An Excerpt from The 8 Laws of Customer-Focused Leadership

In a rapidly changing world filled with uncertainties, one thing remains crystal clear: customers are increasingly fickle and no longer care about loyalty to any particular company. In addition, many well-intentioned companies are falling short of customer expectations, despite every organization’s potential for excellence. The truth is customer experience is not what it used to be. New technologies, values, generational expectations, economic instability, - and the rapid pace of change all must be considered as you forge ahead. How do you put the customer first in the face of all these emerging trends?

Using cutting-edge research and interviewing top leaders across industries, customer experience futurist Blake Morgan has pulled together eight new laws that the best companies follow in terms of building and maintaining a focus on the customer. 

In the excerpt below, Morgan explains why today’s leaders need to be coaches. 

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When Doc Rivers became the head basketball coach of the Boston Celtics, he wasn’t sure how he was going to lead the team to victory. A longtime board member at Marquette University, Rivers was leaving a meeting one day when a colleague approached him. “Your team is going to be amazing … have you ever heard of ‘Ubuntu’?” She urged him to look up the concept, telling him, “It’s not a word, Doc. It’s a way of life.”

He spent the entire night studying Ubuntu, an African proverb that means “I am because we are” or “I can’t be all I can be unless you can be all you can be.”

When Doc took over the head coaching role for the Celtics in 2004, the team had not won a championship since 1986. Doc’s epiphany did not come about until three years later. Three superstar players had been acquired—Ray Allen, Kevin Garnett, and Paul Pierce—in a pair of blockbuster trades, making the Celtics overnight championship contenders.

Doc was worried that these superstars would compete to be individually successful but not work well together as a team.

To keep the players team-focused, Rivers instilled the principle of Ubuntu during the team’s 2007 training camp in Italy, and it became the mantra of the Celtics as they set out on their run to the 2008 championship.

It worked! The team worked together nicely, passing the ball, with no one player trying to outshine everyone else. By stressing from the outset the importance of sharing the ball and trusting teammates, Rivers got his three stars to mesh instantly.

Ubuntu was what the team needed. The Celtics shocked the world by winning the 2008 championship, all thanks to a little teamwork and a philosophy of “we” over “me.”

So, what does Ubuntu have to do with the customer experience mindset? Today’s employees are customers, and today’s leaders must remember they are not coaching individuals—they are coaching teams.

Imagine if Ubuntu was put into place at your company. How would divisions work together better than they do now? Or how would your own teammates drop any drama or politics to collaborate around one goal? If you have one superstar salesperson, and that creates a competitive culture, that’s a problem for your entire team and company. You will have to find a way to create that team environment, just like Doc Rivers did with the Boston Celtics.

How willing is your team to pass the ball so the entire team can win versus individual ego? It is the culture you create that determines whether the team wants to work together or just focus on their own success.

The customer experience mindset is embraced by the leader who sees themselves as a coach, not just a manager. This is someone who thinks about how all the people in their care work together around a common goal. This type of culture is the key to creating a customer-focused culture. It starts with your employees, which starts with your leadership style and how you coach your teams.

Adapted from The 8 Laws of Customer-Focused Leadership: New Rules for Building a Business Around Today's Customer, published by HarperCollins Leadership.
Copyright © 2024 by Blake Morgan.
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