With the changes in the market environment, the demand for talents in the field of experience management is becoming more and more vigorous, so what should you do if you want to devote yourself to this field? This article summarizes three questions about the career development of experience management, hoping to inspire you.
In China, the demographic dividend has peaked, and the competition for customers has shifted from the incremental market to the stock market in the future, and enterprises urgently need to continuously deliver excellent experiences and enhance customer loyalty. Employees represented by the post-90s generation began to "rectify the workplace", forcing enterprises to continuously improve employee experience, etc.
These changes in the market environment have made the demand for experience management talents more and more vigorous. In the context of the experience economy, more and more professionals are devoting themselves to the field of experience management, and the corresponding demand for vocational training and certification in this field is also increasing.
In order to become a leader in this field, we must first understand what the capability model in the field of experience management looks like, check and fill in the gaps against the model, and improve the corresponding capabilities.
1. Three issues of career development
Experience management is an emerging field, which is still in the stage of continuous development and exploration, whether you were in the experience design, product manager or marketing position, if you want to join the experience management field and succeed, you must solve the three core questions of experience management career development: where am I, where am I going, how to get there? As shown in the figure below.
Career development system
Through the three elements of the career development system, you can have an accurate assessment of your current ability, find your career development shortcomings, clarify your career development direction and goals, and finally become a leader in the field of experience.
2. Where I Am: An Enterprise-Level Experience Capability Model
As shown in the figure below, there are seven main competencies involved in the enterprise-level experience competency model: maturity assessment, strategic planning, research insights, journey management, experience innovation, implementation governance, and measurement validation. By cultivating these capabilities, you can become a "heptagon warrior" in the enterprise experience space, and you can forge ahead in this emerging field without victory.
Enterprise-grade experience competency model
The above seven capabilities can be said to be something that everyone in the team must have, but because the ability requirements of different positions are different, the degree of mastery of these seven capabilities is also different for different positions.
As shown in the figure below, in the team, the experience design position has particularly high requirements for experience innovation ability, while the experience operation position has the highest requirements for journey management ability.
Comparison of the radar chart of the competency model of the experience design post (left) and the experience operation post (right).
1. Maturity assessment
In the theory of traditional Chinese medicine, "looking, hearing, inquiring, and seeing" is a very important diagnosis and treatment method, and it is also a basic ability necessary for an excellent Chinese medicine practitioner. The same is true for the enterprise-level experience maturity assessment capability, which is the basic premise for practitioners to promote the experience work within the enterprise, so what is the enterprise-level experience maturity?
"Enterprise-level experience maturity is a measure of the extent to which an enterprise has built a sustainable and win-win experience ecosystem and transformed into an experience-driven enterprise. ”
The maturity assessment is based on our proficiency in using enterprise-level experience maturity assessment tools in our work, the accuracy of judging the maturity stage of the enterprise, and the ability to innovate according to the company's own situation on the basis of standard maturity assessment tools.
2. Strategic planning
There is a saying that everyone must have heard: "It's not terrible not to work hard, but what is really terrible is to work hard in the wrong direction." This sentence fully illustrates the importance of strategy, and if there is a lack of strategic planning ability in experiential work, it will also lead to "going in the opposite direction" of experiential work.
Strategic planning capability refers to the ability to determine the overall and forward-looking enterprise-level experience goals, vision, action roadmap, action plan and resource allocation plan according to the actual needs of the enterprise at the current stage and the overall business objectives of the enterprise.
3. Research insights
At a time when people were still using feature phones like Nokia, Steve Jobs had already seen where the phone was going to go, so he created an iPhone with a superior experience that no other phone maker could match. It can be seen that research insight is very important for enterprise entrepreneurship and development.
Based on the attitude data, behavior data and business data of the target group, the specific target group and market are investigated, tested, evaluated and analyzed, and the results are disseminated within the enterprise, partners and other target groups to form a consistent understanding of the internal and external aspects of the enterprise, so as to provide information for enterprise-level experience decision-makers and reduce the risk of enterprise-level experience decision-making, which is the research and insight ability of enterprise-level experience.
4. Journey management
The experiential journey is one of the five elements of an enterprise-level experience, so the ability to manage the experiential journey is also very important. Journey management capability refers to the ability to monitor and analyze the behavior of target groups and optimize the full-cycle and full-touch experience through practical activities such as experience journey mapping, journey analysis, and journey design and orchestration based on the management of crowd portraits and contact points.
5. Experience innovation
We need to be very innovative in enterprise experience work, and this innovation is often complex, has no single answer, and is non-linear. Design thinking, on the other hand, is a design methodology that is mainly used to solve problems, especially those complex problems where the answer is not unique or unknown. Therefore, cultivating design thinking is conducive to improving the ability of experience innovation.
6. Implement governance
Ultimately, the enterprise-level experience needs to be implemented. Having the ability to implement and govern enterprise-level experience mainly refers to being able to run multiple experience projects in parallel in the process of promoting experience work, effectively achieve the strategic goals of the department, consider the overall resources of the department from the aspects of product, cost, and technology in an all-round and multi-angle manner, reduce duplication and waste, reasonably arrange the plan and schedule, and make simulation and prediction of the plan, avoid major risks in advance, and deal with and solve major changes and emergencies.
