Human-Driven Experience

3Putting Empathy and Expertise Back into the Equation

Empathy is about standing in someone else's shoes, feeling with his or her heart, seeing with his or her eyes.

Not only is empathy hard to outsource and automate, but it makes the world a better place.

—Daniel Pink

Creating a truly people-focused organization is ultimately all about empathizing with our customers and employees—walking a mile in their shoes as the old saying goes. It's taking the time and expending the effort—solo and with your team and larger organization—to actually think about and experience what it's like to be your customer.

To gather information about your complete range of products and services, to buy them, to put them to use in your daily life, and to discover what happens when things go right, and when they go wrong. It's also about power sharing—trust cannot be built unless all parties feel they are participants in the process. And guess what? This is not an HR function; it is something that needs to devolve to every individual. Seventy-six percent of executives in an Accenture survey said that organizations need to dramatically reengineer the experiences that matter.¹ They can do this by putting people first.

All the feedback we generate as we experience for ourselves what it's like to be our customers should be baked into the experiences we create or that we ask our technologies to deliver. Unfortunately, it is really, really hard. Most organizations that I encounter say they want to be more ...