Customer Experience Superheroes - Series 7 Episode 4 - Abundance v Scarcity mindset in CX with John D. Hanson

In this episode of the Customer Experience Superheroes podcast we discuss CX leadership with John Hanson. As consultant, author and President of Accelerated Revenue, John has spent a lifetime listening and observing qualities of leadership in CX. 

In conversation with host, with Christopher Brooks, John shares his experiences of leadership in customer experience explaining the binary principle of the Abundance mindset versus the Scarcity mindset. He explains how Generation Y and Millenniums deselect organisations who survive on a scarcity mindset because it doesn't allow individuals to add value and make a difference and how this is now as important as the pay cheque for a new generation of workers. 

If you lead or support leaders in customer experience, this is a must listen to understand how and why approaches to leadership need to evolve. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:16

Welcome to another episode of Customer Experience Superheroes. My name is Christopher Brooks, and I'll be your host. In the series on customer experience, we explore the superpowers needed to be a leader in the world of customer centricity today. We bring you ideas, ideals, inspiration, and insights from various contributors to the world of customer centricity. Today we catch up with John Hansen. John, who is president of Accelerated Revenue, is also someone who is renowned for his opinions on standards and quality in customer centricity. He holds high ideals, recognizing the broader impact and value the customer experience improvements can have for society beyond the sales transaction. John's been afforded the luxury of understanding what leadership really needs to be in customer experience because of the many roles and the many individuals he has worked with throughout the years. And in this podcast, John shares with us the benefit of his experience on leadership in customer experience. So, yes, so today we we have John Hansen in the uh in the podcast. So, John, this is a real real delight. I mean, you know, I think anyone who's in customer experience readily consumes your content when it goes out live on the on the social platforms, but to get the chance to actually speak to you is is a real joy. So thank you so much for taking time out and joining us on the CX Superheroes podcast series.

SPEAKER_01 2:05

It's something I've been looking forward to for quite some time. Glad we were able to make this happen. Uh, discussions like this are just so rich in ideas because I benefit from the host, and I definitely look forward to adding value to the listeners. So looking forward to what comes through in our conversation today.

SPEAKER_00 2:21

Brilliant. Thanks for that. And so, you know, as I said, I follow you. I know a lot of the people I associate with do, but would you mind perhaps for some of those six degrees of separation or the seventh degree of separation, we should say, who haven't quite got to you yet? Just give us an appreciation of your place in the world of customer centricity.

SPEAKER_01 2:37

Sure. So I'm easily found. Uh the best place to go is LinkedIn. If you put my name in, John D. Middle Initial D for David Hanson, H-A-N-S-O-N. You'll find all kinds of content there. It gives you an idea of who I am and what's important to me. Uh, customer experience is something that I've been in customer-facing roles since I was 16 years old. I didn't know it was called customer experience until just a few years ago. And I realized that there was this thread woven through all of my career steps where I had a consistent pattern of working well with others, superiors, teammates, maybe uh people that I was in charge of, the customer, vendors, had this ability to work well with others. And if I had to put it in a nutshell what customer experience is in a very broad term, it's the ability to have a positive impact on every human experience you have. Because if you silo it too much into just the ones that pay you money, and I have a presentation on this actually, then you've already siloed and limited the impact you can have. So by having a customer experience, a holistic view like that, it helps me identify, first of all, customer experience is different than customer service, which I also am skilled at, but I'm also most passionate about the customer experience because it is so holistic. It is so broad. It doesn't cover just one aspect, it should touch every aspect of our business. Uh so I took my consulting side hustle full-time in January of 2020, looking good, and then March had so many others, and a couple steps later got redirected to the best opportunity of my life. So now I'm the president of Accelerated Revenue of an Ohio-based company, where we just launched in February our consulting arm that focuses on small to mid-sized companies, 150 employees or less, on how we can elevate their business to heroic success. And we believe heroism is achievable so long as you use the right definition and you provide tools so that those businesses can get there. And that's what we do. So uh I'm looking forward to uh sharing with you uh the reason this topic that we're going to be talking about today, every Tuesday I list a poll. I offer a poll on LinkedIn. I know there's so many out there right now, but I want to hear feedback from a family that I've grown of about 24,000 connections. So every week I put out a question I like to know. And I found out that the most engaging topic, the one they wanted to hear the most by far, was leadership. It was almost twice as large as the next topic that they wanted to hear about. So engaging leadership. What is it? How do you do it? And to our discussion, Christopher, how does this apply in the customer world, in the customer experience world? How does it apply there? And so I'm looking forward to diving into that with you.