7. Measurement Verification
Measurement and verification capability refers to the ability to design a multi-level and multi-dimensional indicator system, collect data through multiple channels, quantify, analyze and promote the implementation of experience quality based on customer journeys or touchpoints, establish the correlation between experience and overall organizational indicators, and evaluate and optimize experience. The measurement and verification capabilities can be divided into three aspects: the ability to design the experience index system, the ability to locate and optimize the design of the problem, and the ability to review the project.
3. Where to go: an enterprise-level experience job model
"Where are you going?" indicates the goal, which is the specific position you want to do. Because the focus of competency requirements is different for each position, we must first understand the specific job segmentation in the experience field and its professional background, job responsibilities and competency model.
The job model in the enterprise experience field mainly consists of two parts, one is the subdivision of professional positions, and the other is the professional level of subdivided positions.
1. Subdivide professional positions
In the current work practice, the experience team generally includes several common professional positions, such as team management, experience research, experience operation, experience design, project management, and data analysis, as shown in the figure below. Of course, the specific professional positions should be set according to the background, development stage, actual needs and other factors of each enterprise.
Experience common professional roles in the team
2. Subdivide the professional level of the position
The subdivision positions in the general enterprise are divided into five professional levels: primary, intermediate, senior, senior and expert, of course, the specific professional post level should be considered according to the background, development stage, actual requirements and other factors of each enterprise.
4. How to get there: the GROW model of career development planning
Let's tackle the last core question in career development – "how to get there".
Here I will introduce a career development planning tool - the GROW model. G STANDS FOR GOAL, R STANDS FOR REALITY, O STANDS FOR OPTIONS, AND W STANDS FOR WILL, AS SHOWN IN THE FIGURE BELOW. With the help of this tool, we can make our career development more scientific and planned.
GROW model
So, how does the GROW model work? Let's illustrate the case of a graphic designer using the GROW model to build a competitive advantage in the workplace in the field of experience.
Xiao A is a graphic designer who has been working for five years, and his career is currently facing a huge bottleneck, on the one hand, the field of graphic design is already a red sea in the workplace, and the competition between designers is quite fierce, on the other hand, he is a little confused about the future development and does not know how to develop.
Xiao A found that the current prospects in the experience field are very good, especially in terms of digitalization, such as the field of new energy vehicles and the metaverse, which require a large number of experience talents. So, Little A used the GROW model to plan her career transformation.
1. GOAL: Objective
Based on the enterprise-level experience ability model and the job model, Xiao A preliminarily determines that she wants to engage in experience design post-related work according to her professional background, ability and hobbies. Little A thought: "I am a designer myself, so I should be more innovative." If we take the experience innovation capability as the core, and strengthen the building of the other six capabilities on this basis, we should be able to gain a competitive advantage in the experience design position. ”
2. REALITY&OPPTION:现状与选择
Little A scored and assessed her abilities:
Little A obtained his own competency model radar chart through the competency assessment form and compared it with the senior level of the experience design post, as shown in the figure below. He identified the missing competencies and prioritized the ones that needed to be improved.
Comparison of current competencies with those of the experience design post
As you can see from the comparison chart, in addition to the ability to experience innovation, other capabilities need to be improved. Among them, research insights and implementation governance are the two that need to be improved the most, so he has set these two as the highest priority.
3. WILL: Planning
Then, based on the capacity improvement priorities identified in the previous step, Xiao A formulated a capacity development plan table.
Through the above methods, Xiao A has continuously improved his professional abilities in the field of experience in his daily work, and has begun to emerge in his daily experience work, and is gradually establishing a professional competitive advantage in this field in the current enterprise.
At work, colleagues often ask me questions like this: "I find that there are many competency dimensions required in the experience field, and I feel that I am lacking in many aspects, should I improve comprehensively or make a breakthrough?"
What do you think of this problem? In management, the various abilities of people are compared to planks surrounded by wooden barrels, and the boards are of different lengths, which are very similar to the combination of a person's abilities. Usually the important conclusion of the barrel principle is that the upper limit of a person's comprehensive ability depends on the length of the short board, that is, the shorter the short board, the weaker the barrel's ability to hold water. As a result, many people began to make up for their shortcomings, thinking that they could occupy more advantages in the workplace by making up for their shortcomings. But everyone ignores a problem, the length of ability is relative, maybe your long board is not as long as other people's short board.
From another point of view, why do you have to make up for the shortcomings, do the opposite, and constantly lengthen your own long board, in fact, you can eventually fill more water, as shown in the figure below.
Fill the short board VS long board
If it were you, would you choose to make up for the shortcomings or lengthen the boards?
In fact, there is no contradiction between the two, it can be carried out in stages, and there are more shortcomings when you just graduate, so you can give priority to making up for the shortcomings. If you want to take the career development path of a general management position for more than 5 years, you can choose to continue to make up for your shortcomings, and if you want to take the career development path of experts in subdivided fields, you can choose to continue to lengthen your long board.
This article was originally published by @井然 on Everyone is a Product Manager. Reproduction without the permission of the author is prohibited.
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