Last time I wrote about a phenomenon whereby, when an organization stands up an Office of [Your Favorite Thing That’s Oh, So Important!], other parts of the company will have a tendency, instead of embracing the spirit of whatever you’ve decided is so vital to your business, of feeling relieved of having to ever again bother with whatever it is.  After all, the thinking may go, now that we’ve got a dedicated department for that, we won’t have to worry about it as it’s now their job.

I’ve seen this happen on many occasions, with many different initiatives.  Rather than sparking an enterprise-wide interest and investment in this area of work, somehow putting someone ‘in charge’ of it seems to let everybody else off the hook, not only of doing it, but in some senses, even having to think about it.

In the spirit of coming with a solution rather than simply highlighting a problem, I got to thinking:  Maybe there’s an answer to this repeated cycle:  Properly chartering an organization in the first place.  That, of course, starts at the top.  The leader whose brilliant idea it is to open an Office of Whatever has the obligation to emphasize and make sure it’s well understood that the purpose (or at least one of the purposes) of the new organization is to help us do Whatever, rather than alleviating us from having to do it anymore.

For clarity’s sake, I’ll stick to one that makes sense for us:  CX.  (Naturally, though, this can be anything, really…substitute Process Improvement or Project Management or Change Management or anything, really.)  Say you’re going to stand up an Office of the Customer and hire a Chief Customer Officer.  Here are a few guidelines for not just what they’ll be charged with doing, but in culmination (and if properly messaged) should keep others from thinking they can now wash their hands of CX.

First, yes, this is an advocacy organization.  The Office of the Customer is charged with providing enthusiasm for being Customer-centric and touting the greatness of good CX.  It’ll be, in large part, by way of the forthcoming responsibilities that they’ll mostly provide this coaching and championing, but there’s also room for some good, old-fashioned cheerleading, too.

Additionally, and similar to the rha-rha, there’s actual training and education that will need to be done.  This will have to come from somewhere, and why not the Office of the Customer?  It’s okay to have the office take over this effort completely, but it may also serve the Chief Customer Officer to delegate through Train-the-Trainer efforts, homegrown and organic coaching and training within other departments.  Just make sure it’s done within the parameters of how your organization wants to see it done.  Which is to say, don’t let’s step on L&D’s or HR’s toes!

In a similar sense, the Office of the Customer should drive and enforce governance around the greater CX program altogether.  How are Customer insight programs run and their insights interpreted and shared?  Here’s a place where some work may be consolidated, in fact; depending on how large your company is, you may want to centralize all control of your Customer insights work so as to not cross purposes among and between different branches and departments, such as sending out surveys to your Customers from all corners of your company.  That should be decided and pronounced (and enforced) explicitly if so, but even if you are consolidating all of your insights efforts in one place, whatever program you install there should also encourage and enable all team members to seek and share insights and thoughts from your Customers…while the surveys, say, may be run out of one office, put in place mechanisms so that any Customer insights from any source can be collected and analyzed (and, naturally, eventually acted upon).

This isn’t necessarily the only part of CX that will need governance:  Things like prioritization of efforts derived from those insights, as well as rules of engagement for acting on those insights will need guidance and perhaps even oversight.  But it needs to be done in the spirit of aiding, not taking over.  Governance means proffering structure, not taking over and doing it all.  Think along the lines of things like keeping a log of ongoing efforts and perhaps best-practices; a roundtable of sharing among different offices; a common central repository for a snapshot of what’s going on…and remember, what’s going on is up to those out there doing the work!

Finally there’s the all-important Center of Expertise.  You’ll be hiring some rock-star analysts to sift through Customer insights data.  You’ll find some fantastic Process Engineers to take on both your biggest improvement efforts and perhaps even to take on those projects that span across several different departments, thereby offering a third-party view of the improvement work as well as a locus of accountability for those particular efforts.  These team members will also play the role of those advocates and trainers I’d mentioned above.  The point being, you’ll have a bench of some of the best talent who will inspire and step in to aid when needed.  They’ll stay sharp by plying their trade, but won’t replace local work done within the disparate departments.  They’ll help write and oversee that governance mechanism and track the work done across the enterprise.  In short, they’ll be running the program, a bit more than they’re doing that work specifically.

That work, as I’m trying to say, is getting done everywhere by everyone.

Keep in mind, though, that this needs to be set up from Day One.  Sooner, really.  The success is going to come from the entire organization recognizing what the Office of the Customer (or the Whatever!) is going to do, and what it is not.