• What imposter syndrome is and how it affects us all
• Common themes regarding imposter syndrome among Veterans transitioning from active duty
• The types of Veterans who tend to experience imposter syndrome
• How imposter syndrome impacts behaviors and outcomes for Veterans coming off active duty
• How Veterans can combat the effects of imposter syndrome when moving into the civilian workforce

James wrote an article on the topic “Imposter at Arms” in 2020.

C20 is a twice-a-week, 20-minute, live VA webcast hosted by Dr. Chad Kessler, National Program Director for VHA Emergency Medicine, and VA subject matter experts from the field who join him to address today’s hottest topics.

View the episode replay here. (His interview starts at 10:05 minutes into the episode)

The post gothamCulture’s James O’Flaherty addresses Imposter Syndrome on Veterans Administration C20 Webcast appeared first on gothamCulture.

The process a veteran goes through in order to understand where their skills are valued and required in the private sector can take months or even years. It’s a process of self-discovery, devoid of the formal, regimented guidance veterans are used to having. Transitioning from active duty requires setting new civilian expectations for themselves, identifying how they want to use their skillset and ultimately picking a new career.

When transitioning into the civilian workforce, however, veterans often place unrealistic expectations on themselves and misinterpret the way society views them and their abilities. This misalignment of self-expectations and societal perceptions commonly results in a phenomenon known as imposter syndrome.

Seventy percent of people will experience imposter syndrome at some point in their life. Experts describe imposter syndrome as “an internal experience of intellectual phoniness in individuals who are highly successful but unable to internalize their success.” The syndrome often manifests itself through overworking, discounting successes, low self-assessments and anxiety about fear of failure. To understand how veterans develop and experience imposter syndrome, it’s helpful to take a look at their previous military environment.

On the heels of the longest military campaign in our nation’s history, our servicemembers have spent many years in the cycle of constant deployment to some of the most complex, austere and hostile environments in the world. Since lives were on the line, they needed to be the best. They needed to be perfect. This level of seriousness and intensity doesn’t lend itself to praise for a job well done, but rather a sharp focus solely on ways to improve.

This focus permeates into other areas of servicemembers’ lives. As a result, they leave the military as a high-performing asset without understanding how their unique experiences have turned them into a very valuable asset to the rest of the world. Once they transitioned to civilian life, these veterans took the same mindset to work, constantly looking for ways to improve. This mindset is not only the reason veterans are seen as great hires, but also a major component of the imposter syndrome that many of them come to feel.

Young Marine officers are expected to set a very high standard of professionalism, train their Marines to accomplish the mission and have the wisdom and foresight to quickly adapt when plans inevitably go awry. While training for a mission, they are constantly refining small parts of themselves and their teams to be as close to perfect as possible. Excelling in these areas is not met with praise because you’re only meeting expectations.

Falling short of any of these goals or standards is met with critique, shame and the knowledge that you simply didn’t add up that day. These “failures” can weigh heavily on those whose bar is set at perfection. Success equates to things going as planned thanks to over-preparation. This causes veterans to believe their successes are attributed to the plan instead of their talent. They also tend to focus solely on ways to improve instead of considering all the things they personally did right.

Veterans then carry these mental models into the civilian workforce, which doesn’t always use the same measurements for success, failure and value. Veterans discover a different reality in the civilian world.

Since they want to begin pulling their weight as quickly as possible, veterans will often tap into their tendency to overwork. Although this elevated work ethic served them well in a previous life, it can become problematic when the amount of mental calories they burn on a task exceeds the amount required to do the job well. The military fosters intense competition, so many veterans leave the military with a subconscious need to excel.

This need can contribute to imposter syndrome when veterans enter an industry where they’re not yet as skilled as others and compare themselves to the exceptional, experienced talent around them. As a result, they can begin to feel incompetent by dismissing their own skills and abilities. This need to excel in the presence of high-performers mirrors their experience in the military and drives home the need to maintain a perfectionist mindset.

“Perfect” is the enemy

The military breeds perfectionists in its servicemembers. As it happens, perfectionism is believed to have a significant impact on developing imposter fears. These perfectionist tendencies can result in setting unusually high goals, developing impossible self-expectations and ultimately feeling defeat and shame when not reaching such impossible thresholds.

