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To create a pitch deck

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Why should you know how to create a pitch deck?

Especially for start-ups, but also for all companies that want to convince investors of their idea, it is worth dealing with the creation of a pitch deck. There are several methods for pitching, but the pitch deck is one of the most proven and has been used for a long time. Here we explain what a pitch deck is, how it is built and what structure it has.

What is a Pitch Deck?

A pitch deck is basically a short presentation consisting of 10 + 1 slides. The business idea and the business plan are presented as concretely and concisely as possible, so that investors or other lenders are convinced of the business model. It’s a more motivating and inspiring version of your business plan.

In the start-up and investor scene, the pitch deck is gait and give, and there is usually no way around it when presenting to juries or donors. In the meantime, the pitch deck follows a largely uniform structure and certain specifications. You should follow these best practices to get the best results. A certain margin of manoeuvre is, of course, still possible.

What are the tips for creating a pitch deck?

Before you start creating a pitch deck, you should first understand what exactly you want to achieve with it. What is the purpose of the presentation? Which arguments are most likely to convince you of your exciting idea? What facts can show you to be the perfect team? And what are the reasons for an investment right now?

Once the most important content has been satisinuly, it’s time to create it. PowerPoint or Keynote is usually used here. However, there are also a few free and paid tools to help you create.

A basic rule for any presentation that can also be ideally applied to the pitch deck is Guy Kawasaki’s 10/20/30 rule. A presentation should not have more than 10 slides, should not last longer than 20 minutes, and the font size should always be at least 30. This helps you focus on your most compelling arguments. Keep in mind that investors listen to countless presentations in a row and usually decide after a few minutes whether an investment is possible or not. Throughout the creation process, it is worth putting yourself in the role of investors again and again. Would she convince? What is she really interested in?

For the structure of a pitch deck, it makes sense to follow a certain structure. We will show you this one here.

Time: 7 days

Idea

The film should be kept as simple as possible. Here your company name and logo belongs and possibly a short presentation and the occasion for your presentation.

Founder

Here you will introduce the founding team or the individual founder. This slide must show that you are competent, creative and trusting and that it is worth investing in you. Often even the founding team is more important than the idea. Here you not only bring in data and facts about your qualification, but also your personality. Show why you do what you do and how passionate and reliable you are. With a founding team, you should show who takes on what role in the company and how your team is composed.

Problem and solution

These two slides first introduce the problem that your target group has and which you want to solve. This point can also be supported by a market analysis with surveys or studies to show that this is really a problem and not your imagination. On the following slide, you will present your optimal solution to this problem.

Offer

Whether product or service: Here you will learn about the most important functions of your offer. A few technical data and the most important facts belong here, but don’t overwhelm your listeners with too many details. It’s even better to have a prototype that’s designed to illustrate your product or service and that investors can interact with when needed.

Market

The next slide takes a closer look at the audience. How big is the market and is it already saturated? With a professional own or foreign market study, this point can be optimally underlined.

USP and competitors

These two slides first define the unique selling point and what sets you apart from your competitors. The uniqueness of your offer and the added value for the customer are crucial here. Next, list some of your main competitors and what you do better than this.

Business

Explains how and from when sales are generated. The Business Model Canvas with an emphasis on income flows can be used here to illustrate this.

Proof of Concept (POC)

Proof of concept is optional depending on the scope of your presentation, but can be the key point for your donors.

Capital requirements

On the last slide, you specify how much capital you need and what exactly it is used for.
A simple Internet search also allows you to find various, really good templates for pitch decks that you can orientate yourself on. The finished presentation is finally converted to PDF, as it is easy to open from anywhere.

Conclusion

Can Pitch Decks now completely replace the Business Plan? That depends. In modern and digital industries, the Pitch Deck is perfect for convincing investors. However, it is still worthwhile to have a business plan in store for deeper discussions and for your own clarity. If it is created in a short and crisp way, you don’t need as much time for it, and still have a clear plan that gives you structure and direction. In traditional industries or when requesting loans from banks, the business plan should definitely be used. Here, the pitch deck is rarely used and can be too modern. All in all, the Pitch Deck should motivate and make you want more of your business idea. You’ll also learn to focus on what’s essential to your business during creation.

Briefly explained – Customer Journey Mapping

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What do I need a Customer Journey Map for?

A Customer Journey Map is the perfect tool to get into your customers and look into their heads. The creation process gives you many new insights and insights to develop your business from a customer perspective. A Customer Journey Map allows you to find out whether, at a specific point in contact with your company, the customer’s expectations are being disappointed or even exceeded. It is a tool to build empathy for your customers and inspire them to tie them to themselves and your brand in the long term. Learn how to create a Customer Journey Map and what to consider.

Why should companies be developed from a customer’s point of view?

Customer-centric development is a key success factor for companies. Consistently integrating the customer’s view into business processes drives innovation, creates an advantage in the competition and helps you to inspire your customers and to repeatedly encourage them to buy or recommend you. It saves you the expensive development of products that do not convince on the market later, as you put your customers at the center right from the start and align themselves with their wishes and needs. There are various strategies and tools for the development of companies from a customer point of view, one of which is customer journey mapping.

What is Customer Journey Mapping?

Customer Journey Mapping, also known as an illustration of a customer experience, is a tool from Customer Experience Management. It helps you understand your customers. The customer’s path from the time prior to the initial contact with your company to the time after the purchase is fully visually reflected with the Customer Journey Map. The customer trip is usually presented as a linear history and each step on the trip is analyzed according to certain criteria:

– The phases of the process your customer is going through.
– The specific steps your customer must take at each stage or the touchpoints with your company.
– The channels that the customer goes through or the exact movement of the customer through the process
The triggered emotions in each step (positive, neutral, negative).
– The voltage arc or how important your customer classifies the respective step

Key factors that lead to customer satisfaction or disappointment are identified. Relationships between the different points of contact, channels and emotions are made visible. The steps or touch points on the Customer Journey Map can be directly and indirectly related to your business. Direct contact is, for example, a conversation with one of your representatives; indirect contact can be the experience at the post office, when picking up your parcel.

With the Customer Journey Map, you can also uncover vulnerabilities and pain points on the customer trip, which lead to the cancellation of the purchase. At the same time, purchasing accelerators, i.e. extremely positive emotions in connection with your company, can also be identified. With these new insights, you can specifically decide where to start first and where a change brings the best effect and immediate improvement. Investments can also be analyzed from the customer’s point of view to see if they lead to the desired results and actually to a better customer experience.

How can Customer Journey Mapping be implemented and applied?

There are no standard standards for creating a Customer Journey Map, so you should first consider what type of presentation best suits you and your business. You can do the description of the customer trip on your own, but better in a small team to exchange ideas and incorporate different perspectives.

The Customer Journey Map is based on a Buyer Persona, which means you should first be aware of which persona you want to create the map for. This allows you to respond and focus perfectly on your customer segment. Because there is no offer that appeals to everyone and marketing strategies etc. can be better built on a specific target group.
If you have defined your Buyer Persona, start brainstorming the various steps (i.e. touch points) related to your offer first. Note that the first point of contact may be before the first contact with your company. For example, your Buyer Persona has a specific problem and wonders how to solve it.

The steps are then supplemented by a storyboard. This is a small sketch that you add to each step to visualize the steps and uncover any ambiguities or illogical sequences. No artistic talent is necessary here, the sketch can be kept quite simple.

Once you have done this, you should include the various channels (online and offline!) in the Customer Journey Map. You should add to each step where it takes place, whether in the online shop, when calling customer service or by post when picking up your parcel.

Then you define the emotion for each step. At each step, it should be noted whether a positive, neutral or negative emotion is triggered. The goal is to first remove any negative emotions from the Customer Journey Map by optimizing your processes and services. After that, you can start turning neutral experiences into positive or even enthusiasm. You can add the emotional perception to the steps as a numerical value, or better still transfer it to a simple line chart that graphically reflects the emotional progression over the course of the customer journey.
You should always remember that experiences have different meanings for everyone. If a step is of great importance to your buyer persona, it should also have the appropriate significance for your company, even if you may not find it personally so important. You can represent this meaning with a voltage arc. Each touch point is assigned a meaning on a numeric scale. How much excitement, excitement or drama does your Buyer Persona feel at this moment?

You should compare this arc of tension with the emotional course. If the tension is high and the emotion negative, you urgently need to start here. However, a high tension and a very positive experience is good and the Buyer Persona will gladly remember you.

Your customer journey doesn’t have to be perfect, even trying to put you on paper can bring many new insights. For the Customer Journey Map, there are many pre-built templates that you can download and print, or you can create them yourself according to your own ideas. There are also various tools and programs for creation. Depending on your preference, the Customer Journey Map can be created as a table, matrix, or detailed graphic. In the end, each Customer Journey Map is unique and customized to your business. For other services, objectives or buyer personas, you should create your own Customer Journey Map in order to keep track and better identify the different customer journeys.

Ideally, you can also ask your customers about your experiences and points of contact with your company and exchange ideas with you.

Conclusion on Customer Journey Mapping

You have already come to know many possible applications, but there are no limits to your creativity, as there are no fixed specifications or a fixed model for mapping the customer journey. The Customer Journey Map can not only be used to map the current customer path, it can also serve as a vision of a future customer path. You can use it to develop and optimize products, plan and review marketing activities, target your customers across departments, or identify tracking opportunities and UX issues. This makes the Customer Journey Map an indispensable tool for customer-centric development and for achieving your long-term success!

Work-life blending instead of work-life balance?

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Why should I learn about work-life blending?

The changes in working life are accelerating today and approaches such as new work, home office and flexible working are revolutionizing old principles from everyday work. This is also where work-life blending is included. Whether as a trend or in the long term, it is definitely worth dealing with the new form of work and leisure time and taking one or two tips for your own professional life with you. Here you can find out what work-life blending is, how it distinguishes itself from the well-known term work-life balance and how you can implement it meaningfully and integrate it into your own life and company.

What is work-life blending?

Digitization and increased working online, as well as globalization, have created the framework conditions for the concept of work-life blending. Work-life blending is intended to seamlessly merge work and private life. Activities should no longer be clearly assigned to one of the two areas. All this has a lot to do with flexible working hours and places, as well as with the self-determination of employees. Whether it’s a longer private train ride that can be useful for a project from work, creating a presentation or making phone calls with other time zones in your own garden, or starting work later to do the shopping or private appointments beforehand: these are all examples of work-life blending. Large and well-known companies such as Netflix successfully operate work-life blending and let their employees freely choose their working hours and days. Microsoft was also one of the pioneers here and abolished fixed working hours as early as 1998. Success proves them right. Digitalization and extensive opportunities make this easy for almost any company today and promotes productivity and creativity in companies. Even costs can be saved by the lower demand for premises and the attractiveness as an employer is greatly increased. This is particularly useful in the struggle for skilled workers in the labour market.

Of course, there are advantages and disadvantages here too. The biggest and most obvious advantage of work-life blending is flexibility. Private and professional things can be combined perfectly and thus also offer the optimal conditions for families or employees with their own projects, such as self-employment, study or honorary offices. The individual maximum performance times can be used ideally, e.g. night owls are not forced to concentrate in the morning, but achieve much better results in the evening. Directions are no longer lost or can be used for errands or work projects and no longer feel like wasted time. As a result, performance generally increases and results are improved.

One drawback is the lack of limits. Employees are available 24 hours a day, anywhere, which can be exploited by companies to work far more than usual. This removes the benefits and creates additional pressure and performance degradation. Studies have shown that conscious shutdown is important for long-term health and performance. However, this is increasingly being lost due to the mixing of work and leisure time, and many companies are using work-life blending as a pretext to demand even more from their employees. There must therefore be a harmonious mixing in which both areas get an even share.

What is the difference between work-life blending and work-life balance?

The work-life balance aims at an individual, healthy distribution of one’s own resources between the two areas of work and private life. There is a clear separation here and private life serves to “refuel” new energy. This is not the case with work-life blending, but the time and spatial flexibility no longer makes working life a great energy eater. Work and happiness or fun do not have to be mutually exclusive with this concept. Both concepts therefore focus on the individual, optimal use of resources and reduction of stress and aim at balance, motivation, health and productivity. Both concepts also offer more time for friends, family and your own projects. However, they are quite different in achieving this.

What are the tips and tricks for implementing work-life blending?

The concept of work-life blending sounds spanish to you and you would like to implement at least a few ideas? If the basic requirements such as laptop, good internet connection and access to the company servers, as well as personal responsibility, discipline and interest of the employees are given, nothing stands in the way.

First of all, the framework conditions for the work should be clearly defined. What exactly does work-life blending mean in the company, how is it contractually stipulated and how can and should it be implemented in concrete terms? Are there core times when employees need to be reachable? Are there fixed days when you have to show up in the office? How is the time recording done? Are employees’ laptops adequately protected to reduce threats to the corporate network? It is worth clearly defining all these questions in advance and writing them down in writing in order to avoid any later ambiguities or different expectations.

Both the manager and the employees should communicate times when they are not reachable. In this way, rest zones are created and the constant accessibility is limited. Regular exchange is also particularly important for remote teams that are sometimes created. Continue to provide feedback and be available for questions and support!

As mentioned earlier, you should bear in mind that your employees should also give their private life enough time for a work-life blending to allow for mixing at all. This includes not calling your employees on holiday and not requiring 24/7 access from them. You may also have employees who, despite the flexibility, are looking for structure and continue to choose a classic working day. This is the beauty of work-life blending, as everyone can choose the optimal framework conditions for them and thus use their time perfectly.

Conclusion on Work-Life-Blending

Freedom, personal responsibility and more creativity, instead of a culture of presence: this can be work-life blending. Despite the many advantages, the concept is not suitable for every company, for example, in the case of manufacturing companies, it becomes much more difficult to achieve the corresponding local and time independence. However, if your company and your corporate culture meet a few basic requirements, make your company a popular and successful employer through this concept! But here too it is important to note, despite all the flexibility, to continue to give employees free time in which they are not available on call. Then nothing stands in the way of promoted productivity and perhaps some innovations.

