This is how successful companies ride the waves of digital disruption

The tide of change from disruption is not just one wave, but a set of waves that continue to roll in and disturb the status quo in so many industries. These waves cannot be resisted but must be ridden by companies that want to survive and prosper. This is clearly seen in the retail sector and in services industries such as travel, transport, banking and insurance, health services and energy.

This sea change in business is now eliminating at least two options that so many established companies have relied on to survive.

One is “omission bias” that occurs when leaders worry more about doing something than not doing something. This has a psychological basis where we can see and measure the results of a bad move, but do not measure the costs of a move not made. However, when investments in customer culture and customer experience are not made, we can measure the impact of reduced customer retention and lower customer lifetime value to the business. These omissions to invest are clearly measurable in terms of their business impact.

The other is “loss aversion”. This is a risk averse approach of “playing not to lose” rather than “playing to win”. Psychological experiments in decision-making show that for most people the pain of loss is about double the pleasure of winning. Corporate culture has a direct impact on whether “loss aversion” is the dominant cultural characteristic. In those companies where “failure is an option” and people are empowered to make decisions and learn from their mistakes, then the loss aversion option is much less significant in how decisions are made. As an example, Amazon is continually experimenting and through “mistakes” learning to increase customer satisfaction and create new markets.

Its latest “mistake” occurred when the Amazon Alexa app apparently mistook a conversation by some young girls in Texas for an online order for a doll house and some cookies! I am not sure who made the “mistake” in this instance (you can decide), but there are lessons for Amazon regarding how they enable ordering via the voice activated Alexa AI system.

The most customer-centric leaders I have interviewed are all prepared to take calculated risks – a combination of curiosity of how to do things differently and better for the customer and the use of data and evidence that acts to provide the “calculation” of the risks. This is why we seek to measure the strength of a company’s customer culture because it provides both the quantitative measure of risk and the qualitative feedback from employees that provide many of the answers as to how customer value and experience can be improved.

The MRI is a unique tool to help leaders take calculated risks to ride the next wave of disruptive change, then the next and the next.