To make matters worse, those who experience imposter syndrome discount positive feedback from others because they view those comments as misaligned with their own perfectionist views of success. This can be especially true for veterans who aren’t used to compliments in their military life. In addition to discounting positive feedback, one can even rationalize why they don’t deserve praise or credit (it was luck, it was the process, it was the plan, etc.). As this cycle continues, so does the presence of imposter syndrome.

Ready for the good news? It’s definitely not all just doom-and-gloom.

At ease, soldiers

Although symptoms of imposter syndrome can cripple productivity, many veterans have found a way for them to fuel drive and determination to succeed. Their maniacal pursuit of excellence can lead to a host of different outcomes, including becoming a powerful force to build a company, excel in academia or invent something new.

Dr. Chris Cancialosi, a former US Army Blackhawk helicopter pilot and managing partner of the consulting firm gothamCulture, told me, “I credit my imposter syndrome as something that has fueled my drive to succeed. I push through one goal and move right on to the next. I may not be the smartest person in the room, but I’m going to out-work everyone else to win because, at the end of the day, I don’t think I’m good enough to be here.”

This is a great example of using imposter syndrome symptoms to succeed and make a positive impact on other people’s lives. Although Dr. Cancialosi spent time and energy building this mindset, his perspective sheds an interesting light on how one can flip a potentially harmful mental model into an advantage. After all, these symptoms and mental models can become tools for success if you don’t let them go to extremes. Keep the chaos in check, because the most important 6 inches on your battlefield still lies between your ears.

For us stubborn veterans, recognizing the symptoms of imposter syndrome might be the toughest part, because they were once essential to staying alive. As we work to grow distant from that context, we should acknowledge the traits that are no longer needed and phase them out of our lives. Let’s face it: Lives are no longer on the line. We don’t always have to overprepare. The compliments from our colleagues, boss, family and friends are meant for us, and they’re real.

We don’t have to be perfect. We’ll never be perfect. We’re better off focusing on how lucky everyone is to have awesome people like us on their team.

It was never the plan. It was you. You were never an imposter. You were that good all along.

This article originally appeared on PeopleScience.Maritz.com.

The post Imposter At Arms appeared first on gothamCulture.

Formal New Leader Assimilation

Most existing new leader assimilation processes trace their roots to original research conducted by John Gabarro first published in 1985. Gabarro studied the succession of 14 general managers to understand the challenges of taking charge of a new organization. Using longitudinal studies and historical case reviews, Gabarro examined successions covering:

• Functional and general managers
• Organizations ranging in annual sales from $1.2 million to $3 billion,
• Turnarounds and normal situations
• Successions that failed as well as those that succeeded.

In Gabarro’s work, he found that it typically takes 13 to 18 months of learning before a new leadership is ready to significantly impact the organization. Given the amount of time and resources invested in finding and placing a new leader, waiting a year or more to see a return on that investment is a daunting proposition for most organizations. As such it is no surprise that Gabarro’s work spawned tremendous interest in finding ways to significantly reduce that timeline.

Addressing Common Causes of New Leader Failure

Despite this proliferation of intentional assimilation programs, research by Carruci found that between 50% and 60% of executives fail within their first 18 months in a new role. While the reasons for failure are varied, research by the Center for Creative Leadership (as described by Jacoby) identifies three common reasons that result in failure for newly transitioned leaders:

• Failing to build key relationships
• Being too slow to learn the organization’s culture
• Neglecting to clarify role expectations

To combat these typical points of failure, intentional efforts are required to connect new leaders with individuals, their team, and the organization. I recommend any new leader consider the following key activities to accelerate your impact and set yourself up for long term success.

