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How to Make Sure Your Public Sector Organization Is Primed to Deliver an Exceptional Stakeholder Experience Every Time

Assuming that you buy into the idea that there are mutual benefits to be realized when public sector organizations commit to providing an exceptional experience to their stakeholders, the next critical step is putting that commitment into action.

Rationally, we know that it’s not as simple as standing up in front of your employees and declaring that “Today’s the day we start giving our stakeholders a great experience every time they interact with us!” but that is actually what seems to happen in many organizations! The leader makes a declaration just like this and then expects the team to “make it so”.

However, of course, it’s not that simple but it can actually be relatively easy to achieve when you focus on three important elements that, when combined, work together to position any public sector organization to give its stakeholders an exceptional experience every time they interact with it.

 

1 Determine What an Exceptional Stakeholder Experience REALLY Looks Like

Before you can give your stakeholder a great experience you need to understand what that means, looks, and feels like for your stakeholder. While you may THINK that you know your stakeholder and what an exceptional experience is for them, you need to take the time to (1) identify all the assumptions you are making about what your stakeholder wants and values, (2) create an experience straw model, and then (3) validate that you’ve got it all right (i.e. your experience model AND all essential underlying assumptions).

The best way to do this is to check in with your stakeholder and talk with them until you understand which of the value-creating emotions they are looking for in their interactions with you. Most importantly, you need to understand what you must do to make your stakeholder feel pleased and happy as a result of their interactions with you. Once you think you know what these experience attributes are then you must put them into action and test out whether what you are doing is ACTUALLY making your stakeholder feel the way they want to feel as a result of their interactions with you. This often means going back and asking your stakeholder about their experience and, if relevant, exploring what specifically could be improved. Armed with this feedback, you must invest the time and effort needed to continually tweak what you do in an effort to perfect your organization’s ability to give your stakeholder an exceptional experience at every interaction with you.

 

2 Design and Resource Your Key Stakeholder Processes

Public sector organizations that excel at giving their stakeholders a great experience deliberately design their key processes to deliver the desired experience systematically and consistently. Processes that impact the stakeholder, including their various touch points with your organization, must be designed through their eyes. You can do this by leveraging your understanding of your stakeholder’s needs and expectations, and asking yourself “What feelings and emotions will this process or interaction create, and will that experience deliver value from the stakeholder’s perspective?” Smart organizations use the answers to this question to redesign existing processes so that they still do the job while ALSO satisfying the physical and emotional needs of their stakeholder.

Sometimes, however, it’s not good enough just to redesign a process. Often a process needs additional resources, supports, and infrastructure to run at peak levels of performance. For example, a better, more functional website might be required to make your organization easy to do business with (often a key stakeholder hope/expectation). You must be sure that your organization is ready to put the right resources behind your redesigned processes – without them your process redesign efforts will almost certainly be sub-optimized when it comes to having the desired impact on the stakeholder experience.

 

3 Empower Your Employees

While improving your stakeholder’s experience through stakeholder-centered process design is a must, it will only take you so far. Why? Well, first, when you design stakeholder-centered processes you are designing with the stakeholder GROUP in mind. When you interact with individual stakeholders you quickly discover that each one has unique needs and expectations. It can be virtually impossible to build your processes to accommodate variations in individual needs and expectations, however that is where your employees save the day! Your people play a critical role in making the deviations and decision necessary to deliver a positive stakeholder experience particularly when an individual stakeholder’s needs vary from what your process expects.

Your employees are also a very important piece in the stakeholder experience picture because, after all, it often takes human interaction to create and convey emotions and feelings. Even though you can design your processes to elicit feelings of being valued, trusted, and cared for (for example), it takes caring and empathetic employees with high levels of emotional intelligence to make the experience, and resulting emotions, come to life for your stakeholder. This is why it’s very important to employ stakeholder-facing employees who have an understanding of, and passion for producing, the type of stakeholder experience you are trying to create.   

To help passionate employees deliver an exceptional stakeholder experience they must be empowered to make the decisions required to give it to each and every stakeholder from interaction to interaction. Support your employees in making the right decisions for both your organization AND the stakeholder by:

● Spending appropriately on employee training that tells them about your stakeholder and the desired stakeholder experience;

● Showing them what that experience looks and feels like by providing examples and role models;

● Giving your employees the tools, technologies, and information they need to do the right thing;

● Reinforcing that providing an exceptional stakeholder experience every time is a priority and demonstrating its important through measurement and performance incentives; and

● Rewarding and recognizing employee actions that support a great stakeholder experience AND leveraging employees’ ideas on how to make the stakeholder experience even better.  

