Central to the changing aspect of human performance in organizations is the growing role played by alliances. As Accenture associate partner and director of alliance-related thought leadership and offerings Nick Palmer notes, companies have pursued alliances for a variety of reasons in the past.

Reaching new customers, accessing new technologies, pooling capital, building scale and sharing and reducing risk have been traditional motivations. Today, however, a new and equally compelling reason has emerged: to drive change and innovation within the organization.

GAINING INSIGHTS

Alliances offer them the opportunity to acquire new skills and knowledge, and by focusing on nontraditional alliance goals, they can engineer an internal structure that contributes to the likelihood of success of future alliance efforts.

Making the most of the opportunities alliances have to offer requires employees to develop a different set of skills than those needed for working with vendors or other company employees-innovation in human performance.

"This is truly a new capability organizations need to have today, and it’s not limited to just a few people," Kalmbach says. "A company needs a group of top executives to be champions for the development of this skill set, and if they don’t develop and nurture it, they will lose their ability to move quickly and effectively in today’s marketplace."

One alliance goal that is coming to the forefront, according to Palmer, is learning. While learning has always been an element of alliances, traditionally it has not been a primary concern. With knowledge-based skills and attributes playing a more important role at many companies today, that situation is changing.

"This kind of learning is fundamentally different from the exchange of proprietary information typical of the joint ventures of earlier decades," says Palmer. "The nature of alliances has fundamentally changed."

It makes sense to tap alliance partners to acquire new skills and knowledge.

Perhaps nowhere is innovation in human performance more critical than at the point of contact between a company and its customers-ground zero for all types of commerce.

As the interaction between customers and companies becomes more complex and customers become more demanding, sophisticated and difficult to retain, companies need to develop new strategies to survive at ground zero. The thinking that has developed around this challenge is dubbed customer relationship management (CRM).

Accenture’s research makes clear a stark reality in today’s business world: If a customer feels he or she has not been served well, that customer will move on. As a result, a typical company in a competitive consumer market loses between 10% and 30% of its customer base every year.

It should come as no surprise that more than 65% of CEOs and other top-level executives say that changing customer needs and pressure to customize are the most profound influences on their business strategies.

The balance of power has shifted, and the ball is in the customer’s court. Companies need to build long-term relationships with their customers, but doing so requires a range of new capabilities and a changed mindset throughout the organization. And it must emanate from the top.

SUCCESS BLUEPRINT

Understand their customers, both their wants and needs currently and in the future. That is the foundation of long-term relationships. To achieve that goal, companies must be able to gather and analyze information from across the organization to get a total picture of the customer.

Know and serve their best customers. At many companies, a small percentage of customers account for a large percentage of the company’s total sales volume. Identifying those customers and focusing resources on them is critical to success in today’s economy. At the same time, companies must find ways to turn unprofitable customers into profitable ones.

Manage varied and disparate points of contact. With interactions between companies and customers becoming more complex and varied, traditional vehicles such as the sales force and billing must be complemented by call centers, alliance partners and technology solutions. Companies have to coordinate and integrate those points of contact.

Maintain and improve operational excellence. Customer expectations are high, and in a technology-enabled environment that gives them access to more information that ever before, those expectations will only get higher. Companies must develop the capabilities to manage growing amounts of customer information, and their systems must be flexible enough to allow them to respond to new offerings from competitors.

The concept of "the customer is king" has never been more true in business.

An effective CRM strategy is more than just a technology "point" solution or isolated customer-service initiative. It encompasses all the activities involved in identifying, attracting and retaining the best customers. Properly executed, CRM results in sustainable, profitable growth and increased shareholder value.

FedEx Corp. is one example of an industry leader that has bought into the CRM movement. Its multimillion-dollar CRM program cuts costs and optimizes its existing customer data in efforts to cross-sell and up-sell services.

FedEx has created a system that gives each member of its sales force a comprehensive view of every customer-one of the key points in Accenture’s outline of the four critical elements of CRM. The software identifies each customer’s needs and suggests services that might meet those needs, according to FedEx vice president of worldwide services David Kevren.

FedEx uses the system to refine customer data-and employee responses to it—in ways not formerly possible. As a participant in one of the most competitive sectors of commerce (rapid package delivery), FedEx anticipates its competitors are likely to respond to its initiative.

Companies must be agile enough to respond to cometitors' moves quickly.

Qwest Communications International is another company that has seen the writing on the wall and heeded the message. It has launched an innovative change program that extends to virtually every aspect of human performance within the organization.

Another tactic some companies are deploying to foster innovation in human performance is encouraging creativity. There is a growing body of research that indicates relationships within an organization are critical to its performance-and that the CEO’s role in setting the tone for those relationships is paramount.

"We mandate our leaders with the explicit permission to do what it takes to achieve healthy profitability and growth and to change and recharge those issues should they flag," says Paul Nakai, managing partner and senior vice president of Senn-Delaney Leadership Inc. and co-author of The Mindful Corporation-Liberating the Human Spirit at Work.

But that’s not enough. Leaders need to view their enterprises from a perspective that recognizes the need for growth and regeneration in the human resource and allows for it to happen. "This perspective not only takes into account the health of an organization’s results and profitability," Nakai contends, "it also doesn’t lose sight of the fact that, at heart, it is a living, breathing entity-full of potential and capacity, and open to innovation."

As Nakai and co-author Ron Schultz point out in their book, "Leaders who see organizations from a more mechanical perspective are often those who believe they can and must drive the business hard because, after all, it is a mechanical operation that needs to be driven."

NO QUICK FIXES

"What the leader is missing, of course, is that organizations are not machines but living, cultural entities that need to be treated as such," Schultz says. "When this is ignored, the business eventually loses its life force, the very capacity that helped it reach whatever success it may have found."

In contrast, a leader who views his or her enterprise from a process perspective is more apt to take into account the cyclical nature of life that recognizes and allows for growth and regeneration, according to Nakai and Schultz.

"This approach doesn’t require all the constant care and effort of the mechanical perspective because it operates in accordance with the natural process of adaptability and flexibility, which creates integrated and aligned change," they write in their book.

Quick fixes are more likely to do harm than good in many critical situations.

That perspective not only takes into account the health of an organization’s results and profitability, it also does not lose sight of the fact that, at its heart, the organization is a living, breathing entity full of potential and capacity.