1. Start by focusing on vision. Get clear about the value your team creates for the agency and your customers. And help each member of the team understand how they individually create value in alignment with that vision.
2. Invest heavily to understand the expected outcomes and impacts you need to deliver. In Good to Great, Jim Collins talks about the ability of successful organizations (and leaders) to deal with the brutal facts and not lose hope. Chances are that as a new leader you’re joining a team that has some gaps or areas where they need to improve. It’s essential that you work quickly to get a clear picture of where those gaps are so that you can develop a strategy for maintaining hope in the face of what may be daunting obstacles to overcome.
3. Find high-quality sherpas to guide you on the assimilation journey. As Gabarro observed, it can take a long time for leaders to understand the hidden dynamics of an organization. So, work to establish relationships with key stakeholders at various levels in the organization who can help you navigate these complexities. Look for members of your team, peers, and more senior leaders who have been successful in operating within the organization’s culture and ask them how they’ve managed to succeed.
4. Get the incentives right from the beginning. Driving performance is really all about aligning incentives to generate desired behaviors. New leaders must spend time getting to know their teams to understand what motivates them to contribute to the success of the organization. Then put incentive systems into place to reinforce desired behaviors and discourage counter-productive ones. Often new leaders believe they are “stuck” with the incentive systems they’ve inherited – and when it comes to monetary incentives they may be right. But, focusing more broadly on meaningful rewards and recognition and negative reinforcement from the get-go can accelerate your impact.
5. Be an engaged leader from day 1. Being an effective new leader means you have to model the engaged behaviors you want to generate in your team. As Andrew Reitmeyer explains, consistently adopting a few key behaviors can help improve morale, build better relationships, and improve the performance of your team. So, focus on modeling the most important behaviors early and often to demonstrate their importance and the impact new ways of interacting can have on the organization.

Taking on a leadership role in a new organization can be tough in the best times and even tougher when things are uncertain and volatile. But, with a focused and intentional approach, you can make a significant positive impact that sets the stage for long term success in your new role.

This article originally appeared on GovLoop.com.

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Discover gothamCulture’s approach to New Leader Assimilation.

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The new options are intended to enable agencies to continue meeting their staffing needs during the COVID-19 pandemic. But, while the memo addresses remote delivery for the administrative elements of onboarding, agencies may be struggling to effectively connect new employees to the new organization. And, with one recent study suggesting that a negative onboarding experience makes new employees two times more likely to look for a new job, it’s clear that effective onboarding must be a priority.

Here are six things to consider as you are working to quickly shift to virtual onboarding:

6 Keys to Virtual Onboarding

• Focus on the essentials – The study referenced above also found that the average onboarding process has 54 tasks for new employees. While that may be okay when they are face-to-face with someone who can help guide them through the process, asking a new hire to sift through all those requirements alone is daunting. Your virtual onboarding process should focus just on what is critical for the employee to get to work. Look for ways to streamline administrative requirements and consider deferring non-essential administrative trainings and meetings. Challenge yourself and hiring managers to find ways to assign productive work within the first few days of the employees tenure.
• Start before day one – In traditional onboarding processes, a lot of the pre-first day activity is administrative and misses out on opportunities to begin engaging the new hire in their new role and their new organization. Instead of just thinking about what needs to be done to get the employee to their first day, consider how you can best engage prior to the first day to help them connect to their work, their colleagues and the organization.

• Make time for one-on-one sessions with their supervisors – LinkedIn found that 72% of new hires in their survey said one-on-one time with their supervisors was the most important part of their onboarding experience. And, 96% found the meetings at least somewhat useful. Encouraging supervisors in your agency to prioritize spending time with new hires is an essential part of onboarding.

• Integrate storytelling – Every element of your virtual onboarding experience is an opportunity to build the brand of the agency and introduce new hires to the culture and values of the organization. Leverage videos, blogs, and articles that demonstrate the values, attributes, and behaviors that define your organization. You should share the stories that demonstrate the impact your agency has on customers and communities to help new employees get inspired by the impact their work will have.

• Intentionally connect new hires to their colleagues – Helping new hires feel a sense of connection and belonging to a distributed team is really critical. Consider scheduling virtual coffee meetings between new employees and their team members. Or, having team members write notes to mail to the new employee’s home office. In a time where all connections are electronic, having a physical link others can be very meaningful.

• Stay agile – Remember, you likely won’t get the virtual onboarding process right the first time – or maybe even the 51st time. And, that’s okay. If there was ever a time not to let perfect be the enemy of the good it’s now. Don’t be afraid to try new things, experiment, and learn. Resist the urge to invest in technology-driven solutions that are time-consuming to build and difficult to maintain. Instead, look for ways to rapidly deploy tools and processes that you can quickly adapt based on feedback from new employees. Be open to your new employees that the process is still a work in progress and enlist them as part of the team to help you make it better for those who come after them.

