense against corporate distraction. Vision, values, and strategies. They all need to be seamlessly integrated within a crisp, clear, and compelling narrative.
  3. Build and use the right navigation systems — When NASA launches a probe to Mars, it must travel undistracted for about nine months in order to hit a fast-moving and very small target (the red planet). Even the slightest and briefest of external forces can cause the probe to miss the planet by millions of miles. Having the right navigation systems and a network of alerts and course-correction mechanisms is crucial to a mission like this, and it is just as critical to a business like yours. In business, such technologies and processes comprise your integrated performance management system, and they should include the KPI’s of the business, the network of leading and lagging business metrics we must monitor, and a clear understanding of the relationships between them.
  4. Scenario and contingency planning — Made popular by companies like Shell years ago, the discipline to do this, and do it well, has fallen out of vogue. Not sure why, other than what I heard from a client a few years back…that it “forced us to admit that we might have the wrong strategy”, or that it “would distract us from adhering to that strategy”. That’s as much hogwash today as it was when I first heard it, and failure to implement a rigorous scenario planning process is, as ever, tantamount to sticking your head in the sand. If subjecting your strategic plans to that level of scrutiny adversely affects your ability to execute the strategy as designed, while being agile enough to react and learn from mistakes, then you either have the wrong strategy, the wrong leadership, or both.
  5. The ability and agility to recover from distractions — Unlike the dogs in “UP”, we don’t have masters to yank our collars or order us back into focus. (unless we work in a purely autocratic environment). What we do have is the ability to learn and react. It helps if we have a contingency plan with automatic responses. But we must also have the ability to recognize when something is not working, and the agility to put that learning in motion quickly and effectively.

 History doesn’t have to repeat itself…

2011 wasn’t the first time we’ve seen these types of blunders. And it most certainly won’t be the last.

We all remember the Tylenol scare of many years ago. Drug companies like J&J, who exist largely at the mercy of safety protocols and regulations, can easily be crushed by such events. But J&J’s ability to identify and react to the crisis with agility prevented what could have been an historic business failure. Their “distraction,” which arguably could have been anticipated, was kept fairly well contained.

Others weren’t so fortunate. The Exxon-Valdez and BP-Macondo debacles are two great examples of this. Safety, which should be a core strategic underpinning for any company, but particularly those in this industry, in large measure fell victim to distraction. But, in both cases, it was the lack of a coherent, actionable response strategy that kept business value flowing out of the pipeline/tanker as fast as the oil.

If we have the right blueprint for managing strategy, we can limit the number of distractions, identify and react appropriately when they do occur, and respond with agility and effectiveness to keep adverse consequences to a minimum.

-b/b

Bob Champagne is Managing Partner of onVector Consulting Group, a privately held international management consulting organization specializing in the design and deployment of Performance Management tools, systems, and solutions. Bob has over 25 years of Performance Management experience with primary emphasis on Customer Operations in the global energy and utilities sector. Bob has consulted with hundreds of companies across numerous industries and geographies. Bob can be contacted at bob.champagne@onvectorconsulting.com

Brian Kenneth Swain is a Principal with onVector Consulting Group.  Brian has over 25 years of experience in Marketing, Product Management, and Customer Operations. He has managed organizations in highly competitive product environments,  and has consulted for numerous companies across the globe. Brian is an alumnus of McKinsey & Company, Bell Laboratories, and Reliant Energy, and is a graduate of Columbia University and the Wharton Business School. He can be contacted at brian.swain@onvectorconsulting.com.