Zone to Win – David Juhlin

Zone to win and UX (Transformation Zone)

Posted on September 20, 2017March 1, 2020 by David in Business, User Experience, UX Strategy

In my previous blogs, I covered the Performance Zone, Productivity Zone, and Incubation Zone within Geoffrey Moore’s framework. In this blog post, I am covering the Transformation Zone and how it impacts the UX strategy within that zone.

Transformation Zone:

The Transformation Zone is empty most years and only active during time of disruption. According to Moore, there is typically 1 transformation every decade. However, since technology enhancements are moving faster and faster, I believe the Transformation Zone will be populated more often than that. An important point is to never have two transformations at the same time, and when it is active, the entire company needs to rally around it.

When active in a company with a strategy to grow, the CEO’s job is to take one (and only one) initiative from the Incubation Zone and grow it to generate at least 10% of the company’s revenue and become a part of the Performance Zone. The time horizon for this is 2-3 years, and during this time there needs to be a significant reallocation of resources, which in turn impacts all the other zones.

The Performance Zone needs to give up resources to support this new initiative at the same time as they ideally find ways to support and integrate the new technology into their initiatives. The Productivity Zone will need to make sure that there are programs to support this transformation and help move the transformation from their “start-up” culture into the core business culture. The Incubation Zone needs to be significantly reduced since resources are needed for the transformation, and there will not be another transformation for several years. This means that most other initiatives need to be spun out or integrated into the other initiatives.

If a company, on the other hand, is in defensive mode (a competitor is disrupting them by use of the transformation zone), the goal is to neutralize this threat as soon as possible. Basically, try to find ways to take the best features and include them in your offering (reverse engineer, partner with other companies, etc.). During the catch-up time, it might be necessary to cut down prices as well.

Because of the Transformation Zone’s infrequent activity and limit of only one initiative at a time, only a small portion of UX professionals work in this zone. However, the activation of the Transformation Zone will have a major impact on UX professionals throughout the company.

If you are working on the initiative that is going through the Transformation Zone, i.e. your company tries to grow an initiative from the Incubation Zone into the Performance Zone, a lot of things will happen. Previously, you worked in a start-up mentality, and there is a significant chance you acquired a lot of UX debt. During this maturity phase, you’ll have to address all of that at the same time as resources are poured into the product/service – often resulting in greater complexity. You’ll also start collaborating with the UX team in the Performance Zone, which might have slightly different processes than you had when you were a “start-up”. At the end of the transformation, this start-up should be aligned with the methodologies of the Performance Zone or have enough influence that the established UX division change their processes to align with yours.

On the other hand, if you are working in a company that is being disrupted by other companies pushing a transformation, you’ll have to protect your market shares. This means that the UX division needs to quickly gain an understanding of the main benefit that the disruption is providing the customer so that the company can respond accordingly as soon as possible. Once the main benefit is understood, your company should aim to deliver the same benefit. This can be by partnerships, reverse engineer, etc., but independent of the approach, the UX division needs to make sure the new features are integrated in a good, usable way. One thing the UX division can do is to run competitive tests against the disruptors’ solution to gain insight of how to deliver the best user experience.

For large corporations, things can become very complex. For example, they might push one transformation within their company that will strengthen their products/services in one way, but at the same time a competitor might have another transformation in their company as well. So, at the same time as they are disrupting in one part of the market, someone else might be disrupting some other parts. Sometimes it will impact all the products/services they provide and at other times only some of them. Therefore, larger companies might need to both play offence (pushing their transformation) and concurrently play defense (coping with the disruption from the competitor).

Conclusion

It is important to understand the larger corporate strategy and ensure that the UX resources are aligned to support the overarching company strategy in the best way. This means that you should not have one UX strategy for the entire corporation, but instead have different UX strategies for each of the four zones (Performance Zone, Productivity Zone, Incubation Zone, and Transformation Zone.

Zone to win and UX (Incubation Zone)

Posted on August 19, 2017March 1, 2020 by David in Business, User Experience, UX Strategy

In my previous blogs, I covered the Performance Zone and the Productivity Zone within Geoffrey Moore’s framework. In this blog post, I am covering the Incubation Zone and how it impacts the UX strategy within that zone.

Incubation Zone

The Incubation Zone has the longest time horizon (3-5 years), and for a company to invest in such a distant future, it needs to be a disruptive innovation with a significant potential impact. The goal is to create the “next big thing”, not just innovation in technology or in the business model. This effort, if successful, should result in a “new company” with a significant revenue stream coming out of it (10+% of total revenue).

The recommendation is to manage each initiative as an independent operation unit and manage them separately. In the same way as a start-up requires funding from venture capitalist, each operating unit requires funding from the company (the company appoints a venture board). This mean the initiatives here live the uncertain life of start-ups, they might run out of funds, be shut down, spun-off, etc.

If the company is in growth mode, the initiatives can flourish in this start-up like model (as long as they seem promising), and the goal is to become successful enough so that the company will pick it up as a new line of business. If it fails, it might get a second chance, but not a third.

If the company is primarily trying to protect their market shares, these initiatives are instead needed to help the rest of the company and fight off potential threats. This means that these initiatives have to integrate their technologies into the existing business, even if it means the end of that initiative as a star-up.

UX professionals working for initiatives in the Incubation Zone will be working in a start-up like mentality even if it is a well-established company. This results in wearing multiple hats, and at times, maybe even perform non-UX work.