The rapid, forced shift to remote onboarding is going to stretch even the most forward-leaning and resilient organizations. But, with a few simple practices and the right attitude, you can capture the opportunity to radically reinvent the way you bring new people on to the job.

Need more tips on effective onboarding? Check out the GovLoop guide to essential onboarding.

This article originally appeared on GovLoop.com.

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LinkedIn, the premier professional networking platform has utilized their massive wealth of user data to understand how a person’s network not only supports their long-term success but what factors contribute to (or stifle) a person’s ability to develop healthy networks throughout their lives.

Meg Garlinghouse shared these insights in her article on the LinkedIn Official Blog

1. Where you grow up. LinkedIn users who grow up in areas with a median income above $100k are 3x more like to have a stronger* network than other users.
2. Where you go to school. Users who attend top schools are 2x more likely to have stronger networks.
3. Where you work. Users who have work experience at a top company are nearly 2x more likely to have stronger networks.

This ‘network gap’ presents a reality that can hinder career opportunity for some simply based on factors that are partially, or completely, out of their control.

Closing the ‘network gap’.

Understanding and acknowledging that some populations have a steeper hill to climb based not on their talent but on their life circumstances it is incumbent upon employers to be intentional about finding ways to expand their recruiting practices beyond the historical methods to access the potential talent that resides outside of the “typical” spots.

RJ Naugle, Principal with REV Consulting and prior service Army officer has worked in the area of veteran transition for years and also brings the perspective of a leader of a B2B business. Naugle suggests that the network gap impacts veterans in a variety of ways, some of which are within each veteran’s control. “We need to meet transitioning servicemembers where they are at. Too often the transition is treated with a ‘one size fits all’ approach versus a more human-centered design that enables each servicemember the ability to take charge of their own transition,” Naugle adds. Regardless of the specific situation, a servicemember may find themselves in when they transition, each one would certainly benefit from a “navigator” to help them chart a course to the over 46,000 veteran-serving organizations that exist and the “sea of goodwill” that can often overwhelm people.

That said, Naugle acknowledges that there are aspects of the transition process that servicemembers can control. He suggests that transitioning servicemembers must, “Take charge of their own transition by not managing their own objections (getting past all of the reasons why they feel they can’t network, etc.), putting a clear plan in place ‘getting ready to get ready’ to engage without ever actually taking action, and doing things to develop a network that expands beyond the military bonds which can feel very uncomfortable and overwhelming to many.” Mr. Naugle speaks from experience as, he himself, navigated this transition and is grateful for the already transitioned veterans who assisted him on his post-transition path.

Not only has Naugle himself transitioned from the military to a successful civilian career as an entrepreneur, but he also has direct experience supporting a great many other transitioning service members in his prior role supervising veteran programs for Microsoft and then Starbucks and the Schulz Family Foundation. When asked what tips he might suggest to companies who are looking to expand their recruiting pools to better find fantastic veteran talent that they may otherwise miss due to the network gap he responded, “For a business looking to diversify their workforce, especially in the midst of great flux like the pandemic we are currently grappling with, they need to first acknowledge that they can benefit by finding qualified talent that can be counted on to be self-accountable, loyal, adaptive, and able to work in dynamic and ambiguous situations.”

Second, Mr. Naugle advocates for companies to take a more long-term view of talent acquisition by, “… seeking out talent that may not have the direct technical skill (but is trainable) but who has the right values and work ethic that will help drive their organizations into the future.” This shift in thinking about talent will help hiring organizations adapt and expand where they are looking for top talent for critical roles.

In closing.

As research into the ways in which an individual’s networks impact their opportunity continues to develop, we will continue to gain a deeper insight into the ways in which certain populations are marginalized. Businesses will also be armed with additional data and understanding from which to continue to find creative ways to find great talent in the spots they typically may have overlooked in the past.

By expanding the pool of potential talent, businesses can bolster their efforts of finding diverse talent that they may have otherwise missed out on.