Multichannel remarketing: How to get your buybacks back

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There are many names for multichannel remarketing. We also often encounter the terms behavioral retargeting or remarketing. Many Internet users are likely to confront this phenomenon on a daily basis without knowing it. But what exactly is remarketing and how does this concept work? For whom does it make sense and how can the principle be implemented most efficiently? These questions will be examined in more detail below and, of course, answered.

Specifications for Internet Project Management

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A specification in project and quality management is a broad outline of the planned project, drawn up by the client, which includes the definition of a product or service and the totality of the requirements for the scope of services of the contractor. The term “load booklet”, which can also be referred to as a catalogue of requirements, customer specification or product sketch, is particularly common in media design and software development.

8 Tips for optimal online press releases

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Many authors of online press releases miss out on the opportunity offered by the internet to be disseminated by various errors in the creation of their texts – to reach a wide range of texts. Online pr can be placed almost anywhere. In social communities, on social news portals and press portals. Companies and agencies can thus take advantage of a first-class opportunity to publish information about your company and its products and to reach interested parties as well as customers or media contacts alike. So the theory, the practice usually looks different.

Briefly explained – Robotic Process Automation (RPA)

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https://open.spotify.com/episode/2LIdxXNbxoEPr1lYuenV2M

Overview: Robotic Process Automation

Robotic Process Automation often leads to confusion because there is no visible robot to perform actions. It is, on the other hand, software that takes over tasks previously performed by humans. So it is not to be confused with physical robots, as is known from production. Nevertheless, Robotic Process Automation offers many business starting points to automate tasks, save costs, and become more efficient. Here we show you what Robotic Process Automation is, what you should consider before implementation, where there are frequent applications and whether it is just a short-term trend.

What is Robotic Process Automation?

Robotic Process Automation is also often abbreviated with RPA or robot-controlled process automation. It is defined as automated processing of structured processes in the company by digital software bots. The RPA dates back to the 2000s and was linked to the evolution of three key technologies required for this purpose. Screen scraping, workflow automation and artificial intelligence form the basis for the development of RPA technology. The technology was also inspired by the robots from the industry, which were already known at the time, and can carry out production tasks independently and completely and not only semi-automated.

Artificial intelligence and machine learning now allow you to automate routine tasks that previously only could be done by humans. Even very large amounts of data can be managed by RPA. The software bots or robots mimic the work of a human employee and can log in and out of applications on their own, enter and process data, calculate tasks and make transactions. The RPA software is over-stored in a company’s IT infrastructure and can therefore be implemented without having to make a change in the existing systems. This is fast and efficient. The software can take over almost any process and thus offers numerous and creative applications.

Robotic Process Automation offers companies many advantages and is a central component of digitalization. Among other things, customer service can be improved and accelerated, processes become more efficient, costs for manual and repetitive tasks are saved, and overall productivity can be increased. Quality also remains uniformly high and is not subject to day-to-day fluctuations or human error, and the control and compliance of standards can be automated and thus increased. All work steps can be traced back by the software, should there be a problem, and be carried out around the clock, as no working hours have to be observed. RPA software is implemented relatively quickly and therefore saves resources over other automation strategies.

Another advantage of RPA over other IT automation solutions is the skilful response to exceptions and changed circumstances. While IT solutions usually cannot handle this, Robotic Process Automation is trained in such cases. The algorithm is constantly learning and this makes it possible to react correctly to new situations. It is also possible to communicate with other systems without the need to interconnect an employee. Exceptions are therefore not simply marked and assigned to an employee for further processing, but the RPA technology searches independently for the missing information, even across systems.

In which areas is Robotic Process Automation used and what do I have to consider before integration?

The RPA software is most commonly used for manual, time-consuming and repetitive work. This can be the case, for example, in the office or in production.

However, in order to operate Robotic Process Automation, strict rules must be in place for the operation. If this is not yet the case, processes should first be defined as routine processes and the exact steps should be defined. This does not have to be done centrally for the entire company, but offers individual departments individual opportunities to carry out their processes more efficiently. Due to individuality, flexibility does not have to suffer and can be maintained despite fixed routine processes. The objective of integrating RPA technology should also be maintained before it is put into practice.

Typical applications of Robotic Process Automation are customer service, accounting, healthcare, human resources departments, financial services and supply chain management.

In customer service, the technology automates the tasks of the call center. For example, documents can be uploaded automatically, email signatures can be checked and information submitted by the customer can be checked automatically for completeness and how to proceed with it.

In accounting, Robotic Process Automation can handle general and operational accounting, budgeting, and transaction reporting.

In healthcare, medical records, reports, and billing can be managed by RPA.

The technology is also an efficient solution for HR departments and can take on time-consuming tasks such as time recording and management of employee information.
In the area of financial services, for example, account openings and closures are carried out by Robotic Process Automation.

Another important area of application is supply chain management. Here, inventories can be monitored, shipments can be tracked and payments and orders can be processed automatically. So there are already numerous effective applications for robotic process automation and in the future many more will probably be added with a further development of the technology.

Conclusion on Robotic Process Automation

Robotic Process Automation can make companies more successful and simplify their day-to-day work. However, the software should not be rushed and integrated headless just to be there. First, we really should take the time to analyze resource-intensive processes and consider where automation would make sense. The required workflows must be defined as fixed routines and rules in order for RPA technology to adopt them. You should also answer the question of whether you want fully automated or only semi-automated processes for your company. If the corresponding preparatory work is carried out, Robotic Process Automation can then lead to great cost savings, efficiency and productivity.


What is certain is that the RBA is not only a trend, but will continue to accompany us for a long time to come. By 2025, 140 million full-time positions worldwide are to be replaced by the corresponding software, and by 2024 the RPA market is already expected to reach five million dollars. As a result, companies and employees will have many new opportunities, and tasks and responsibilities of previous job descriptions are likely to adapt and change across all levels of the hierarchy. So it‘s worth keeping up to date and thinking early on in which areas you could use this technology in a meaningful way.

Google Patents: what do you mean for the future?

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In recent years, the media company Google has acquired patents that have already been filed with remarkable intensity and has filed patents itself. At the beginning of 2011, google had just over 800 patents listed in the database of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), the U.S. Patent Office. On 1 January 2013, there were already more than 20,000. In 2018, Google was awarded a total of 2,070 patents in the US. This rapid increase was due, on the one hand, to two large-scale acquisitions. In July 2011, Google initially won 1,030 patents and in August 2011 another 1,022 patents from IBM.

LinkedIn Basic Knowledge: HowTo Linkedin Profile on Sales Trim with LinkedIn SSI (Social Sales Index)

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LinkedIn is a social networking site designed specifically for the business world. The aim of the site is to enable registered members to build a professional network.

More than 600 million experts are registered on LinkedIn to advance their careers and business. The key factor that distinguishes LinkedIn from other social networks is that it is focused on building strategic business relationships. This does not depend on the number of contacts, but rather on what quality they are. With more than 500 Connections, LinkedIn no longer displays your number of contacts. It’s about quality, not quantity.

A LinkedIn member’s profile page highlights your education, career, and skills. The profile page also includes professional network newsfeeds and a limited number of customizable modules. LinkedIn basic membership is free. The members of the LinkedIn network are referred to as “connections”.

LinkedIn for Business enables you to connect with existing customers and expand your market value with word-of-mouth propaganda. Instead of simply increasing the number of followers and connections, you should use LinkedIn marketing tools to unlock new growth opportunities. LinkedIn supports businesses in many ways, so you need to figure out exactly what benefits you want to take from your LinkedIn business efforts. For example, are you trying to build a customer network for the online sale of products? Do you want to establish yourself as a thought leader? Or would you like to recruit top talent?

LinkedIn can encourage the sale of your products. [easy-tweet tweet=”Social Selling nutzt soziale Medien, um Verkaufsaussichten zu generieren, sich mit ihnen zu verbinden und sie zu verstehen.” user=”MirkoPeters8″ url=”https://bit.ly/2Zxd7zb” template=”user”] It is therefore a modern way to build valuable relationships with potential customers.

Social Sales Index SSI LinkedIn
LinkedIn Social Social Sales Index – SSI by author Mirko Peters

What is the LinkedIn Social Sales Index

The LinkedIn Social Selling Index (SSI) shows how effectively a person has established himself as a professional brand. In short, you can tell if a person is connected to the right people; whether it exchanges with experts and whether it is active in the network.

Social selling is still quite a new concept in the B2B world. It aims to use social media to build and promote online relationships with interested parties on social media. The focus of social selling is to generate trustworthy contacts by putting the needs of customers before their own, which in this case would mean the completion of a sale.

Before evaluating LinkedIn’s social selling index, it was difficult to measure the success of an individual social-selling strategy in a consistent way. LinkedIn’s Social Selling Index delivers a unique value that is updated daily, allowing it to identify its strengths and weaknesses.

LinkedIn SSI – What is measured in the Social Sales Index ?

What does the LinkedIn SSI score actually mean? The LinkedIn SSI score is mainly measured by the following four points. We have broken down each evaluation component to explain it as easily and intelligibly as possible for you.

1.) Building a personal brand

It is extremely important that you optimize your Linkedin profile with a view to customers and customers. Check whether you publish relevant articles that appeal to professionals in your industry. This content can be either from trusted sources or from one of your blog or LinkedIn Pulse posts that you write using the Publish an Article feature. It is a good thing to establish yourself as a thought leader.

2.) Finding the right customers/industryexperts

LinkedIn offers sophisticated search tools to help you find the ideal customer and industry expert. This includes regularly expanding your network and building valuable relationships. For example, LinkedIn’s analytics tool can be used to curate a reader-focused marketing strategy to reach potential customers and increase revenue.

3.) Dealing with insights

Dealing with insights (articles, posts, videos, appointments) is a great way to find similar people from your own industry as well as in the industry of your ideal customer. By joining relevant and active groups, expertise can be shared without any sales focus. It is also advisable to become an active member of these groups in order to get in touch with your future customers. Insights (insights) are primarily a feature of LinkedIn premium accounts, so it’s unlikely to get a high score if you’re not willing to pay for it. Apart from the active use of insights, you can increase your score by looking at content (commenting, sharing) that publishes your connections.

4.) Building relationships

Obviously, a lot of people want to build relationships with the top executive within companies that you want as a customer. But it’s important not to discriminate against other employees within the company, because according to LinkedIn, 73 percent of B2B buyers prefer sales professionals who have been recruited by someone they know. The percentage rises to 87 percent if they were introduced by someone from their professional network.

The Importance of LinkedIn SSI Results

LinkedIn claims that users with a higher SSI score are more successful at achieving their sales goals than users with a low SSI score. For example, highly active LinkedIn users get 45 percent more opportunities than others.

The result does not guarantee an increase in sales success, but it establishes a strong link between specific and targeted network activities, an increase in opportunities and potential prospects.

How to Optimize LinkedIn Profile for the Social Selling Index

Create a buyer-centric profile

The profile should not revolve around oneself, but rather the customers you want to reach. After all, your target audience isn’t about recruiters you want to convince, it’s about generating leads. Still, most of the profiles of sellers are digital resumes or, worse, a copied and pasted value proposition.

Other LinkedIn users use the network to find people they can trust and want to work with. They look at their profile and judge whether they can imagine building a business relationship. As a seller, you should send messages to your entire profile to show you how to help your customers. Share knowledge that is valuable to them and make it clear that you are a trusted and helpful resource. As a salesperson, do not write on your CV how much money you have contributed to your company, but what benefits have arisen for your customers.

Optimization of photo, heading and summary

Most profile visitors first look at these three areas: photos, headings, and summaries. In today’s fast-paced world, no one wants to spend too much time scrolling! This means that all core information should be Above the Screen.

Your photo should be professional, i.e. no selfies, no group photo, beach photos or school pictures from 20 years ago are taboo. It is not necessarily obligatory to wear a suit in the picture, but one should appear trusting and authentic – like someone to whom a prospective buyer can entrust his business.

The title should not be used as a heading. Instead, it is best to answer these two questions: Who are you helping and how do you want to help? Your profile visitors usually only look around briefly on your LinkedIn profile, so formulate it as tightly and pointedly as possible.

The summary must be as prominent and appealing as possible. It should show the added value that you or your product offer the customer. It is recommended that you end up with a call to action, and several troublemakers (eye-catching content) should also be added.

Conscious lyrizing the network

Connect with the people with whom you have had successful contact in the past. It is also possible to connect with people you have never really met. But please do this on the right track, no one likes to be contacted by spammers or contact bots.

In general, your own network should consist of people you really had contact with (personal or virtual).

If an invitation is sent to someone without having met the person before, please send a personal message here and briefly explain why you should both be on each other’s network. Do not start contacting you directly with a sales intention. This can then preferably be sent better in an InMail or e-mail.

Keep the profile public

You should not restrict your LinkedIn profile as a seller so as not to be displayed as anonymous. After all, it’s about the social networking of LinkedIn, it’s not for nothing called “social network”. Tests with customers have shown that more than 30 percent of people whose profile is viewed anonymously are back to their profile. Especially when you’re trying to expand your reach and generate leads, that’s a good thing to arouse curiosity.

Publish at least four to six content per day

According to a statement from Topo inc. The survey gives people who consistently share content 2 to 3 times more profile views than inactive users.

As a seller, you probably rarely blog or create your own content. You should ask yourself what content should you share? The articles that are of interest to your target audience do not all have to be written by themselves. You can also curate content at any time.

Articles from external sources also give a credible and less self-serving impression. One should try to find a balance between spanning content and sales information. Spend at least 20 to 30 minutes a day searching your own feed for content.

Scan the buyer’s profile before adjusting your own approach

You have to look for three types of information: role-specific, goal-specific, and common ground.

Role-specific basis: What are your responsibilities?
Target-specific basis: What are the goals you want to achieve in your role?
Common basis: What are the similarities with your customer? It is very important to find some kind of connection to yourself, it can be a common connection, a colleague, a hobby or an experience.