The result of this investment is a passionate and engaged workforce that is committed to, and adept at, delivering an exceptional experience to every stakeholder who interacts with your organization.

 

Many leaders in public sector organizations shy away from focusing on the stakeholder experience – largely because they don’t appreciate its importance in creating mutual benefits for both the stakeholder and the organization.  Others understand the importance and are ready to make the commitment – they have the will but are unsure about how to deliver the desired stakeholder experience.

Public sector organizations that are recognized as being stakeholder-centered have made an organizational commitment to the stakeholder experience - both in their values and in the steps they take to put that commitment into action. Furthermore, they realize that maintaining a focus on delivering an exceptional stakeholder experience is an ongoing commitment that never ends. Why? Because stakeholder needs, expectations, and what they are looking for in an experience changes over time AND the ways in which organizations can deliver those experiences, particularly when technology is a key factor, continues to evolve over time as well.

 

Has your public sector organization made the commitment to deliver an exceptional experience to every stakeholder? Are you taking the necessary steps to put your commitment into action? What do you need to start doing to get on the path to making your public sector organization a stakeholder-centered organization?

 

Leverage these three essential elements and get started today!

 

How to Make Your Stakeholders Love Your Public Sector Organization (and Why It Matters)

A great deal of research has been done in the private sector into what attracts customers to companies and the secrets for creating loyal customers. Numerous investigations have shown that a customer’s perception of any given company and their brand is built on two components:

 

1 The functional aspect of the business - that is, what they do or provide (i.e. their products) and how the do/provide it (i.e. service), and

 

2 The emotional aspect of the business – that is, how the customer feels interacting with the company and using its products and services.

 

Interestingly, research has further revealed that these two aspects are NOT equally weighted in the customer’s mind. In fact, the emotional component has been found to play a significantly greater role in differentiating a company in the marketplace and attracting customers than the functional components and offerings do.

Successful for-profit companies have figured this out and, while they know that they must excel in the functional aspects of their business, their strategy for success and market leadership is actually focused on developing and delivering the emotional aspects of their business to the customer.

Importantly, it’s been discovered that companies that focus on differentiating predominantly on functional attributes receive only temporary levels of loyalty from their customers. That is, their customers leave them as soon as a new competitor, offering a similar product with functional enhancements or greater benefits, such as a lower price, comes along. In contrast, differentiation on emotional attributes has been found to generate true, long-term customer loyalty. Customers who have an emotional connection with a company tend to stick with that company even when a newer and functionally enhanced product or service option comes along.

 

In short, focusing on the customer’s emotional experience builds levels of customer loyalty that enable sustainable business growth and success.

 

With all this understanding of the importance of the customer experience, I often wonder why some public sector organizations still seem to treat the stakeholder experience like a frill while most seem to ignore it all together.  

My only conclusion is that many public sector organizations don’t see stakeholders as customers and don’t consider stakeholder loyalty to be a necessary part of their business equation. Also, I think that many public sector organizations operate like they are the only game in town ( in many cases they are) carrying on with the mindset that stakeholders have no option but to deal with them regardless of the experience or their level of satisfaction.

However, even when this is the case, there’s just no excuse for this attitude because, quite frankly, creating stakeholder loyalty is a necessary component of every public sector organization’s “social license to operate”.

 

When astute public sector organizations do focus on creating and delivering an exceptional stakeholder experience they are actually able to do their work more efficiently – largely because when you treat people with care and respect they are more likely to work with you rather than against you in interactions. In addition, happy stakeholders approve the execution of your mandate more willingly and with greater support. And it’s difficult to argue against the fact that smoother and more efficient operations result in better outcomes for all stakeholders including a less stressful work environment for employees.

What public sector organization wouldn’t want to enjoy benefits like these?

The good news is that they can be achieved by public sector organizations that place an emphasis on delivering an experience that their stakeholders value.

 

Let me give you a real-life example to show you what I mean.