*LinkedIn measures the strength of a person’s network based on size (the number of connections they have) and openness (the number of connections the user’s network has that extend beyond the user’s immediate network).

For additional information on this topic read Veteran Opportunity Report: Understanding an untapped talent pool.

This article originally appeared on Forbes.com. 

The post The Network Gap and its Impact on the War for Talent appeared first on gothamCulture.

There are countless strategies and approaches agency leaders can, and have, tried to address these complex challenges. But, building organizational empathy may be just the tool HR leaders need to make a near term impact.

Building organizational empathy is a strategic element for organizations trying to hire and retain top talent in an increasingly tight labor market. Research by the benefits technology firm, Business Solver in their State of Workplace Empathy report reveals that empathy is a key driver of retention, motivation, and productivity. More than 90% of employees surveyed indicated they were more likely to stay with an empathetic employer. In fact, respondents were even willing to trade off hours and pay in favor of increased empathy.

In an increasingly competitive talent environment, building a culture of empathy should be a key part of the people strategy in all organizations.

Building Empathy in Your Organization
So, how can leaders increase empathy in their organization? A 2016 report by the World Economic Forum looked across highly empathetic companies to identify common practices that any organization can apply to improve empathy:

1. They care about their cultures – Every organization has a culture that shapes behavior and drives performance. In the most empathetic organizations, the culture is intentionally shaped and managed. Leaders prioritize creating a workplace where people-centered behaviors are recognized and rewarded. And individuals are consistently recognized for delivering empathetic customer experience. By intentionally creating cultures that inspire engagement and commitment, high empathy organizations improve outcomes through high-quality employee experience.
2. They insist on transparency – Companies scoring high on the empathy index resist the urge to cover up and deflect attention from uncomfortable truths. Instead, they see full disclosure as the first step in dealing with challenges. They embrace the opportunity to engage their workforce in productive problem-solving processes that drive progress toward needed improvements. And, they recognize and reward efforts to challenge the status quo.
3. Their social media practices reflect strong empathy – Social media provides an unprecedented capability for organizations to dialog directly with their customers and employees. Organizations high on the empathy index capitalize on the opportunity to interact with their stakeholders through social media. And take advantage of the opportunity social media provides deliver messages with authenticity and humanity to a broad audience.
4. They see customer complaints as opportunities for insight – It can be tempting to ignore customer complaints or chalk them up as coming from the far extremes of your customer base. And, in fact, a 2011 study by research company evolve24 found that only about 29% of customer complaints on Twitter received a response. But highly empathetic organizations recognize that even the most extreme negative feedback represents an emotional response from the customer that provides an opportunity for insight. Learning to learn from all forms of customer feedback is key to building a more empathetic organization.
5. They make ethics a priority – Similar to the bias towards transparency exhibited by high empathy organizations, organizations scoring high on the index also prioritize ethics. In the words of the World Economic Forum, high empathy organizations always have someone asking “should we” instead of “can we”. Employee expectations around ethical conduct are high – as they should be. Organizations that want to retain key talent must maintain the highest standards of ethics in all aspects of operations and decision making.

Additional Resources
Building organizational empathy is a strong way to improve the employee value proposition for your agency. With serious commitment from leaders, becoming a more empathetic organization is a great way to address your critical talent shortages. For other retention strategies and tips, consider this advice from Scott Span or these insights from Ken Lee on GovLoop. Or check out this great tool from GovLoop if you want to build your own personal empathy at work.

This article originally appeared on GovLoop.com.

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The Culture of Being Busy
A few years ago the Atlantic published an article asserting that “Ugh, I’m so busy” has become the status symbol of our time. And in 2018, sociologist Anna Akbari’s Psychology Today article challenged readers to define their success not by their lack of time, but by the quality time they dedicated to the people and things that they loved. It seems our culture has come to embrace busyness over all else. The idea is that to be successful and happy we need to constantly have schedules filled to the brim. That being important means battling multiple conflicting priorities. Or that productivity means just having too much on our plate to possibly fit in one more thing.

