Mark L. Vincent brings a wealth of expertise in driving customer-centric strategies at the C-Suite and board level. What I admire about Mark is his commitment to bridge the gap between executive leadership and boardroom strategy. In this episode of What’s Your Edge?, Mark and I discuss how boards of directors (BOD) and C-Suite (CXO) members can collaborate effectively to align goals and accelerate growth through customer-centricity by using data and performance management to support governance and forward-thinking. Mark L. Vincent is a process consulting pioneer and (meta) Systems Convener with more than 30 years of service as an Executive Advisor and Corporate Board Member. He currently serves on the boards of Century Companies and the Center of Steward Leader Studies and chairs the board for Mygrow.

In our experience, the relationship between the C-Suite and the board often determines the direction of an organization. Boards become significantly more effective when they are equipped with actionable insights derived from data. This allows them to support strategy development and make faster, fact-based decisions—critical for driving innovation, excelling at meeting customer expectations, and remaining relevant in the market.

Mark, as a board member, what data do you need from members of the C-Suite to help you make key strategic decisions?

I’m a fan of the hard work of distilling strategy into one-page plans supported by operating systems, a growing example of which is EOS. This enables information to be shared transparently, accurately, and in real-time, up and down the organization. I like to see this combined with 12-month trailing financial indicators and dynamic budgets adjusted for the next twelve months in accordance with what the data reveals. 

When these are used in combination you have the entire organization working with the same data set and from the lens they are to bring to the organization.

Many enterprises do not do this.  They use a budget plan that they update once per year, using financial reports that are already a month old. We could do an entire podcast on the many ways employees and executives game this system to their advantage and to the long-term harm of the business.

I’m a big fan of the one-page plan too, which is why created our patented SaaS application – Accelance®. It visually connects investments and activities to business results on one page.

Mark, many organizations are swimming in data and as a result are challenged to identify important patterns and signals needed to tease out the meaning behind the data. In addition, good narratives tell stories. Mark, how can C-Suite executives prepare a data-driven narrative that speaks to board members’ needs for operational resilience, financial performance, and innovation?

This is an area where I’ve done a lot of work with organizations across the years. An organization that has a compelling mission backed up with key products or services, and powered by a strategic direction with key initiatives, has a great outline for a budget narrative that tells the story of intention, and the reporting data that tells the story of results.

One look at the business plan of the organization will tell you what the real mission and real story is. Either it matches the narrative of the mission/strategy or it doesn’t. And if it doesn’t, then the mission and strategy is a farce. The financial plan and its results tell you where the priorities really are.

I agree, it’s easy for distractions to get our attention.  The key is to focus on priorities. I think somebody has written a book about that. A key role of the BOD is to ensure that the leadership team has the resources, support, and framework to successfully embed customer-centricity into every part of the organization. In this capacity, a BOD member’s role is about oversight and alignment rather than day-to-day management.

Mark, what role does customer data, like lifetime value, customer effort score, or customer retention, play in these discussions? And how can boards use these metrics to guide discussions about resource allocation and strategic priorities?

The BOD does not need to develop customer-centricity nearly as much as it needs to expect it and hold its executive accountable to develop and continually refine it.  Once they are in place, the data becomes useful to measure effectiveness, and then to drill down to where adjustment or refinement of strategy is needed.

And this brings us back to the narrative again. It’s tough to spin data when there is a specific outline and cadence of reporting to follow. I’ve been in more than one boardroom where an executive or functional manager’s long history of gaming the system to their advantage is exposed and no longer works. Thankfully, some learn to adjust and grow their ability to better lead the organization. Others do not and end up harming another organization elsewhere.  Either way, the organization becomes healthier.

Take Me to Advisory Services

In our work, we’ve seen that achieving customer-centricity is an essential part of growth and needs to be integrated into the overall strategy. Customer-centricity requires organizations to strike a delicate balance between long-term strategic goals and short-term performance demands. This balance helps ensure sustainable growth while meeting immediate business needs. Boards play a pivotal role in guiding this alignment, helping leadership teams prioritize initiatives that deliver both immediate results and long-term value.