You should also try to pick up topics from the Prospect’s LinkedIn profile that you can contact. Check out the feed of content that the user has published recently. Here you can see if he has posted press releases, articles about new leaders, events, or other important news. You can then contact one of his posts via a comment.

Using InMails and Emails

Just like e-mails, InMail is a suitable and perhaps even more effective channel for the introduction of your own product or service. Research by InsideSales.com found that an InMail in LinkedIn with exactly the same content as an email receives a 33 percent higher response than the email.

Content, sharing and commenting

Nothing makes a person happier than applause. Likes and shares are the digital applause. Follow your customers’ topics, view their posts and show appreciation!
Benefits of the LinkedIn Social Sales Index

The 5 benefits of LinkedIn’s Social Selling Index (SSI) are as follows:

1. The SSI is ideal for determining an underlying. After optimizing your LinkedIn activities, you can see how the score has improved.

SSI Vergleich Branchen und Netzwerk

2. The SSI is a quantitative indicator of a seller’s capabilities. Team compositions can also be identified: In general, a team consists of beginners, advanced and experienced LinkedIn user stars. In some cases, beginners should be required to complete a LinkedIn Basic program so you can keep up.

3. By averaging all of the team’s SSI scores, you can see the average level of competence of all team members. The higher the SSI average, the faster you can expect good sales.

4. The SSI score motivates to achieve more, the principle is also known as gamification. The SSI scores are republished daily. It’s similar to a motivating driver for more self-improvement, similar to fitness watches, but it’s about business, not athletic success.

5. The SSI is ideal for competitions. Competitions such as “Best Profile” or “Best Networker” have always been held in sales training. By using SSI scores, you can make competitions measurable. Every single one of you in a sales team wants to be at the top of the SSI leaderboard.

Disadvantages of the LinkedIn Social Sales Index

Some drawbacks of the LinkedIn Social Sales Index are:

1. It is claimed that the SSI results are updated daily and that they are based on parameters such as the publication of posts with “attractive content”. However, if you start to focus too intensively on the SSI results, you will be distracted by the actual direction of networking.

2. The daily update of SSI results does not always seem to take into account all interactions. Some users complain that their SSI hasn’t changed for weeks, even though they’ve been very active on LinkedIn. According to their expectations, their ratings should have gone up. But they apparently didn’t.

3. And thirdly, after all, sales agreements count. Social sales are not really what a platform like LinkedIn can measure. This requires another solution in which sales with sales value could be deposited. LinkedIn also changes general data from industry to industry, from country to country, and from network to network.

What should I pay attention to in relation to the LinkedIn SSI score?

In order to answer these questions, it is worth remembering that all four pillars are connected to determine the entire SSI. It is therefore unlikely that even one pillar can be ignored if one is determined to achieve a respectable score of 80 or more.

4 Säulen des SSI
Columns of the SSI

However, the first pillar – the establishment as a professional brand is by far the most basic. Many LinkedIn users create their profile, personalize their staff, and stop actively using LinkedIn. Permanently successful LinkedIn users must be permanently engaged in all four pillars in order to assert themselves as a pioneer within the LinkedIn community.

Conclusion:

The digital transformation took a 360-degree rotation in the way we communicate with each other, build relationships and, of course, (buy). Companies have had to develop new strategies as technology has made progress and society has changed rapidly as a result.

More recently, the concept of social sales or “social sales” has gained particular importance, which has led to a paradigm shift in traditional sales strategies. It allows to maximize online sales in certain companies, thanks to the optimization of the presence on social networks. The art is to sell via social networks without directly promoting a product.

By using LinkedIn as a social network, people connect with their colleagues and do business. Everything you do on LinkedIn should add value to your network. In the future, the network will think of you and recommend you to others. Through face-to-face conversations with customers and prospects, you can better understand how to build trusting relationships. Diesel-based principles apply offline as well as online.

The evaluation of the Social Selling Index (SSI) is a measure of how your own sales activities are conducted with the LinkedIn Sales Navigator. Clicking on your SSI score takes you to a dashboard that gives a picture of how the social-selling efforts are going and how he’s doing with his LinkedIn network in his own industry. The Sales Navigator tracks the history of social selling activities over time and shows where it performs best and where there are still opportunities for improvement.

LinkedIn users with a higher SSI score are more successful at achieving their sales goals than those with a low SSI score (according to LinkedIn). The Social Selling Index (SSI) is demonstrably important for ranking linkedIn search. This is crucial to after receiving business requests, new job vacancies, or simply expanding your network with the right people. The high SSI score does not guarantee an increase in sales success, but increases the likelihood of achieving the sales targets.

Is digitalization a job killer? With these skills, they beat every machine

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Digitisation is an important tool when it comes to organisational impacts and as such can pose a challenge for the workforce. It changes the way every company works and how every company takes care of itself when it innovates. It’s never been so important to see how you can leverage the power of digital technologies to improve your career prospects, support the brand’s mindfulness, and grow/build your audience globally to deliver results.

Digital gold – the importance of data for businesses and citizens

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Data is considered digital gold. Accordingly, there is currently a gold-digger mood in German companies. Achim Berg, president of the digital association Bitkom, explains the importance of data in our society in an interview with the German trade newspaper. He describes how very different data is collected to optimize business processes and improve the customer experience. The success of the data evaluation depends on the degree of digitization of the individual companies. It is important not to lose sight of data protection and to bring benefits to citizens through digitalisation. Decentralized data storage could help. Berg expects the importance of data to increase in the future. We present his central theses from the interview.

Briefly explained – Process Mining

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https://open.spotify.com/episode/5B9RkRduzef7qMU3UewAg8

How do I advance my business through Process Mining?

Do you want to analyze and optimize your company’s business processes and achieve process efficiency? Process Mining eliminates the loss of 20-30% of your revenue due to weaknesses in the business process. Especially in larger companies, it is impossible to find a person who understands all the factors and steps involved in a business process. This is made possible by process mining. Here we explain what process mining is, for whom it is worthwhile and how it is applied in the company.

What is Process Mining?

Was ist Process Mining small

Process mining is a process management method and is sometimes referred to as Automated Business Process Discovery (ABPD). Real processes are analyzed as a basis. Assumed or theoretical processes are not considered with process mining because electronic event logs must be available to work the method. Process Mining combines techniques in the fields of data mining, computional intelligence, process modeling and analysis.

The method is data-driven and focused on the analysis of event logs. Event Logs are information about individual steps in the process that are stored in IT systems. Log files reflect events in chronological order and can be assigned to a specific step or person in the process. Each step that is digitally supported leaves these traces as logs in the IT system, which are then used for evaluation. In this way, trends and patterns can be identified, weaknesses can be identified and typical business processes can be better understood. All of this helps to optimize them.

In addition, Process Mining provides an objective view of the existing processes that you would not get when “humanly” analyzing business processes. Each employee probably has different ideas about why a process doesn’t run smoothly. Process mining allows you to optimize based on data and facts and not just act on the basis of personal assessment.

Examples of processes that are frequently analyzed by process mining are sales processes, manufacturing processes, logistics processes or IT service management processes. The only requirement is the existence of an electronic event log that can be evaluated.

Process mining is partly related to data mining and the terminology is also influenced by it. A very large amount of data is evaluated to gain or draw on helpful insights. Unlike data mining, however, it is not a specific incident or defined challenge that is evaluated, but an entire business process.

One drawback of Process Mining is that steps in the process that take place exclusively analogously cannot be evaluated. For example, the analysis does not include a feeling that the employee has when performing a work step or the customer’s facial expression when interacting with customer service. This should be kept in mind when considering the results of process mining. Nevertheless, Process Mining offers valuable insights.

What are the process mining types?

Welche Process Mining Typen gibt es small

Process mining uses techniques that help create, assess, and expand process models. In this context, three types of process mining were defined.

Detection

Also called Discovery, this type of process mining processes are traced and understood, as well as models for business processes are created. The causes of poorly performing processes are determined here. This step thus forms the basis for improvements.

Conformity check

This type is also called conformance and allows the comparison of developed process models to the actual and current data. They are checked for compliance, revealing vulnerabilities. Existing process models can be validated by this step and differences between reality and model are shown.

Extension

The extension or enhancement is used when you want to extend business processes. With the help of newly acquired information, new processes can be created or existing ones can be improved.

How is Process Mining applied in the company?

Wie wird Process Mining im Unternehmen angewendet small

There are processes in every company, which is why Process Mining is theoretically applicable in every company. In order to obtain electronic event logs, which form the basis for evaluation, we need workflows that are at least partially digitally supported. Even for very small companies, where workflows are manageable and there are people who can understand the whole process and understand all the factors related to it, the investment in Process Mining is of secondary importance. Here, vulnerabilities in business processes can usually still be identified and improved by this person.

For process mining there are usually special software and applications. This technology uses key figures to show the functioning of processes or even weak points of business processes. These metrics are called Key Process Performance Indicators (KPPIs) in this area. They can be combined with a company’s KPIs to provide an even more comprehensive picture of performance. It is also helpful to have a homogeneous IT infrastructure for the proper functioning of the Process Mining project.

It is worth applying Process Mining step by step and starting with a central process. Some time should be spent planning and selecting the process. The objectives of the Process Mining project should also be defined first in order to achieve helpful results. Then you can start analyzing and improving. If you have optimized everything accordingly, you can take further processes step by step. In the following period, Process Mining should be used continuously in order to be able to detect problems at an early stage. Process mining can also be used optimally in the next step to monitor workflows and to verify compliance with guidelines.

Conclusion

Process mining is a useful investment to achieve process efficiency. Note, however, that processes are not static and process mining should not be a one-off action, but should be integrated into the company regularly and permanently. When processes are clear, it is also easier to implement changes and react more flexibly to environmental influences. Process mining can also be used for ongoing control and improvement and is already successfully used by many companies. If you have asked yourself more than once why your processes are not running as smoothly as you wish and how you can change this, you should definitely invest in Process Mining. By accurately understanding your workflows, you know where to start, become more flexible, detect errors before they have far-reaching impacts, and are one step ahead of your competitors.

Briefly explained – Rapid Prototyping

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https://open.spotify.com/episode/6BG4KxFkaIl0VcEe4OqJOP

How does Rapid Prototyping advance me and my company?

To test an idea, it’s worth creating a prototype. Most people know this and often this proof of concept is carried out before investing in the production of a new offer. The problem here is that the production of a prototype is often already very time-consuming and costly and requires almost as much preparation and resources as the actual manufacturing process of the final product. This is annoying if the prototype does not arrive as desired in practice. This is where rapid prototyping comes in. It allows you to produce a prototype that is suitable to validate your idea, but saves you investments. Different versions can also be tested much faster. Here we explain what rapid prototyping is, how it works and whether it is suitable for you.

What is Rapid Prototyping?

Rapid prototyping is an umbrella term for different techniques that enable scale-based models to be produced using CAD data (computer-supported design data). These look like the original product and work like this. However, Rapid Prototyping is not aimed at producing a final product, but only at producing prototypes or small batches. Additive manufacturing, rapid manufacturing, rapid tooling or simply 3D printing are often said to rapid prototyping. There are now more than 30 different techniques and procedures for rapid prototyping worldwide.

The first forms of 3D printing were already in the 1980s. Since then, a lot has happened in this area and 3D printing is now ideally suited for the production of prototypes. This technique allows you to accurately represent both the size and design, as well as the way it works, making it suitable for proofing. Rapid protoyping can be used to produce concept models or working prototypes. It is also used very gladly and successfully to test the manufacturability. By means of small batches produced by 3D printing, errors in the production process can be detected and avoided at an early stage.
The models can be interacted with, so you get pretty close to the final product when testing. Misunderstandings due to insufficient visualization of a concept are avoided and the testers can be observed when interacting with the prototype to identify possible weaknesses. The collected feedback can also be implemented immediately by rapid prototyping and the optimized prototype can be retested.

Compared to the production of a real product, rapid prototyping is much faster and more resource-saving. This will make it possible to produce and test prototypes in one day. The optimizations are also implemented quickly and can be tested again without a long time delay.
The real models also promote employee engagement and motivation. When abstract concepts quickly become tangible and functioning prototypes, this motivates testing, optimizing and developing and spurs further innovations.

Rapid prototyping also reveals weaknesses in the concept without serious consequences. If the produced prototype does not arrive well or does not work as planned, much can be learned from it and an optimized prototype can be easily and quickly produced with the findings. Investments are within a manageable framework and are much lower than if the final product had already been produced. This promotes your company’s error culture and simplifies the trial and error process. Rapid prototyping therefore offers you numerous advantages.

How is Rapid Prototyping used and for whom is it suitable?

To apply rapid prototyping, three-dimensional design data must be available in digital form. These can be processed by special systems for rapid prototyping via a corresponding interface.

The implementation of rapid prototyping ideally takes place at a 24-hour rhythm. During the working day, the model is designed or optimized and at night it goes into 3D printing. The following morning, the 3D printer is cleaned and the model tested. Then the cycle starts from the beginning until the optimal version of the product is found.

Rapid prototyping is a good and efficient solution for designers, product developers, R&D departments and engineers. The costs of 3D printing are manageable nowadays and can therefore be a good solution for small businesses. In most cases, it is much cheaper to make a prototype than to invest in tools, machines and materials for the production of an “original”.

Traditionally, rapid prototyping is used for prototypes that require high complexity. This is the case, for example, in architecture, the automotive, aerospace and aerospace industries, mechanical engineering and health.

A high-precision prototype can also be convincing for start-ups looking for investors and pitching with financiers. Of course, despite the lower cost of producing an original, there are still expenses for rapid prototyping that exceeds those of on-screen visualizations or elemental crafts. That’s why it’s worth thinking carefully about how precise the prototype should be. If a rough model is sufficient, other techniques can also be used. However, if a high-precision prototype is required, rapid prototyping is excellent.

Conclusion

The prototypes produced by CAD data are definitely better than on-screen visualization and high-precision. Even the different materials can be displayed in a fairly detailed way by 3D printing. When it comes to trying out a concept and conducting tests, rapid prototyping is unbeatable. The only disadvantage is the still higher costs than when displaying models on the screen or even more rudimentary forms of presentation of a prototype. However, precision quickly compensates for this disadvantage.

