This is session 2.3 of the IRG100 curriculum, on evolving experiences. It presents the study finding, the reason experience keeps moving, a set of practices for keeping up with it, and a worked example from Adecco, then puts the participants to work on their own organization.
Key findings
- The headline gap is large. Over-performers deliver ever-evolving experiences at 81 percent against 32 percent.
- The starting condition is poor. Gartner research is cited for the finding that only 8 percent of customers say they have good customer experiences.
- Expectations do not reset between categories. The previous best experience a customer had becomes the baseline expectation for the next one.
- The competitive risk the deck names is a sea of digital sameness, where every touchpoint converges on the same design.
- The economic frame is Joseph Pine’s progression from commodities through goods and services to experiences, where customization moves a business up the ladder and commoditization pushes it back down.
The practices the session teaches
The first is a posture rather than a technique. Over-performers embrace what the deck calls being always beautifully dissatisfied, which is what keeps an experience evolving after it is good enough.
The rest are concrete: embrace design thinking, start with the customer journey, be empathetic and think like a host, fight sacred industry norms, and leverage AI along with AR and VR. Livestreamed shopping events and Alibaba’s Hema are given as examples of an experience that became something else.
The ambition beyond the experience itself is a movement. The running club example is described as going from experience to movement.
What the Adecco work actually involved
The case study is notable for its scale. The journey mapping included 13 branch immersions, 50 branch manager and consultant interviews, 4 focus groups, 8 executive team interviews, 32 insight sessions with Gen Z, 20 ideation sessions with start-ups and 700 interactions with candidates and clients in France and the Netherlands.
One finding stands out: consultants spend 70 percent of their time on administrative tasks. The work produced more than 100 co-created solutions, each with a named business owner, timing, branch impact, digital impact and pain or gain, developed with Adecco experts, customer experience experts and start-ups.
What the leader is asked to do
The role section is deliberately modest about authority. Create empowered teams in flattened organizations, lead the cross-silo discussion, start where you have influence, manage a portfolio of initiatives, and ensure humanity at key touchpoints.
Participants then work individually on where their own organization leads and lags, what enables and blocks success, and what they should do more or less of, referencing the benchmark. Groups prioritize best practices, and everyone books a sparring session before the first milestone on growth opportunities.
Where the session sits
The roadmap places this session in the what module, between multiple business models and the da Vinci growth CMO, with the how module covering human-centric transformation, open culture, the anticipative organization, whole-brained thinking and diversity for growth, before the program converges on Cannes.
The session also reports live poll results from the group on how they work, covering whether they develop a detailed business model proposal before discussing it with colleagues, how widely they discuss business model implications across functions, and whether they are a trusted partner of the CFO.
Scope and limitations
The deck is teaching material for a closed cohort. The poll results come from the room rather than from the study, and the Adecco case is presented as one worked example.
Source
This page summarises Evolving Experiences, by Institute for Real Growth, March 2021.