Leader 2030-Innovation Strategy-How to Increase Customer Satisfaction and Reduce Costs Simultaneously

The Executive Study Group (ESG) webinar named “Leader 2030 – Innovation Strategy-How to Increase Customer Satisfaction and Reduce Costs Simultaneously” was held by Asia Pacific Institute for Strategy Limited (APIFS) on 6th Aug 2025. He discussed the relation between customer experience and loyalty, customer service as a hygiene factor, make it easy by removing obstacles and 5 strategies for “Effortless’ customer experience. 

Firstly, Dr. Mark Lee defined the loyalty that as customer’s intention to continue doing business with a company, increase their spending, or say good things about it. However, research showed that exceeding their expectations during service interactions hardly improve loyalty.

Thus, Dr. Lee proposed to make it easy by removing obstacles. Shifting the loyalty curve by exceed customer expectation is a wrong loyalty goal. 

But shifting the loyalty curve by making it easy should be correct loyalty goal. For example, coaching staff to reply customer if no product in stock as “We’ll have stock availability for that item in two weeks.” 

After that he further explained “Make It Easy” meaning to remove obstacles for customer. 

Finally, Dr. Lee briefed 5 strategies for “Effortless” Customer Experience as follows. One example that company defined event-clusters that not only resolve customer’s primary issue but also to anticipate and address common downstream issues. 

Reference:

Asia Pacific Institute for Strategy Limited (亞太策略研究所有限公司) – www.apifs.org

ESG facebook - https://www.facebook.com/groups/esg08

Leader 2030 - Empowering the Next Generation of Leaders - https://www.apifs.org/Leader2030-en

20250625: ESG Webinar – Future-Proof Your Career: Strategies to Stay Irreplaceable in the Age of AI - https://qualityalchemist.blogspot.com/2025/06/esg-webinar-future-proof-your-career.html

Leader 2030 series:

20250307: Leader 2030 Webinar – Lean Startup: Quick Innovation Strategy - https://qualityalchemist.blogspot.com/2025/03/leader-2030-webinar-lean-startup-quick.html

20250319: Leader 2030 Webinar – How Are AI Projects Different from Traditional IT Projects - https://qualityalchemist.blogspot.com/2025/03/leader-2030-webinar-how-are-ai-projects.html

20250422: Leader 2030 Webinar – The Secret for Successful Strategy Execution - https://qualityalchemist.blogspot.com/2025/04/leader-2030-webinar-secret-for.html

20250502: Leader 2030 Webinar – The Secret for Successful Strategy Execution (II) - https://qualityalchemist.blogspot.com/2025/05/leader-2030-webinar-secret-for.html

20250515: Leader 2030 -Negotiation Strategy to Lead Changes - https://qualityalchemist.blogspot.com/2025/05/leader-2030-negotiation-strategy-to.html 

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Leader 2030 -Negotiation Strategy to Lead Changes

The Executive Study Group (ESG) webinar named “Leader 2030 – Negotiation Strategy to Lead Changes” was held by Asia Pacific Institute for Strategy Limited (APIFS) on 15^th May 2025. The first part of negotiation is about human interaction.

Firstly, Dr. Mark Lee quoted “The Art of War” that those skilled in war subdue the enemy’s army without battle”. He said that negotiation is not debating but about “human interaction”.

Then he defined that “Negotiation is the process by which two or more parties who perceive a difference in interests or perspective attempt to reach agreement”.

After that he quoted two examples and they were NFL Strike (2011) and NHL (2005). Then he surveyed us which barriers making agreement more difficult that (A) The Audience Problem and (B) Zero-sum Problem.

The survey result was near half-half. It is no right answer.

Dr. Mark Lee mentioned NFL solution that separated benefit in more details through three revenue buckets. 

So that every party won the negotiation.

Lastly, he introduced the coming public lecture for “Storytelling” skill.

Reference:

Asia Pacific Institute for Strategy Limited (亞太策略研究所有限公司) – www.apifs.org

ESG facebook - https://www.facebook.com/groups/esg08

Leader 2030 - Empowering the Next Generation of Leaders - https://www.apifs.org/Leader2030-en

Leader 2030 series:

20250307: Leader 2030 Webinar – Lean Startup: Quick Innovation Strategy - https://qualityalchemist.blogspot.com/2025/03/leader-2030-webinar-lean-startup-quick.html

20250319: Leader 2030 Webinar – How Are AI Projects Different from Traditional IT Projects - https://qualityalchemist.blogspot.com/2025/03/leader-2030-webinar-how-are-ai-projects.html

20250422: Leader 2030 Webinar – The Secret for Successful Strategy Execution - https://qualityalchemist.blogspot.com/2025/04/leader-2030-webinar-secret-for.html

ESG Negotiation related talk:

20230504: ESG Negotiation Strategy Webinar – 8 Negotiation Lessons from Sun Tzu’s The Art of War - https://qualityalchemist.blogspot.com/2023/05/esg-negotiation-strategy-webinar-8.html

20160830: ESG Seminar – How to Control the Bargaining Table - https://qualityalchemist.blogspot.com/2016/08/esg-seminar-how-to-control-bargaining.html

20130409: 碼頭工潮的談判策略分析 - https://qualityalchemist.blogspot.com/2013/04/blog-post.html

20130323: ESG Negotiation Strategy Seminar - How to Structure a Negotiation towards Your Advantage - https://qualityalchemist.blogspot.com/2013/03/esg-negotiation-strategy-seminar-how-to.html

20130131: ESG Negotiation Strategy Seminar - How to Get What You Want by Effective Negotiation - https://qualityalchemist.blogspot.com/2013/01/esg-negotiation-strategy-seminar-how-to.html

Previous talks summary:

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Leader 2030 Webinar – The Secret for Successful Strategy Execution (II)

The Executive Study Group (ESG) webinar named “Leader 2030 – The Secret for Successful Strategy Execution (II)” was held by Asia Pacific Institute for Strategy Limited (APIFS) on 2^nd May 2025. 

Firstly, Dr. Mark Lee introduced the mission of Leader 2030 and reviewed topics in Part 1 & 2. The content of Part 3 included 5 elements in decision rights and information flow, as well as, creating a Transformation Program.

Then he quoted Gary L. Neilson (Senior Partner, Booz & Company) that he said “We’ve identified four fundamental building blocks executives can use to influence those actions – clarifying decision rights, designing information flow, aligning motivators, and making changes to structure.”

And then Dr. Mark Lee compared corporate staff (C) and line staff (L). Corporate staff focused on company-wide functions, strategy, governance and oversight such as Corporate Strategy, Legal & Compliance, HR, etc.

Line staff mainly related to business units, operation or line functions that are directly involved in profit & loss (P&L) accountability such as sales & marketing, manufacturing, customer service, etc.

Based on the four fundamental building blocks executives that Dr. Lee discussed improvement check-list for company immediate actions. 

Lastly, he introduced the next topic named “Negotiation Strategy to Lead Changes”.

Reference:

Asia Pacific Institute for Strategy Limited (亞太策略研究所有限公司) – www.apifs.org

ESG facebook - https://www.facebook.com/groups/esg08

Leader 2030 - Empowering the Next Generation of Leaders - https://www.apifs.org/Leader2030-en

Leader 2030 series:

20250307: Leader 2030 Webinar – Lean Startup: Quick Innovation Strategy - https://qualityalchemist.blogspot.com/2025/03/leader-2030-webinar-lean-startup-quick.html

20250319: Leader 2030 Webinar – How Are AI Projects Different from Traditional IT Projects - https://qualityalchemist.blogspot.com/2025/03/leader-2030-webinar-how-are-ai-projects.html

20250422: Leader 2030 Webinar – The Secret for Successful Strategy Execution - https://qualityalchemist.blogspot.com/2025/04/leader-2030-webinar-secret-for.html

Previous talks summary:

https://qualityalchemist.blogspot.com/search/label/Executive%20Study%20Group

Leader 2030 Webinar – The Secret for Successful Strategy Execution

The Executive Study Group (ESG) webinar named “Leader 2030 – The Secret for Successful Strategy Execution” was held by Asia Pacific Institute for Strategy Limited (APIFS) on 22^nd Apr 2025. Firstly, Dr. Mark Lee introduced the mission of Leader 2030 and today topic that was 17 Fundamental Traits of Organizational Effectiveness. He quoted Gary L. Neilson statement that “Execution is the result of thousands of decisions made every day by employees acting according to the information they have and their own self-interest…” and his four fundamental building blocks. 

The four fundamental building blocks showed in the right-hand side included “Clarifying Decision Rights”, “Designing Information Flow”, “Aligning Motivators” and “Making Changes to Structure”. Then he explained the 17 fundamental traits of organization effectiveness one by one. Where 1, 3, 7 belongs to Decision Rights and 2,4,5,6,8,9,10,16&17 are Information.

Where 11 & 12 are Motivators and 13 to 15 are Structure. The ranking makes clear how important decision rights and information are to effective strategy execution. The first eight traits map directly to decision right and information. Only three of the 17 traits relate to structure and noe of those ranks higher than 13^th. Finally, Dr. Mark Lee asked us to survey 17 fundamental traits in our organization to find out the strength index for prioritizing the traits.

Lastly, he introduced the next topic.

