Empathy On Tour: Notes From My Trip Across Asia

I’m committed to amplifying #empathy . Hopefully my sessions with leaders around the world is making an impact.

I spent the previous month on a business tour in Asia, visiting Singapore, Mumbai, Tokyo, Auckland, Wellington, Sydney, and Melbourne. It was a great trip, as I was able to engage with many fantastic people around the world. I participated in a lot of excellent sessions, which included speaking at events, leading workshops, engaging with executives, meeting with client teams, doing press interviews, and interacting with our outstanding Qualtrics team members.

While the trip is still fresh on my mind (I’m on a plane heading back to the US), I thought I’d share some of my thoughts—both personal and professional—from the action-packed month.

Key Presentation And Discussion Topics

With so many different sessions, I covered a myriad of topics. But here are the major elements of content that I shared during my presentations and discussions:?

• Embedded human empathy. Qualtrics XM Institute has labeled 2023, The Year of Empathy , so a lot of my discussions this year (and on this trip) have focused on this critically important topic. One of the concepts I’ve introduced during this tour has been of a mega trend that I call from “Passive Market Research to Embedded Human Empathy.” I’ll write a separate post with more detail on this trend, but the concept is that we have historically learned about people (customers, employees, etc.) through discrete projects that deliver reports that document the output of their findings. In the future, where we’re heading, all of an organization’s processes and decision making tools will have a deep and continuous understanding of people integrated into their workflows.
• Managing through uncertainty. Everywhere that I went, leaders were struggling to keep up with shifts in employee and customer needs, and responding to all sorts of social, economic, and political unrest. There’s global agreement that it’s currently difficult to accurately forecast and plan for the future. So I’ve been discussing how the combination of agility and empathy are key ingredients to managing during uncertainty. In this environment, #ExperienceManagement (#XM ) is more important than ever. This becomes more evident to people after I explain that XM is not about creating amazing experiences. Instead, it’s about enabling #agility by building three capabilities: 1) continuously learn what people are thinking and feeling, 2) propagate insights in a useful form across an organization, and 3) rapidly adapt based on an increasing flow of insights.?
• Continuous value management. One of the questions I hear all the time is, “what is the ROI of XM?” In one of my speeches I suggested that this was the wrong question, as it leads people to make discrete analyses of the benefits of their work. Instead, we should be thinking about creating value at every stage of our efforts. That’s an approach that I called, continuous value management . The basics of this approach are captured in one of XM Institute’s Six XM Competencies that we call “Realize.” This competency has three skills: value planning, value delivery, and metrics management.?Basically, it’s about aligning all of your efforts to help the organization achieve it’s most important objectives.
• Driving organizational change. As I reflect on my many interactions with executives and teams of Customer Experience and Employee Experience professionals, it hits me that most of my discussions were about driving change, from new process adoption to large-scale cultural shifts . Unlike other professions where people go to work and carry out what’s in their job description, XM teams go to work to change what everyone else is doing. It’s not an easy job being a change agent, but it’s a fundamental part of the role. I will write another post with some of my advice on this topic.??

Observations From My Trip

Here are some of my overall observations from the trip:

• We have great Qualtrics teams. In every city that I visited, I was welcomed by an amazing group of Qualtrics employees. It’s invigorating to land in a new country or city and find an energetic team focused on experience management. I truly enjoyed hearing about the nuances in their local markets and the XM efforts of their clients. I also enjoyed sharing meals and some non-work “down time” with them.
• Empathy has global appeal. There is quite a difference in how people live and work across countries, but there are some universal truths… the need for empathy is one of them. My message about increasing empathy was received very positively in every city and at every event that I attended. People recognize that we all need to do a better job of understanding and responding to the needs of other people, both in and out of our work.
• XM has gaps in maturity, but not passion. It was interesting to see the different levels of Experience Management maturity across countries. Japan was probably the furthest behind, mostly because of the language gap. I think the country will mature quickly as more Japanese companies start adopting Western XM practices. No matter where I stopped, even in Tokyo, I found teams of smart, energetic XM professionals. It’s wonderful to see such a strong and growing global talent pool.
• NPS remains a compelling discussion topic. #NetPromoter Score (#NPS ) is a topic that comes up in just about every session I have, in just about every location that I visit. This trip was no exception. My advice and opinion about #NPS is mostly captured in this post, Advice For Propelling Your NPS Program . It’s not a particularly good measurement, but it can be used effectively to drive good results. That is, of course, unless you’re in a country where people respond to scaled questions much differently, like Japan (where almost no one gives a “9” or “10” on a scale to 10). So in Tokyo, I advised companies to stay away from NPS based on my post that examined NPS as a global metric .
• AI has reached a tipping point. I didn’t set out on the trip expecting to talk a lot about AI, but it made its way into many discussions. Brad Anderson ‘s speech at X4 Summit in Sydney discussed how Qualtrics is using AI across many of its products and processes. AI is an area that I’ve been following for many years (more than a decade), but it has certainly hit an inflection point. ChatGBT and other generative AI tools have made AI accessible by exposing the analytics to a much wider audience by providing a widely accessible input and output channel… human dialogue. I’ll probably be writing more about this topic in the near future.
• The All Blacks are awesome. Before I went on this trip I knew very little about rugby and had never heard of the All Blacks . Now I’m a raving fan of the All Blacks, #NewZealand’s national rugby team. They are one of the most successful sports teams in the world, especially if you factor in the incredible ladies team, the Black Ferns . And it isn’t their success or their hakas (which are simultaneously energizing and frightening) that I admire the most. It’s the culture they’ve built around 15 mantras , which go from No. 1, “Sweep the Sheds” (e.g., Never be too big to do the small things that need to be done.) to No. 15, “Write Your Legacy.” I’m looking forward to reading “Legacy ,” the book about the All Black culture.

