Someone gossiping about you!

Yes! I am absolutely right that there is someone gossiping about you and your behaviors in your organization. And this gossipy body is very talented to walk around, leave trace and reach everybody in the organization and even outside of the organization. If someone, who gets on well with this body comes to your organization, s/he can tell a lot about your organization and come up with exact scenarios that happened years ago.

It is not more than 3 years that I am in business world and working with companies living more than 10-20 years. And I remember myself talking and even discussing in confidence about what exactly happened 6-7 years ago, how a company merged with the other, what was the main process related issues, what are the taken actions, whether they are successful or not, how these decisions affect their current business ...etc without talking to anyone who exactly experienced that period. 

Are you surprised? Excited? Get anxious? 

If you are a great fan of social media, sharing about where you are on Foursquare, what you eat on Instagram, what you feel and think on Twitter and who you follow on Facebook ... than you are already familiar with the concept from your social life and you should not be surprised when you noticed that everything happens in your business is tracked in much more detail.

How? Thanks to my gossipy friend in your organizations: The Data!

Is this a threat or an opportunity? Depends how you get on well with this friend.

We are humans - the living bodies, having habits, having memories, having ups and downs and you get it, our organizations too! You need to talk to your organization, you need to understand ups and downs, the reasons, the experiences and this will help you a lot to catch up with the upcoming trends and expectations in the market and to grow, most importantly to survive. 

All we know that customers lead the business so the new trend is customer centric business strategies. To apply these strategies successfully, we are trying to learn as much as possible about our customers and thankfully our customers leave lots of footprints around. Are we capable of following these footprints? Is it easy to read and guess the next action of our customers? The answer for these questions is another topic but in overall the answer is Yes! But the next question is - are we capable of to react accordingly within an acceptable response time?

Do we know about our strengths, our weaknesses? 

At first can we measure them? Yes we can! 

But do we? Not very commonly.

Companies started to spend great budgets and efforts to understand and better serve to their customers by gathering volumes of external data. The point that we are missing is, data is such kind of an asset that can be benefited only if directed to a target! Otherwise, it might turn into a burden and even a risk. You can liken to our simple but most valuable source: the water. Do you want to grind the info or cause a flood?

The gossipy friend tells you a lot that can support you to gain quick wins without waiting till the end of long development cycle of any transformational project that will solve your current problems after three years! You are a running organization and it is inevitable that you have some strength that might attract your customers. Instead of looking what exists and taking all, focus on what you can do and use what you need to reach your defined targets.

There are trends going around and all we are trying to follow. So the result - many companies working on technology transformations, CRM projects, marketing campaigns, they are planning to go online, use big data in short time ..etc. All these are required in today's business world. But does the same work for everyone? Does not it sound like we are missing one of top trends - customization? Do you have your own well-structured and well-defined strategy and goals? Or just repeating trends as your new strategy? Believe me; they are too high-level to transform your business. 

Define your own strategy, own targets and then go for a coffee with your gossipy friend! It will tell you where to focus, what to change and how to change according to your strategy. If you do not care it enough, it will start to gossip about you in the market!