The CoXen Cycle: Refine phase

After a fair amount of time dedicated to several different discovery efforts and a few different slight molding to the overall customer experience, you’ll want to give some very conscious thought to what may need to be refined within your customer experience to maintain the overall integrity of what your company’s mission and goals are as far as customer experience goes and to keep up with the market and changing environment.

While some of the efforts of discovery and molding can be very natural and even subconscious; getting into the refining portion, you may find to be the most uncomfortable part of the process so far. It can be extremely difficult it and may challenge you in your very most comfortable spots.

With discovery, especially in the early stages, it can be very exciting because you’re at the cusp of ‘we just rolled something out to the customers, let’s start to understand what they think about it!’. And molding can be in response to some of that discovery or in simple maturity with your organization and matters you just noticed that needs to be changed. These are matters that should be exciting!  These are items that exist because of your great passion for what you’re trying to deliver the customer and keep you in the mindset of ‘I’m just trying to do what’s right by the customer and what’s right by my vision and mission.’

The refining portion may be the first time you’ve had to take a full 360 view and I long hard look in the mirror at some matters you hoped didn’t exist or didn’t want to look at.  Refining typically comes out of recognizing that something you’re trying to deliver is not working or at least isn’t working in the way you want it to. It may also be one of the most challenging phases of the cycle because you have to accept the truth that exists about your customer’s experience that you’ve never wanted to admit exist, and that can be extremely uncomfortable.

In order to be successful at the refinery stage, you have to want to get better for your employees and customers beyond the things that are fun to change. You have to have extremely thick skin and extremely objective approach to some matters that come forward and may call into question some ‘sacred cows’.

Sadly there are many organizations, even very quality organizations, that aren’t comfortable enough to admit to these obvious truths and will avoid the refining phase.  They stick their head in the sand, or worse, force themselves and their teams back into the discovery phase. Try to convince themselves that the real problem is new, yet discovered facts, and not these facts in front of them. They spin their wheels by, ‘If we just spend more time in the discovery phase we can find something that proves that everything is OK and we can all just be excited discovering more information and making slight changes that we want to then go on our merry way.’

This is an extremely dangerous mentality, that I nicknamed the ‘New Coke’ mentality. I’ve often had to gently call leaders on the carpet when I see them avoiding the clear need for refining to the customer experience by ignoring the facts at hand.  The call to action kindly goes something like this, ‘well that is one approach…it reminds me that somebody, very smart, thought it was a good idea to move forward with New Coke once upon a time also…so, shall we keep digging or address these matters?’

You didn’t build your culture or establish your customer experience by accident. You establish that a great passion, deliberate action and the hope for an opportunity to deliver something powerful to a customer base. That all took a tremendous amount of risk and courage, but you did it and you’re on your way.
You have to exhibit the same type of courage with an added dose of humility now that you are out in the market with customers are responding to you, the market is responding to you and competition is responding to you. You need to be bold and brave enough to adjust and refine to meet those needs so that you can continue to bring your passion to the market.

Here are a few gut check items to always keep in mind and gear you up for the needed refining activities you’re going to have to do at some point to remain a going concern:

1. Make, ensure your vision and mission are strong enough and deep enough to withstand needed changes from the marketplace, competition, and customer feedback. The passion for what you intend to deliver needs to have a firm enough and broad enough foundation to ensure that it can withstand some refining as it takes place.
2. Establish clear rules for what is objective facts. Have a trusted analytical team and trust them when it comes to information found in the discovery and the molding process.
3. Never let the objectives become subjective. As a huge sports fan, I have never once seen a post-game interview with the scorekeeper. The scorekeeper’s role is extremely objective. When something is scored and the officials on the playing field have all agreed that it was a legitimate score that scorekeeper then records it. It is the most objective of the objective roles that I can think of.  Similarly when it is been established that in discovery and from molding experiences that you have found an objective fact that points in the direction of needed refinement, you’re only kicking against the pricks to then try to turn that objective back into a subjective manner to avoid the discomfort of needed refinement. Hold yourself accountable to sticking by what you’ve agreed on as objective matters and stop wasting everyone’s time debating it.
4. If you are a leader, be a leader. When facts are presented to you and obvious changes are needed don’t waste your or your teams time by avoiding them unnecessarily or out of any discomfort on the matter. Step up and be the first advocate of change.
5. Beware of sacred cows that aren’t producing enough milk. They are blocking the clear path to success because of over-emotional ties and postponing of needed refinement.

An organization’s willingness and maturity to accept the need to refine is a powerful key in that organization being strong enough to survive and thrive.  It also signals trust to the employee and customer base and can be the pivotal point at which you define if you’re truly in this together or if up to this point it has been a very superficial relationship where each party is only willing to look after their own individual needs.

Having the courage and the fortitude to refine as a partnership with the customer and employee base is a huge factor in companies being able to withstand and roll with the various challenges that will continue to pressure them for the long-term. Successfully refining enables the opportunity for the company to exist as a going concern into the future to best meet the needs of all involved parties for the long-term.