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Making Innovation Happen – SF CIO Roundtable

John I. Todor — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 22:02:20 +0000

John Todor is speaking on:

Making Innovation Happen

San Francisco CIO Roundtable, October 19, 2011.

New Date for Making Innovation Happen

John I. Todor — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 15:44:29 +0000

Fisher Silicon Valley CIO Roundtable – September 13, 2011

John I. Todor, Ph.D., MindShift Innovation speaking on:

Making Innovation Happen

San Jose, CA

Customer Experience–a Roadmap to Next Practices

John I. Todor — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 13:03:52 +0000

Customer experience best practices have evolved more slowly than customers have changed. Companies that want to thrive must build a roadmap for delivering customer experiences in sync with customers—experiences they find meaningful and of value.

August 17, 2011, Pleasant Hill, CA: Emperia, LLC and MindShift Innovation announce a new series of programs to help companies create roadmaps to designing and implementing Next Practices in customer experiences. Delivering compelling customer experiences leads to strategic advantage and sustainable profits and growth, but it is not a static endeavor. While best practices have evolved, customers have changed more quickly and more dramatically. These programs identify the changing customer milieu, provide an actionable framework and engage participants in creating next practices in customer experience—experiences today’s customers find compelling.

“Today’s customers differ in expectations, the challenges they face and their buying patterns and strategies, and this has changed the relationship between customers and companies” says John I. Todor, Ph.D., managing partner of MindShift Innovation. The implications, according to Todor, a psychologist and business strategist, are that companies must focus on winning mindshare of a changed and changing customers. Customer experience best practices have evolved more slowly than customers have changed. Companies that want to thrive must build a roadmap for delivering customer experiences in sync with customers—experiences they find meaningful and of value.

Research by Forrester indicates that less than one-third of customer experience initiatives reach their full potential. “One of the major reasons for this under-performance comes from a lack of a coherent and aligned customer experience strategy throughout the company,” say Del Langdon, Partner of Emperia, LLC. Langdon adds, “Our Next Practices Roadmap programs take company-wide view of the customer experience, provide an actionable framework for understanding the expectations and wants of today’s customers and, critically, include mentoring in the practicalities of getting organizations to shift to next practices”

Next Practices Roadmap programs address:

The business case for a focus on the customer experience.

A psycho-economic framework for creating and delivering compelling experiences to today’s customers.

An examination of best practices with an emphasis on making better.

Creating “Next Practices” based on new customer dynamics and emerging trends and technology.

An outside-in approach to innovating and aligning business practices across the value chain.

Social software systems and tools for staying ahead of the curve.

These programs are experiential. Todor and Langdon share their experiences and expertise and provide a comprehensive framework. Most importantly, they will engage and mentor participants in working with new ideas and collaboratively confronting real-world challenges. Participants will leave with a roadmap for seizing the benefits of customer experience next practices.

Next Practice programs are designed for business leaders from all functional units within a company. To facilitate innovation and alignment across these units, people representing as many functional units as possible are encouraged to participate. Programs are offered to cross-corporate organizations or customized for individual corporations.

For program details go to Roadmap to Next Practices, or contact either Del Langdon (del.langdon@emperiallc.com ) or John Todor (johnt@mindshifti.com )

Del Langdon is a partner of Emperia, LLC (www.emperiallc.com) with extensive experience helping F1000 companies implement strategy-driven change and achieve sustainable results. She has deep in expertise customer experience but recognized that initiatives come up short unless there is corresponding innovation and alignment in partner and employee, business practices, technology-enabled solutions, and channel interaction design. Del co-authored (with Don Tapscott) a book, “Planning for Integrated Office Systems, A Strategic Approach”. Her large-scale strategy, integrated design and transformational change programs have been featured as Harvard and Stanford Business School cases and Forrester Research Report.

John I. Todor, Ph.D. is the managing partner of MindShift Innovation (www.mindshifti.com). As a business strategist, mentor and psychologist, he constantly assess the shifting dynamics impacting what customers find meaningful and of value. MindShift Innovation programs are designed to help business leaders, employees and organizations make the mindshifts required to turn the uncertainty and complexity of change into new possibilities for creating and delivering value to customers. His book, “Addicted Customers: How to Get Them Hooked on Your Company” is the leading primer on the psychology of the customer experience. His other books are on Winning Mindshare and Social Media and Customer Relationships.

Making Innovation Happen

John I. Todor — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 15:15:32 +0000

Fisher Silicon Valley CIO Roundtable – October 4, 2011

John I. Todor, Ph.D., MindShift Innovation speaking on:

Making Innovation Happen

San Jose, CA

Build the Business Acumen for Change>

John I. Todor — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 15:10:12 +0000

Future of Talent Webinar – August 17, 2010

John I. Todor, Ph.D. of MindShift Innovation speaking on:

Build the Business Acumen for Change

http://www.brighttalk.com/channel/6385

Mindshift Innovation Methodology: A Video Overview

John I. Todor — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 20:48:18 +0000

Just released, a 4 minute video overview of our Mindshift Innovation methodology.

Mindshift Innovation is a new system of engaging business challenges. It is designed to help people and organizations adapt and thrive in today’s fast-paced, uncertain and increasingly complex business climate.

It is based on the Psychology of Accomodating to Change and provides practical ways for individuals to ramp-up their adaptive potential.

Mindshift Innovation in a Nutshell

How do You Rate on the Ability to Adapt and Thrive?