SPEAKER_00 5:22

This is a really cool topic to talk about. I mean, we're sitting here on the superheroes podcast, and you're talking about bringing heroism to your clients and helping them with their customers. You've you had me at hello, as Jeremy Maguire might say, because I'm a firm believer that when you put the commercial game in the mix, it distracts you and you think about what you take and not what you can contribute. And I'm absolutely with you on that. The power of customer experience to improve the positive impact on human behavior is immense. And you know, that's not just customers or employees, that's community. That's raising the you know, your competitors. So they raise their game and deliver more for their customers and society at large. So I'm really, you know, aligned to how you think, which is which is wonderful. And and I think, you know, in that space, that leadership is so critical because it will set the tone. So let's talk about leadership then. First point to you is in terms of leadership, I quite often get into the topic of customer-centric mindset and being customer-centric leaders. Is there a difference? And what is the difference if there is one?

SPEAKER_01 6:30

Yeah, there is a difference. I think what is often missed by people is they think, well, I don't have this title on my business card or on my desk that designates me as a leader. Therefore, I am not, or I'd like to be someday. And what I don't think they understand is that it doesn't matter what your title is, everyone can be, and ideally, in a great company, everyone should be. The mindset is kind of the vehicle, but the leadership is who's driving.

SPEAKER_00 7:02

That's a great way of putting it.

SPEAKER_01 7:04

Everyone can be a driver, no matter what their title is. And the greatest insight I found, Christopher, is there's people that are just so knowledgeable and well-versed in this that speak on leadership, have written books about this that I greatly respect and consistently digest their content because I want to stay fresh on this. But I went back to the origin. Like, where does the word leadership come from? I use it all the time. And I promised myself when I wrote my first book that if I ever came across a word that I thought would be rich in meaning, I would go back to the dictionary and find out where did it come from? Because that's been tremendously insightful every time I've done it. So I did it for leadership a couple months ago, and I found out some fascinating things. It's Gaelic, and it's origin, and it comes from the word essentially to guide. If your idea of leadership is that you're in charge, that you're a boss, and I can understand why we might think that. Because in the analogy, I said, you know, the mindset is the road, is the vehicle, but somebody's got to be driving. Well, you're the leader, so you need to be driving. Oftentimes people think that that means that I need to be in charge, that there's other people in the car and they take orders from me. That's not necessarily true if you understand that leadership is a guide. The very best experiences on holiday, I'll use your word, holiday. We say vacation here in the state. On holiday, is if you have a tour guide that's experienced and takes you along with them so that you can have the very best experience by immersing you into the culture, into the language, into the food, they bring you along, as opposed to someone that may have the title of tour guide, but they're simply paid to take you from stop A to stop B to stop C. And by the time you get to stop Z, you've done the tour. You've technically gone through a tour, but the experience is entirely different than if you have someone that is immersed in it and finds great joy and pleasure in making sure that the people on the tour get the most out of it. So if you think of that as leadership, and ship simply means capacity, it means ability or capacity to lead. If you think of being someone that can guide others along, I have worked for some incredible coworkers throughout my career that had no titles, but I loved working with them. And from day one, they made me feel welcome. They helped me learn the processes and the people and how things they made my job better. They made it more enjoyable. That's a leader. That's a leader. And we need more people to step up with that first that mindset that says I can totally be a part of this, this customer-centric mindset. Um, I want our company, take ownership of it. I want our company to set the standard for the experience inside and outside. That's the mindset. What can I do to be a part of that? That's leadership.

