WHAT I KNOW: GOAL Map, Don’t Journey Map—Part 2

Posted on June 23, 2022

Hi, everybody, this is Jeanne Bliss,and this is the second installment of “What I know about goal mapping versus journey mapping.”

What I mentioned in our first installment is that I have found—through my experience in working with organizations—is that journey mapping inadvertently is an inward focus. It’s about what we want to get from the customer, versus what the customer wants to achieve, because they’ve given us their money. They’ve given us their trust. They’ve put their career sometimes on the line for installing our product or service.

And so in a minute, I’m just going to share my screen and go over some slides for you so that you have a little bit of a toolkit on this. And so that it can start to sink in for you to figure out how you can embed this kind of thinking, I call it “the Vulcan mind meld” inside your organization.

Click here to download the toolkit »

Part of what I’ve seen with journey mapping—as well intended as it is—is that it’s a session, and that the language of leaders doesn’t change, the accountability to customer goals don’t change. It becomes a tool and a mechanical thing that we do versus really embedding systemic leadership into the organization.

“No Strings Attached” Giving & Uniting Silos Through Audience Goals

So let me walk you through some things, to give you a sense of what I mean by this. This is some work we did for the Smithsonian. What was interesting was before this work was done. And you know, they were on a journey like everyone else, the Smithsonian was very much a siloed organization, by taking a look at the needs of teachers a huge population for them, they actually recognized and understood that what they needed to do was reconfigure how they delivered and what they delivered. And also that ended up driving who they engaged with.

So if you take a look at this teacher, first question when they think about going out with their classes: where should I take my class? Now, what they realized, and what this prompted them to do was recognize that there’s a powerful opportunity to engage with the tourism industry with others, etc, so that they start to have a voice. This is the first part of goal mapping that so many organizations miss I call it the “No Strings Attached” giving, where you actually give information to your customers, whether it’s B2B or B2C.

Even if they’re not going to buy from you right away, you become a company and people in the world who are givers, and whose intent in helping people feels and looks very pure. So going on with that: organizing my trip, how do I organize my trip. So what that prompted them to do was innovate around apps around understanding what to do and how to simplify how to organize the trip, arrive prepared at Campus, have a plan for each building—was fascinating because now what we’re doing is creating a very specific opportunity for teachers, and uniting many, many facets of the Smithsonian that used to work separately. You know, the Smithsonian, if any of you have been there, is I think 200 buildings, a national park and Zoo. So by simplifying from a teacher’s point of view—by building up the goals—it really redefined how the silos work together, then going on to: how will they experience and building? How will they successfully depart with their class? What are the exit memories? And then finally, at home, back home learning with the classroom.

What’s fascinating about this is that it also does something that’s critical about goal mapping, which is it changes the language of leaders. If goal mapping is just a part of an exercise that you do with a bunch of people in your organization—or you hire someone to do it with you and then it’s about defining broken things—you miss such a wonderful opportunity, which is also to change on a regular basis in your monthly/quarterly leadership meetings and throughout the organization, the conversation around what you’re doing to improve the goal achievement for your customer.

A B2B Example

So here’s a more explicit a goal map. That’s a B2B goal map and let me walk you through this one. Now, remember, I mentioned in the last conversation we had in the first introduction to goal mapping was that often when I ask people about their goal map or their journey map, they give me their sales pipeline. Not everyone, but it’s it frequently feels like, again, what you want to get from the customer versus what your customer needs to achieve from you. What I’m going to show you and what we’ve been able to prove is that when you start by delivering the goals you can earn your journey map outcomes.

So let me walk you through this: prepare me to be ahead of change. This is an industry that’s supporting chief customer officers and other people driving change inside of an organization. This is the first goal, which is that “no strings attached” giving should be a resource for me in the marketplace telling me what’s going on in my industry, how consumer tastes are changing what’s going on. In terms of technology, whether I buy from you or not helped me be prepared.

This next one is: feed me knowledge to earn trust with my colleagues. One of the things that’s fascinating, especially in B2B is that when you’re selling into the organization, you find value if the organization you’re buying from supports you with that mission, because your corporate ability to be understood and to continue to succeed sometimes is really weighing on these things that you push inside the corporate agenda, or that you’ve advocated for. So be a partner in helping me to find trust inside the organization. Ensure we experience immediate success and value.

Now, a lot of companies call this onboarding. But when you think of it as just onboarding, it becomes mechanics— paperwork, check, process, check, check, check—it’s all about the internal processes versus the outcome, which is: how are we going to measure that this client had immediate success, and that the people inside the organization saw value? So glue a bunch of silos together to ensure that this happens: next goal, proactively solve issues as they arise. Again, these things happen inside of your organization, but they probably happen in an “it depends” approach, meaning it depends on the person, the salesperson, the the support teams, whatever you whatever your organizational structure is. By rethinking the work of your business around these goals, it glues the silos together. And in a minute, you’ll see it also drives what you measure differently, and what drives those red, yellow, and green dots on your scorecard. And then finally, prove increased client value and growth—make the growth of our business a KPI on your dashboard.