 

Last week I had to fly out of Pearson Airport in Toronto. I’m sure that I’m not alone in disliking the security experience at airports. As recently as five years ago, going through security at YYZ was a painful experience complete with a gauntlet of serious and surly officials. Bad security line management and unsmiling personnel made going through security the necessary evil that we all had to grudgingly endure for safety’s sake.

Now, CATSA (the Canadian Air Transport Security Agency) could have kept chugging along this way but a few years ago I started to notice a change. Their security people were becoming much more friendly and pleasant to deal with. So much so that my experience last week was beyond exceptional! I was initially met by a smiling officer who scanned my plane ticket and wished me a pleasant day as I entered an extremely fast moving and efficient line of travellers. That was nice I thought but I reserved judgement as it could have been one person having a great day. However, as I proceeded through the line and the security checks I was repeatedly greeted with friendly and smiling people who made eye contact with me, were polite and helpful, and who wished me a great day at every opportunity! By the end of my security experience I was energized and happy and walked away confident that the CATSA officers had done a thorough job while also treating me with respect and care.

 

I actually felt that everyone on staff had made it their personal goal to make my time with them the best part of my entire day! Now that’s remarkable. In fact, I actually remarked “WOW - that was great!” as I walked away from the security checkpoint.

How many times do you hear people saying that after they go through security in an airport?!

 

By giving me an exceptional experience, CATSA provided me with value, however, the value is actually shared. By treating me with friendliness and care I was more relaxed and committed to working with officers to get through their security process. Having the public work with, rather than against you, enables your public sector organization’s efficiency and actually creates greater capacity to focus on critical operational elements. A calmer, happier, and more efficient environment is better for employees which almost certainly improves employee satisfaction, happiness, and engagement.  As a result of this fabulous experience, I won’t dread the security lineup next time and will be happy to work with CATSA officials to achieve our mutual objective – a safe flying experience.

 

However, the key to sustained success for CATSA will be to deliver the same remarkable experience the next time I interact with their personnel and processes. I expect they will.

 

While CATSA (and all airport security agencies around the globe) could have ignored the public’s experience (because – hey – what are we going to do? - if we want to get on a plane, we are at their mercy), they have made a focused effort to realize the mutual benefits and shared value associated with building an exceptional stakeholder experience into their strategy and day to day operations.

 

So - given all this, I have some questions for you: 

Is an exceptional stakeholder experience a key component of your public sector organization’s strategy and way of working? Why or why not?

What mutual benefits could your organization and your stakeholders enjoy if you did place greater importance on delivering an exceptional stakeholder experience? What kind of experience would your stakeholders value and what would you have to change to give it to them?

 

I hope that you’ll take this opportunity to explore the answers to these questions for your public sector organization. Your stakeholders will thank you!

 

 

In my next blog post I’ll explore what it takes to put a focus on the stakeholder experience into action in your public sector organization.  

    

How to Know Whether your Organization’s Business Model is Working For or Against Your Stakeholder Value Proposition

When strategy execution just isn’t working in your public sector organization as well as you’d like, one of the first things you should do is take a look at your stakeholder value proposition (SVP). Issues here could be the root of the problem.

In my experience, organizations with strategy execution challenges often suffer from one of three SVP-based problems: (1) little or no thought has gone into defining a SVP; (2) a primary or leading SVP hasn't been identified; or (3) the business model and SVP are mis-aligned.

 

No Stakeholder Value Proposition

Many organizations are all about their “what” – so much so that little or no thought has gone into their “why”. One sure sign that this is your organization’s problem is silence when you ask the question “Why do our stakeholders value us?” Organizations that spend all their time talking about the great programs and services they provide but are unable to clearly say who they serve and the unique value they deliver to these stakeholders are missing a SVP. In the absence of a clearly articulated SVP employees fill the gap with their own thoughts on value and how to deliver it. Their actions and decisions reflect their individual choice and the result is almost always an inconsistent experience of value for your stakeholders.

To test whether this is your organization’s problem, ask a range of people the question “Why do our stakeholders value us?”. Blank stares = trouble. 

