Toyota or Netflix?
Insights for leaders navigating a digital world.
Welcome to Leading Digital - a three minute read designed to help you ask better questions, make smarter tech decisions, and lead with confidence in today's digital environment.
Toyota or Netflix?
An activity I often use with leadership teams who are working through technology strategy decisions includes a series of “where are we on this scale” questions. I ask each member of the leadership team to choose a number between 1 and 5 and give a company as an example at either end.
It’s not a case of 1 is bad and 5 is good, they’re just very different experiences. This tool helps to generate a conversation, challenge assumptions and help the team to determine what the ideal role of technology is for their context.
One of the scales relates to customer experience. Do we want to be more like a Toyota, or more like a Netflix?
If I wanted to buy a Toyota tomorrow, I wouldn’t be able to do it without travelling to a dealership, speaking to several people and physically looking at the merchandise. Sure, they’ve got a lovely website, but there’s always going to be a human element.
On the other hand, even if I did want to get hold of a human at Netflix, it’s unlikely I’d be able to. This is the extreme end of the digital customer experience. Everything is available to me at a touch of a button (so long as I hand over my credit card details!).
A purely digital experience. Is it personalised? Yes. Is it personal? Certainly not.
While this is a simple question, it’s a key element of an organisational technology strategy.
It’s one of a series of key topics we have to come to a consensus on. Once we have that shared understanding of the role of technology in the organisation, we can better understand where to invest time, money, and staff upskilling efforts. We can also understand where we can make tradeoffs, and it’s much easier to communicate the ‘why’ of those decisions across the team.
Leaders have been asking...
Asking great questions is a leadership skill you already have. Here's some questions you can ask to better understand the role of technology for your own organisation.
A question for yourself or the leadership team: "Where do our customers currently fall on the spectrum between a Toyota and a Netflix experience? Are we meeting their expectations?"
A question for yourself: "Is the whole team on the same page when it comes to our customer digital experience?"
A question to inform your future planning: "If we wanted to move from where we are today to somewhere else along that spectrum, what would need to change?
Of course, this is just one facet of an organisational technology strategy. If it's hard to get a consensus on this or other elements, it might be stopping you from making the right decisions when it comes to technology investments. Questions like these are great for uncovering where more thinking might be required, and to challenge assumptions.
Take action!
This fortnight, if you have a business and/or technology strategy, review it and see if you can identify where your organisation is aiming to be on that spectrum.
If you don't have a technology strategy, know that you don't have to start with some enormous document. A few key areas of consensus are enough to get started making clearer decisions about technology in your organisation.
Technology strategy can sound like it has to be deeply technical. While there are technical decision to be made, the broad strokes are about the 'so what'. Most leaders already have a strong vision for customer experience, staff experience, and the many other facets of how technology supports the execution of business strategy. The most important part is knowing where we're aiming. I'll be back in your inbox next fortnight with more on digital leadership.
Scarlett