In addition, there are no limits to the imagination of rapid prototyping and unusual or innovative products can also be ideally illustrated. Rapid prototyping gives you a significant competitive advantage through cost and time savings, as well as the ability to quickly optimize and test many variants.

The 24-hour work cycle also clearly defines how rapid prototyping is best implemented. This makes it worthwhile to try this procedure if you are confronted with the new development or optimization of a product. You can also use rapid prototyping in your company to promote innovation.

What is Digital Leadership?

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https://open.spotify.com/episode/3SBvigNTuC4jCDuHoOUpfj

The rapidly advancing digitalization of all divisions does not stop at the demands on people themselves. The veteran hranly hrmanager suddenly has to become an influencer for his company on LinkedIn, the backend developer is suddenly required to be involved in product development in the agile team and the manager…. Yes, what actually happens to the manager? What does Digital Leadership look like? And where are the differences to “analog management”? We have investigated these questions for you.

What features does a Digital Leader need?

Führung und Lernen bedingen sich gegenseitig small

The bad news first: there is no checklist of digital manager attributes that you just need to tick off to become a certified digital leadership expert quickly and with 100% certainty. Just as digitalization is flexible and constantly evolving, the executive must always reorient at the changed requirements.

Various digitization frameworks, blueprints, strategy papers, etc. have been published in recent years, discarded in whole or in part, further developed or nailed to the office wall as lip service. The topic of digitization suffers from the sheer mass of input in the often lack of qualifications of the authors: managers who declare full-bodiedly that the digital transformation is completed in their company (“Completed” is by definition impossible) write books in self-publishing, which are guaranteed to lead to digital success. Hordes of psychologists offer in obscenely expensive seminars to attest to the necessary “digital skills” to analog leaders, but without changing their attitudes or ways of thinking…
It is therefore necessary to examine all these sources extremely critically and with the necessary distance. However, if one compares these results with the experiences of leading companies with a digital focus, some points can be filtered out, which are mentioned again and again when it comes to digital leadership. In the absence of a long-term, scientifically validated list, they form the best framework for modern leadership that we currently have. These include:

A digital leader and his team develop visions instead of controlling the implementation of targets and the achievement of goals.

You’ve probably encountered the metaphor of the wolf pack, in which the leader symbolizes the alpha animal. For decades, this corresponded to the self-image of managers: the leader of the pack, the strongest/smartest wolf, who is in complete control. Where simple employees put their feet up after work, he was (or “they” – but let’s face it: it was almost always an “he”) also available around the clock on weekends or on holiday. Work-life balance? Rather work-work balance! Hahaha, who will be well received at the next board meeting.

With the digital transformation, a new level was added to the metaphor: the aerial view of a pack of wolf in a snowy landscape made the rounds in many networks. It showed an aspect in the behaviour of wolves that has so far been deliberately ignored: the alpha animal is by no means a “leader” in the direct sense of the word. He does not march in front of the pack to show the way. No, the lead wolf is always behind the other animals at the end of the group. From there, he can ensure that none of the other wolves fall back, are attacked, or take another path. The alpha animal does not boldly pave the way for others through its superior strength and endurance; it ensures that the whole group is successful through its foresight and the ability to make the pack one.

Hardly any picture describes digital leadership better. After all, the manager is not a locomotive that pushes ahead and pulls the less qualified employees behind him. It is an enabler, an enabler that holds the team together, eliminates difficulties and thus enables individual members to reach their potential. After all, let’s not deceive ourselves: who creates the real values in a digital company? Who is really replaceable? The AI expert with a degree from the elite university, who hasn’t opened his LinkedIn mailbox for months because he gets 4 job offers every day beyond the 250,000/p.A.? Or the manager who, like hundreds of thousands of others, is still looking for his role in digitalization with his business studies + MBA and the motivation posters on the wall of the individual office?

This does not mean that digital transformation will make executives redundant – on the contrary! They are more important than ever. Only the requirements profile is now a significantly different one. They must succeed in bringing together the highly qualified employees of their team under a common vision (a vision that they could only develop through the input of those employees) and enable them to apply their skills. This means that the Digital Leader keeps his team’s back and provides the environment, processes and structures needed to implement the common vision.

The classic metrics against which successes of companies, departments and their executives were measured have also become largely obsolete due to digitalization. How do you measure the success of the business intelligence team? The size of the data warehouse? The ratio of unstructured to structured data? The number of requests from other departmentsthat have been answered?

And if Team X has been working on the new app for two years, which will bring in millions directly on the first day of release, but has no measurable results by then – what is the point of insisting on old analog measurement and control systems?

Finding an answer to such questions is one of the fundamental problems of digitization and the search for it is one of the many difficult tasks of digital leadership.

A digital leader uses as extensive a data base as possible to make decisions and avoids, as much as possible, incorporateing his subjective opinion into a decision.

Another image, which often subconsciously swung along in the self-image of the analog managers, was the idea of the leader as a great general, who outmaneuvers the enemy through clever tact and, with ingenious moves, also astonishes his own troops. The “enemy” here is the competition, inside and outside the company. If we are honest, the customer was often painted a goal shift – after all, before digitization,he was a mystical being whose behavior apparently did not follow any discernible rules and who decided with his benevolence on personal success.

The analog-leitwolf-general manager saw only himself as being able to develop the right plans and strategies through his imaginary genius – and a good dose of glass ball use – that would bring the enemy to its knees. Others lack the necessary foresight and intelligence, he said.

At every opportunity, it was always emphasized that there was a huge predominance of difficulties that would be against the analogous manager. Not a bad idea: if the analog manager failed with his plans, he could always blame the circumstances and the incompetence of others. If he was successful, his victory became all the more impressive in view of the resistance swayed by him.

But digitalization has completely overturned the basic prerequisites for this kind of self-expression. The customer is no longer an inexplicable mythical creature! Today, it is illuminated in all facets, its wishes and goals recorded and accessible at any time. The big change that has come in is that our entire world, both entrepreneurial ly, and privately, is now digitized and data-driven. The use of digital applications, which a digital leader always focuses on, and the ever-increasing performance of our technologies, has significantly increased the data wealth.

Data – and with it knowledge – is now the most important asset of a company, because it determines the success of products and services. Thanks to powerful BI, market potentials can be discovered in seconds. What does our product need in order for our customers to offer it preference over the competition in the future? A call in market research is enough to find out the result. And if it turns out that we lose disproportionately large amounts of sales in the second step of the checkout of our online store, our UX team can find and fix the reason after a short analysis.

The previously popular presentation, the many difficulties and problems would have made it impossible for the manager to succeed/would have made success almost impossible and could only be overcome by the unbelievable talent of the manager, now no longer works: if these difficulties actually exist, they would be proven with data and facts. By insisting on subjectively perceived resistance, the analog manager only makes himself ridiculous in a digital, evidence-based environment.

With better data and a better understanding of the personality of our customers, the demands on management change: where the analog manager made decisions that, in their opinion, could have a chance of success, digital leaders act according to the data situation. It is true that no human being is able to act completely objectively; the continuous experiment, however, is what distinguishes analog from digital guidance.

This may also mean that the Digital Leader’s prestige project is sacrificed to the red pencil if the data shows that success is questionable. Digital leadership therefore also places great demands on the manager’s ego: Only those who can put back here and are able to orientthemselves coolly and objectively to the data situation can keep up with the digital transformation and show lasting success.

This shows once again the particularly large discrepancy in the characteristics that have traditionally been linked to the management level and what is actually in demand due to digitalization. The days of big egos, great speeches and big gestures are over. The time for flexible team players to make data-based, objective decisions is dawning.

A digital leader develops strategies that focus on the customer and ask about their wishes and needs, rather than thinking from the company’s point of view from the beginning.

In the end, this is a continuation of the “great general” metaphor: companies also develop something like an ego through their culture. “We are market leaders, we design our products as we think it is right” is a good principle – until suddenly a competitor appears who listens to the wishes of the customers and literally rolls up the entire market overnight.

The importance of corporate culture for digital transformation cannot be overestimated. It determines depth, speed and ultimately also about the success or failure of digitization. All areas must therefore be aligned with the customer’s vision – a process that should be pushed forward by digital leadership.

As already mentioned, this includes first of all the acquisition of knowledge through appropriate data collection and processing. If the company has gained the best possible insight into its customers, their needs, interests, dislikes, idiosyncrasies, etc., this information must be consistently implemented. A high speed and flexibility is absolutely necessary for this, because profound social changes are taking us at an ever-increasing pace.

Global events reach billions of people through ubiquitous networking and influence your opinion. A new example of structural sexism in the US is spread over Twitter, and suddenly a German company is facing negative publicity because its board is made up of old white men. An app ecosystem like WeChat is an indispensable part of China and opens up the race to develop a comparable system in Europe. Hundreds of other examples could be found. Those who do not adapt to such developments and adapt their communication, processes and economic activities flexibly will be overtaken by the competition. Once these two steps, data focus and flexible and fast implementation, have been met, the path towards customer-side thinking has been taken and long-term success is possible.

Instead, if a company decides to plan and act from its own point of view, the course is set to be overwhelmed by digitalization. Do you market your products along the path that corresponds to your company’s self-image, even though your customers are on the move in completely different channels? Then you’ll probably feel like the dozens of luxury brands that steadfastly refuse to switch from stationary to internet retail, even though 90% of their customers prefer to shop online – and then go under.

Are you resting on your position and past achievements? Then you will probably suffer the same fate as the German car industry, which relies on oversized SUV road armour while customers are interested in agile electric vehicles – and have therefore been left behind by international competition.

But the customer’s view is not just a company-wide aspect; it is a core competence of every single digital leader. The customer is the focus of all aspects of his actions. Digital leadership therefore also means courageously deviating from company requirements if they serve the end in itself. A difficult field that quickly gives the digital manager a reputation for being “uncomfortable” in an old-fashioned company. This inconvenience, however, is preferable to the rigid work in the corset of an analogous corporate culture. Because while a company that is unable to adapt to the new circumstances is on its way to ruin, your customer centering will reward you with success for a long time to come.

But how can this customer focus be implemented in everyday life? The answer to this must be: depends on the case. From the perspective of product development, for example, the question changes from “what can we sell to the customer?” or “what does the market want?” to: “How can we inspire people?”. In production or in the service segment, the questions are no longer “how can we make our product better?” or “how can we sell more?” but: “What need does the customer have – and how can we satisfy it?”.

A digital leader focuses on the result, not the output.

Digital Leadership understands that digital transformation is first and foremost a transformation of strategies, cultures, structures and the understanding of customers. By using modern digital technologies, the Digital Leader achieves a higher quality of results. Yes, it is true that digitisation can speed up and improve the old work processes and procedures – but this is a very short-sighted approach. Real added value results instead in the change of the retracted patterns. Instead of increasing the previous output, the focus should be on creating new, potentially completely different results.

For example, you can transfer procurement applications for your administrative buildings from paper to digital format, increasing output (faster applications, cheaper, easier, etc.). At this point, however, you could also directly ask why 100% of your administrative staff still have a job and do not work through work-anywhere from home or anywhere else. This would have made little difference to the output, at least initially, but would have had a significant impact on the result (more efficient, happier employees).

The Digital Leader is therefore aware of the current “key figure problem”, i.e. the difficulty of grasping and measuring digitized work entrepreneurially, consciously and always strives not to fall under its spell. A departmentthat has taken the first step towards digital transformation may not be better in absolute terms, or perhaps even worse, than one in which “everything is the same.” However, due to the profound changes in its processes and ways of thinking, it will react faster, more comprehensively and more successfully at the first sign of change. Thanks to the digitalization that has begun, flexibility has become part of their DNA.

This long-term result is therefore preferable to short-term improved output.

Another extreme here would be the “over-motivated digitizer”, which throws all known patterns overboard and immediately and exclusively relies on a digital transformation that is as comprehensive as possible. Only in very few cases (e.g. building completely new teams) is it possible to ignore the day-to-day business in this way. The right speed, which deviates from familiar metrics and shifts to digital results, depends on the respective company, the industry,the culture and much more.

A digital leader pursues the vision holistically, instead of optimizing individual key figures through isolated actions.

The task field of the analog manager is often divided into many, small to-dos. Here a bottleneck in controlling, there a project in arrears, here the technology is not sufficient and one of the employees has slipped into a task for which he is not qualified at all. If the manager has managed to extinguish all these fires with a lot of personal commitment, the next problems are already waiting. The work was carried out in isolated actions that did not improve the overall situation.

The Digital Leader, in comparison, concentrates on changing the structure and culture of his remit: by empowering the team, i.e. consistently equipping him with all the necessary powers to work independently, he has already created the foundations that enable his employees to solve problems. Thanks to the consistent use of digital systems, which is an indispensable part of digital transformation, this positive effect is amplified.

Thanks to the common vision that the Digital Leader has developed with his team and which is constantly being developed, not only are everyone pulling together – they are also pulling in the same direction.

This vision, which is closely linked to the respective product and its characteristics, forms a brace around the work of the entire team. Instead of the thousand construction sites, digital leadership can now limit the focus to just two things: on the one hand, the further advancement of the digital transformation in order to amplify the positive effects and to benefit new ones. On the other hand, by removing obstacles, whether technical, bureaucratic or social, the digital manager enables his employees to make full use of their talents and thus to do the best work.

It is this type of work – fast, flexible, digital, independent, customer-oriented – that makes a digital transformation such a worthwhile goal for companies. The competitive advantages that arise from this are so significant that they can quickly decide on success or failure.

So you could see the Digital Leader as a leader who has a stronger impact on structure and processes. Digital Leadership is the support and enhancement of the values of digital transformation. The focus moves as far away from daily content as possible and instead creates help for self-help. The modern digital manager is a supporter, amplifier and motivator – and no longer a controller, self-promoter or driver.

