In the last episode, we talked about the vision and why it's important to always start with the vision. Always start with defining what you're trying to accomplish. In this episode, we're gonna talk about the journey. How are you gonna get there? What are you gonna do to achieve that vision? And importantly, why is that next? Instead of the culture, Make Work Not Suck. Our podcast that talks about exactly that, our process, vision, journey, culture, and results. We present real-world business solutions that make the difference. Our goal is to make work not suck. Hosted by Ryan Hodges, co-host Daniel Steere. Join us each episode and make work not suck. Welcome to the Make Work Not Suck podcast.

Last time we talked about vision and why it's important to start with vision. To start with the belief, to start with why we are all here in the first place and where we're trying to go. After vision comes journey, and journey's kind of an interesting word choice. I think it could mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people. So unpack that for me a little bit. What do you mean when you say journey?

All right, so journey is the mental side of the equation. We're going back to our psychology piece, right? And the mental side of that comes in two forms. So you have your, on the high end, you have the imagination, like the dreaming, the experience, what you think it should be, or what you envision. Like if you close your eyes and you think about kind of the vision you're trying to achieve, then you think of that experience. Okay, this is where we go from to that. We still got a little bit of the EQ in it, right? Like what are we trying to get? Yeah. Kind of coming out of that belief and into the mental and what do we want people to feel when they engage with our brand? What the customer journey experience, right? Like do we want them to experience when they're a customer of ours? And then when you work down on that, you've got your strategy, you know, your kind of big picture, how you move through the customer journey. Like everybody knows, you know, customer journey, you got sales, marketing, you know, customer success, production. You know how you actually deliver, right? And then the bottom part of that is the SOPs on how the individual people actually deliver that. And so you get from what you and what the experience you want people to feel down to the IQ of how people actually deliver that. And that's, that's, that's what journey is. And so it's not only a journey of the journey, right? But it's the journey. You, you, you're taking people on the, the journey within the business and how people execute the journey, which is, I mean, at the end of the day when what you, you sell something to a customer, you take 'em through a customer journey. There's SOP involved to do that.

All right, so here's a question we didn't even talk about, but this is happening in real time. Can you give me an example or a couple of examples of companies that you have either worked with or maybe you are a customer of them, right? Maybe it's a consumer product or something like that. Companies that you say nail the journey. And then if you don't want to name names, you don't have to, but maybe some customers where the journey wasn't what it should have been.

Ooh, there's a couple of good ones. So everybody loves Chick-fil-A. Chick-fil-A is always used as a good reference point. Yep. Because everybody knows it doesn't matter how long that drive-through line is, you're getting your food in like five fricking minutes, right? Yeah. I think it's like 3.4 minutes less than, let's be honest, let's be honest, it doesn't matter what other fast food restaurant out there. Maybe, maybe if you like In-N-Out Burger or something like that. But let's just do like, you know, the Taco Bell, McDonald's, Burger King. Jack, Oh, it's even a competition. There'll be three cars in line and you're waiting, you know, 30 minutes, right? Versus there's a hundred cars in Chick-fil-A and you're five minutes or less. And that food is hot. Yep. And it's good. And it's consistent. It doesn't matter which one you go to in America. Yeah. It doesn't matter where in the country. It's the same. It's the same. That's, that's an experience. And so what is Chick-fil-A? Chick-fil-A, they go, we want, we want our people to experience, you know, this, this, you know, we don't want them to come in and be frustrated.

Right.

And I'm not gonna get into the details of that one. That's, that's for a later date and time. Yeah. But, but, but just think things of this, like everybody knows when you say thank you, they say, My pleasure. Right. That's again, part of the experience. The other one is, is what's the first thing they ask you when you pull up to the window? Or if they're, What, uh, what's the name for your order? What's the name for your order? And then guess what, they put that in their computer. And then everybody knows because of an SOP to say, Hi, Daniel. Are, are, are you, Daniel? This is your order. Because they also took note of your car. They wrote down what car you're in. They took down your name. And so they know, they walk over to the, the white BMW, they say, you know, are you, are you Daniel? Here's your order. Yes. I'm Daniel. Thank you very much. It feels very personalized. Right? That is nailing an experience between what we want people to feel. We want them to feel that, that positive experience through our drive-through. We've got the strategy and play on how to do that. And we've got the SOPs that everybody lives by to do it. That's a, that's a great example of.

Oh, yeah, yeah. That one's good. I'll, I'll add one to that. Took my family on vacation, took them to a Disney park, and then took them to another theme park who I will not name. That was not too far away. I'm not gonna say what state I'm in, just universal, just, Nope, not saying anything. Anyways, um, even my wife commented that there's just a different experience. Like, it just feels different. It somehow feels more magical, even if the lines are longer, they have created an experience for you so that you're standing in line for 90 minutes and yet somehow you're still entertained.

Well, there's a, there's a saying from Walt Disney, and I'm gonna butcher this, but it's like, if you micromanage the process, then it creates, the magic is created by everybody adhering to the process. That's why, you know, nobody points at Disney. Everybody throws their hand, you know, they, they, oh, the open hand. Oh, I didn't even realize that. I, I don't know how true some of this stuff is, but like the trash cans like go underground and you never see anybody like actually changing the trash because, you know, you don't wanna walk through a park and watch someone throwing trash bags around. That kind of detracts from the magic, the characters walking around. And so when, when it's always clean and you don't know why it's clean. Mm-Hmm. And when there's always courtesy and gestures, when there's always, you know, experiences in the rights, even, you know, they have what the imagineers.

Oh yeah.

The job is to think all this stuff up and make it a magical experience. Though I will tell you, it is very fun to watch Jack Sparrow on the, uh, CAPY of the Caribbean ride. Mm-Hmm. At, uh, Disneyland, Tokyo. Oh, yeah. Speak in Japanese. It's actually quite comical, but again, an experience.

Right, right. Yeah. Well, I mean, I even noticed how they do crowd control and they are friendly, but efficient. And that is, I mean, that is a tough line to walk.

Yes. To, to keep people moving quickly in the right directions, but not feel like cattle. And somehow they're able to do that. And I would think, when I think about companies that are great at the customer journey, that customer experience, Disney's one of the first ones that comes to my mind.

Yes.

Yeah. And there's, there's several of them, several of 'em out there. I mean, even, I think one of the other episodes we talked about, uh, delivering happiness with, uh, uh, Zappos.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah. You know, there's like people that like called in and, you know, trying to figure out where to order a pizza. And their whole philosophy was they would help you in any way they could, and hopefully you would buy shoes.

Sure.

And because that experience, that customer service was so high, right. That people just kept buying shoes.

Yeah. Interesting. Um, any experiences you've had recently that was not a great journey?

Oh, I have far too many of those and not, won't name names, but.

That's one of those, yeah. Don't name names.

It, that's one of those, when that, that typically means there are more results, heavy organization on KPIs. Mm-Hmm. And there's a balance, there's a dichotomy between having your processes in balance with your results. And so, actually I'll give you a more recent example. There was, some requests coming in through an organization using HubSpot as our sales and marketing tool. And it was, they wanted to modify the deal flow and HubSpot to get a, kind of a more accurate representation. And this, this was a, kind of a consulting firm that was doing this. And you end up with a, a misalignment between, okay, what's the goal and how the process is executed. And so there was a disconnect between the two. And that was a, a kind of a bad journey experience for the, for the client. So when they were working with them, they were not getting the full use of their software and their expectations were misaligned. That's just one recent example. It happens all too often in business, unfortunately, where the client experiences something differently than what the business intended, and you end up with a misalignment of expectations.