Leadership

DRIVERS Framework
Reading Time: 5 minutesCustomer Experience Has Entered Its Governance Era For more than a decade, customer experience has been discussed as a cultural aspiration – the DRIVERS framework helps executives to understand its impact. Organisations spoke about empathy. They invested in journey mapping, launched listening programmes and tracked sentiment. Yet many leadership teams [...]

Introducing the DRIVERS Framework

 in Business / Leadership / Teams  tagged Governance / Leadership / Strategy / Success by
Customer-centric
Reading Time: 6 minutesWhy customer-centric focus fails without governance — and how leaders fix it 1. The uncomfortable truth: most board agendas are still inside-out Most boards would say they put customers first. Very few agendas reflect that claim. Customer topics often appear late in meetings, framed as performance reports rather than decision [...]

How to Build a Customer-Centric Boardroom Agenda

 in Customer Experience / Leadership / Management  tagged Business / Communication / Leadership by
Leadership Questions
Reading Time: 6 minutesIf your executive team feels aligned, but there is something not quite right, ask yourself these leadership questions, starting with this one: When was the last time you disagreed properly about something that mattered? Many leadership teams mistake calm meetings, polite agreement, and steady activity for alignment. In reality, avoidance [...]

10 Leadership Questions that Executive Teams Avoid

 in Leadership / Personal Development / Teams  tagged Communication / Leadership / Team by
Net Promotor Score NPS
Reading Time: 6 minutesSeeing B2B Customer Success Through the Right Lens For many boards, Net Promoter Score (NPS) has become the default proxy for customer success. It is reviewed regularly, discussed confidently, and often treated as evidence that the organisation is either “doing fine” or “needs attention”. The problem is not that Net [...]

Beyond the Net Promoter Score (NPS)

 in Business / Customer Experience / Leadership / Management  tagged Business / Customer Experience / CX / Leadership by
Sustain - SUCCESS Framework
Reading Time: 5 minutesKeeping Growth Alive After the Excitement Fades with Sustain Every transformation begins with energy. The first workshops spark new thinking.The new rhythm feels refreshing.Teams experience early wins.Leadership sees movement.Confidence spreads. And then — slowly, quietly — reality returns. People get busy.Priorities multiply.Operational pressure reasserts itself.Urgency shifts.Enthusiasm fades into routine.Routine fades [...]

Sustain – SUCCESS Framework

 in Business / Leadership / Management / Teams  tagged Business / Communication / Leadership / Team by
Executable Plan
Reading Time: 5 minutesTurning Customer Truth Into Coordinated Movement The Executable Plan is the discipline that stops Account-Based Growth from becoming a well-framed intention rather than a lived organisational behaviour. It is the point in the SUCCESS framework where understanding becomes movement — where strategy gains a pulse. There is a dangerous moment [...]

Building an Executable Plan – SUCCESS Framework

 in Business / Leadership / Management / People  tagged Business / Communication / Leadership / Team by
Customer Segments
Reading Time: 5 minutesCustomer Segments – Who Deserves Your Best? Many leadership teams still don’t know who their best customers really are. They know who shouts the loudest.They know who spends the most time with them.They know who complains.They know who buys occasionally but demands constantly. What they often don’t know is: Which [...]

Customer Segments Development – SUCCESS Framework

 in Business / Customer Experience / Leadership / Technology  tagged Business / Digital Transformation / Leadership / Success by
Understanding & Unification
Reading Time: 6 minutesUnderstanding & Unification – Where Strategy Meets Reality Most leadership teams believe they’re aligned. The quarterly review ends, the dashboard looks healthy, the pipeline report shows green, and everyone around the table nods with confidence. Then a customer says something that stops the room cold. – “That’s not what your [...]

Understanding & Unification – SUCCESS Framework

 in Business / Leadership / Technology  tagged Communication / CRM / Leadership / Strategy by
Strategy & Governance
Reading Time: 5 minutesIf you read the introductory post in this series, you’ll know that SUCCESS begins with the discipline that holds everything else together. Here, we start with S — Strategy & Governance: the foundation of predictable, aligned commercial growth. The discipline that determines whether your organisation will actually grow — or [...]

Strategy & Governance – SUCCESS Framework

 in Business / Digital Transformation / Leadership / Project Management  tagged B2B / Leader / Leadership / Success by
SUCCESS Framework
Reading Time: 3 minutesWhere Growth Becomes a Leadership Discipline Most growth initiatives don’t collapse because the model was wrong. They collapse because the rhythm is lost. A small misalignment here, a missed review there. A decision made on assumption. A customer insight diluted. A Heatmap ignored. A success plan left to gather dust. [...]