Digital Leadership summarized

Digital leadership is thus reflected in a manager’s ability to understand, drive and transform digital transformation into customer-effective results. It is important to be careful and not too drastic in changing the historical structures and processes of a company. A lot of empathy is also required if employees are to adapt to the new, digital management style. To ensure the success of the changes, a clear, common vision is needed – it distinguishes the analog “everyone on its own” way of working from the digital, which is characterized by empowered work by team members, the consistent use of digital systems and absolute customer focus.

“Getting all these aspects under one roof” is a mammoth task for any executive. It is almost impossible to achieve good results in any sub-area immediately. This makes it all the more important to constantly examine one’s own achievements and to adjust where there is a need. Digital leadership is not a single trait that could be trained, but a sum of different ways of thinking and acting that influence each other and must be treated accordingly.

LinkedIn Basic Knowledge: 8 Best Practices Tips for Your LinkedIn Company Page

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With over 600 million users, LinkedIn is the largest social network in the field of B2B and is therefore of great importance for lead generation. This social media platform is primarily about building contacts and networks. It’s not just about your own contacts, it’s also about who your contacts are in contact with (contacts of your contacts). For example, my LinkedIn profile has over 6000 contacts, together they have about 82,0000 contacts and the 3rd degree contacts result in a total of almost 2.8 million contacts. This demonstrates the potential reach of LinkedIn. If my profile alone reaches such a wide reach, what do you mean, how big is the reach when they add up all the employees and fans of your company? In this way, LinkedIn gives your company access to a market that can be gigantic.

4 Do’s and 4 Don’ts at webinars and videoconferencing

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ZOOM, Skype and Co. are experiencing an absolute boom. The reason: the Corona crisis. People can no longer meet privately and now chat via video to maintain social contacts. These portals are also increasingly used for webinars and video conferences. But it is not only during this time that they offer advantages. You can find out exactly what webinars and video conferences are, what advantages they bring and do’s and don’ts that make you an expert, here in the blog.

LinkedIn Basic Knowledge: 7 Tips for The Success of Your LinkedIn Showcase Page

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A central task of any company is to describe your buyer personas (target groups). If these personas are different from each other, the challenge for companies is to address them individually. It’s also hard to get all the buyer personas on a social media site equally excited about the company.

LinkedIn Basic Knowledge: HowTo with Employee Advocacy in 4 Steps to Success

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Employee Advocacy refers to the commitment of employees as ambassadors of your own company to expand their marketing reach, open up new perspectives and attract potential customers without spending much on advertising.

Successfully apply Kano model in customer service

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Why should you learn about the Kano model?

Approaches to improving customer service are many, but clear steps and recommendations for action are often missing. The Kano model offers good assistance and it is easy to deduce concrete implementation possibilities. So if customer service or product development is a priority for you, it’s important to look at the model.

What is the Kano model?

Noriaki Kano, a quality management scientist from Tokyo, developed the Kano model in the 1970s. The model explains how customer satisfaction is created and which product characteristics generate true enthusiasm for the customer. It can be wonderfully applied to services, customer service and usability considerations. The Kano model allows you to look at an offer even better from a customer’s point of view and supports you in the development of new products or services. It can be useful help for start-ups as well as for large companies. The Kano model consists of three dimensions: basic requirements, performance requirements, and enthusiasm requirements.

Basic requirements

Basic requirements are a “must” for any product or service. These criteria must be met, but they do not yet define an offer and do not set it off from the competition. Only the dissatisfaction of the customer is avoided by fulfilling basic characteristics. Basic requirements are taken for granted by the customer, so fulfilling them does not yet lead to satisfaction. However, these requirements must be met, otherwise it will lead to sometimes great dissatisfaction with the customer. Basic features can be requested and expressed directly by the customer and can therefore be described, but they also include implied requirements that cannot be put into words by the customer. It is therefore essential that you fulfil these obvious functions. If this is the case, it is worth taking care of the performance and enthusiasm requirements in order to really ensure customer satisfaction. Examples of basic requirements include tight packaging for liquids, fast loading of websites, or the presence of customer service. These functions are a prerequisite for the customer, but if they are present, this does not lead to satisfaction as they are taken for granted. However, failure to comply, such as leaking packaging, a website that does not load, or a non-existent customer service, quickly leads to great dissatisfaction.

Performance

The customer is aware of performance requirements. The customer has specific requirements for product characteristics and specific ideas, which features should be met and to what extent. If fulfilled, you can make the customer happy here and collect plus points and thus stand out from the competition, which may not meet these characteristics. The customer’s choice of their own offer can also be decided by covering these features. Performance requirements can be met to varying degrees, enabling direct comparison of bids between providers. Meeting these requirements leads to a linear increase in satisfaction, but non-existent satisfaction leads to a linear increase in dissatisfaction. Examples of performance requirements would be the availability of a car’s customer service or gasoline consumption. Here you can compare directly between suppliers, when customer service is available, through which channels and whether it costs anything to contact or how much liter of gasoline is consumed per 100 kilometers. The more performance requirements are met, the better. If, in addition to 24 hours of availability, customer service also offers contact by mail, chat and telephone and responds relatively quickly, the customer addresses. While one car offers low fuel consumption, another has much more storage space, better interior design, LED headlights and various other features, the choice is more likely to fall on the product with more fulfilled performance features. Performance characteristics thus distinguish them from competing products. They are consciously perceived and can be packed into words by the customer. This means that you can query these requirements in concrete terms and thus incorporate them into the development or optimization process of quotations. However, it should be noted that even if the performance characteristics are met at a high level, the basic requirements must be absolutely covered in order to satisfy the customer.

Enthusiasm requirements

The enthusiasm requirements make the real difference in product comparison and lead, as the name suggests, to a true enthusiasm of the customer. They surprise the customer as they don’t necessarily expect these features and provide a wow effect. They provide special benefits and thus create a great advantage over the competition. Even supposedly small changes can make the difference here. Characteristics that lead to enthusiasm are seen as innovative and special, since the customer did not know about this possibility beforehand. They make an offer into a brand to which the customer feels connected and with which he likes to identify and lead to a very special customer experience. The customer is happy to recommend the brand or the product and can also bind to the brand in the long term. Enthusiasm requirements are your competitive advantage! However, they are not so easy to develop and discover, as they are mostly new and unknown. However, it is worth investing here!

Furthermore, there are still minor characteristics and rejection characteristics. Insignificant features are “nice to haves”, their presence does not lead to satisfaction, nor does their absence lead to dissatisfaction. These are usually small things without concern for the customer, such as an existing cigarette lighter for non-smokers. From a vendor’s point of view, however, it is important to know insignificant characteristics, because costs can be saved so often. Rejection characteristics are features that cause dissatisfaction in presence, but do not satisfy when omitted. They are therefore the reversal of basic requirements. This is why rejection characteristics are difficult to query, as they are not always conscious of the customer and can sometimes not be put into words. An example would be disturbing pop-ups in a webshop.

Application and implementation in customer service

First, take a thorough look at the current state of your customer service and divide characteristics into the different requirements categories. What are the characteristics and behaviors that characterize your service? What is the difference to the competition? Where are you even unique? What features do your customers attract to compare providers? Performance features can be requested during market investigations and support you in answering these questions and in the classification. The customer can explicitly specify these performance requirements.

Next, you’ll see if all the basic requirements are met. If this is the case, it is worth addressing the performance requirements. Are there any features and services that can be integrated? Should you omit a negligible or even a rejection feature for this? If you and your customers are satisfied with the coverage of the features, it is worth thinking about a unique selling point or a special innovation in your customer service that will inspire enthusiasm and brand loyalty for your customers.

Conclusion

The Kano model helps to decide in which area of your customer service further investments are useful and where to start first. The habituation effect must also be taken into account. Where a live chat to contact customer service may have led to customer enthusiasm at the beginning, it is now almost a standard and no longer leads to a special perception and demarcation from the competition. In all respects of your services, please note: No dissatisfaction does not automatically mean satisfaction! You can now deduce how they generate satisfaction or even genuine enthusiasm among your customers from the Kano model.

Customer Journey Mapping – Developing Companies from a Customer Perspective

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What do I need a Customer Journey Map for?

A Customer Journey Map is the perfect tool to immerse yourself in your customers and look into their heads. The creation process gives you many new insights and insights to develop your business from a customer perspective. A customer journey map allows you to find out whether, at a specific point in contact with your company, the customer’s expectations are disappointed or even exceeded. It is a tool to build empathy for your customers and inspire them to tie them to themselves and your brand in the long term. Learn how to create a Customer Journey Map and what to consider.

Why should companies be developed from a customer’s point of view?

Customer-centric development is a key success factor for companies. Consistently integrating the customer’s view into business processes drives innovation, creates an advantage in the competition and helps you to inspire your customers and to repeatedly encourage them to buy or recommend you. It saves you the expensive development of products that do not convince on the market later, as you put your customers at the center right from the start and align themselves with their wishes and needs. There are various strategies and tools for the development of companies from a customer point of view, one of which is customer journey mapping.

What is Customer Journey Mapping?

Customer Journey Mapping, also known as an illustration of a customer experience, is a tool from Customer Experience Management. It helps you understand your customers. The customer’s path from the time prior to the initial contact with your company to the time after the purchase is fully visually reflected with the Customer Journey Map. The customer trip is usually presented as a linear history and each step on the trip is analyzed according to certain criteria:

The phases of the process your customer is going through
The specific steps that your customer must take at each stage, or the touchpoints with your company
The channels that the customer goes through or the exact movement of the customer through the process
The triggered emotions in each step (positive, neutral, negative)
The voltage arc or how important your customer classifies the respective step

Key factors that lead to customer satisfaction or disappointment are identified. Relationships between the different points of contact, channels and emotions are made visible. The steps or touch points on the Customer Journey Map can be directly and indirectly related to your business. Direct contact is, for example, a conversation with one of your representatives; indirect contact can be the experience at the post office, when picking up your parcel.

With the Customer Journey Map, you can also uncover vulnerabilities and pain points on the customer trip, which lead to the cancellation of the purchase. At the same time, purchasing accelerators, i.e. extremely positive emotions in connection with your company, can also be identified.

With these new insights, you can specifically decide where to start first and where a change brings the best effect and immediate improvement. Investments can also be analyzed from the customer’s point of view to see if they lead to the desired results and actually to a better customer experience.

How can Customer Journey Mapping be implemented and applied?

There are no standard standards for creating a Customer Journey Map, so you should first consider what type of presentation best suits you and your business. You can do the description of the customer trip on your own, but better in a small team to exchange ideas and incorporate different perspectives.

The Customer Journey Map is based on a Buyer Persona, which means you should first be aware of which persona you want to create the map for. This allows you to respond and focus perfectly on your customer segment. Because there is no offer that appeals to everyone and marketing strategies etc. can be better built on a specific target group.

If you have defined your Buyer Persona, start brainstorming the various steps (i.e. touch points) related to your offer first. Note that the first point of contact may be before the first contact with your company. For example, your Buyer Persona has a specific problem and wonders how to solve it.

The steps are then supplemented by a storyboard. This is a small sketch that you add to each step to visualize the steps and uncover any ambiguities or illogical sequences. No artistic talent is necessary here, the sketch can be kept quite simple.
Once you have done this, you should include the various channels (online and offline!) in the Customer Journey Map. You should add to each step where it takes place, whether in the online shop, when calling customer service or by post when picking up your parcel.

Then you define the emotion for each step. At each step, it should be noted whether a positive, neutral or negative emotion is triggered. The goal is to first remove any negative emotions from the Customer Journey Map by optimizing your processes and services. After that, you can start turning neutral experiences into positive or even enthusiasm. You can add the emotional perception to the steps as a numerical value, or better still transfer it to a simple line chart that graphically reflects the emotional progression over the course of the customer journey.

You should always remember that experiences have different meanings for everyone. If a step is of great importance to your buyer persona, it should also have the appropriate significance for your company, even if you may not find it personally so important. You can represent this meaning with a voltage arc. Each touch point is assigned a meaning on a numeric scale. How much excitement, excitement or drama does your Buyer Persona feel at this moment?
You should compare this arc of tension with the emotional course. If the tension is high and the emotion negative, you urgently need to start here.

However, a high tension and a very positive experience is good and the Buyer Persona will gladly remember you. Your customer journey doesn’t have to be perfect, even trying to put you on paper can bring many new insights. For the Customer Journey Map, there are many pre-built templates that you can download and print, or you can create them yourself according to your own ideas. There are also various tools and programs for creation. Depending on your preference, the Customer Journey Map can be created as a table, matrix, or detailed graphic. In the end, each Customer Journey Map is unique and customized to your business. For other services, objectives or buyer personas, you should create your own Customer Journey Map in order to keep track and better identify the different customer journeys.

Ideally, you can also ask your customers about your experiences and points of contact with your company and exchange ideas with you.

Customer Journey Mapping – Slideshare

Conclusion

have already come to know many possible applications, but there are no limits to your creativity, as there are no fixed specifications or a fixed model for mapping the customer journey. The Customer Journey Map can not only be used to map the current customer path, it can also serve as a vision of a future customer path. You can use them to develop and optimize products, plan and review marketing activities, target your customers across departments, or identify tracking opportunities and UX issues. This makes the Customer Journey Map an indispensable tool for customer-centric development and for achieving your long-term success! An exciting addition to the Customer Journey Map is the Value Model Canas.

NeuroLeadership with the SCARF model: “Brain-friendly employee leadership”

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What do neuroleadership and the SCARF model bring you?

Misunderstandings, frictions or even the complete disintegration of a team … All of this can be the impact of leadership. Neuroleadership and the SCARF model are about avoiding interpersonal conflicts. You should deal with this if your goal is to achieve a constructive working atmosphere and improve the performance of your employees. The model explains certain reactions scientifically and gives you tools to deal with them. It is basically applicable to all social interactions, including private life!

What is Neuroleadership?

Neuroleadership is a relatively new field of research and a new leadership approach in which the findings of neuroscience are fused with management theories.

The term was founded by Jeffrey Schwartz and David Rock in 2006, a neuroscientist and a management consultant. This should motivate employees to perform better and effectively implement change processes.