 

No Leading SVP

Successful public sector organizations select only one of these three value propositions to accentuate and focus on:

Operational Excellence: The organization is focused primarily on maximizing cost efficiencies

Innovation (Product, Program or Service) Leadership: The organization is focused primarily on providing sector-leading products, programs and/or services

Stakeholder Intimacy: The organization is focused primarily on providing customized programs, services, and/or advice based on an understanding of individual stakeholder needs

Unfortunately, most organizations hesitate to, or actively avoid, selecting a single leading SVP.  Instead, they attempt to excel at all three SVP’s at the same time. This, unfortunately, is costly and risky because choosing not to choose produces operating efficiencies, costly decision-making and mistakes, organizational conflict, inconsistent or poor stakeholder service, and, ultimately, the delivery of stakeholder value that doesn’t measure up to stakeholder expectations. Why? Because each SVP option requires a certain type of organizational structure and business model if it’s going to be successful. Many of these required choices are incompatible from SVP to SVP.

The key to success is to select just one SVP to maximize while keeping the other two SVP’s on the radar with performance at threshold levels only. Determining your best SVP choice requires a good understanding of how your stakeholders define value.

To test whether this is your organization’s problem, ask a range of people the question “Why do our stakeholders value us?”. Inconsistent answers and guesses mean you don’t have a clear leading SVP and are, again, heading for difficulties. 

 

Business Model - SVP Mis-alignment

Even when your organization has clearly selected a leading SVP, there’s still a strategy execution risk. The primary cause? A business model that is getting in the way of delivering value and fulfilling your organization’s SVP promise to your stakeholders. Your organization’s business model includes its purpose, strategic choices, and strategies/strategic objectives. It also includes the offerings, processes, policies, infrastructure, distribution networks, relationships, and other organizational must haves that are required to enable your strategy, deliver value, and achieve your purpose/mission.  

Is your organization’s business model positioned to help or hurt its ability to deliver on your leading SVP? Walk through each of these steps to assess the fit between your primary SVP and the priorities expressed in your current business model.

HINT: Be on the lookout for cases where your current business model lines up with a SVP other than your leading SVP OR situations where the elements of your current business model show that you are mixing SVP’s on your business model design.

 

Step 1: Start by recording your organization’s leading SVP

 

Step 2 – Evaluate the “Fitness” of Your Foundation

The foundation of your business model is your organization’s culture. The right culture creates the right environment for the successful implementation and functioning of your business model.  Your organization’s core values outline the type of culture and environment you are trying to create so compare your organization’s current core values against the ones typically associated with each of the different SVP’s: 

Operational Excellence	Innovation Leadership	Stakeholder Intimacy
●   Ensuring conformance to standards ●   Focusing on quality and repeatability ●   Relentlessly focusing on continuous improvement and lean/efficient operations	●   Innovative thinking and creative solution generation ●   Intelligent risk taking ●   Entrepreneurial thinking ●   Employee initiative	●   Stakeholder-focused, pro-active decision-making ●   Leveraging stakeholder knowledge at every stakeholder touch point ●   Employee empowerment

Which SVP do your current core values line up with best?

Are your core values mixed with elements from each SVP?   

 

Step 3 – Review the Stakeholder Experience You Are Striving to Create

What type of experience are you ultimately trying to deliver to your stakeholders? What types of feelings are you trying to create? Compare your organization’s predominant stakeholder experience objectives and attributes against the ones typically associated with each of the different SVP’s:

Operational Excellence	Innovation Leadership	Stakeholder Intimacy
●    Lowest price with reasonable quality ●   Convenience ●   What I want is always available ●   Dependent, consistent, repeatable, and reliable	●   Hot off the shelf (and I got it first) ●   An adventure – excitement and thrill ●   A new experience ●   Surprise and delight every time	●   Have it exactly my way every time ●   A quality relationship ●   I feel understood and important ●   Exactly the right things I want/need before I even know I want/need it

Which SVP do your current stakeholder experience objectives line up with best?

Are your stakeholder experience objectives mixed with elements from each SVP?

