Breakfast Roundtable - Customer Activation & Growth

Russell Reynolds Associates hosted a number of senior executives at our Singapore office for a breakfast roundtable on 22nd of November to discuss how “Customer Activation and Growth” can help drive competitive advantage in a customer-centric world. We had a diverse group of guests from various industries including healthcare & wellness, financial services, professional services, fintech startup and hospitality & leisure. They come from a good mix of locally headquartered companies and multinationals. Of the attendees, half are CEOs or commercial heads and the remaining look after innovation, digital transformation or human capital.

The session was moderated by 2 of our overseas colleagues: @Norm Yustin and @Tristan Jervis.

Digitization and technology have enabled customers and consumers to be in better control and this customer-centricity is requiring companies to rethink their entire organization, including new business models, organizational structures, and roles that better activate their customers.

Traditionally, companies succeeded when their go-to-market functions worked together seamlessly. Today, a lack of integration between go-to-market and technology functions creates friction across the end-to-end customer journey. As part of this transformation journey, customer-centric leaders are required, and they are typically driven by a growth agenda and have 4 distinctive traits: They are pragmatic thinkers by nature but know precisely when to take a risk. And, they are people persons that build strong teams.

Companies will go through different stages of this journey as they shift to be customer focused. In the first stage, they tend to have a transactional mindset. Then, they are likely to face organizational resistance when they become aware of the need to change, before needing to go through an organizational restructuring to move to the next stage. Gradually, they will be more customer-focused before they can become truly customer-centric.

We had a lively and interactive discussion with our guests which went just over the hour. Our guests shared with the larger group, the situations their companies are in now and the challenges they face. Some key challenges include having to educate their organizations on the new world and what it means to them, overcoming cultural resistance to change and managing employees who are not ready or able to change. 

Some of the key themes that surfaced during the discussion include:

• Buy-in from Boards: Buy-in at the board level must happen for digital / technology transformation and customer activation to happen. To begin with, many boards are not “tech-savvy” yet.
• Convergence of expertise: Expertise at the board and C-Suite level needs to change. Go-to-market leaders must have technology expertise, and vice versa.
• Resistance due to culture and mindsets: Many organizations understand the need to integrate the technology and customer functions and are agile-informed but remain resistant, often due to existing organizational culture and mindsets of individuals.
• New breed of leaders: Talents who can help organizations navigate this transformation often need to be hired from outside as the existing internal talent pool may not have the right skillsets and agile mindset. Traditional leaders think of growth as gaining market share while “new” leaders would think of “market making”.
• New ways of evaluating talents: Organizations will need to move away from the conventional way of evaluating talent based on academics, tenure, past experiences and look at adaptability, aptitude and attitude instead. We would need talents with both deep and broad expertise.
• Technology Management: Given the extensive use of technology, the issue of governance, sustainability and activism related to technology is also becoming top of mind for senior executives and companies.

What is clear from our discussion is that many organizations are well informed of the need for this digital transformation and customer activation journey. The question is how they can get there. Different organizations are at different stages of this journey and it is important to understand where you stand now and figure out what are the steps you will need to take and the obstacles to overcome in order to progress. Russell Reynolds Associates would be glad to be your advisory partner in this journey.