The goal of neuroleadership is to “lead brain-appropriately” to achieve better results. Neuroleadership does not consist of individual instruments, but rather of a fundamental understanding of processes from which you can form new ways of management.
What is NeuroLeadership

What is the SCARF model?

The SCARF model was also developed in 2008 by Jeffrey Schwartz and David Rock and specifies the neuroleadership findings. Basically, the SCARF model is based on the brain’s quest to maximize rewards and minimize threats. The recognition that social needs are processed in the same regions of the brain as basic survival needs is also at the root of this model. The abbreviation SCARF comes from English. The model consists of five dimensions: Status, Security/Certainty (Certainty),Autonomy , Connection (Relatedness) and Fairness.

As a leader, it gives you clues on how to support your employees in any social interaction. Above all, it promotes the intrinsic motivation of the
SCARF model

The 5 dimensions of the SCARF model

Status

The status is the relative position between people in a group. He describes how important we feel compared to others, whether we feel respected, and whether we are better or worse than others in one thing. The sense of superiority resulting from a supposedly higher state activates the reward system in the brain.

Conversely, a perceived loss of status leads to the activation of the brain regions, which are also active in physical pain. Performance assessments, praise and criticism affect the status of the business environment. Positive feedback and public recognition thus promote the perception of one’s own status. Whatever status you ascribe to, it depends on the environment. A status perceived as low in the company can be compensated by a high status in another environment (e.g. a voluntary service) and the negative effects can be counteracted.

Certainty

Certainty means the predictability of the future. The Certainty dimension can also be translated with predictability or certainty. The brain retrieves, if possible, familiar patterns to save energy and not to be constantly vigilant in the search for dangers (today’s saber-toothed tigers). This process also activates the reward system again. If a situation is unpredictable, it always causes a certain amount of stress and thus reduces performance. However, depending on the nature and extent of uncertainty, such a situation can also arouse interest, curiosity and attention, which in turn increases performance and problem-solving competence. In this case, it is important to deal with individual persons and to take individual circumstances into account.

Autonomy

This dimension describes the possibility of shaping one’s own environment and being able to influence decisions. It reflects how much we can determine our lives. Restricting autonomy can be perceived as a threat, and we sometimes even feel vulnerable. In this state, stress factors that cannot be controlled or altered are classified by the brain as particularly threatening. In the working environment, this usually leads to exaggerated, negative and irritated reactions.

Connectedness

Belonging and social relations are a basic human need. Do we feel accepted and safe in a group? As in the Stone Age, our brain still distinguishes between friend and foe. The presence of familiar faces appeals to the reward system. The trust that arises in well-functioning teams increases the willingness to exchange information with each other and to work with each other instead of against each other.

Fairness

How just we feel treated in comparison to others is described with this dimension. Experiencing fairness stimulates the intrinsical reward system. Transparency is a decisive factor here, especially in companies.

Application and implementation

If our brain feels threatened in one or more of the five dimensions, our performance decreases. Unfortunately, threatening responses are generally triggered faster than reward responses, which used to be good for survival, but today can hinder performance.

You can avoid this with the knowledge of the SCARF model. Here you will also find concrete implementation proposals for the new management style. But these implementation possibilities are not only conducive to managers, but also as a team member you can orientate yourself on the SCARF model.

The most important thing is to be honest with yourself first. Where do you already apply the findings of neuroleadership? Where else is it? How would you feel if your colleagues and employees acted according to the SCARF model? Perhaps your intention was meant nicely, but it still provokes a threat response from your counterpart. You can check this against the five dimensions.

Avoid losing your employee’s status! You can achieve this through praise and constructive criticism, attention and appreciation. This is usually even more sustainable than acquiring status symbols (company cars, own office, etc.).

Give your employees orientation and security! Communicate clearly what is expected of them and provide guidance and clear guidance if necessary. Let your employees influence. Support them to be courageous and to be able to shape their own environment and tasks.

Here, too, clearly communicated rules and framework conditions play an important role, which delineate your employee’s room for manoeuvre and enable him to make decisions himself. Measures such as self-determined learning portals, flexible working hours and self-selected office facilities increase autonomy.

Your employees can experience trust and connection! Social relations and positive cooperation should be the order of the day in order to achieve optimum performance. This can be done by empathy, trust from your side and occasional (voluntary!) team actions. But even a friendly handshake, joint talking topics or video conferences and the use of digital networks in global companies can lead to more cooperative behavior.

Say no to a lack of transparency and share information early. Create clear rules that your employees can control themselves at any time, or better set rules together as a team. This has been shown to promote compliance with the rules and does not provide room for injustice. However, this does not mean that misconduct should be tolerated. This, like praise, should be clearly addressed.

Brain-friendly employee management, a change management tool, building working teams and a new management style: all this is hidden behind the five dimensions of the SCARF model.

Conclusion

Our brains don’t work well when it suffers from time pressure and interpersonal conflict, because the threat system is active here. It switches to Fight or Flight mode or even turns dead. This is not necessarily conducive to a successful working day! Therefore, with the findings of the SCARF model, it is important to reactivate the reward system and thus create a productive working atmosphere and increased performance!

You can use the knowledge as a tool for sustainable employee motivation and for change processes at the personal or company level.

The Dilts Pyramid in an Entrepreneurial Context

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The Dilts Pyramid can serve as a model for shaping your digital transformation or for any changes you want to achieve at the organizational or team level. The Dilts Pyramid makes aspects transparent that most companies ignore in terms of change, goals, and problems, hindering success. For you, too, it is a guide in achieving goals and solving problems.

What is the Dilts Pyramid?

The Dilts pyramid comes from the NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) and is also referred to as the “model of logical planes” or “NLP pyramid”. It was developed in the 1980s by Robert Dilts, one of the co-founders of the NLP. With this model, you can explain where a problem or target is located and thus contribute to the clarification and planning of intervention measures. In addition, the Dilts Pyramid describes change processes of people, teams and entire companies. It is built as a hierarchical model, with a higher level organizing and influencing the information of the underlying layer.

How is the Dilts Pyramid structured?

The Dilts pyramid consists of six levels that should be viewed from top to bottom.

The 1st level goals and meaning
The top level describes the “why?” and is a level of emotion. Thus, it is not visible and cannot be observed directly. This results in overlaps with system theory. The top level requires the lower level. It gives meaning and meaning to everything.

The 2nd Level Identity
The second level is about the self-image and the foreign image. It refers to emotion as one of the top three levels. “Who are you?” and “How do the others see you?” describe this level.

The 3rd level values and beliefs
The third level can be conscious or unconscious. It refers to emotion and requires the application of skills and execution of behaviors of people. This is where a person’s convictions and ideals lie. Values and beliefs can be asked with “What is (you) important?”, “What are you looking for?” and “Why?”.

The 4th Level Skills
The fourth level of skills can be accurately described, but is not directly observable. The layer refers to the ratio as one of the bottom three levels. Questions about this level are marked by “How?”. How do I do an activity? What skills are needed for this?

The 5th level behavior
The fifth level is behavior. The behavior is directly visible and also refers to the ratio. It describes concrete actions, all individual actions and reactions. Related questions include: “What?”, “What exactly is being done?” and “What action can an outsider observe?”.

The 6th level environment
The environment forms the basis of the pyramid. Each behavior is embedded in a concrete context. This layer is directly visible and writable and refers to the ratio like the two above it. With the questions “Where?”, “When?”, “Who?” and “With whom?” this level can be described. This also leads to overlaps with Bateson’s theory of learning.

Application and implementation of the Dilts Pyramid

Changes at one level can only be achieved if you start at least at that level, but better at the level above it. The Dilts Pyramid can be applied to yourself, to teams or entire organizations.

Using the Dilts Pyramid for yourself

For yourself, it is especially helpful for solving a problem or for supporting your goal achievement. Are all levels aligned with the goal and meaning? Is there a rebuttant somewhere? At what level do I communicate and where can I start? Go through the layers one at a time to find out where it’s ticking.

Use the Dilts Pyramid at team level

A team-level application option is for inconsistent behavior by your team members after announced decisions. The Dilts Pyramdie allows you to explain this behavior and take action at each level. At the lowest level, we need to look at the corporate culture. What context is there for the employees, is there an open error culture and a flat hierarchy in which they can question and express constructive criticism?

For the next two levels, it is worth addressing behavior openly, introducing communication training or moderation techniques so that your employees can learn to express concerns objectively and resolve conflicts. Up to this point, interventions are clearly visible and their success can be clearly assessed.

For the top three levels, you can have one-on-one conversations with your employees to learn about their beliefs and past experiences. You should act as a role model and show your desired values on a daily basis so that your employees can orientate themselves on them. You can also learn a lot about the identity of your employees in these conversations. Pay close attention to your language, where a lot is already revealed about their identity and at what level your employee or team communicates. Also, going through and explaining the Dilts Pyramid with your team can help your employees and you understand which level is most worth it to start at. Give them time! Especially in the upper three levels, interventions take time.

Using the Dilts Pyramid at the company level

At the enterprise level, you can use the Example of Digitization to take the Dilts Pyramid. Start at the top level and define a clear goal and sense. You can find thousands of arguments as to why digitalization is good on the Internet, but what exactly does that mean in the context of your company? What is the sense for you?

The second level is about the identity of the company. What is your self-image like? How are you seen from the outside? And above all: does this correspond to the image of a digitized company or is it worth taking a look at here?

In the third level, values and beliefs are questioned. Do they make it possible or even hinder it? It may be necessary to change or adapt beliefs here. The values of the employees must also be able to allow the goal of digitization.

In order to train the skills of the employees, training courses in modern communication channels or seminars on agile methods etc. are offered. The change in behavior can be observed in videoconferencing, using project management tools, and the like. Changes in the environment are again the most easily visible and valuable. This could mean a laptop for each employee to be more flexible or create digital touchpoints for customers. For the bottom three levels, this article probably won’t be difficult for you to find more examples and transfer them to your business.

Conclusion

The transformation of people, teams and organizations is characterized by six levels based on each other. However, there are no clear boundaries between the levels, especially in the upper area, these can blur with each other. Change processes that start higher up in the pyramid are more difficult and lengthy than those at the lower levels, but are particularly worthwhile for sustainable change. No matter what you want to change, you always ask the question of purpose and meaning: What are we doing this for? What are the advantages of change in the specific context of our company? In addition, plan actions at the other levels.

Unfortunately, many companies only started on the lower levels and believe that a fruit basket, a nice roof terrace and a table kicker (environment), dailys, slack communication and scrum teams (behaviour) or training and training in agile methods (skills) are already the solution to all problems. Without a clearly communicated goal and sense that is clear to everyone and that you and your employees stand behind, your company will not develop a new culture or mindset.

Briefly explained – Agile project management with Scrum

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Although Scrum is easy to understand, the implementation usually troubles, this article is intended to provide first aid.

Lean Management – Detox for Companies

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Lean management, i.e. lean management – what exactly is it? Lean management is designed to optimize processes and activities, thereby avoiding any waste of all kinds. But how exactly is this approach implemented and designed in companies? All the important things about this now in this article.

Lean Thinking as a Trailblazer for Customer Centricity

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What does it say so beautifully? The customer is king. This is not just a proverb that is said to be so. It reflects the values of Customer Centricity and plays the most critical role in a company’s success. Lean Thinking offers an approach to customer centricity. You can find out what important roles these two terms have for companies today in this article.

What is Customer Centricity?

Most former seller markets have long since become buyer markets. This means nothing more than that the customer can regulate the market. Why is that? There are now so many suppliers in the most diverse markets that an oversupply has arisen. This results in a wide range of decision-making options for buyers. This means that you can choose which provider they use a particular product or service from. Here, therefore, the sellers have to adapt to the customer and understand their well-being in the best possible way. This entrepreneurial strategy is called Customer Centricity.

Creating real added value

At Customer Centricity, the customer or user is the focus of the event. The company focuses on the needs and interests of customers in all measures. This should give rise to competitive advantages. Customer Centricity is a holistic, strategic approach. User needs are therefore the starting point for any entrepreneurial activity. Real added value (read also Value Model Canvas) is to be created for the customer. This is not only about fulfilling the existing wishes and needs, but also with a view to the future to find out what the customer would like to have later.

What is the USP?

The USP, i.e. the unique selling point of companies, is sometimes decisive for the purchasing decision of customers. What do customers like better about one product than the other? Meanwhile, in many markets, it has become difficult to produce actual USP’s. This makes the treatment of the customer and the standing of the customer in the company all the more important. If he feels comfortable, this can make a lot of difference and make up for other minor mistakes or minus points. In this sense, a good Customer Centricity can also be regarded as USP.

Customer Centricity Tools and Implementations

There are several tools for Customer Centricity to implement. This includes, for example, loyalty programs that reward customers who are there in the longer term. These rewards may be in the form of rewards, discounts, or gifts. Exclusive clubs are also part of Customer Centricity. Building social media channels is also useful for shaping this philosophy. Posting relevant content that is interesting and useful to the customer can lead to more, or happier, customers. As a result, the relationship with existing customers can be maintained very well.

Lean Thinking – Definition and the Five Principles

[easy-tweet tweet=”Lean Thinking kommt aus dem sogenannten Lean Management. Hierbei sollen Werte für den Kunden geschaffen und dadurch der unternehmerische Erfolg dauerhaft gesichert werden.” user=”MirkoPeters8″ url=”https://bit.ly/3d3gVfk” template=”user”] These values are to be created in ever higher quality and by omitting unnecessary ballast. There are the five principles of lean thinking that are now to be presented.

Wie ist die Kundenperspketive ?

Zunächst muss der Kunde und sein Value, also Mehrwert, identifiziert werden. Das heißt nichts anderes, als dass man die Kundenperspektive einnimmt. Welche Aktivitäten und Aufwände, die das Unternehmen tätigt, bieten dem Kunden Mehrwerte? Im zweiten Schritt wird der Value Stream identifiziert. Das bedeutet, dass die Prozesse vom Start bis zum Ende, in dem Werte für den Kunden entstehen identifiziert werden. Im ersten Schritt war die Frage also welche Werte entstehen, jetzt wird analysiertu003cemu003e wieu003c/emu003e diese entstehen.

