CXU Student Brief 12

Principle 4: Pushing Through Fear

Fear is one of the greatest barriers to creativity and does little to foster the adaptive culture we need for customer experience excellence. 

We tend to focus on strategic change rather than small changes, but often small changes are the precursors to growth. We also like to demand change instead of creating it collaboratively. Looking at the most successful workplaces in the United States, the CXU team discovered that employee feedback is the common thread of employer success. All of the happiest and most productive workplaces have devised a way to garner employee feedback and then integrate it into the company quickly. Growth happens when employees are empowered to interact with customers, make observations, solve problems, and help revise operations.  

Employee engagement is a heightened emotional and intellectual connection that an employee has for his/her job, organization, manager, or co-workers that, in turn, influences him/her to apply additional discretionary effort to his/her work. An anatomy of this definition of employee engagement reveals that there are three threads: emotions (hearts), cognitions (thinking), and behavior (discretionary) that companies have to influence and galvanize to deliver the desired experiences to customers. These threads are also present in customers. Every organization that has placed customers at the core must also place employees at the center. Only employees who are engaged can do an effective job of winning customers’ hearts, minds, and hands.

Companies have indeed recognized that engaged employees deliver results. Therefore, at the same time as they take an ‘outside-in’ perspective with the customer as their focus, they also recognize that an ‘inside out’ perspective with a focus on employees is critical to success. The combination is powerful. The results can be outstanding.

What can you look for?