And I think I’ve taken the bait, hook, line, and sinker. I pursue hobbies with such zeal that they look more like vocations. And I work so hard to provide my kids with opportunities, experiences, and activities that I stay busy keeping them busy. But at the end of the day, I don’t think I’m any more productive, significantly happier or more well off because of how busy I’ve become. Nor do I think any of the other folks I encounter who are constantly busy are any of these things either.

Here’s how I’m fighting back

So, I’ve decided I’m going to take a day off from being busy, and maybe not just one. I’m going to start regularly planning not to be so busy that I can’t slow down, take time to breathe, think and reflect. Making time to build a deeper relationship with colleagues, clients, friends, and family. Or, as one of my favorite philosophers, Winnie the Pooh, puts it to, “just go along, listening to all the things you can’t hear and not bothering.” I’ve become more convinced than ever that I may be getting it all wrong. The weekend isn’t a time to relax, recover, and reset for the next 40 (or more!) hours of work. Instead, I work so that when the time comes I can appreciate the contrast in slowing down. And, it’s not that I don’t love my work – what I do really is fulfilling and exciting. But, I need to rebalance that time with intentionally not being busy so that I’m better able to appreciate the joy that comes from that work – and from the other important things in my life.

Being not busy can be hard. And the work you need to do is real. But the reward from finding just a bit of time to rest can make that work all the better. So, how do you make taking time off a part of your regular routine?

Here are a few tips I’ve found helpful in my journey:

• Start by declaring that you’re not going to be busy – and really mean it.
• Block out time when you will make space for rest and reflection and be diligent about protecting it.
  Invite others along for the journey. Use your time for rest and reflection to deepen relationships and invest in others so that they can be not busy too!
• Find someone to keep you accountable. That way when you slide back into busyness they can remind you of your commitments.
• Do it now. Don’t wait for the “right time” to start changing your habits and building in time to not be busy.
• Building new habits and routines can be hard. But if you, like me, have become fully immersed in the culture of busyness, I hope you’ll find time for a day off!

Want some help finding time in your schedule by improving your productivity? Here are a few tips that might put you on the path to “un-busyness.”

This article originally appeared on GovLoop.com.

The post Why I’m Taking a Day Off From Being Busy – And You Should Too appeared first on gothamCulture.

Gotham Government Services LLC (GGS), a Virginia SDVOSB, will acquire all assets of Abrams Learning & Information Systems (ALIS).  GGS, under the leadership of Chris Cancialosi, will continue providing learning and performance improvement services to clients at the Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA), Army Futures Command (AFC), and other Federal clients.

ALIS was founded in 2004 by President and Chief Executive Officer General (Ret) John Abrams. The company provides government and business clients with solutions and services in workforce development, strategic planning, change management, program management, exercise support, and executive and management education.

GGS was created as a partnership between, gothamCulture, a New York based SDVOSB organizational culture firm, and a long-standing federally focused training company and will continue to serve all geographic markets and contracts that ALIS currently serves.

“We are honored to bring on the ALIS teams that are providing analysis support to AFC and training development support at VBA,” said Chris Cancialosi, Founder and Managing Partner of GGS and the company’s parent firm gothamCulture.  “As a former armor officer, the opportunity to honor the Abrams legacy is of great importance to me. As a veteran, continuing to support our former and current Warfighters is a deeply personal mission. And adding the ALIS team to gothamCulture’s core capabilities in organizational culture, leadership development, and people strategy offers these and other clients new avenues for supporting their mission objectives.”

“As the Founder and CEO of ALIS, my father’s focus was always on doing great work, making a difference, and taking care of our ALIS family,” said Elizabeth Abrams Bauernshub, Vice President of Abrams Learning & Information Systems, Inc.  “With our shared core values, Gotham Government Services is the right company to lead ALIS’s work into this next chapter, which brings growth and opportunity for both our clients and our employees.”

Gotham Government Services is a Service-Disabled Veteran Owned Small Business (SDVOSB) headquartered in Fairfax, Virginia. We provide government and business clients with solutions and services in workforce development, strategic planning, change management, program management, exercise support, and executive and management education. As a recognized leader in our field, we have worked with clients in government, academia, and private organizations to address their critical needs and meet their goals for the future. For more information visit www.gothamgovernment.com.

