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Internal Customer Development
The document outlines a framework for internal customer development, emphasizing the need to identify the biggest risks and assess options through customer interviews and stakeholder analysis. It highlights the importance of engaging stakeholders based on their expertise and interest levels. The conclusion stresses the need to avoid mistakes during the development process.
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Internal Customer Development
- 1. Internal Customer Development AndreaHill @afhill
- 2. Get Back inthe BuildingGet Back in the Building
- 3. 1. Identify yourbiggest risk 2. Assess your options 3. Don’t mess it up!
- 4.
- 5. 1. Identify YourBiggest Risk
- 6.
- 7. 1. Customer Interviews 2.Stakeholder Analysis 1. Expertise 2. Legitimacy 3. Willingness to engage 4. Influence 5. Necessity of involvement
- 8. Stakeholder Analysis COMMUNICATE (HighLevel) ENGAGE PASSIVE COMMUNICATE (Low Level) Expertise Level of Interest HighLow Low High SK BS DG DC
- 9. Stakeholder Analysis COMMUNICATE (HighLevel) ENGAGE PASSIVE COMMUNICATE (Low Level) Expertise Level of Interest HighLow Low High SK DC DK BS
- 11. Stakeholder Analysis COMMUNICATE (HighLevel) ENGAGE PASSIVE COMMUNICATE (Low Level) Expertise Level of Interest HighLow Low High SK DC BS
- 12.
- 14. 1. Identify yourbiggest risk 2. Assess your options 3. Don’t mess it up!
- 15. 1. Identify yourbiggest risk 2. Assess your options 3. Don’t mess it up! Ok, NOW You Can Head On Outside!Ok, NOW You Can Head On Outside!
- 16. Internal Customer Development Questions?Comments? Andrea Hill andrea.hill@readytalk.com @afhill
Editor's Notes
- #2 Hello, my name is Andrea Hill. I’m a Product Strategist at a Denver-based company called ReadyTalk, and the General Manager of their first internal startup called UbiMeet. I was here in your shoes a year ago, when we had an inkling that we wanted to launch a lean startup, but weren’t sure how to institute it. Armed with the knowledge I got here a year ago, I went back to ReadyTalk. We got a dedicated team together and set to work, and released our initial MVP product in less than 10 weeks. Im honored to be here today to share with you my biggest takeaway from this pilot project:
- #3 If you’re in this session, it’s because you recognize the importance of having support from your parent organization. Like any startup. you’re in search of a business model and until your external customers pay the bills, you’re relying on the patronage of investors. In ‘the real world’, those may be venture capitalists. For intrapreneurial ventures, those come from within your walls. So you can’t ignore those investors.. and in fact, you’ll have a lot more success if you cultivate them as you do your future customers.
- #4 So how do you do that? Thankfully, there’s a simple list of steps for you to follow. Some of these will seem familiar, as you’re still doing customer development, just at a different level. First, you’ll identify your biggest risk. What type of support is the most important for the success of your endeavor? Next, you’ll assess your options, and today we’ll go over a stakeholder analysis to help you determine where to focus your efforts, and lastly I’ll offer some tips on how to ensure that relationship stays mutually beneficial and doesn’t go south.
- #6 In the lean startup, we talk about mitigating technical vs market risk. In this case, we need to understand our risk related to ongoing support. What do we need from the parent organization? Financial support? Dedicated staffing? Funding? Time-boxed commitment? ReadyTalk: dedicated time-box, no budget. Slowed down ability to iterate. Problem: Certain members of the exec team weren’t bought into the process and were skeptical of what value we offered. We knew we werent at risk of losing our jobs, but we had to educate people on the process and our progress in order for them to buy in.
- #7 we couldnt devote all our time to engaging and educating internal customers, otherwise we’d never actually move forwad on our progress! But of course we had to be sure we were gaining traction internally. We had to look at our internal stakeholders to understand what was going to help us mitigate the risk we identified earlier: how we were going to get people to buy in to support the process in as effective a way as possible.
- #8 But just as you do any customer cultivation: TALK TO THEM. Early on, we wanted to know what would constitute success for each of our executive team. What were they concerned about, what did they not understand? By asking these questions early on, we were able to ensure they we were presenting something that worked for them. Basically, devising a solution that met the problem they had. The next step is to rank each critical stakeholder on a few key features. The Business for Social Responsibility has a great Five-Step process for Stakeholder Engagement, so I’ll give them due credit. Each stakeholder in ranked according to their expertise, their willingness to engage, and the value they offer back to the project.
- #9 We probably could have mapped our stakeholders like this - we had a few people very interested in being actively engaged, a few that were interested in the process and one that just really wanted to be sure this was going to happen and not cause ireevolkable damage. This was the theory at least..
- #10 In practice, we ended up with something a bit more like this. A few more people we got engaged, and then really - isnt everyone really interested in what we’re doing, at a micro level? Week by week experiments - doesnt the whole company need and want to know that? And surprise - all of a sudden we’re a communications team, not a new product development team. Do you know what this is? This is lack of focus.
- #11 About three months into the program, something changed. We hired a new VP of Strategy, and the dynamics of our stakeholder pool changed dramatically. David didnt have the same fears as many of the other stakeholders, and he was very respected and trusted among them. We realized that the team would be able to move a lot quicker if he were to become our project sponsor and clear the way for us.
- #12 Things shifted down and to the right - which in this case is the way we want to go. I was able to focus on the work we were doing, and he let us do so. I let David know what I was working on, and he was able to reflect that back to the stakeholders in a way that was palatable to them.
- #14 Great product sponsor: Autonomy, trust, timely contextual feedback Respond with honesty, timely updates
- #15 Today we’ve covered the three steps to garnering support within your organization. Now that you’ve created a strong foundation and support for your organization, and cleared yourself the space to focus on your business model and feasibility, NOW
- #16 Now, you can head on outside and get into the good stuff! Build something great.