More value-enhancing activities less “that-we-have-always-done-so”

A flow is then to be created. This is done by consciously avoiding and omitting activities that do not provide any additional value. As a result, only value-enhancing activities crystallize, which means that there are no more interruptions and disturbances – the flow is created. The final step for the time being involves the pull strategy. In doing so, the customer’s needs are actively addressed. The customer is clearly in the foreground when it comes to lean management. It is therefore necessary to understand this and its needs. A process is therefore to be created to respond to these needs. This initiates principles one and three. The corresponding value for the customer is to be increased, while avoiding waste. Once this step is complete, perfection occurs. In itself, the individual steps have been completed, but now it is time to work on fine-tuning. The Lean Thinking Principles are a cycle that is completed until no improvement can be achieved.

This gives the name of Lean Thinking,to German lean thinking. The processes are reduced until only the really necessary ones are available.

In the summary:

1. Value (Which values are relevant to the customer?) ->
2. Value Stream (How/through what steps do I achieve these values?) ->
3. Flow (How do I create the flow by draining what unnecessary ballast?) ->
4. Pull
(listen to the customer and respect his requirements, wishes and values) – > 5. Perfection (cyclic repetition of steps on the way to perfection)

Lean Thinking thus consolidates the idea of customer centricity in companies. The customer and his needs and wishes are the focus of all actions. Strategically, everything is geared towards the customer. This should give rise to competitive advantages and stand out from the competition. Of course, this topic is not applicable to every industry, but it should serve as a food for thought and support the long-running development of many markets from the seller market to the buyer market. If companies are in such a market, Customer Centricity as a corporate philosophy is indispensable. Lean Thinking ultimately offers a good and proven means of putting this philosophy into practice.

Customer Centricity – Customer Service in Digital Change

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The keyword Customer Centricity should have arrived in companies of all industries long ago. The customer is at the heart of all actions. Improve customer service and create a USP that sets you apart from the competition. But how exactly is customer service going in the digital transformation? What do companies need to consider and what is different?

Customer Centricity – what’s the point?

At Customer Centricity, as the name suggests, the customer is at the center of any business action. The focus is entirely on the needs and interests of the customers in all measures. This is expected to give them a competitive advantage. This is due to the fact that many markets have gone from original seller markets to buyer markets. Here, the market power lies accordingly with the buyer. Due to oversupply, the choice is now so large that there are hardly any differences between products and services. True USPs have become rare. In these industries, customer centricity is therefore becoming increasingly important. Studies have shown that this is one of the most critical factors for success or failure in the digital economy. When the customer is in focus, his satisfaction increases, which in turn increases sales and a better position in the market.

Additional values

Real value must therefore be created. But how does this happen in times of digital change? For a long time now, it is no longer enough to leave location-based trading only where there is physical customer contact. Through digital change, customer service must go further – in the form of the Internet. However, this does not only mean integrating a contact form or e-mail address on the website, but should go far beyond that if successful intentions are successful.

Customer service and digital transformation

Customer service via e-mail or contact forms is no longer up-to-date. The problem: the asynchronous form of communication. This is usually not effective, but above all time-consuming and exhausting, both for the company and for the customer. The generation of digital natives is advancing and demanding up-to-date solutions. You are used to getting fast and uncomplicated answers through smartphones and instant messaging. If companies can’t offer this with their customer service, dissatisfaction quickly arises. It is therefore important to provide the customer with access that is familiar to him. This is where the live chat comes in. It enables customer proximity and, above all, has the immense advantage of synchronous communication.

Speed has increased in the information age

When customers have questions about a product, service, or the company itself, they are usually already informed. These are usually only small things that could be answered quickly. However, this takes time via a contact form. Live Chat, on the other hand, offers the fastest possible exchange and even stands out from telephone customer service. Why? Employees can respond to multiple requests at the same time. As a result, it is less likely that there will be longer waiting times. On the other hand, the even more personal contact, which can reach the customer positively, is an advantage when telephony or even a video conference.

Live chats as a solution

The language in the live chats can build a more personal relationship with customers. One is used to writing about Instant Messanger in colloquial and not very formal language and then automatically has this expectation when entering the live chat. But beware! If the company is usually more formal and its customers are sieve, it becomes rather difficult. In this respect, therefore, a uniform language and salutation must be chosen in advance, which all employees follow.

Live Chat: you have to reckon with these expenses

The implementation of the chat is very simple in itself. There are many different providers and programs for this. Of course, this must be adapted to the company in terms of design.

  • What sounds are heard when used?
  • What is the first impression? Is the apparition too intrusive?
  • Is the design modern?

Companies must ask themselves all these questions before they start live chat.

Live chat: you have to reckon with these costs

Once this is integrated, the much greater effort begins. Depending on the usage and provider, this can cost several 100€ per month. Personnel costs, which are automatically added, must also be taken into account. This can, of course, be problematic for smaller companies, which often have no capacity for this.

More customer service options

Beyond live chat, there are many other ways companies can best implement customer centricity in customer service in times of digital change. It is essential to find the ideal mix of people and technology. The service experience is to be redefined. When customers contact customer service, they want quick and uncomplicated solutions and be advised as friendly as possible. For this to happen, it is first necessary to start somewhere else.

Awakening empathy

The service staff need the time to be able to engage intensively with each individual customer. This triggers a kind of “you take care of me” feeling at the customer. In order for employees to have this time, they must be relieved in other places. Many of the requests are piling up and can be answered quickly. For example, detailed and clear FAQs provide a remedy for this, which can answer general questions. As a result, many customers do not have to contact customer service at all. Online forums are also a tried and tested means of doing so. Here, customers can exchange ideas with each other.

Self is the man and woman with self-service offers

This self-service offer is ultimately intended to reduce manual effort. This gives customer service more time to deal with the requests in a more personal way. This is where the aforementioned video interaction comes into play. Face-to-face communication awakens empathy, and exemplary sharing of the screen often makes it easier for the customer to understand problem solutions. The collection, analysis and distribution of requests should also be automated. This saves enormous time.

Conclusion: Digitizing customer service

Customer service in the digital age is expensive, but more than worthwhile. Companies that have set Customer Centricity as their philosophy can’t get around it. It is important to provide the best possible and satisfactory support to the customers. This is achieved through personal and quick exchange via live chats or video chat. In order to create the time required for this, so-called self-service offers such as FAQ’s or online forums must be relieved. If customer service is optimally implemented, this ultimately leads to a significant satisfaction in the customer base and a corresponding increase in sales.
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Ambidextrie – Digital Leadership with Agility and Flexibility to Success

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Digitisation affects all of our lives and, for a long time, companies in all sectors. Those who are not behind here will quickly be left behind by the competition. In digital leadership, companies need to address this. Ambidextrie is a proven guidance method designed to strike a balance between changing and maintaining existing structures. You can find out what it is all about in this article.

What is Digital Leadership?

More than ever before, digital change affects companies around the world. The Digital Leadership decides on the success or failure of the companies. This goes with the digital transformation. In doing so, social and technical changes are taken up, traditional corporate structures are questioned and new working models are developed. Existing structures are thus being broken up and rearranged. This is an absolute must in today’s world of work. If companies are unwilling to innovate, they can quickly lose importance.

The Digital Leaders

The so-called Digital Leader organises the Digital Leadership in a leading and supportive manner. It is therefore primarily responsible and decisive for the positive or negative response of the innovative structures. It is important that these are adapted to the needs of both employees and customers. Companies must not be anxious about old structures. Courage for innovation and soft skills such as openness, innovative spirit and flexibility pave the way to success here.

Bodies of Digital Leaders

However, what properties does a Digital Leader need to have to successfully implement the digital transformation in the enterprise? First of all, this includes flexibility. Sticking to old structures and fear of wrong decisions are definitely misplaced and only hinder digital transformation. Disruptive thinking should be the divisiveness of a digital leader. Break up old structures and introduce new work processes and business models. Agility should be at least as important. This refers to the correct distribution of stability and flexibility. This allows the Digital Leader to react to changes and then act accordingly. Digital literacy is essential. It is self-speaking that in the case of a digital transformation, the head of the department should always be informed about current developments in digitalization. The final point is openness. In order to ensure satisfaction in the company, the needs of the employees must always be taken into account. Freedom for each individual is important here and classically hierarchical leadership methods are out of place.

Ambidextrie in connection with Digital Leadership

But what are the possibilities of digital transformation? How do I approach this as a company? Ambidextry offers a common and effective model. This was mainly influenced by scientists such as Michael Tushman, Charles A. O’Reilly and Julian Birkinshaw and was developed in the 1970s. Shortly explained, Ambidextrie deals with the ability of companies to act both hands. In this context, Bothhand refers to the ability to manage both day-to-day business and incremental innovations, as well as to drive disruptive innovations. For the layman many foreign words. Incremental innovations are those that renew or improve existing structures. Disruptive innovations are completely new products and structures. An example of an incremental innovation would be the evolution of the Apple iPhone from Generation 5 to 6. The reintroduction of the iPad into the market, on the other hand, would be an example of disruptive innovation.

[easy-tweet tweet=”Beim Digital Leadership muss stets auf diskontinuierliche Umweltveränderungen reagiert werden. Agilität und Flexibilität sind hier also unabdingbar.” user=”MirkoPeters9″ url=”https://bit.ly/2TCtFly” template=”user”] This means increasing orientation, bringing together strategies, structures, corporate culture and processes, and at the same time being prepared for inevitable revolutions. Only then can companies successfully complete the digital transformation.

Structural ambidextrie and contextual ambidextry

In ambidextry, a distinction is made between structural ambidextry and contextual ambidextry. Structural ambidextrie deals with different structures that implement different degrees of innovation. Contextual ambidextry is related to employee behavior. Depending on the context, they eventually show different rules and behaviors that need to be addressed. These two structures of ambidextry exist in parallel with each other. They are therefore also referred to as dual structures. Depending on the phase of the company in which it is currently in digital transformation, you must select accordingly.

The required different cultures are treated both tightly and loosely during ambidextry. Tight in the sense that corporate culture includes general norms that are important for innovation. This should include, for example, openness, initiative, risk-taking and a spirit of innovation. Loose in the sense that these values can be expressed differently in the respective innovation situation.

Ambidextrie – Analytical and creative action

Ambidextrie combines both analytical and creative action by perfecting the actual situation and making the target situation innovative. The aim is therefore to align company executives with two action-oriented ways of thinking at the same time – the dual structures that have already been mentioned. Executives should use the company’s resources in such a way as to enable profit-oriented exploitation of the existing business, while at the same time exploring and exploring new products, services and business models under a certain degree of risk.

Ambidextrie in Change Management

But what exactly is ambidextry useful for? Change is not a one-off project that is limited in time and is intended to achieve a certain final goal. Much more, it is an interplay between the preservation of already existing, successful structures and the innovative view forward. Managers can only succeed with a constant view of the future, without too much “clinging” to current structures and working methods. Nevertheless, it is at least as important to take into account the current success. The cramped urge for change does not bring any more than the “clinging”. It means motivating employees in current operational tasks and letting them participate in future change processes.

Conclusion

The balancing act between change and existence is not easy and exactly the crux of the ambidextry leadership. Agility and flexibility are crucial to the success or failure of a company. The Digital Leader must be able to react and act on constant changes in the working environment. The sensitivity of the person in dealing with his employees is also decisive here. Too much or too little innovation can affect the general mood and damage the working environment. The inclusion of employees is therefore indispensable. However, if ambidextrie is used correctly by executives, it is quite a sensible and above all successful design of corporate governance.

Objectives & Key Results (OKR)

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The goal of every company is to generate growth. When companies are successful and grow faster than expected, there is great joy at the beginning. But rapid growth does not only bring benefits. We need to take into account things that have never been wasted on a thought before. How do you approach such a situation? How do you manage the company and its employees successfully in these conditions? Objectives & Key Results – or OKR for short – provides an answer here. You can find out what it is all about in this article.

What does Objectives & Key Results mean?

The method was invented by Intel co-founder Andrew Grove. Today, Google, Twitter, and LinkedIn are sample companies that successfully use OKR as a leadership model. Translated from English, it means as much as objects and key results. Objectives are the qualitative goals that are motivating and formulated as a vision. The results of the objectives should bring clear added value. Key results, on the other hand, are the quantitative objectives. They are the intermediate results that make the objectives measurable and the success visible. Thus, measurable key results (key results) are assigned to each of the goals( The respective success is then measured at regular intervals.

Aims and results

Each Objective has 2-5 Key Results assigned to it. The target is therefore set and how this can be achieved on the basis of 2-5 measurable criteria. The main cost of generating key results is that it takes time. The objective is usually set quickly. The key results, on the other hand, must be well and meaningfully considered. Here it is not uncommon to repeat this process again and again until one receives satisfactory and realistic key results. It is also important that not only OKRs are set up for the company as a whole, but also for each team and for individual employees.

Methodology of Objectives & Key Results

The methodology of Objectives & Key Results must be adapted to each company individually. As a rule, the targets for the next 2-4 months are set. It is therefore a short-term method that always starts from scratch. Once the cycle is over, the results must be looked at and new targets set accordingly. A target achievement of 70-90% should be targeted. If it is permanent at 100%, it may mean that the objectives are not sufficiently ambitious. OKR is definitely not an employee evaluation method. It serves much more as a management approach to achieving goals. It is transparent and publicly available to every employee. [easy-tweet tweet=”Objectives & Key Results verbindet die Unternehmensziele und die Ziele der Mitarbeiter. Es ist also essenziell jeden einzelnen bei der Zielsetzung des Unternehmens zu integrieren.” user=”MirkoPeters8″ url=”https://bit.ly/3glcFdk” template=”user”]Otherwise, no commitment of the employees can be guaranteed.

But why do Google, Twitter and Co. use this method? The answer is simple: OKR is especially suitable for fast-growing companies. Here, a quick overview is often necessary, which can be achieved. The size of the company does not matter. The methodology can be applied anywhere.

