"Online services and stores are so gone & history, long live the social media". "You have to understand that mobile internet is so different than "PC internet"". "We are professionals in branded consumer goods digital campaigns". "Digital B2B marketing is so different from B2C digital marketing". "CRM is so old dated when you can have all the possibilities of social media". "Your company does not have competence from our industry's digital strategies".
Oh man where does all this wisdom come from. Who creates all these silos? Who sets these "facts"? What kind of background you need to have to believe all these as facts? How much time you need to spend in one function? Or industry? Or particular company culture? Or listening to "gurus"?
Let's take another view. Susanne is 32 year old woman with two children and she is working as a sourcing manager in company XYZ. Susanne is a normal human being so she reads newspapers, buys consumer goods & groceries, spends free time and acquires information from various sources both for work and household purposes. Susanne has a mobile phone and a laptop. Basically she is like all of us with her habits, thoughts and behavior.
If we take as granted all the beliefs above then Susanne is a different person or driven by totally different motivations while she is using her mobile phone vs. laptop, reading newspaper's online version vs. buying from apparel brand's online store, her analyzed behavior at department store's customer database is far from her social media analyzed habits, she is always 100 % analytical while working but driven by emotions at her free time, she is tired of using any online service when social media spaces are available. She adjusts herself to behave differently with every industry, every gadget, with everything. Susanne has 22 different personalities.
Sounds out of space but that is how many companies see her - or actually do not see her at all. Instead of we are driven by tunnel visions of different gadgets, industry competencies, different technologies, trendy hypes, company's internal structures & power games and one idea gurus.
Therefore we need to wear hats. Someone cannot be a professional of mobile and PC internet because it is different technology. Someone cannot be a professional of consumer (digital) services because it requires industry competence to develop those. Someone cannot be a professional of CRM and social media because different emerging time of hype and again technology. So you are given a hat to wear how to describe you - named function's one subgroup professional and/or professional in one named industry. Customer just cannot be the starting point, it just cannot because it would ruin too many beliefs and "facts".
Still we have Susanne, Mary, George, Ian and thousands and millions others.
So true. It takes time before the understanding is established and effects of the new player is fully recognised. Takes awhile before a new "ism" is accepted by the players in the industry. Interestingly, looking things from the end-user perspective should be that new?
ReplyDeleteHowever, the first step in every change process is the recognition that a different approach maybe needed. How to do the change...hmm.. get wider hats?