Stop Selling Digital Candy in your C-Suite

Conversations create connections. Curiosity combined with creativity unlock possibilities, and these possibilities result in a path forward. For the last 4:4:4 virtual session, “Stop Selling Digital Candy in your C-Suite,” Shane Lennon, business leader and digital CEO joined Pete Sena, co-founder and CCO of Digital Surgeons to discuss digital transformation, specifically what it takes to drive real change and enterprise value.

In Shane’s opinion one of the most important concepts to understand and drive digital transformation is the “customer journey.” Before diving into unpacking what a customer journey is, Shane first explained how he looks at customer experience.

“I look at a customer experience as three things. Your engagement on content and particularly brand identity which is content. Your engagement with the products and services. And your engagement with your people. It’s relatively easier to build successful new brands than transform an existing brand.”

Simultaneously to nurturing your customer experience as part of your customer journey, Shane talked about how the best brands that understand transformation and move the needle are the brands capable of understanding their purpose.

To further explain what he meant by this, he examined the brand Chobani from a case study perspective. According to Shane, Chobani carved its own unique brand positioning within the dairy category by defining itself as a humanitarian purpose-driven brand.

Chobani shifted from being a yogurt company to being a wellness-nutrition category. The result of this shift was the creation of a new category within the dairy market, and Chobani’s new mission was to centralize all Chobani employees to support one story. Because of Chobani’s dedication to improving customer experience, the brand understood its customer journey and how to continue iterating on it to generate success and innovation.

Additionally, during this 4:4:4 conversation Shane put a magnifying glass to the idea of, “company culture.” He offered us his take on what company culture means and how his role defines it in so many ways.

“Normally I find myself having to work on company culture. Each time it’s different. My goal is to figure out who a company is and what the mission is. I need to make sure the CEO and C-Suite lives it because they have to own this. They own the culture, they own the organization. Realistically the C-Suite’s job is to empower the people that work for them, so that the company can deliver great products and services.”

Shane further cited the success of company culture is when leaders hold themselves accountable, explaining that any CEO, CMO or someone else in a leadership role needs to set a behavior that is accountable, one that can be challenged empathetically and constructively. We couldn’t agree more.

Special thanks to the leaders, managers, strategists and everyone else that joined us live during this 4:4:4 session! You can connect with Shane Lennon on LinkedIn, if you’d like to learn more about digital transformation and driving enterprise value from the C-Suite and beyond.

Check out the video below, to watch the full episode of this 4:4:4.