Objectives & Key Results (OKR) – the advantages and disadvantages

OKR brings many advantages. For example, the transparency of the model can attract a great deal of support from employees. They can see the objectives and key results openly and thus become familiar with them. It promotes internal communication and is easy to understand. In addition, the method can be implemented without complicated infrastructure. Objectives & Key Results gives companies a real focus for the next two to four months. This allows these companies to focus more on the essentials and thus better manage and use scarce resources. Overall, companies are becoming more agile and can respond more quickly to changes.

However, OKR can become a disadvantage if it is not properly understood or if the readiness for action is not given. If it is used as an‘control tool’of the employees, this can be met with strong opposition. Even if this is not the case, but is understood and felt in this way, it can have negative consequences. OKR is also a change project. If this is not understood and viewed in this way, it is also not an advantage. As explained earlier, one of the first steps in Objectives & Key Results is to set goals. Achieving a target of 70-90% is optimal. However, if too many goals are set or if they are too ambitious, this quickly hits the mood in the company. Consideration and caution should be taken here. A maximum of 4-5 objectives and 4-5 key results per objective should be set for each organizational level. OKR requires a lot of operational readiness and time capacities. Every company and its employees must be aware of this. Especially for the so-called OKR Master. He is appointed by the company and is permanently responsible for the implementation and moderation of the processes. At best, the OKR Master is not from the management team, but rather a more neutral employee.

Here are all the advantages and disadvantages again in the overview:

OKR Benefits

  • Clarity about the most important tasks in the company
  • real focus
  • Proper use of scarce resources
  • Transparency for employees
  • Better communication
  • easy to understand
  • Company becomes more agile

OKR Cons

  • too many goals = overwhelming
  • requires operational readiness and time capacities
  • Use as a “control tool” -> Rejection of employees
  • OKR must be understood as a change project, otherwise rejection of the employees

Conclusion:

In summary, OKR, as long as it is properly applied and understood, offers a very good corporate governance methodology. It is not without reason that it is successfully used by Google. It makes companies more agile and is particularly suitable for fast-growing companies. OKR can react quickly to changes. This is essential for such companies, as trends can vary from week to week.

The 6 Steps in the Design Thinking Process

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Warum sollest du dich mit Design Thinking beschäftigen?

Design Thinking ist heutzutage fest in agilen Arbeitswelten verankert und fördert sowohl Innovationen wie auch kundenzentriertes Denken. small

Design Thinking. Sicher haben Sie diesen Begriff schon einmal gehört und unter den zwei Worten einzeln kann man sich auch etwas vorstellen. Doch was bedeutet die Kombination? Design Thinking ist heutzutage fest in agilen Arbeitswelten verankert und fördert sowohl Innovationen, wie auch kundenzentriertes Denken.

Wenn Sie Struktur in Ihren Innovationsprozess bringen und die Kreativität im Unternehmen fördern wollen, sollten Sie sich unbedingt mit Design Thinking auseinandersetzen. Hier erklären wir Ihnen, was das ist und welche Schritte es zur Umsetzung gibt.

Was ist Design Thinking?

Design Thinking kommt aus der Mitte der 80er Jahre und wurde passenderweise von einer Innovationsagentur IDEO entwickelt. small

Design Thinking kommt aus der Mitte der 80er Jahre und wurde passenderweise von einer Innovationsagentur (IDEO) entwickelt. Inzwischen ist es eine beliebte und etablierte Methode, um Innovationsentwicklung zu strukturieren.

Bei diesem Ansatz wird der Mensch oder Kunde in den Fokus gestellt, es kann genau herausgefunden werden, was dessen Bedürfnisse sind. Der gesamte Prozess ist in 6 Schritte aufgeteilt, die wir Ihnen weiter unten erklären. Der Prozess muss nicht linear verlaufen, sondern verläuft viel öfter in Schleifen. Das Feedback aus einem späteren Schritt kann dafür sorgen, dass noch einmal ein oder zwei Schritte zurückgegangen werden muss, um zu optimieren und sich so der Lösung schrittweise anzunähern. Das ist beim Design Thinking sogar erwünscht.

Ständiges Lernen voneinander, der Austausch vieler unterschiedlicher Meinungen und Standpunkte und ein regelmäßiges Hinterfragen des Status Quo sind wichtige Bestandteile im Design Thinking Prozess. Er lässt das Begehen von Fehlern zu und fördert es sogar, um daraus lernen zu können und wirklich eine Lösung zu finden, die funktioniert.

Ziel von Design Thinking ist es, einen typischen Fehler in der Entwicklung eines Angebotes zu vermeiden: Ein Produkt wird entwickelt und wenn es letztendlich auf den Markt kommt, interessiert sich keiner dafür. Wie leider allzu oft, wurde in dieser Situation nicht auf die Kundenbedürfnisse eingegangen und der Kunde nicht ehrlich nach seiner Meinung gefragt. Dem kann man mit Design Thinking entgegenwirken.
Der Prozess kommt vor Allem in der Produktentwicklung zum Einsatz, kann aber auch zum Erstellen von Serviceleistungen oder um Struktur in kreative Projekte zu bringen, angewendet werden. Er kann einmalig als Experiment verwendet werden oder sogar fest in die Strukturen und Arbeitsweisen eines Unternehmens integriert werden.

Die 6 Schritte im Design Thinking

Verstehen

Zunächst geht es darum, seine Zielgruppe zu verstehen. Welche Probleme hat Ihr Kunde? Wie versucht er diese zu lösen? Was hindert ihn an einer erfolgreichen Lösung? Welche Bedürfnisse hat er? Um diesen Schritt zu unterstützen, lohnt sich eine intensive Recherche. Das Ergebnis kann später in Schritt 3 z.B. in einer Buyer Persona festgehalten werden.

Dieser Schritt sollte gründlich und ausgiebig durchgeführt werden, da er die Grundlage für alle weiteren Schritte bildet. Am Ende sollte jeder Mitarbeiter in der Lage sein, sich in den Kunden hineinzuversetzen und aus seiner Perspektive zu denken.

Beobachten

Im zweiten Schritt interviewen Sie Ihre Kunden und beobachten sie, um ihre Probleme und Bedürfnisse noch genauer kennenzulernen. Hier ist es wichtig, Ihren Kunden unvoreingenommen zuzuhören und über den Tellerrand zu blicken. Im besten Fall begleiten Sie Ihre Kunden sogar bei der Lösung des jeweiligen Problems, um zu beobachten, wie sie bisher damit umgegangen sind. Durch diesen Schritt überprüfen Sie Ihre Annahmen aus Schritt 1 und können diese weiter definieren. Um diesen Schritt festzuhalten, können Sie Dialoge genauestens mitschreiben, Videos machen oder Fotos machen. Wichtig ist hier, im realen Umfeld zu bleiben und künstliche Laborbedingungen zu vermeiden. Versuchen Sie außerdem, mit dem ganzen Spektrum Ihrer Kunden zu sprechen, von den eingefleischten Fans bis hin zu den Kritikern.

Sichtweise definieren

Als nächstes fassen Sie Ihre Erkenntnisse aus den ersten beiden Schritten zusammen. Das kann in Form einer Buyer Persona geschehen. Je detaillierter die Persona, desto besser. In diesem Schritt werden Einsichten in die Zielgruppe entwickelt und ein 360 Grad Blick der Kunden wiedergegeben.

Ideen finden

Die Grundlagen sind gelegt und Sie haben ein tiefes Verständnis für Ihre Zielgruppe entwickeln können. Nun geht es darum, Ideen zur Lösung des Problems zu finden. Eine beliebte Technik für diesen Schritt ist das Brainstorming. Auch Rollenspiel oder die 6-3-5 Methode eignen sich hierfür. Alle Lösungsansätze werden zunächst, ohne jegliche Wertung, gesammelt. Es lohnt sich auch, externe Personen in diesen Schritt einzubeziehen, um Betriebsblindheit zu vermeiden.

Prototypen entwickeln

Im vorletzten Schritt befassen Sie sich mit der Umsetzung der gesammelten Ideen. Hierfür werden Prototypen erstellt, die es ermöglichen, die Ideen zu visualisieren und zu veranschaulichen. Der Prototyp muss keine kostspielige ausgereifte Version sein, sondern dient lediglich zur Veranschaulichung und zum Testen. Dieser Schritt muss wahrscheinlich einige Male durchlaufen werden, um die optimale Lösung zu finden, also investieren Sie nicht zu viel Zeit und Geld in die Erstellung eines Prototyps. Wichtiger ist es, sich Feedback einzuholen.

Testen

Im letzten Schritt wird der Prototyp mit Ihrer Zielgruppe getestet. Holen Sie sich soviel Feedback wie möglich ein, beobachten Sie die Nutzer bei der Interaktion mit dem Prototyp und notieren Sie sich, wo es Unklarheiten oder Schwierigkeiten gibt. Sollte der Prototyp gar nicht gut ankommen ist das nicht schlimm. Sie haben immerhin noch nicht viel in die Entwicklung investiert und können einfach einen Schritt zurück gehen, um ihn zu verbessern. Das ist das Wunderbare an dem Ansatz: Sie entwickeln am Ende im großen Stil nur, was wirklich gut ankommt.

Conclusion

Virtually every company strives for innovation. In addition to the appropriate framework conditions, a lot of courage and an open-minded corporate culture, however, a suitable methodology is also needed to produce innovations. This is where design thinking starts. It structures the process in 6 sub-steps, which are relatively easy to understand and implement. It also offers scope for individual adjustments, so steps can be completed multiple times or moved from one step to the previous one to make adjustments. It is crucial to maintain a basic attitude that always promotes innovation and to focus on people and their needs. It’s worth trying out design thinking for any company. However, it should be noted that the process alone is not yet a guarantee of innovation or creativity. Various other factors, such as team composition and culture, also come into play here.

The 6 Steps in the Design Thinking Process

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Why should you be concerned with Design Think?

Design Thinking. Surely you have heard this term before, and you can also imagine something among the two words individually. But what does the combination mean? Today, design thinking is firmly anchored in agile working environments and promotes both innovation and customer-centric thinking.
If you want to bring structure to your innovation process and promote creativity in your company, it’s important to focus on design thinking. Here we explain what this is and what steps are taken to implement it.

What is Design Thinking?

Design Thinking dates back to the mid-1980s and was appropriately developed by an Innovation Agency (IDEO). It is now a popular and established method for structuring innovation development.
In this approach, the focus is on the person or the customer, it is possible to find out exactly what their needs are. The entire process is divided into 6 steps, which we will explain to you below. The process does not have to be linear, but runs much more often in loops. Feedback from a later step can mean that one or two steps need to be taken to optimize to move step closer to the solution. This is even desirable in design thinking.
Constant learning from each other, the exchange of many different opinions and points of view and a regular questioning of the status quo are important components in the design thinking process. He allows mistakes to be made and even encourages them to learn from them and really find a solution that works.
The goal of Design Thinking is to avoid a typical mistake in the development of an offer: a product is developed and when it finally comes onto the market, no one is interested in it. As is unfortunately all too often, in this situation the customer’s needs were not addressed and the customer was not honestly asked for his opinion. This can be counteracted with design thinking.
The process is mainly used in product development, but can also be used to create services or to bring structure into creative projects. It can be used once as an experiment or even firmly integrated into the structures and working methods of a company.

The 6 Steps in Design Thinking

Understand

First of all, it is a matter of understanding its target group. What problems does your customer have? How is he trying to solve them? What prevents him from a successful solution? What are his needs? In order to support this step, intensive research is worthwhile. The result can be recorded later in step 3, e.g. in a buyer persona.

This step should be carried out thoroughly and extensively, as it forms the basis for all further steps. In the end, every employee should be able to immerse themselves in the customer and think from their perspective.

Watch

In the second step, you interview your customers and observe them to get to know their problems and needs even more closely. Here it is important to listen to your customers unbiasedly and to look outside the box. In the best case, you can even help your customers solve the problem to see how they have handled it so far. This step will allow you to review your assumptions from step 1 and further define them. To capture this step, you can write dialogues, make videos or take photos. It is important to stay in the real environment and to avoid artificial laboratory conditions. Also, try to talk to the full spectrum of your customers, from die-hard fans to critics.

Defining your point of view

Next, summarize your insights from the first two steps. This can take the form of a buyer persona. The more detailed the persona, the better. In this step, insights into the target group are developed and a 360-degree view of the customers is reproduced.

Finding ideas

The foundations have been laid and you have developed a deep understanding of your target group. Now it is a matter of finding ideas to solve the problem. A popular technique for this step is brainstorming. Role-playing or the 6-3-5 method are also suitable for this purpose. All solutions are collected first, without any evaluation. It is also worth involving external persons in this step in order to avoid operational blindness.

Developing prototypes

In the penultimate step, you will deal with the implementation of the collected ideas. Prototypes are created for this purpose, which make it possible to visualize and illustrate the ideas. The prototype does not have to be a costly mature version, but is only used for illustration and testing. This step will probably have to be completed a few times to find the optimal solution, so don’t invest too much time and money in creating a prototype. It is more important to get feedback.

Test

In the penultimate step, you will deal with the implementation of the collected ideas. Prototypes are created for this purpose, which make it possible to visualize and illustrate the ideas. The prototype does not have to be a costly mature version, but is only used for illustration and testing. This step will probably have to be completed a few times to find the optimal solution, so don’t invest too much time and money in creating a prototype. It is more important to get feedback.

Conclusion on Design Thinking

Virtually every company strives for innovation. In addition to the appropriate framework conditions, a lot of courage and an open-minded corporate culture, however, a suitable methodology is also needed to produce innovations. This is where design thinking starts. It structures the process in 6 sub-steps, which are relatively easy to understand and implement. It also offers scope for individual adjustments, so steps can be completed multiple times or moved from one step to the previous one to make adjustments. It is crucial to maintain a basic attitude that always promotes innovation and to focus on people and their needs. It’s worth trying out design thinking for any company. However, it should be noted that the process alone is not yet a guarantee of innovation or creativity. Various other factors, such as team composition and culture, also come into play here.