Not a grain of truth in it?

So, what do you use to decide which ‘innovations’ are more important than others? Clue: The answer isn’t by ‘allowing’ all your different departments to decide for themselves…

Today, a culture built around experience is one of the main reasons for the success – or stress – for many companies, whoever their customers are.

Those who understand it use experience strategies to attack problems of all sizes, while many other companies are still afraid to use experience as the powerful motivator it really can be. So while some continue to struggle to move from becoming just efficient to more effective, experience-aligned leaders are already jumping from being more effective to truly emotive.

Since we live in a business world that is responding so rapidly to changes, it’s harder than ever to understand what and which of the challenges you face might be useful for you, or to the competition. How can you understand that not all innovation is in your best interests? That simply asking for more innovation risks creating an internal market for competing ideas – and you customer’s attention – and confusing the heck out of everyone.

Thinking experiencially – and not in the narrow context traditionally associated with experience’s role, i.e. event and brand activation programmes –  to innovate your organisation and your approaches and processes enables you, your brands, your products, messages and people to stand out from the crowd.

So what you can do to develop a culture of experience at your company? Here’s some ideas:

Re-centre.
Get back to basics and see what it is that your business does, why it does – or did it – and why re-centering on the authentic ideas that founded you will win back the appreciation of your people. And your customers. Remember, anecdote isn’t evidence. Evidence is.

Do unto others.
Get into the habit of thinking about how what you do, if done to you, would make you feel. Then think harder about how a better experience can drive better products, places, services and messages. You’ll be better people for it.

Experience design.
The art of deciding what your experience needs to be means you have to see it before it happens – to look into the future and understand what your legacy might look like. Unless you can visualise that strategy, it can often remain unresolved – and so judged a failure – or unsettlingly non-specific – so risking uncertainty and becoming a distraction rather than a focus.

Get outside, in.
Ask more from the brains inside and out of your business. Don’t waste your valuable time and resources on pitching around for thinking, create an environment where your agency partners can mentor your teams – and deep-dive into business problems, rather than distracting you with guesses.

We’re good at making sure businesses get the reputation they deserve, by helping it understand how to behave in the way customers expect it should. Or in a way that’s so good they never expected it. In whichever way, so as they chose you and keep doing so.