Simplicity attracts customers. Help me shop and sign up for coverage. Help me help myself. Help me manage my health and find the right care. This is essence of what consumers want. It’s the same needs when they reach out to public and private exchanges searching for healthcare. Why is it then, that we’re not able to give them this simple service? The answer is simplicity.
- Leonardo da Vinci summarized this well when he said, “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication” (originally in Italian “La semplicità è l’ultima sofisticazione”).
- Christine Romans, CNN’s chief business correspondent wrote a book called “Smart Is the New Rich,” and she wrote “The ultimate luxury is simplicity.”
- Richard Austin Freeman from the book “The Eye of Osiris” has more flare when he wrote: “simplicity is the soul of efficiency.”
Solution: Help your organization find simplicity.
Businesses today are focused on assets. If we’re talking about health exchanges the focus is on call centers, operations, finance and technology. If we’re in manufacturing we’re talking about suppliers, producers, source material and buyers. If we’re talking about banking the focus is on margin, head office (HQ or corporate), regional branches, financial risk and investments. In each of these examples the big picture is missed. Yes, the executives and the leaders that run your company have gotten lost in details (most of which should be delegated).
Solution: Build your strategy on the big picture.
Building a consumer experience (CX) is about the journey. It’s about cross functional engagement and stepping back to gain a broader perspective you’d otherwise not have the benefit of realizing. Understanding the customer, throughout the lifecycle of value (in short designing for value). Value based operating models, tilts asset management conventionally done by silos, toward insights that drive strategy and move toward design-to-value.
Solution: Leverage journey maps to transform the consumer experience: don’t drive through functions.
We say we want our teams to innovate, but do we actually? We say we are looking for advances in product, service and monetization models. The actions and behavior of leaders need to reflect this design-to-value desire. As our processes mature we become more efficient (not effective, more efficient). Efficiency removes variability. Variability removes innovation. By our very quest to be efficient we are eroding our organizational agility to be innovative. Don’t steer your teams, let them flow. Simply – guide your organizations.
Solution: Don’t depend on steerage, let the process flow.
References
Abbott, S. (2006). Customer Crossroads: Complexity versus Simplicity: It’s Time for Simplicity (online image). Retrieved June 17, 2015, from http://arc.typepad.com/customercrossroads/2006/03/its_time_for_si.html