Reference:

Asia Pacific Institute for Strategy Limited (亞太策略研究所有限公司) – www.apifs.org

ESG facebook - https://www.facebook.com/groups/esg08

Leader2030 - Empowering the Next Generation of Leaders - https://www.apifs.org/Leader2030-en

Previous talks summary:

https://qualityalchemist.blogspot.com/search/label/Executive%20Study%20Group

Leader 2030 Webinar – How Are AI Projects Different from Traditional IT Projects

The Executive Study Group (ESG) webinar named “Leader 2030 – How Are AI Projects Different from Traditional IT Projects” was held by Asia Pacific Institute for Strategy Limited (APIFS) on 19^th Mar 2025. Before the webinar, Dr. Mark Lee introduced the mission of Leader 2030 that aims to develop leadership capabilities for 2030s and build a strong network of future-focused leaders. Then he introduced the guest speaker Mr. Eric Moy (CEO, KB Quest). 

In the beginning, Mr. Eric Moy briefed the trend from Large Language Models (LLM) to Large Reasoning Models (LRM). Only DeepSeek is open source in the top level of LRM.

Then he mentioned from Agentic to AGI that AGI possesses the ability to understand, learn, and apply knowledge across tasks at a level comparable to human intelligence. And then he demonstrated the latest AI Agent “Manus” as example. It showed how to compare NVDA, MRVL & TSM stock prices and wrote website to demonstrate it.

After that Mr. Eric Moy compared the definition between traditional IT project and AI project. The key differences are from rule-based decision to Agentic AI / AI making decision.

He said AI projects’ scope was difficult to define and framework was still evolving.

Different skills and team composition included data scientist, machine learning engineer and domain experts that emphasized on research and experimentation but not focused on coding and system integration.

Testing of traditional IT project and AI project were different from focus on functional testing to model accuracy. Where data were core component in AI project.

Finally, Mr. Eric Moy mentioned three dimensions to be considered as AI project completion that were accuracy, time and cost. The most important one is to establish a hard deadline! Maintenance is also considered as ongoing such as new version of GenAI launch.

Lastly, he reviewed five factors of distinctions.

He recommended AI project flow from coaching to executive for expectation management and then defined the firm deadline, after that define minimal acceptable standards and ensure executive involvement.

At the end, he concluded three must-dos for AI adoption and they were accountable, controls and AI assistant.

After Q&A, Dr. Mark Lee introduced the next topic entitled “The Secret for Successful Strategy Execution”.

Reference:

Asia Pacific Institute for Strategy Limited (亞太策略研究所有限公司) – www.apifs.org

ESG facebook - https://www.facebook.com/groups/esg08

Leader2030 - Empowering the Next Generation of Leaders - https://www.apifs.org/Leader2030-en

Previous talks summary:

https://qualityalchemist.blogspot.com/search/label/Executive%20Study%20Group

Leader 2030 Webinar – Lean Startup: Quick Innovation Strategy

The Executive Study Group (ESG) webinar named “Leader 2030 – Lean Startups: Quick Innovation Strategy: How Traditional Companies Accelerate Innovation Speeds” was held by Asia Pacific Institute for Strategy Limited (APIFS) on 7^th Mar 2025. Dr. Mark Lee introduced the goal of Leader 2030 before the webinar (See reference). 

In the beginning, Dr. Mark Lee quoted Prof. Steve Blank (Stanford University) that Lean Startups practices did not only for young tech ventures but also large companies. 

Then he introduced the 4 stages of “Lean Startups”. The first two steps are Customer Discovery and Validation that belongs the first part “Search”. The second part “Execution” included the last two steps and they are Customer Creation and Company Building.

Lean Startups Re-entrepreneurship (LSR) included three elements and they are Business Model Canvas (BMC), Hypothesis Quick Test (HQT) and Minimum Viable Products (MVP). Dr. Lee reviewed BMC of last webinar.

Then he also reviewed the HQT – Test Card 4 steps and they are Hypothesis, Test, Metric and Criteria.

And then Dr. Lee briefed the Minimum Viable Products (MVP) that need to fulfill two critical factors and they are customer found it valuable and rapid growth rate.

Dr. Mark Lee use Facebook, Blue River Technology and GE as examples to explain lean startups practices.

After that he mentioned the multiple rounds using BMC → MVP deployment of HQT and got customer feedback for quick experimentation. 

Finally, he compared the traditional company culture and lean startup culture from Strategy, New-product process and Engineering.

As well as, compared from Organization, Financial Reporting, Failure and Speed.

Lastly, he polled to survey our company ready for Lean Startup’ unique culture or not. Around 60% replied agree / highly agree their company ready for this culture change.

Reference:

Asia Pacific Institute for Strategy Limited (亞太策略研究所有限公司) – www.apifs.org

ESG facebook - https://www.facebook.com/groups/esg08

Leader2030 - Empowering the Next Generation of Leaders - https://www.apifs.org/Leader2030-en

Previous talks summary:

https://qualityalchemist.blogspot.com/search/label/Executive%20Study%20Group