The post Gotham Government Services Acquires Assets of Abrams Learning & Information Systems appeared first on gothamCulture.

Why has CX become such a fundamental component of brand success?

While certain brands that have understood the power of the customer experience for many years and have continued to refine their CX delivery in new and profitable ways, the notion that all organizations need to consider the experience that they provide to their customers as a competitive driver has really only become something of note over the last decade. One primary reason for this is due to the great leaps and continuous improvements that these CX leaders make to their customer experiences which continue to raise customer expectations.

Brands like Amazon, Apple, and even Uber Eats have provided customers with the ability to engage in experiences that are designed around their specific needs and wants- and they like it. As expectations around experiences evolve those brands that are unable to deliver will undoubtedly lose the affection of their customers. This reality creates the need for organizations in all sectors and industries and of all sizes to ask themselves what they are doing to both understand what their customers want and need and what steps are they taking to be able to evolve their experiences to deliver on those expectations.

The experience that a customer has with your brand, positive or negative, can have a significant impact on your organization. Several years ago, I wrote a column about my experience at Walt Disney World- a trip that I was not looking forward to. To my great surprise, the experience that Disney created at every touchpoint that I had with their brand completely won me over. Since this experience and my reflection on it, I find myself continuously taking mental notes of the way in which my experiences with other brands live up to my expectations (or fail to do so).

A study published in 2018 by Forrester Research compared the stock prices of a sample of CX leaders and laggards to the S&P 500 and found that leaders significantly outperformed both laggards as well as the S&P. The message is clear, those organizations that are better positioned to meet and exceed the experience expectations of their customers in a consistent and repeatable way and those that are best able to adapt to the changing needs of their customers are those who will continue to outperform the competition.

The performance benefits of improving CX make it hard to ignore. From increasing customer engagement, trust, and likeliness to forgive a brand for making a mistake, to improving voluntary compliance to requests, CX has been shown to make the delivery of services more cost-effective. Oftentimes, in fact, the savings gained by improving CX delivery can make the financial arguments against the investment moot. Many organizations that embark on improving their CX delivery find that the effort becomes, in effect, a “self-funding” activity where the savings they see from improving CX delivery outweigh the investments to improve.

Who is your customer?

For many, day-to-day contact with end-user customers is rare. If this is the case for you, it doesn’t mean that CX is not important. Support, or back office, personnel may find themselves serving multiple customers though they may be internal customers. The same principles that serve organizations well when enhancing the end-user customer experience can be applied internally to your internal customers to help facilitate your interactions.

I asked David Hicks, CEO of CX advisory firm TribeCX to weigh in on what differences may exist between improving CX delivery for end-user customer versus internal customers. “There really aren’t significant differences, CX is a way of thinking. Seeking out, what is it that I do in my job that really makes a difference for colleagues/customers and then being fanatical about persistently and consistently improving on it and delivering it can benefit customers regardless of who they may be,” Hicks suggests.

CX in government agencies.

Recent research by McKinsey & Company shows clearly that government agencies, particularly those in the federal government, are lagging behind when it comes to the level of customer experience that they provide. Government organizations have their own, sometimes unique, challenges that make delivering high levels of consistent CX a challenge without a doubt. Many subject matter experts are retiring, draining critical institutional knowledge. Legislative and regulatory rules can make collecting data from customer difficult. Agencies may collect a great deal of data but a lack of integration of legacy systems can make drawing insight from this data a real nightmare. In addition, the role of CXO seems to still be something akin to seeing a unicorn in the public sector indicating that CX has not been at the forefront of managers.

What the most successful organizations do.

McKinsey’s (2018) research on the topic found that the most successful organizations do three things exceptionally well and consistently:

1. They put themselves in the shoes of their customers. Really, truly taking a hard look at the brand experience through the lens of the customer can be tough but opening the curtain to understand the realities that exist is critical to understanding the opportunities that exist.
2. They understand their end-to-end customer journeys.
3. Isolate the moments that disproportionately shape the experience.

Where do you start?

