The power of celebrating digital experience insights across teams.

After 10,000 failed attempts to create the lightbulb, Thomas Edison said, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”

But in the world of continuous iteration and improvement, what we really need is 10,000 small digital wins (or so-called micro-wins) that we can be proud of, learn from and celebrate. 

In this blog, we’ll discuss why too often companies celebrate digital success in silos and without acknowledging the small wins and what they learned along the way. We will also share how you can present and celebrate your own digital wins internally. 

The problem with celebrating in silos.

We love being recognized for our big wins and accomplishments. In fact, it’s no secret that employee recognition is one of the top drivers of employee satisfaction, engagement, and innovation. People who feel recognized at work are 2.2x more likely to say innovative thinking is embraced. In another study, 85 percent of employees said recognition made them feel more satisfied with their jobs.

A company I worked for had a wonderful way of celebrating big digital launches at the monthly department all-hands meeting. Many team members were recognized for their noteworthy accomplishments. Everyone cheered and felt great about the big win.

Most of the presentation focused on the outcome of the launch – the details and behavioral data that helped them identify the opportunity was rarely shared.

The reason it was done this way? Too many technical details not relevant to the broader audience in attendance (is Finance really going to care where users clicked on the website?) It’s fair to say the all-hands meeting isn’t necessarily the right forum for every minuscule detail.

So what’s the problem with this approach? Insights that lead to big wins are often a series of small wins generated across multiple teams – not recognizing them is a symptom of data silos and sometimes even friction across teams. And there’s no evidence that success wasn’t just a fluke. Did the team guess their way to a big successful launch using hunches and a magic eight ball? Or were there key customer insights and learnings along the way?

How to celebrate and share digital insights across teams.

The all-hands celebrations are great for celebrating success. But this is not always the right forum for celebrating progress. 

One solution to this is the Continuous Product Design (or CPD) approach to showcasing digital wins. Using this approach, organizations present digital customer insights across functions in smaller, targeted gatherings on a regular basis. These “Show & Tell” meetings involve all key stakeholders in the digital experience across product, analytics, and engineering, ranging in roles, from executive to practitioner. 

Each meeting is usually led by a key champion within the org, includes a rotating spotlight, and highlights key data points.

For reference, a large telecom provider hosts cross-functional “Show & Tell” meetings where power users are encouraged to share their best practices and “winsights” on a monthly basis. Users present their findings to multiple teams and departments across product, IT, UX, CX, VOC, contact center and digital ops.

In one example, they demonstrated how an experience alert identified an uptick in frustration and rage clicks on their website. In another, they built a new dashboard that helped them identify and prioritize several high impact opportunities for improvement. And they showed a survey verbatim that was quantified and tied to session replay all in one click. The bigger the opportunity, the bigger the celebration.

In other examples of fun celebrations, a large retail chain features a fun thermometer along with a “Win of the Month” section in their cross-team newsletter. Others leverage CPD community sites with insights trackers where they share key behavioral insights and digital wins.

Cross-team celebrations help break down silos.

With all the pressures and distractions in our busy schedules, it’s often easy to forget the importance of small wins and sharing what we’ve learned about our customers.

It’s time to celebrate these insights across teams to promote better collaboration and a shared view of the digital customer experience. You can start by learning how to use Continuous Product Design (CPD) as a methodology for cross-team collaboration that puts customers at the center of everything. 

This type of sharing is not only a great morale booster for the teams, but it’s a powerful way to share best practices, understand what others are working on, and most importantly break down digital silos. Read the ebook on how to prevent clashes and promote collaboration for additional steps on how to break down silos. 

Cross-team celebrations are a great step toward building a culture of collaboration and alignment around customer needs. It leads to happier, more engaged employees and better business outcomes. And that’s a win-win.