Earn Authority

This post comes from my good friend Bill Pacheco, former design leader at Cybex and Keurig Dr Pepper, and currently Senior Innovation and Design Thinking Fellow at Trinity College. He’s also the Founder of Open Until 8, a boutique business consultancy. Bill invites you to connect here.

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Recently, I privately reflected to a colleague, “Our new client is hanging onto our every word. I’m excited and concerned.” At first, it felt a bit unearned, and I wondered why we, as outsiders, had so much influence early in our engagement, despite lacking any deep experience in their industry. How did we speak with such authority? We earned it through empathetic engagement.

Here’s the backstory:

We were helping this client incorporate design thinking into their organization. They’re the “hub” in a hub & spoke strategy and positioning to be the key partner to many fintech’s to provide “banking as a service.”

Since their business has primarily been B2B, they had drifted quite a distance away from the end customers requiring financial services. This made it challenging to scope where to focus and how to begin. Given that uncertainty, we conducted a few “empathy test probes” to see what pain points and opportunities might emerge.

In banking, several control and verification points are necessary, so we interviewed several stakeholders on what that was like. We heard over and over how they see those as cold, dry, and in some cases, disrespectful moments. Many compelling & surprising quotes were captured, packaged, and shared with the team in a way that felt as if the customers were speaking directly to them. That’s when the dynamic all changed. 

The team connected the problem space to how they currently do business in a profoundly new way. The dialogue became all about how & when the customer intersects the parts of the journey that cause all that grief. Questions abound from the team seeking more context & clarity. They were truly curious on who, where and when those conditions show up most. All we had to do at that stage was shape and steer that empathetic energy. We quickly aligned on a design sprint approach and got going into the business of innovating.

As I reflected on this experience, this quote came to mind.

“You can't buy engagement; you have to build engagement.” – Tara-Nicholle Nelson

Friends, if you’re interested in building a more creative culture, managing change easier or simply motivating and aligning your team, earn authority by making the customer the real hero in business.

Related: Talk to Other Humans
Related: Welcome Surprises
Related: Solve The Right Problem
Related: To Promote Innovation, Make Your User the Hero

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