If the company is focused on growth, the initiatives can continue operating as a start-up, which means running at the speed of light. The UX strategy most appropriate would therefore be Lean UX and other processes that work well in an extremely agile environment.

Alternatively, if the company primarily wants to protect their market shares, the technology of the “start-ups” needs to be integrated to the existing business (initiatives in the Performance Zone). If these initiatives already are staffed with a generalist, they might need to layoff the UX employees working in the “start-up”.

Next blog post will cover the Transformation Zone

Zone to win and UX (Productivity Zone)

Posted on July 21, 2017March 1, 2020 by David in Business, User Experience, UX Strategy

In my previous blog, I covered the Performance Zone of Geoffrey Moore’s framework. In this blog, I am covering the Productivity Zone and how it impacts the UX strategy within that zone.

Productivity Zone

The Productivity Zone contains all functions that don’t have any direct accountability for any revenue (finance, legal, HR, tech support, etc.). The goal of the Productivity Zone is to make sure all the other zones can work efficiently (“doing things right”) and effectively (“doing the right things”). The time horizon in this zone is short and aligns with the Performance Zone, i.e. next fiscal year.

If the company’s overall strategy is growth (expanding into new markets or offering new products/services), the Productivity Zone has to develop new programs to handle the change. This mean they might need to reallocate resources as well as allow more flexibility in processes (they might for example need to loosen up rules regarding approved software).

If the company primarily tries to protect their current market shares, the Productivity Zone’s primary objective is to keep costs down so resources can be distributed to the other zones. This means that the Productivity Zone should focus on reengineer and streamline processes (centralize, standardize, optimize). It can even mean the company will outsource parts in the Productivity Zone to keep costs down.

There are not as many UX professionals working in the Productivity Zone since the zone doesn’t generate any revenue stream for the company. However, the UX effort also depends on the different type of functions (customer facing, supplier facing, or internally facing). Within the Productivity Zone, the customer facing functions tend to have a larger concentration of UX staff than the other two (supplier facing, and internally facing). The reason for this is that even if it is not directly impacting the revenue, the customer facing functions still have an impact on the customers and the sales. Just think about customer support and how it can be important for future purchases. For the internal systems and the supplier facing systems, the UX is often a low priority and the focus is on making the systems efficient enough (“able to complete a task fast”).

Independently if the company is going through growth or trying to protect their market share, a beneficial way to provide UX expertise is through an agency model. This agency can be internal, external, or some type of hybrid. The agency model would allow UX expertise at the same time as the agency can manage work fluctuations from the different groups and, if needed, contract out to external resources.

If the company is in growth mode, the agency would need to manage a lot of external resources and make sure they can deliver a “good enough” solution. An internal agency should take on high priority projects themselves and outsource the less important projects.

If the company primarily tries to protect their market share, the main goal from the Productivity Zone is to keep costs down. This can result in a lot of layoffs among the UX agency team and the company might even go to a model in which UX design is completely outsourced.

In my next blog post, I will cover the Incubation Zone

Zone to win and UX (Performance Zone)

Posted on June 21, 2017March 1, 2020 by David in Business, User Experience, UX Strategy

Zone to win is a book by Geoffrey Moore, in which he presents a framework on how to manage a corporation during a time of disruption. You begin by splitting the company up into 4 zones and then manage each one separately. In turn, this has an impact on the UX strategy, which has to be adjusted for each zone.

In this initial blog, I am covering the Performance Zone, and in my upcoming blogs, I will cover the other zones (Productivity Zone, Incubation Zone, and Transformation Zone).

Performance Zone

The Performance Zone contains the bulk of all mission critical products/services in the company. These are the company’s “Cash Cows” (usually over 90% of revenue is generated from products/services in this zone). Therefore, this zone also consists of a large portion of the company’s employees.

The goal in this zone is focused on sustaining innovation, and the time horizon is for the next fiscal year. Basically, the company needs to make sure they make “the numbers” every quarter.

If a company’s overall strategy is to grow, it would require them to expand the offerings to new market segments or offer new products/services. Therefore, the main problem for initiatives in the Performance Zone within a growth focused company, is to manage the allocation of resources.

On the other hand, if the company primarily tries to protect its market shares, their primary goal is to retain customers. In other words, they don’t focus on attracting new customers, just keeping the ones they already have from deserting them and going to a competitor. Because of this, the R&D initiatives are primarily focused on making your products “good enough”.

Most of UX professionals work in this Performance Zone since it contains the bulk of the products/services that the company offers. If the company is focusing on growth, it is important to manage the UX resources closely. They should not be spread too thin. Instead, it is better to focus on some projects and make sure they are staffed appropriately.

If the company is going through a transformation (they invest heavily in new technology), the primary focus should be on projects that align well with the initiatives in the Transformation Zone. Thereafter, a ranking of projects needs to be made. There are many components that need to be taken into account, but make sure to include the following:

Severity of the user pain point you would be solving – higher pain, the more you can charge for the solution.
Market potential – the larger market, the more you can sell.
Internal capabilities – if you can weave together many internal capabilities/products to deliver a superior solution to the user pain, the harder it will be for competitors to replicate your offering and you’ll be able to reap the benefits for a longer time.

Alternatively, if the company is primarily trying to protect their market shares, the UX team needs to be spread out on many projects to maintain the products/services to be “good enough”. This means that the company may need to be staffed with more UX generalists compared to when the company can focus on specific projects and can allocate many UX resources to one initiative.

Next blog post will cover the Productivity Zone