Richard’s Diagram:

I can still see the long lost diagram in my head, and I wish it was not lost in my former agency’s history. It was a diagram dreamt up by my partner Richard Blumberg.

It was his attempt to show a senior manager at P&G how to reorganize for faster decisions.

It was a time when P&G was realizing that “speed to market” had to be one of their competitive advantages and as one of the marketing agencies that worked for this spectacular company, we wanted to support their initiative.

The diagram broke the traditional military org chart into a series of smaller units in a flatter organization. It let senior management focus on strategy and the smaller units on functional decisions. The thinking that Richard put into this structure was brilliant, but unfortunately we were not large enough to make this dramatic sea-change in a goliath company.

Speed to Market Improves Customer Experience

I bring this past memory back, because speed to market is still a huge part of improving the customer’s experience. And the main thing that impedes moving fast is the layers of people that must clear decisions. Just one person dragging his heels out of fear of change can kill a great idea … or slow it down until a competitor gets there first.

The Connected Company

What really caught my eye today was an article on The Connected Company website with several illustrations to visually capture their concept.

One of the most difficult challenges companies face today is how to be more flexible and adaptive in a dynamic, volatile business environment. How do you build a company that can identify and capitalize on opportunities, navigate around risks and other challenges, and respond quickly to changes in the environment? How do you embed that kind of agility into the DNA of your company?

The answer is to distribute control in such a way that decisions can be made as quickly and as close to customers as possible. There is no way for people to respond and adapt quickly if they have to get permission before they can do anything.

I found The Connected Company when I was curating content on Customer Experience Marketing. I encourage anyone who wants to lead a faster, smarter company to read this article. It is not a high-level document, but it is worth the time to read “The Future is Podular.”

This blog is all about freely sharing insights about customer experience and contextual marketing. The ideas are free to you and I hope you find them valuable in helping you lead a marketing transformation at your company. If I have helped make you more successful, then this project has been worthwhile.Google+

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Related posts:

1. The Role of Customer Experience in a Down Market
2. The Customer Experience is About Mindshare, not Market Share
3. The Speed of Change for Customer Experience