So what you’ll see here is this is much different than what we sometimes see. But fascinating. The outcome is: if you deliver what the customers goals are, you can earn what you’re setting out to achieve. But we’ve got to flip it. And we’ve got to then do the work to embed this as part of—not just an exercise where we identify broken things—but an ongoing accountability to these goals. So if you build a goal map, the key is that you build a draft, then bring in customers to make sure you’re defining it the right way.

And over time, the simplicity of this is very powerful, because in those monthly/quarterly/annual meetings that leaders hold, and then the rest of your organization, you know, yes, you can do silo-based report-outs. But at a high level, what you should be doing is goal-based accountability. So it guides how you lead how you sell how you serve.

And importantly—this is fascinating—how you earn admiration by not only what you do, but how you do it. If your business seems attuned to your customers goals, you’re going to show up very differently. It’s also going to drive innovation. I’ll talk more about that in a minute. And importantly, it will drive growth.

The “Keep Me Flying” Experience

So I want to tell a story about the journey that organizations go on when they’re working through these things. And again, the very initial approach is to rethink the journey map around silos. Very well intended, but it actually doesn’t do what your customers need. This is work we did with Bombardier Aerospace. This was the part of the organization that sold private planes to high wealth individuals. So as we were doing this work, we were building out their goal stages and the very smart Parts and Service organization, whose metrics at the time were around how many parts they sold, and how much service they sold, said, “You know, we need to build out the parts and service experience.”

And I said to them, “You know, that’s fascinating, and I understand why you’re thinking that. But is that what your customer’s thinking about? Is that how they define what they want to achieve? Because they’ve given their money to you?” Well, of course not. When we’re talking to customers, what they want is the “keep me flying” experience. The “keep me flying” experience involves a lot more parts of the organization than the parts and service department and make sure it has to make sure we have pilots that are ready to go, that the planes are cleaned that not only parts and service exists, but that they’re in the right place, that there are the right technicians, that there is a concierge available and starting to communicate to a customer proactively when you have to land when it wasn’t planned. And that there’s places to put them. And that also, they make sure that the customer feels taken care of and swiftly gets them back up in the air.

And so what changes here, when you start thinking about your goals is: now the language of leaders shifts from the “marketing/operations/sales experience” to the “ensure I outfit my plane correctly experience,” the “get me started and then keep me flying experience” to “keep me flying experience” now involves all of the silos that have to then report together. And it fundamentally also changes what the company measures, in this case, Parts and Service were what was earned. When the new metrics became how many days are our customers up in the air when they want to be? How many days are they on the ground when they don’t want to be? And how swiftly do we get them back up in the air?

Now what you’ve done is you’ve glued multiple silos together, you’ve attached purpose to the language of leaders. And now you’re going to earn admiration for keeping those customers in the air and taking care of them swiftly when things happen and they have to land quicker.

Measure Differently: Customer-Driven KPIs

So as you think of your goal map, it will also drive you to reflect on new customer-driven KPIs. Thinking about: how will you operationally measure the outcome metrics that will earn their goals? Not just asking them how we did or how satisfied they are. And also recognizing in a B2B standpoint, what are you doing to help them achieve their goals?

So your KPIs change from “how many parts and service did we sell?” to “what we had to do operationally to make that customer’s goal be achieved?” Keep me flying, how many days in the air? How many days on the ground? How quickly did we get them up? As you start thinking in this new way, it’s going to challenge what you’re measuring today. You’re still gonna want to measure those operational metrics, but at a purpose leadership driven standpoint, this changes your company.

And importantly, it also embeds this way of thinking so that whoever’s leading this work when they leave the building or ascend—as many CCOs, chief customer officers are moving on to hire the other leadership positions: CEOs, CEOs, etc—the behavior and the way of thinking about the business sticks.

The other thing that I want to talk about is how you ask the customer: how you’re doing, how they’re doing. When you start moving and shifting to goals, you can also start thinking about asking them how they’re doing, based on the achievement of their goal. Many, many surveys are again, inadvertently, internally driven, and they ask, “How are we doing?” They’re validating how we’re doing as a company versus understanding what the customer needs, what their goals are, and how they’re being achieved. And so, think about how you will reorganize your listening not only from surveys, but also what I call “fearless listening,” bringing customers in to understand from many sources, how they are achieving the goals that they want to achieve, because they’ve put money in your pocket.

What I know—what you know, as a customer, no matter if you’re in a B2B or B2C company—is that impact and admiration comes from delivering two things one value, did you do what you said you’re going to do? But also memory: How did you do it? Did the way that you deliver show who you are as people in a different way? Did it earn admiration, because of how you did it and about the fact that you put your customers goals first, and that they can see as a result of working with you that their life has improved and that their business is improved?

So what I know is that goal mapping not journey mapping is a new way of leading, uniting your organization and earning the right to customer driven-growth. Please go to customerbliss.com/WhatIKnow to get more and to subscribe. Thanks so much, everybody.

Missed part 1? Click here to watch that video.