Business Transformation Requires Transformational Leaders

The explosion of connected devices has set a new standard in consumer expectations, in that the "standard" is a moving target. Everything is connected, everything is digital, and everything is real time. There is no tolerance in the market for a company that produces great products but offers a poor service experience around that product or vice versa. The experience with your firm's products and services must be at least as good as the best experience a consumer has ever had with anyone else.

Empathy-based software design makes sense, but like many apparently sensible ideas, most will miss it. The right way to start is to put yourself in your customers' shoes, look at the world from their perspective, and feel for yourself the delight and frustrations your end user might feel. Listen and understand the reasons why users will want to engage, will want to use this application, and what their context and intentions are. You then focus on creating an effortless and situationally appropriate experience. Respect the consumers' preferences.

Imagine you are at a networking event filled with experienced IT professionals. In all likelihood, you would probably not need to walk more than three steps before bumping into an IT leader who has had a miserable experience trying to implement one of the major ERP or CRM packages. It does not matter whether you mention SAP, Oracle, or even one of the trendy cloud-based products; every one of these systems can be challenging to implement in a manner that truly has a tangible, positive, and transforming impact on the desired business and IT operations.

We are analog beings in an increasingly digital world. This presents a design conundrum -- the more we crave empathic design to enrich our lives, the less capable we are of producing it.

Jack Stark is a licensed clinical psychologist who specializes in performance psychology. He works with Fortune 500 corporate executives and college, professional, and Olympic athletes employing an approach that is detailed in his highly acclaimed book The Championship Formula.

The product owner plays a key role in Scrum. This role has migrated to most Agile practices whether grounded in Scrum or not. The product owner provides key stakeholder representation, ensuring an Agile project remains on track in meeting user needs and expectations.