SPEAKER_00 9:57

As you say, you've been in the sphere of customer service, customer experience delivering the stuff, customer centricity, the strategy, and everything else. Over your over those times, have you observed good leadership in this space? Or have you seen just lots of bosses out there telling people what they should do? Because there's a bit of a challenge, I think, with with the space that we're in. Sometimes it can rock up like a peacock, you know, flap its feathers and say, don't worry, you've been in business for 150 years, but we're here to solve the day. I worry that those coming into the industry see that as a role model for how we should do things. Whereas the person you're presenting actually is very different to that. So, what's your observations been? Have you seen more kind of peacocks or more sort of drivers of the vehicle?

SPEAKER_01 10:43

I would first look at my own life because I've seen as I've matured, as I've worked with great leaders, uh I in the vacuum of those things, and it's only what I bring to the role. I've seen where I was young and thought I had to know it all, and that was impossible, and put me in an impossible thing where I wasn't drawing from the expertise, the pooled expertise on my team. I saw other times where I was one of the hardest workers, and because of survival, I earned leadership, but not because I was the best qualified. It's just I was the only one left standing and had great influence. And even starting off in the military, I did uh served eight years in the Army National Guard here in the States. Starting off, I saw a marked difference with how I started and how I ended. Some of those traits that I brought into being a leader when I was younger, some of the immaturities, some of the not benefiting from others, being threatened by someone that's more proficient in a certain slice of what we did rather than leveraging what they know, rather than plugging them into what they're good at, so that my team is even better. All those things that I learned. So you mentioned we've been in business 150 years. That's if you rest on John Maxwell has this great saying that today's success is the greatest threat, meaning that what got you here won't get you there. Just because you've been in business 150 years, to be frankly honest, customers don't care. What they really care about, especially nowadays, I know you, obviously, we know about you. Do I like you? Maybe, maybe not. Do I trust you? No like and trust is the fastest growing commodity behind the buying decisions that consumers make. No like and trust is a different level between just no and like. As a matter of fact, Zendesk had a global survey pre-COVID of 45,000 companies, 140 countries, and identified that no like and trust was going to be the main driver. They said at that time in 195 to 10 years out, this would be the main driver for consumer decisions. Yeah. It wasn't going to be brand recognition and it wasn't going to be price. It was going to be no like and trust. Well, they didn't foresee COVID. COVID has accelerated that curve to where now I believe we're coming out into an era that's also paired with the first time in modern history this has happened, that the bulk of business owners, consumers, and people in the workforce are Gen X, millennial, or younger. The baby boomer generation that craved stability because they were coming off of the parents who survived the Great Depression and those cycles that were very difficult economically. Now it's a focus on relationships, on experiences, on adding value. As much as these younger generations, I love how Simon Sinek pulls this out, they're not looking for a pat on the back. They're not looking for participation trophies. They want to know truly, do I make a difference? Because if I don't make a difference here, I'm not chasing a paycheck. I can get paid anywhere. I want to be a part of something that I can help make better. So earlier you talked about this customer-centric mindset, right? If they don't believe that they're contributing to an organization that even has this as a value, they're not going to stick around. Now the stalwarts of 150 years can't keep people. They can't keep customers. Out of the blue, like what changed? These undercurrents, I call them tsunamis, because tsunamis, people have this picture that it's like this tidal wave that's stories high and just smashes buildings. I was in Baghdad, Iraq, um, during my tour overseas, and I was watching the tsunami that hit Japan unfold live on television in the control center for the command post. And I was watching this low, unassuming wave just slowly, powerfully creep towards the shore. And then it hit, but it kept going. It never stopped. It was this low, unstoppable, destructive tide. Now we're going to flip it to the other side and say that these are tides that have been coming that you can't stop, you can't change. You need to be able to prepare for what's coming. Companies that haven't prepared for that, for this tide of how people buy, of why people work, of what brings people fulfillment, the most important drivers behind their decision-making processes. If they're not mapping this, if they're not preparing for this, then they're going to be quote unquote caught by surprise. And the stalwarts that rested on stability and on brand and on some on price, those things aren't going to move the needle for this up and coming bulk of our society worldwide. And you know what? It's actually healthier. It's healthier that their relationship and experience focused because it makes for a richer life. That's what people want to identify with. They want their money to go to as much as possible, an organization that matches those kinds of values. So a customer-centric mindset, and then leaders that get this is that they need to understand what's going on economically, generationally, then they also need to be very intentional about how they communicate to those consumers, to those team members, because we do not, and human nature, no matter what generation, we do not assume the best. We assume the worst. It's in our human nature. So if it's not being thoroughly, consistently, regularly communicated, that this is important to us, and then followed up with actions that match, you will either have great statements on a wall that don't move anyone, or you'll have this vacuum of best guess, we don't know. Let's go somewhere that they make that clear. So there's a lot of things at stake here that companies you mentioned the stalwarts, customer experience, employee experience are no longer customer-centric culture, is no longer you can live without it. Going forward, you've got to have plans in place for if you don't have it. How do you adapt to include that? How do you disrupt yourself in a healthy way? Otherwise, the market will do that for you in an unhealthy way.