The SUCCESS Framework Series

 in Business / Digital Transformation / Leadership / Technology  tagged Business / Leadership / Team by
Christmas Future
Reading Time: 8 minutesChristmas Future – The Era of Cognitive Transformation 1. Introduction — The Acceleration to 2035 When I first wrote The Post of Christmas Future in 2014, the world still felt full of uncomplicated technological optimism. We pictured electric cars, self-driving systems, virtual reality training suites, 3D-printed homes, and an emerging [...]

The Post of Christmas Future 2035

 in Business / Leadership / Technology  tagged Business / Leadership / technology by
Leadership Alignment
Reading Time: 5 minutesOrganisations rarely break at the bottom. They fracture at the top. Leadership alignment is key to recovery. Misalignment inside a leadership team isn’t dramatic at first. It begins quietly, in the background: different interpretations of the same data, different definitions of success, meetings where people nod but leave with different [...]

Leadership Alignment – Where Recovery Takes Root

 in Business / Leadership / Management / Teams  tagged Alignment / Communication / Leader / Leadership / Strategy / Team by
Board - Customer Alignment
Reading Time: 3 minutesWhen an unhappy strategic customer leaves the room, what does your boardroom really sound like? Introduction: The Door Closes, the Real Conversation Begins The handshakes end, the smiles fade, and the customer leaves the room. Within seconds, the conversation changes. Targets. Timelines. Blame. A quiet sigh of relief that the [...]

The Sound of Board and Customer Alignment

 in Customer Experience / Leadership / Teams  tagged Customer Alignment / Customer Spectacles / CX / Leadership by
Digital Handoffs
Reading Time: 5 minutesDigital Handoffs: The Delivery Paradox While digital projects celebrate on-time delivery, we find the real threat to success lies in the handoffs—the critical transitions between teams where intent is diluted, context is lost, and the promised business value quietly leaks away. 70% of digital transformations fail to meet their objectives [...]

Digital Handoffs: Where Value is Lost

 in Business / Customer Experience / Digital Transformation / Project Management / Teams / Technology  tagged Business / Digital Transformation / Leadership / Project Management / Team by
A to Z of Culture and Collaboration
Reading Time: 6 minutes26 leadership behaviours that turn strategy into execution Introduction: The Invisible Advantage Strategy might set the direction, but culture and collaboration sets the speed. Every leader knows the strategic map, but few measure the invisible friction that dictates execution speed. In today’s complex world — marked by hybrid workforces, cross-functional [...]

The A to Z of Culture and Collaboration

 in Business / Customer Experience / Leadership / People  tagged Collaboration / Culture / Leadership / Team by
Stakeholder Engagement
Reading Time: 4 minutesIntroduction: Beyond the Boardroom: The Strategic Shift Stakeholder engagement has become one of the most misused phrases in modern leadership. For many organisations, it still means investor updates, community statements, and polite Q&A sessions at annual meetings. The goal is often compliance, not connection. But the world has changed. Stakeholders [...]

Shifting Stakeholder Engagement for Real Alignment

 in Business / Leadership / Project Management  tagged Business Change / Leadership / Relationship / Transformation by
A to Z of B2B CRM
Reading Time: 9 minutesBeyond Transactions to Transformation – B2B CRM For most enterprise and public sector organisations, the B2B CRM promise remains unfulfilled. It was meant to be the single source of truth for revenue growth; instead, it’s often a cumbersome reporting tool, a compliance checkbox, or a system plagued by distrust and [...]

The A to Z of B2B CRM – An Executive ...

 in Business / Customer Experience / Technology  tagged CRM / Leadership / Sales by
From Pitch to Delivery - Where B2B Trust Breaks Down
Reading Time: 4 minutesWinning the deal is only half the battle – Pitch to Delivery Success is Key In the pitch room, the atmosphere is electric. Slides are polished, ideas flow, and promises are made with confidence. Customers nod along, excited by the possibilities. They say “yes” to the vision. But the true [...]