Mark, what do you recommend the BOD do to help enable the balance between the long-term strategic goals of customer-centricity with short-term financial performance?

There are two ways we might understand the word “balance,” and I prefer the second. The first is to think of it as alternating between short-term and long-term at appropriate times, trying to ensure that neither is neglected. The second is to expect both at the same time and at all times, never losing sight of either.

Let’s use the example of triage in a catastrophic medical situation. Triage is not just about quickly providing medical treatment at the moment (short-term). It is about saving lives and as many as possible (long-term). Neither is cast aside.

Having described this, I’d like to offer what I consider another method. In executive development, we want executives to think about long-term, mid or near-term, as well as short-term. And, we want to combine this with thinking about the top, middle, and bottom line. The complexities of these dynamics are always present so why not be aware of and respond to them ahead of time rather than constantly being surprised by their interactions and having to devote additional and scarce time and resources to play cleanup.

Many BOD members have served in C-level roles. Making the shift from a leadership role to a board member position presents unique challenges. One of my favorite sayings is ‘noses in and fingers out,’ which is attributed to Jim Brown. In his book, The Imperfect Board Member, he describes the ideal role of a board member—staying informed and aware of the company’s operations (‘noses in’) while not interfering with day-to-day management decisions (‘fingers out’).

Building on this idea, Mark, how have you found serving on a board different from running a company or serving in the C-Suite? How does the board’s perspective differ from that of C-Suite executives, especially when considering the strategic role of customer-centricity?

I like the metaphor as a way for C-Suite executives to begin learning that the roles are different than what they are doing in their working life.  And yet, there is a weakness in the analogy because the central point of reference is the executive suite rather than the boardroom.  When this happens, almost all of the agenda ties to the operations of the business, with the board feeling rather anemic because it is trying to keep its questions and comments elevated and not wanting to sound like a second-level executive.

The board needs to have its noses and fingers in the governance of the org, everything from its charter to its strategy, and all related policies. These set the stage for operations and how they will be measured and reported. The central point of reference for the board is governance. And its agenda should contain a number of governance matters in addition to any standard reporting deck from the executive.

This shift in perspective—from operational execution to strategic oversight—offers a unique opportunity for board members to champion initiatives that prioritize customer success. By staying focused on alignment and long-term business outcomes, boards can help ensure that customer-centric strategies remain at the forefront of organizational priorities.

To achieve this mission, board members must ask critical questions to ensure the company is on track with customer success initiatives and what we refer to as advantageous excellence. We have found that it’s very important for BODs to focus on assessing the organization’s ability to innovate, adapt, and align operations with customer needs.

Mark, as a board member, what kinds of questions do you typically ask related to strategy, data, operational excellence/processes, and performance management?

I’d love to have you unpack more of this, especially how customer success matches up with investor intention. There is a synchronicity here that every organization needs, or everyone (customer, employee, and investor) receives less than desired.

My response to this ties back to where we began, with strategy matched up with operational reporting in real-time.  When those are in place, my questions will follow a three-fold priority:

One other quick note to make is that a board meeting often operates under a tight time limit. That does not exempt my responsibility as a board member to ask important questions.  I’m on the board because of what someone felt was my unmatched point of view. I’m compensated to bring that and so I must. If I can’t do it at the board meeting, I can do it ahead of or following the meeting. 

Again, this is not about making statements and offering opinions, nearly as much as using my insights to bring good questions and expect robust answers.  It’s not about displaying whether I am knowledgeable at all. It is about the enterprise living into its expressed mission.

Thank you for sharing these three questions! Journalist Simon Caulkin is attributed to saying, “What gets measured gets managed—even when it’s pointless to measure and manage it, and even- if it harms the purpose of the organization to do so.”