 

Step 4 – Evaluate Your Decisions About What You Need to Excel At and How

What types of business processes must your organization absolutely excel at to deliver the desired stakeholder experience and how must they perform to allow your organization to fulfill its stakeholder promise? Compare your organization’s prevailing process priorities and performance requirements, objectives, and attributes against the ones typically associated with each of the different SVP’s:

Operational Excellence	Innovation Leadership	Stakeholder Intimacy
●    Streamline and optimize the supply   chain ●   Product and service creation and delivery – quick, efficient, convenient, and   cost-effective ●   Minimize risk to maximize performance reliability ●   Continuous quality improvement as a business process	●   Excel at identifying new opportunities including product and service trends   in the external environment ●   Understand current and future  stakeholder   needs ●   Combine both capabilities above to create new and exciting offerings ●   Speed in product or service development and launch capabilities	●   Stakeholder-centric processes ●   Attracting stakeholders and building deep relationships – stakeholder   relationship management ●   Stakeholder service excellence through customization ●   Pro-active creation and delivery of new stakeholder based products and   services

Which SVP do your current process priorities line up with best?

Are your process priorities and process performance objectives mixed with elements from each SVP?

 

Step 5 – Assess Whether You Have the Right Supporting Organization in Place

What kind of people, skills, capabilities, and culture does your organization have in place to achieve the required process performance, deliver the desired stakeholder experience, and fulfill its stakeholder promise? What kinds of tools and technologies must be in place to unleash and maximize the impact of your organization’s capabilities? Compare your organization’s current capability profile against the attributes typically associated with each of the different SVP’s:

Operational Excellence	Innovation Leadership	Stakeholder Intimacy
●    Cultivate a relentless focus on   quality and continuous improvement ●   Implement technologies that enable efficient business operations (e.g.   electronic transaction processing) ●   Leverage technology to identify opportunities for improvement and increased   business efficiency	●   Invest in multi-disciplinary skills that maximize creativity and innovation ●   Create an environment that enables opportunities for and rewards innovative   thinking ●   Invest in tools and technologies that help employees explore the marketplace,   integrate information, and speed new products and services from creation to   delivery	●   Cultivation of stakeholder-focused talent ●   High stakeholder management skills, knowledge, and decision-making   authorities with front-line employees ●   Technology and applications that capture and share stakeholder intelligence and   insights

Which SVP does your current organizational attributes profile line up with best?

Is your profile mixed with representation from attributes from each SVP?

 

Step 6 – Evaluate Your Approach to Money and Resource Management

Does your organization manage its financial and non-financial resources in a way that enables the execution of the items outlined in steps 3 -5 and aligns with your leading SVP? Compare your organization’s prevailing money and resource management priorities against those typically associated with each of the different SVP’s:

Operational Excellence	Innovation Leadership	Stakeholder Intimacy
●    Minimize waste and improve cost   structures inside and outside the organization (i.e. the supply chain) –   ensure efficiencies are achieved at all levels of the organization ●   Manage with everything treated as an individual expense item ●   Maximize resource and asset utilization	●   Manage costs from a product/program life cycle perspective ●   Grow revenues by offering new products and services to stakeholders ●    Allocate resources in   research/innovation and development activities	●   Manage with the life-time value of the stakeholder in mind ●   Allocate resources to maximize stakeholder service responsiveness and   customization ●   Invest in building capabilities that have a high stakeholder value ROI

Which SVP do your current money and resource management priorities line up with best?

Are your money and resource management priorities mixed with elements from each SVP?

 

Making Sense of Your Assessment

What did your assessment and your answers to the questions at each step in the evaluation process reveal about the level of alignment between your current business model and your leading stakeholder value proposition?

Scenario 1: Did you discover that your current business model lines up pretty well under one SVP category? Is that category the same as your leading SVP?

If so then you can be assured that your business model is well positioned to support the delivery of your primary SVP. Any strategy execution problems you may be experiencing are probably due to another challenge in your business.

If, however, your current business model aligns with a SVP other than your leading SVP, you need to decide whether you need to switch your primary SVP OR (the more likely option) renovate and re-align your business model and strategic priorities.

Scenario 2: Did you find that your current business model contains a mix of elements from all three SVP’s?

If so, your business model isn’t optimally designed to fully support your leading SVP. The best course of action is to renovate your business model so that your leading SVP is more clearly emphasized and the other two SVP’s are taking a sub-ordinate position in the elements of your business model.

 

Aligning your organization’s business model with your leading stakeholder value proposition is one of the most important business management activities any organization can undertake. While it requires some difficult choices and trade-offs, the payoff of SVP-business model alignment is the more effective and efficient execution of your strategy, better business performance results, the consistent delivery of your stakeholder promise and value proposition, and, ultimately, the achievement of better business and stakeholder outcomes.