John I. Todor — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 14:59:10 +0000

Announcing a new presentation:

Leadership Essential for the New Normal of Business

John I. Todor — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 19:53:53 +0000

MindShift Innovation Builds the Leadership Capacity for Business Innovation

John I. Todor — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 21:29:16 +0000

Pleasant Hill, CA, March 7, 2011: MindShift Innovation helps executives and organizations confront two pervasive business challenges – the volatility and complexity of the marketplace. MindShift Innovation enables individuals to shift from an execution mindset to an implicit learning and collective intelligence mindset to turn the challenges of externally imposed change into new possibilities. MindShift Innovation builds the leadership and organizational capacity to see and seize the new possibilities.

Recent research by IBM identifies adapting to rapid change as a critical leadership gap. Economist Intelligence Unit research identifies improved employee engagement as a key ingredient to thriving.

Managing Partner, John I. Todor, Ph.D. states, We immerse executives in a process that tackles two critical issues: envisioning new possibilities for creating and delivering value to customers and fostering employee engagement in the innovation and alignment of business practices to deliver on the new possibilities.

MindShift Innovation gets beyond coping by turning the challenges of change into new possibilities to create value. Executives confront new and emerging business imperatives and co-develop an adaptive organizational framework that will lead to competitive differentiation and strategic advantage. The ensuing model dramatically increases an organization’s adaptive potential and relevance to customers by:

Putting an outside-in, customer-centric model into action

Innovating and aligning business practice

Stimulating employee engagement

Facilitating collaboration and collective intelligence

Enhancing implicit learning.

As part of the process, executives become versed in the use of social computing tools to enhance their own adaptive potential.

John I. Todor, Ph.D., managing partner of MindShift Innovation brings together expertise in psychology, disruptive innovation, business strategies and customer engagement. Senior partner, William D. Todor, Ph.D. adds expertise in organizational development, human resources and employee engagements. Both partners have extensive experience in executive mentoring.

The partners are available for keynote presentations, webinars, and executive briefings (Speaking Overview). Their programs are custom designed to maximize leadership development and customer and market development (www.MindShifti.com). See our video (2:50m): Get Beyond Coping – Adapt and Thrive!

MindShift Innovation is an initiative of The Whetstone Edge, LLC

Keywords: leadership development, executive mentoring, innovation, disruptive change, mindshift, possibility thinking, design thinking, employee engagement, adaptive business models, IBM, Economist Intelligence Unit

Time isn’t Money Anymore: Time is More Important that Money

John I. Todor — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 21:28:45 +0000

The first time I heard Adrian make this statement I thought “Okay, here we go, another pitch about making it quick, easy and convenient for customers.” Then I got a chance to read a prerelease copy of her new book, The 24-hour Customer: New rules for winning in a time-starved, always-connected economy.

Adrian is talking about something much more important than timesaving. Consider this, in one situation people are very stingy with their attention and in another they seemingly waste hours. If you don’t understand the “new rules” governing this behavior, you will, at best, be force to sell on price. If you own, run or lead a business, I highly recommend this book.

If you think the new rules concept is over-blown, read on, then make your decision about reading Ott’s book.

Sustainable profits, let alone growth, are not easy these days – ask almost any business leader or owner. When pushed for a reason, globalization and foreign competition frequently come up. Or, you might hear, prices drop so fast you can’t make any money and you are stuck with obsolete products.

Often, there is a little anger in the responses. It is easy to dismiss both the message (too simplistic) and the messenger (too defensive). Well, the objective evidence doesn’t paint a rosy picture either. Here are three realities that are hard to ignore.

Consumer spending is down and it is not rebounding the way it did following previous recessions. The theory of pent-up demand has been replaced by tough credit and debt. This won’t change any time soon. According to research by economist Richard Rumelt, debt-to-income ratios are too high for most people. This ratio went up exponentially over the past three decades and has reached a breaking point. There is too much debt and too little credit. This means customers will scrimp to splurge. They will scrimp on things that have less emotional value to splurge on things that do.

Brands are in trouble! Brand equity and trust has seriously eroded. Sure, consumers began choosing store brands over name brands when the recession hit and many have concluded there is little real difference except price. But, brand equity and trust have been eroding for more than a decade. If you don’t invest in the value of your brand, how will you win new customers and keep the ones you have?

Customer churn has escalated. In tough times, commonly given advice is to protect your most loyal customers. Good idea but the old strategies are not working. A study of over 32 million consumers across 685 brands found that over 50% of the most loyal customers became less loyal. Worse yet, a third of loyal customers defected completely.

These three studies should shock you into action! The marketplace doesn’t function the way it used to and many old ways of doing business are counterproductive.

Now back to Adrian Ott’s insightful book. The studies of brands in trouble and customer churn both acknowledge that there were exceptions – some companies are thriving into today’s marketplace.

What do they know? What rules are they playing by? Well, Adrian’s book will help you unravel the puzzle.

What you will learn is that customer behavior is full of paradoxes when viewed from a traditional sales/marketing perspective. Take the position that,

Time isn’t money anymore. Time is more important than money

Time starved customers are often stingy with their time and attention. However, there are circumstances where they splurge on time, attention and money. Ott tells the stories of companies who have figured this conundrum out and are thriving. More importantly, she explains the rules that govern this customer behavior and give a framework for taking action.

Want customers to splurge with you, value your brand and become advocates rather than churn – read this book.