SPEAKER_00 17:01

There's just so much in there, John. I mean, I think you've tapped into a number of the trends that have brought us to where we are today. And as you kind of unpack them, I could hear in my own head that I remember doing a piece of research with a HR company, it was pre-COVID. And the worrying thing was that candidates were saying, Why would I work here? And that was the narrative coming. And the younger generation were feeling this is not me being bulshy or trying to be disruptive. I genuinely don't want to waste your time because if I can't feel like we're working together towards something that is of value, meaning, and has purpose, I'm not going to get along here and you're going to regret employing me. So it was a, you know, and I thought, wow, that's that's such a change versus the let me through the door, I'll figure it out when I'm here. Um and the younger generation have seen that. Now they've had a year, a year and a half of looking out and seeing organizations behave brilliantly and despicably in different ways. And I think the Ederman Trust Barometer said over 70% of consumers said, I will not return to a brand if I felt that organization didn't look after its employees and its communities. This is where we saw real leadership come forward. Where one particular um Herbert Roller, who are an Iberian utility company, two or three days after lockdown hit, they looked and went, what's the consequence of this? Well, an awful lot of our suppliers are going to be panicking about what's going to happen. They looked at themselves and went, We can do this. We're going to extend all contracts out by an extra year, and we're going to reduce our payment terms to 48 hours. So you put an invoice in, you'll be paid in 48 hours. We've got the money. This is not the right thing to do to be holding it back from you. And at the same time, if I do that, I'm going to get preference from my own customers because they'll get the service because these guys all feel connected. So have the capacity to do that without knowing what the next 12 or 15 months looks like for me is a true demonstration of someone who goes, I know where we need to take the bus. You guys are going to be doing all of the hard work, but I'm going to be steering the bus in the right direction. And everyone then just follows you. So I think we've had some sparks of incredible leadership come through and in a new way that didn't look at the bottom line and say that's important. It looked at the human capital, employees as assets, and said, This needs investing and I need to get this right. So it's it's great to kind of you know hear you say that. And I think you're right. It means that some of the organizations who have rested on some of the conventional pillars of their distinction, the differentiation, even if it's got to a point where they control channels, etc., have got a real wake-up call because that next wave of employee just simply won't connect with them or consumers, but the employees won't connect with them. That change has been accelerated, but it was it was coming. It was coming. So is there someone in your mind, even if it's kind of a fictitious silhouette of a leader? Um, you know, the definition of leadership rather, that you you look to and think, you know, that's my role model for it. Either an individual or as I say, just a fictitious definition.