Understanding that you have an opportunity to take a long, hard look at your current customer experience and committing to improve that experience over time is a good first step. David Hicks suggests that leaders begin by, “… buddying up with a front-of-house colleague for an entire day and to listen carefully to them and to the customers with whom they interact. Ask them what the single most important thing is to focus on first. This sends a powerful explicit and implicit message to your staff.”

Regardless of your sector or industry, customer experience is a factor of organizational life that is here to stay. Those that are best able to adapt to meet the changing needs of their customers and that are able to continuously increase the ease of interacting with their brand at key touchpoints are those who will enjoy a substantial and sustained differentiator over their competitors. As customer continue to get comfortable with their newfound new-found power to choose when and how they interact with brands, those that are unable or unwilling to make the effort to truly understand what their customers want and need run the very real risk of becoming irrelevant.

This article originally appeared on Forbes.com. 

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Rapidly evolving technology only underscores this critical need to stay ahead of the curve. Gartner estimates cyber security spending will top $113 billion by 2020, and that number will continue to climb.

But, ‘staying ahead of the curve’ is a big challenge when dealing with safety and security in an unpredictable environment. And few people understand this better than Mike O’Neil, a 22- year veteran of the New York City Police Department and the first Commanding Officer of the NYPD Counterterrorism Division.

Today, Mike serves as CEO of MSA Security, providing security, intelligence, training, and investigative services to both public and private organizations.

“Our ultimate goal is to put ourselves out of business,” says O’Neil. “The world would be a better place if it didn’t need companies like MSA.”

Mike’s advice is for leaders to practice “constant forward thinking and anticipation of future threats. We remain nimble and adaptable. Several years ago, MSA became the first EDC company to train our bomb dogs on homemade explosives such as TATP and HMTD. Now we see this is the most prominent explosive threat we face today.”

Unfortunately, most organizations don’t often take these proactive steps to prepare for security threats. Instead, they react after a safety or security incident shakes them out of complacency.

Today’s global economy makes keeping up with the pace of change increasingly difficult. And leaders must stay vigilant as new, unexpected threats to our local and national security appear nearly every day.

So, how can government leaders stay ahead of the curve in today’s volatile and uncertain operating environment?

Here are a few ways to stay prepared:

1. Stay humble. Most important for government leaders is to put your ego in check. If you aren’t the expert, listen, ask questions, and understand what the experts are saying before you make any decisions. Otherwise, you may do more harm than good.

2. Think long term. Our society often plans in the short term, but it will be our downfall unless we change our thinking. People who play the long game win. They may lose a battle here and there, but in the long-term, they win the war. Chess is a great example of this. If you play a reactive or short-term strategy, your opponent with a long-term strategy will win every time. The cost for us not playing the long game in safety and security could be catastrophic.

3. Take training seriously. If you’re in government service, safety and security training is often required or at least offered. Once you know where you are on the curve, get some training on how to deal with these safety and security issues to get yourself ahead of the curve. Don’t assume your level in the organization (high or low) will save you from dealing with these sorts of situations. Whether you’re a janitor or the President; if you work in public service, the safety and security of the country and its people are in some way part of your job. Also, don’t assume just because you’ve had the training you are done. Get a refresher at least once a year.

4. Make connections. Get to know folks like Mike who is an expert in safety and security. These are good people to be able to call on when you or someone you know has a problem. Also, don’t only call on these folks when you have a problem. Be proactive, reach out, and get updates on the field.

5. Build a team you trust. Being surrounded by people you can trust seems like common sense, but it’s much harder in a government agency where you don’t always have the ability to pick your team. So, you will need to either figure out how and when you can trust those around you, or figure out how to clean house.

6. Promote dissenting opinions. It’s ridiculous the number of leaders who I see in public service that chastise people for disagreeing with them. You want to hire smart people you trust and have them disagree with you. Having a bunch of yes-men agreeing with your every word is a recipe for disaster. You will make better decisions if you have people who aren’t afraid to tell you when you are making a mistake. Don’t be the Emperor Who Had No Clothes.

When dealing with issues of local and national security, “it’s critical to stay ahead of the latest threats with an intelligence program,” says Mike. “Be proactive, not reactive.”

While leaders can’t always anticipate what’s next, they can stay informed, help their organizations build strategies that will address a future need, and prepare their teams with proper training as threats evolve.

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