In order to measure something we first need to agree on what we are measuring. If not any measure will do the job. — What is customer experience?: Customer experience is the design and improvement of any process in the organization (organizational, way-of-working, strategy, planning, execution, continuous improvement etc.) that leads to value for the customer that drives value for the business. Or to put it simpler in the words of former Merck CEO…

An organization is led by it’s mental models. These are our frameworks for “how we understand the world” (1). — A mental model is not the truth, it’s an assumption about how the world works. A business commonly operates based on its own mental models e.g.: “cars are primarily status symbols. Styling is therefore more important than quality” — GM (2) Mental models consciously and/or subconsciously gets reflected in a…

Metrics serve decisions, not the other way around. — Metrics are essential, but they are also misunderstood and misused. They are too easily treated as the goal in itself when in fact nobody needs metrics, what we are better decisions. How can we design for decisions — not metrics and dashboards? 1. Are we over-marketing our metrics? “While all metrics can be gamed, this often…

Making a company data driven doesn’t make it anything as it is just going to duplicate the current biases and opinions of the organization. — According to Cathy O’Neil in her book Weapons of Math Destruction [1] a mathematical model is nothing more than a simulation of the world that often models blind spots reflecting the judgement and priorities of its creators. e.g. a product myopic organization [2] would not become anything else by applying…

“Every time you solve a problem you create a new one” — Kevin Slavin (1). Are we trying to hard or not hard enough? In our quest to make the world data driven and quantifiable are we producing new problems? Are we so eager to make the world into a programmable sequence (algorithm) that we exclude the parts that make us sentient [able to perceive or feel things]? Meaning: if we want the computer to do all our work do we have to become computers?

A strategy is a theory about what the organization assumes the world looks like, which influence it thinks it can have on it leading to which hypothesized outcomes. — Nobody knows the answer to any of these questions which are most likely multiple and changing all the time (1). One way to set strategy is open, broad statements that can fit a lot of change in them, another is experimentation. With experimentation the strategy becomes active. It’s not a…

the language that you speak shapes the way that you think. And that gives you the opportunity to ask, “Why do I think the way that I do?” “How could I think differently?” And also, “What thoughts do I wish to create?” — Lea Boroditsky (1) We choose labels to…

Measuring a customer as if it is a piece of code, a simple button or algorithm removes what is human from them. This can interfere with our ability to understand them, build for them or even improve ourselves. — A channel is context-less. It’s thin data. A human being is context rich they are influenced by the situation they are in, their individual and cultural experience. They are thick data (1).

In systems thinking the purpose of modelling the world is to better understand the forces of influence, their linear and non-linear effect on each other, patterns of these relationships and how it all leads to the problem or behavior you want to investigate and/or influence. You can do this by…