From Pitch to Delivery: Where B2B Trust Breaks Down

 in Business / Leadership / Management / Marketing / Sales  tagged Leadership / marketing / Sales by
Alignment
Reading Time: 4 minutesB2B Growth slowing, but why? When B2B growth stalls, leadership teams often point the finger at market shifts, aggressive competition, or disruptive technology. Those factors matter, but in countless organisations I’ve seen, they’re not the real killer. The silent assassin of B2B growth is misalignment across functions. It doesn’t scream [...]

The Silent Killer of B2B Growth: Misalignment

 in Business / Leadership / Management / Teams  tagged Communication / Leadership / Sales. Marketing by
A to Z Digital Leadership
Reading Time: 8 minutesDigital leadership isn’t just leadership with shinier tools. It’s a different discipline altogether. Traditional leaders rose through hierarchies, steered with experience, and relied on authority to get things done. Digital leaders still need authority and experience, but they also need speed, adaptability, and the humility to learn faster than the [...]

The A to Z of Digital Leadership

 in Digital Transformation / Leadership  tagged Digital Leadership / Digital Literacy / Digital Transformation / Leadership by
Project Rescue
Reading Time: 9 minutesWhen projects derail and when to move into Project Rescue Every leader has faced it: the project that starts with promise, burns through months of effort, and then stalls. Deadlines slip, costs spiral, and meetings feel more like crisis briefings than progress updates. In the private sector, that might be [...]

The A to Z of Project Rescue

 in Leadership / Management / Project Management / Technology  tagged Business / Communication / Leadership / Success / Transformation by
Reading Time: 15 minutesIntroduction In Part 1 of this series, we explored how to craft a digital transformation vision that truly inspires — one that speaks to every stakeholder by answering the question: “What’s in it for me?” But vision alone doesn’t deliver outcomes. Many organisations begin their transformation journey with optimism, board-level [...]

Leading Digital Transformation: From Vision to Reality

 in Digital Transformation / Leadership / Teams / Technology  tagged Digital Transformation / Leadership / Strategy by
Oak Consult, Customer Experience, CX
Reading Time: 5 minutesHelping teams build a culture that truly puts the customer first by wearing customer spectacles Introduction When was the last time your team truly saw the world as your customers do? Most organisations say they are customer-focused, but targets, processes, and politics often pull attention inward. The result is experiences [...]

Customer Spectacles: Seeing Through Your Customer’s Eyes

 in Business / Leadership / Teams  tagged Communication / CRM / Customer Experience / CX / Leadership by
Coaching Team 3
Reading Time: 4 minutesWelcome to Part 2 of Leadership Styles: The Coach Author, educator, and motivational speaker, Dr. William Arthur Ward wrote a phrase that I try to remember. It gives me personal strength to do the right thing, rather than the easy thing – ‘The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. [...]

The Coach ~ Leadership Styles – Part 2

 in Leadership / People / Teams  tagged Career / Coach / Coaching / Communication / Feedback / Leadership / Listening / Relationship / Success / Team by
Word Cloud - Elephant in the Room 3
Reading Time: 7 minutesI see two distinct types of ‘Elephant’ in my line of work…and two ways of tackling them. The Management Elephant and the Leadership Elephant. This blog focusses on the latter. If you missed Part 1 – An Elephant in the Room: Management breakthroughs, and are wondering what on earth I’m [...]

An Elephant in the Room Part 2 – Leadership Breakthroughs

 in Business Skills / Leadership / People / Teams  tagged Accountability / Business / Feedback / Goals / Honesty / Leader / Leadership / Relationship / Results / Success / Team / Vision by
Listening for the unsaid! 1
Reading Time: 4 minutesTo paraphrase Wikipedia – An “Elephant in the room” has become a management saying meaning an obvious truth that is being ignored or goes unaddressed. It applies to an obvious problem or risk no one wants to discuss and based on the idea that an elephant in a room would [...]

An Elephant in the Room Part 1 – Management Breakthroughs

 in Leadership / Management / People / Teams  tagged Discrimination / Elephant in the room / Feedback / Leader / Leadership / Performance / Relationship / Sabotage / Success / Team by
Mark Conway 1
Reading Time: 5 minutesThanks to those of you who took the time to complete the recent Top Leadership Challenges poll. The top 3 challenges as voted for by Think Oak! readers are: 1. Creating a high performance culture How leaders believe things should get done is a key driver of culture. Leaders establish [...]

Top Leadership Challenges – The Results

 in Leadership / Management / People  tagged Culture / Customer Services / Innocent / Leader / Leadership / Public Sector / Raving Fans / Team / Walt Disney by