SPEAKER_01 20:09

Yeah, I would say uh two things. One is, and I'll touch on the simpler one first. It's massively when you look at this paradigm. So I looked at the word hero. We use the word heroes. Um, we are drawn to it as soon as we're born. It's been in humankind for millennia. We love the hero, we want to be the hero, we aspire to heroism. What is it? So I looked it up. And it's essentially the pursuit of two things higher purpose and excellence. If you understand that heroic heroism is achievable, that being heroic in how you do business is uh actually being done by a single percentage of businesses, most likely, but still being done. And if the industry leaders uh in industries that are notorious for poor experience internally and externally, they wouldn't understand that they're that they're being heroic. But when you apply those two percepts throughout the organization so that there's consistent experience no matter what uh branch, no matter what location, no matter what brick and mortar you hit, website, any interaction, the brand is consistent, the experience is consistent because that's baked into their DNA and culture. You can't pay for it, you can't copy it or fake it. Customers and employees are way too savvy, or they'll figure it out quickly enough, and they don't care if they move on to a better opportunity. The sooner they do that in their minds, the better. And it's true. It's not dinged where, oh, you've been only been a couple years at that place and now you're here. Why are you here? Uh you have trouble holding a job. That's not a ding anymore. If as long as they say it wasn't the culture I was looking for, and I'm hoping that your organization is. Now all of a sudden the pressure is on that HR person. In the seat of whoa, is that who we are? And the need for engaged team members is higher than it's ever been because people don't just want a paycheck, they want to be going after something with higher purpose. We sell plumbing supplies, we sell toilet plungers for crying out loud. If somebody needs to unclog the loo, how is that heroic? Okay, I'll give you an example, Christopher. You're at somebody's house, dinner party, and uh you do the flushing thing, and then the the level of the water is doing this number, right? And just right next to it, there happens to be not only any plunger, but a plunger that works fantastic. Can you think of anything more heroic in that instance?

SPEAKER_00 22:43

Nothing in the world would be right.

