Human Insight Podcast | Speaking the language of execs: it’s not about CX

Janelle Estes interviewed me for the excellent Human Insights Podcast (and there’s an accompanying blog post). We talk a lot about how to be heard.

Here’s a snippet from the blog post and interview:

“Here’s what I would evangelize. I would evangelize business centricity to customer-focused professionals. That’s what’s standing in your way. We’ve tried all the arguments about why it’s so great to be customer-centered. We have to meet them where they are. We have to find the people who control the dollars,” Adlin said. “If you’ve been battling as a professional with evangelizing customer-centricity, then stop and ask yourself, how can I become more business-centered to achieve the same result.”

[Tamara] uses an analogy of building a tropical island called customer-centricity. And you’re waving your arms to the people on the mainland, your executives, expecting they’re going to see it and come over. But they’re too far away. So you build a boat to bring them over. But that’s too much of a risk for them, traveling all that way to some unproven island. So you build stepping stones all the way from the island to the mainland. Then you need to go to the mainland, take their hand, and walk them from stepping stone to stepping stone.

“We have to do the work to get them to the island,” Adlin said. “We’re not doing that. We just keep saying, ‘how can we make the island prettier?’ That’s not going to help us much at this point. Luckily, you already have every single tool you need to fix this.”