Mark, what do you recommend board members measure to determine the success of customer-centric initiatives, particularly when measuring against traditional KPIs like revenue growth or profit margins?

If we’ve done the work to identify who our customer is and how we meet a need or fulfill a desire, then we have items that should be showing up in our strategy, our plan, and our metrics.

An ongoing approach is for a board to have a finance committee and perhaps a separate executive compensation committee to make sure that organizational goals held by the board match up well with the operational goals given to key leaders. 

Staying on one of my favorite topics, performance management. What specific performance measures or KPIs do you feel are crucial when evaluating customer-centricity, particularly regarding customer loyalty, customer lifetime value, and retention rates?

How can leading versus lagging indicators, like referral rates and retention rates, help predict revenue and profit growth?”

I spent some time with a business owner of a growing enterprise this past week, where we were drilling down into this. We figured out his business drivers and how they become his lagging indicators of success (or not). We then unpacked them back to the leading indicators of whether enough has been done to continue driving business.  Another way to say this is that we moved in a progression of what produces a sale, followed by what the sales results were, then working all the way back to what continued activities are needed prior to any possible sale.

Each business is different in this regard. In this case, it was a leisure business.  If it is the manufacturing of a specific product, the offering of a counseling service, or the provision of medical care, the leading and lagging indicators surrounding the engine driving the business will be different.  And once again, we are brought back to mission/vision/values/strategy and operational metrics that tell the story in real-time, aren’t we?   

Yes, we are right back to mission, vision, values, and strategy! And that takes me back to the topic of customer-centricity as an organizational model. Customer-centricity is about how the leadership team makes decisions and runs the company.  We believe that integrating customer-centric practices is essential for long-term growth and profitability. Research from various organizations has found that customer-centricity directly drives increased customer lifetime value, retention rates, and referral rates—all critical for building sustainable, competitive advantages.

Mark, in your experience, what are the most effective ways BOD and C-Suites members can integrate a customer-centric approach into their overall business strategies? And how can BODs ensure customer success is treated as a priority?

Let me respond with a question.  What does the word “customer” mean here?

I think any stakeholder is a customer of the enterprise, either because an investment has been made or a purchase. Or, in the case of an employee, the selling of one’s time for a wage.  And in the case of a vendor, it is the provision of goods or services to the business for a price. If this stakeholder view is true then the answer becomes simple. Centering on the customer and centering on the mission become one and the same.

Investors, employees, vendors, and customers likely have individual agendas as they interact with the business.  If we are going to be customer-centric, we will need to engage in a lot of listening before speaking. And that listening metric would be one the board should expect to see. I would hope that listening shows up somewhere in those leading indicators.

Excellent point about listening! As an operational excellence expert, I imagine you agree that speed and adaptability are key to being customer-centric. This takes having the right systems, tools, and processes in place.

Mark, how can boards assess whether the necessary technology infrastructure and processes are in place to support customer-centricity?

Behind the technology are the people. Their desire to listen rather than to use technology as a substitute for their listening matters a great deal.  What we put into the development of the humans needs to lead the way. Then, technology can be chosen in support of the human capacity and speed things along. There is ample evidence that when we get it the other way around, technology leading the way, then humans reduce their capacities and support the technology rather than the customer.  As a board member, this is where I want to start.

As we wrap up, Mark, what advice would you give to C-Suite leaders who are trying to better align with their Board of Directors to ensure customer-centric strategies are fully supported and executed?

I would end where we started. Customer-centricity needs to be in the mission in order for it to be in the values and resulting strategy. Then it can become what we measure, report, analyze, and continuously improve.

I couldn’t agree more, customer-centricity needs to be the mission. Thank you, Mark, for your insights today. As we conclude, we invite our listeners to reflect on their own organizations. How can you leverage data and operational excellence to foster a customer-centric culture to drive growth and innovation? What changes might you need to make? For more insights and strategies for leading with change, visit VisionEdge Marketing’s website and explore our resources designed to help you grow and thrive.