Organisational Maturity

It's a loop.

Photo by Jr Korpa on Unsplash

A few days ago, I had the pleasure of joining Jochem van der Veer, co-founder of the Customer Journey Management Platform TheyDo, in a live webinar on organising journeys for effective decision-making. If you missed the session, don't worry; you'll find a video recording at the end of this blog post.

I presented my framework, A.V.O.C., to an engaged audience of over 230 people, covering themes like customer vs. consumer lifecycle, contextualising customer journeys vis-à-vis business objectives, securing buy-in, integrating the journey architecture within the organisational structure, and much more.

We received many interesting questions, demonstrating a high level of knowledge and awareness among the audience. One question particularly resonated with me, which I'd like to explore in today's blog post: "How do you evaluate the maturity of an organisation you work with to know if they are organisationally ready for your work?"

Ladder? No, Loops.

We often discuss organisational maturity as a ladder, assuming that organisations progress towards higher levels of maturity as a whole. These levels are typically characterised by increasingly sophisticated awareness and capabilities, with 'the destination' at the top defining an organisation as 'mature'. This concept is often visualised literally as a ladder.

For fun, I googled 'organisational maturity', and unsurprisingly, ladders dominated the visuals.

Early last year, alongside two fellow service designers, Cristina Tamburello and Marion Ferrec, I conducted research on corporate organisations' journey towards customer centricity. This entailed fundamental transformation efforts to re-orient around customer needs and experiences. We surveyed over 300 people across five European countries and interviewed 13 design and CX professionals engaged in these efforts. The research results are available in a whitepaper, which you can access below.

A key insight from this research is that organisational maturity, at least in this context, is a loop.

Organisations are constantly in a 'transformation lifecycle', moving from unawareness to stages of awareness, commitment, structuring, scaling, evaluating, and evolving. This cycle is continuous, with organisations engaging at different stages of their journey with renewed purpose, in an endless effort to stay fit for their operating context and market. There's no end game or single point defining maturity; customer-centric transformation is an ongoing journey.

Transformation Lifecycle.

Within this transformation lifecycle, we identified three key journeys organisations tend to undergo. These journeys, while not exhaustive, emerged as the most common, representing patterns of action undertaken by CX and Design Leaders during transformation efforts. Each journey includes a pivotal moment, sparking a significant shift towards greater maturity.

Maturity Journeys.

For simplicity, I use 'organisation', but we found that different units or functions within the same organisation can exhibit vastly different maturity levels. For example, in a bank, the Consumer Banking unit might be far more mature than Asset and Wealth Management. Despite being in the same transformation lifecycle, these units display divergent maturity levels simultaneously.

An organisation can be on multiple journeys at various maturity levels simultaneously. There's no uniform maturity level or end point to this process.

Returning to the initial question, "How do you evaluate the maturity of an organisation you work with to know if they are organisationally ready for your work?" there are two parts to the answer.

Evaluating Organisational Maturity.

When exploring a potential collaboration with an organisation to contribute to their customer-centric transformation efforts, there are a few questions that help me understand their maturity. I aim to ask these questions to as many people as possible, targeting at least 10 individuals across different departments. I often start collaborations with my clients when they invite me to speak at one of their internal events. This provides a fantastic opportunity to gauge the status quo, as it allows me to engage with many people across various sectors of the organisation in a single event.

Vision & Strategy

• Do you have a vision for what it means to be customer-centric?

• If yes, what is that vision? Can you articulate it briefly now?

• Is this vision shared across the organisation?

• How are you collectively going about achieving that vision?

• Why is leadership interested in this? What's the business case? (If you only get to ask one question from this bucket, ask this one.)

Service Structure

• Do you have a list of all the services you offer?

• Can you give me an example of the services this organisation offers? (If you only get to ask one question from this bucket, ask this one.)

• Do you know how these services perform?

Measures & Culture

• What do you currently measure in respect to customer experience?

• How do you know if your work is successful?

• Do you usually collaborate with colleagues from other divisions?

• How are decisions taken around here? (If you only get to ask one question from this bucket, ask this one.)

I rarely get to ask all of these questions unless I manage to agree to a period of what I call 'organisational ethnography', which is preparatory to the start of a project or program. Regardless, even asking a few questions and seeing how different people respond provides deep insights into the maturity loops different parts of the organisation are likely to be at.

Evaluating Organisational Readiness.

I personally do not believe that organisational readiness is directly related to organisational maturity. More mature organisations can be just as challenging to shift towards new levels of maturity as those at the very beginning of their journey. When deciding whether or not to work with an organisation, maturity is rarely the determinant I use.

What interests me is where the energy of the organisation is at that specific point. What is top of mind for people? What do people discuss the most? This will determine where money and resources are allocated and the level of friction you may encounter on your transformation journey.

Once you understand where the organisation's energy currently lies, the question to ask is: can you create a clear, direct link between the work you want to do and that source of energy (money and resources)?

For example, if the current energy is focused on winning more market share or increasing retention, you can easily link this to the desire to build a journey architecture to improve and innovate the customer experience.

Similarly, if the energy is about automation, a customer journey framework can aid in contextualising services and products to prioritise what needs to be preserved and what could be automated without affecting the current experience.

If the current hype is around a specific technology (for the technology's sake) or cutting costs drastically to meet some random financial projection, then it's not the right time. Choosing the right timing for this type of work is far more important than the maturity of the organisation.

What’s New.

Below is the recording of the webinar hosted by TheyDo where I spoke about organising journeys for effective decision-making.

If you are in the midst of setting up a Customer Journey Framework and need help, do get in touch. I have designed a low-resource, high-value type of engagement that is designed to boost your knowledge and confidence, setting you up to own your journey like a pro. Click on the button below to discuss.

Next week, I'll be in Milan talking to a crowd of 200+ people from the industry about Leadership by Design. The event will be hosted by Politecnico di Milano and the Observatory for Design Thinking for Business. If you are in Milan and would like to meet for a coffee, I have a couple of hours free on Thursday 22nd. Get in touch.