RED DEER – Who is your customer? What does that customer want? What can you do to improve your customer’s experience?
Three key questions involving one common theme – if you don’t know what the problem is that you are trying to solve, your attempts at change will not be successful.
For 90 minutes on Friday night, Matt Symes stated, stressed, discussed and reinforced these questions and themes during the keynote address to open Hockey Alberta’s 112th Annual General Meeting and Hockey Conference at the Cambridge Hotel.
Symes is a founding Partner at Symplicity Designs who has helped introduce more than 350 organizations to the principles, methods, and tools of performance excellence. He has worked with numerous organizations in all sectors, including Hockey Nova Scotia and the Francophone education sector in New Brunswick.
The Friday evening presentation set the stage for a workshop session on Saturday morning, which Symes will be leading with Minor Hockey Association representatives and Hockey Alberta volunteers.
“Hockey is a hard game to change,” said Symes.
He talked about the challenges involved with change, being prepared to move fast enough, and making sure that the proposed changes solve the problem. Identifying the problem is the first step.
“You have to define the problem before you work to solve it,” Symes said. “You have to understand your organization from the outside in, not the inside out. Do you know what your customer is saying? Are we making decisions based on what the customer wants?”
The Hockey Conference continues Saturday morning at Red Deer College with the Leading Change workshop led by Symes. That will be followed by a session on Complaint Handling and Policy Development led by Steve Indig of the Sport & Law Strategy Group, and a hot-stove session will be held to discuss some of the sport’s hot topics.
The Annual General Meeting gets underway at 2 pm.
