by Mandisa Makubalo
When organisations talk about wanting to set up a new business unit, there is often so much confusion within the organisation and outside the organisation. This confusion could be justified by the fact that most individuals both internally and externally are not part of the boardroom conversations where decisions are made. To some this decision is seen as a response to a business need; to some this introduction is met with great resistance as they feel left out and anxious about the thought of new people coming into the organisation. There’s concerns about who will be promoted, some immediately make accusations about unfair recruitment practices like “they already know who they want for those roles” which begins to threaten their relationship with the organisation.
On the other end of the spectrum there are those who start rallying themselves up as they feel qualified and equipped to take on these new roles, there’s loud sighs at the coming relief because they’ve been feeling stuck in their current roles therefore this offers a fresh start, to some it’s a potential career move and to some it’s an answer to their financial problems as they start thinking about the potential salaries.
Imagine this amount of confusion and uncertainty to your work force and your customers. On the top there seems to be absolute clarity and consensus around the why, how, when and who, on the 2nd layer from the top there’s a bit of fragmentation about the “why, how, when and who” and this fragmentation gets worse as you go down the corporate ladder.
Being in such an environment meant that I needed to suspend my assumptions on the “why, how, when and who” as I soon realised that even at the top the “why” was one sided, as a matter of the fact if the organisation continued to make a financial investment on the “how, when and who” this would have led to a huge cost implication because the “why” was still obscure even to those who were part of the boardroom conversation. Some of the C-suite members were against the decision and some were for the decision.
This placed a great demand on me as an external independent professional who was invited to provide clarity and guidance on the “why”. A typical consultant would immediately want to do the work for the client by applying their expertise to create a solution for what might seem like a granular size business challenge. But I realised through a process of education, patience, dedication and strategic thinking that my goal was to influence the long term success of the organisation, predict problems before they come and most importantly I needed to make suggestions on tasks for the client to complete.
Fast forward, after a series of conversations, observations, analysis, questioning, I was able to express my ideas in a way that demonstrated my expertise with this particular business challenge. I used my expertise, insights and experiences to deliver an authentic and genuine framework that will not only be used for setting up this business unit, but rather a scalable framework that can be adopted across the organisation whenever there’s a business need to set up a business unit.
I further made a recommendation for the framework to be used to review existing business units against this new framework and set of standards.
So what am I saying? Although I was brought in as an independent CX consultant because to the client it seemed rather obvious to get a CX consultant to guide them through the process of setting up a CX business unit but my role soon evolved from consulting to advisory using thought leadership skills. At times the client might seem certain in terms of the business challenge they need solved but our role is to think differently as this allows us to deliver the greatest value.
In this case the greatest value was a scalable framework for setting business units across the organisation and not only that but to review existing business units against this new framework and set of standards. I was happy to get a call from the client about a month later where she stated that as a result of the framework they are now making decisions to combine certain business divisions into one which has the potential to create great efficiencies, improve talent management (resource allocation) and cost savings for the organisation. They were also able to use my reports to drive better employee engagement by beginning to re-look at their succession planning policies, job re-grades etc.
If you’re looking for much more than a typical Customer Experience Project, feel free to contact me, our goal is to deliver transformative and scalable solutions to influence the long terms success for our client’s business.
Mandisa Makubalo is the founder of Unlimited Experiences, co-founder of WasteMinders, and Customer Experience Advocate. She is a highly experienced serial entrepreneur and change-maker. She is the founder of Unlimited Experiences SA, the first 100% black-owned customer experience management consultancy in South Africa, a business that helps companies become more customer experience centric. She is also the Co-Founder and CEO of a waste management non-profit organization called Waste Minders NPS, a company driving economic development through waste management and creating awareness around environmental degradation. Mandisa has studied and worked in customer environments for most of her professional career - her expertise lies in Strategic Planning, Design and Implementation and Service Excellence. Mandisa has been recognised and awarded for her exceptional leadership qualities throughout her career.
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