City-by-City Highlights

Here are some (mostly non-work) highlights from each of the cities I visited:

• Singapore: My first stop on the trip was Singapore and my first meeting was a video shooting with the 新加坡航空 #CX team for an internal event. I really enjoyed seeing how Lara Truelove has built the Singapore Center for Experience Management, meeting Xiu Ling Gan ’s son, and visiting the eco dome at the Gardens by the Bay .
• Mumbai: This was my first trip to India, and OMG I can’t believe the traffic. I’ve never seem so many cars in one place, but they all seemed to work together to keep things moving. I was amazed by the density of people in the Dharavi Slums where more than 2 million people live in less than one square mile. Amazingly, this immense poverty is in South Mumbai, an incredibly high rent district. Not far away is Antilla , probably the most expensive private residence in the world (worth around $2 billion). The contrast was eye-opening. And it was great to see how many people follow my work in India. I was asked to be in more photos in Mumbai than anywhere else on my trip.
• Tokyo: My wife Karen Temkin joined me in Tokyo for her first visit to #Japan . We enjoyed all of our meals and a couple of tours through Tokyo. We had the best views of the city from the amazing Qualtrics office, which is on the top floor of the?Shin-Marunouchi Building . We also had a wonderful day in #Kyoto , a beautifully historic city.?I also got to meet one of my mentees in person for the first time, Victor Songa Musiwa, CCXP, XMP, MSc , and catch up with an old friend Lesley Lykins, CCXP, MBA who had just deployed to Tokyo.
• Auckland: This was Karen’s and my first trip to #NewZealand . What a beautiful country! Our tour to Hobbiton was really breathtaking, as the Lord of the Rings cinematography came to life right in front of us. On that same trip we visited the Waitomo Caves and saw the cool glow worms. We also had one of our best meals on the trip at Sidart . This was also the city where I was mesmerized by the All Blacks Experience . I also really enjoyed spending time and collaborating with two friends and colleagues, Cecelia Herbert ?? and Phillip Bland .
• Wellington: Yet another beautiful city in #NewZealand (although we still need to visit the South Island). One of the most beautiful spots on our trip was the Zealandia Ecosanctuary , where we saw so many different birds in their original habitat. We also really enjoyed the cable car ride up to a beautiful walk through the Wellington Botanical Gardens .
• Sydney: One of the highlights of the trip was X4 On Tour in Sydney, where about 1,200 attendees came to hear about XM. I really enjoyed catching up with ex-Minister Victor Dominello and then hearing his great speech. He was followed on stage by maybe the most inspirational part of the entire trip, Jessica Watson . She was the youngest person to sail alone around the world. What an amazing story! We also enjoyed catching up with Genevieve Boyle over breakfast and Ammar A. during a walk along the beach. Karen’s last part of the trip was something she’s wanted to do for years, attend an AFL match . We had a great time with Cecelia and her family watching St Kilda beat GWS Giants.
• Melbourne: Karen headed home from Sydney as I went on to Melbourne. I may have been alone, but it didn’t feel lonely as I stayed at the Crown Metropol , where I’ve stayed during each of my previous three visits to Melbourne. We actually held two Temkin Group workshops in the hotel on our first visit more than five years ago. After a really nice session with the team at Healthscope , I ended my trip with a leisurely walk through the National Gallery of Victoria .

My Final Thoughts

Thank you to everyone inside and outside of Qualtrics who helped me throughout the trip, especially Eileen Puse who planned most of the tour.

It’s been wonderful to meet with so many great people during this trip, including colleagues, clients, and friends. While we may live on opposite sides of the world, we share so much in common. Our belief in the value of humanity and the importance of empathy overwhelms any differences that we may have.

I’ll close this article with an All Blacks mantra, “Be a good ancestor,” which is great advice for all of us. We are all part of the same world, and it is up to us to do what we can to leave it in better shape then what we inherited. Part of this collective responsibility is to amplify empathy.

I’m looking forward to being home for a little bit, and then I’m back on the road next week to London and Dublin—spreading the empathy message in Europe.