I just took a full-time position at Forrester Research serving as Principal in their Customer Experience consulting practice. I'm enjoying being part of a team, having an office, working on a topic that I love, and of course a regular paycheck and benefits. Self-employment is often held up as the holy grail to those in corporate America but it has its downsides as well.
While I'm no longer overtly in the world-changing space, I now have exposure to a lot of Fortune 100 clients whose stated values include social and environmental issues, yet these values aren't visible to customers in their experiences. I bring expertise in using the brand lens on sustainability to ensure what's visible is appropriate to the brand and relevant to customers, and also using a sustainability lens on brand and customer experience (ie. how to bring those values to life in a way that builds credibility for the brand.)
Forrester's CX practice is putting a strong focus on ecosystems as well; instead of simply mapping a customer journey, we need to understand the full ecosystem of people, partners, technology and processes that conspire to create an unsatisfactory experience, and how it can be shifted to create a more positive outcome. That's been the focus of my thinking for the past year and it's great to continue the "systems vs. silos" approach within corporations.
From a blog content perspective, I'll focus on customer experience and its intrinsic link with brand, as well as some continued thinking around this concept of coherence. More soon!