SPEAKER_01 22:46

So absolutely everything can be heroic because it's not about the item, it's not about the service or the product, it's about how it's done. The other thing that I have in my mind for someone that with leadership that I think engages is this mindset that I identified kind of as polar opposites uh a few years ago. And I use a word picture to explain it an abundance mindset versus a scarcity mindset. The illustration, the story you gave of a company that was an abundance mindset decision. And that the reason they did it was because it was the right thing to do, not because they were betting a short-term play of, hey, if we play this up and we look good a year from now, we get even more business. That's not why they did it, because you can read through that too. No, it was consistent with their values and their culture, and they wanted to take the very best care of people. So let me give you the word picture: scarcity versus abundance. If you've ever put bowls of dog food in front of seven old dogs, they eat their food, they enjoy their food, they take their time, because they know there's another meal coming. Now, on the other hand, you take seven bowls of food and you put them in front of seven puppy dogs, mass chaos erupts. They want all of theirs and all of everybody else's, even though they could never eat all seven bowls. That's the difference between the two. The company that has a scarcity mindset, you'll be able to tell this, and this is a clue to people that I want to be in leadership. Well, here's how you whether this company is going to be a good fit for you. It's worth putting your time and effort to earn that kind of a role. Look at how they make decisions. If it's fear-driven, if it's loss-focused, if it's competition-based, if it's comparison, those are all scarcity. Those are saying that we want as much of the pie as possible. We want all of the pie. Even though companies as large as Amazon could never logistically handle every single client, customer in the entire world. They couldn't do it. They don't have the capacity for it. Even though that's true, there are still companies that act like we could have the whole pie. We want the whole pie. Our entire mission is to get as much of that pie as possible. That's not what's on the wall. That's not what they say, that's not what they communicate or they advertise or brand. But you'll know it when you're part of an organization like that, as opposed to the ones that say, How can we involve everyone in this? How can everyone have every stakeholder be a part of our success? Are people having a great experience with us consistently? How can we improve? This is another big tip off, Christopher. If companies view continuous improvement as a threat, scarcity. If they view it as a tool that is a blessing that they embrace and go with that consider rather than say, well, this is the way we've always done it, scarcity, versus saying, Well, it can always be better, can't it? How can this be better? You look at those two mindsets and you'll be able to map an organization or leadership, and you'll know, okay, I can only get so far in this organization because when you get to a certain level of it or outside this department, this department might be. I've worked for great direct supervisors, but once I got outside of that department, scarcity, scarcity mindset. Wow, I can only do so much, and I'm actually limiting the impact I could have if I was in an organization that actually valued this. As much as companies might not like to hear this, if a candidate is looking for an opportunity, you need to look and find out as much as you can is this company abundance-minded and the leadership, or is it scarcity-minded? You'll be able to see those telltale signs if you break it down that way, rather than trying to look for the other things that get very much into the minutiae. You've got to look at a big picture thing of scarcity or abundance. I understand it may be hard to tell, but just in your conversation with, if you're seriously a candidate for them, with who you're going to be working for, phrase your questions in a way to understand how does this person make decisions? How do they involve others? Do they involve others? Are they collaborative? All those things are abundance mindsets. Leadership that's threatened, leadership that a book that I highly recommend, Multipliers by Wiseman. And in it, that after two years of research, she and the co-author they identify that there are leaders who multiply their impact, and then there are leaders that are empire builders that drive great candidates away. Empire builders end up, um, sometimes it by accident, not intentionally, driving away great talent because they try to do too much themselves rather than involving the whole team. So some of the best leaders, the most effective leaders, are not the bossiest, not type A personalities. They're often the most effective leaders are usually the ones that have a way of connecting with others, engaging with others, drawing out the best of others so that there's more buy-in. And going forward, that kind of a leader is what companies need. They have to have that in order to succeed going forward.

SPEAKER_00 28:13

Wow. I was going to ask you what kind of the you know, if you want to get into understanding this topic better, what's the first thing you should do? But I think you've just given us a really good indication there in terms of looking into organizations and seeing just if they are full of abundance, you know, just if that that is what they're about. And as you say, I've got loads of examples of brands just whooshing through my head where you can really easily, almost like binary, put them in one or two brackets because of the way that they behave towards employees, as customers, or or towards their communities. John, look, this this has been a brilliant topic. I can tell for for someone who's just you're kind of scratching in it, as you were saying, my God, there's a well you've you've been down to get to. And no doubt you've got a lot more you're going to do on it. But it'll be great to kind of hear how your journey with leadership goes as you kind of continue your discovery. I'm grateful the definition of hero has come out so favorable, being the fact that this is the CX superheroes podcast. It would have been quite uncomfortable if we ended up somewhere else. But I love the fact that I like to think about higher purpose and excellent. I think they're really two strong characteristics that can only create a better society. So thank you for being in that society. Thank you for being in the CX community. Thank you for contributing what you share. Has richness. I didn't realize just how you research all your topics so well, which is brilliant. I think anyone who's hearing this should make a beeline to follow your contents. Once again, thank you so much for your time. And I really look forward to any future opportunity we have to connect.

SPEAKER_01 29:42

Well, thanks for the invite, Christopher. And uh I get myself fired up with what I learned and am able to share it with others. So it just reinforces in my mind that these things are non-negotiable values that people are just hungry for. And the companies that provide it, they'll be magnets for the ideal clients and the ideal team members they already want.

SPEAKER_00 30:01

Brilliant. Brilliant. Okay, once again, John, thank you so much.

SPEAKER_01 30:05

Thanks, Christopher.