Thought Leadership
Executive thought leadership by Steve Towers, Founder and CEO of BP Group. Summaries of every edition of the LinkedIn newsletter covering Outside-In customer experience, CX governance, the CEMMethod, the Triple Crown, and the future of customer-led business.
Most journey maps end up as wall art. Steve explains the common traps that turn mapping into theatre, and the Outside-In discipline that makes the work actually drive measurable change in service, cost and revenue.
A curated reading list for CX leaders who want substance over slogans. Steve picks five books that have shaped Outside-In thinking and explains what each one adds to a practitioner's toolkit.
The traditional CX playbook is running out of road. Steve makes the case for a new professional stance — one grounded in Outside-In thinking, commercial accountability, and the mechanics of the Triple Crown.
CX functions are drowning in measurement but starving for signal. The issue is not volume of metrics, it is the absence of metrics that connect to customer successful outcomes and the decisions leaders actually need to make.
Lean Six Sigma optimises the wrong thing when the starting point is internal efficiency. Steve explains why Outside-In redesign succeeds where traditional Lean programmes stall, and what to do when your transformation has already hit the wall.
A near-future view where customer experience stops being a department and becomes the organisation's operating system. The governance, process, and measurement implications for boards and C-suites.
Why structured accreditation, properly designed, raises both the floor and the ceiling of CX and process capability. A candid look at what good looks like, and the common traps in certification programmes.
Customer experience is the first place AI exposes weak processes, weak governance, and weak decisions. Treat CX as your organisation's early warning system, not as a downstream consequence.
The five most common breakdowns in end-to-end customer journey management, and the practical moves that fix them. A field guide for leaders who have tried journey mapping and want the journey actually governed.
Most transformation programmes optimise internal machinery and stop short of changing outcomes. Steve sets out the shift from activity-led to outcome-led transformation, and the governance it requires.
How Outside-In thinking consistently delivers the Triple Crown — grow revenue, improve service, and cut cost simultaneously — and why organisations anchored to internal efficiency keep missing it.
The CEMMethod as an executable path to the Triple Crown. What the method actually prescribes, what it measures, and the evidence from practitioners deploying it at scale.
Outside-In is easy to admire and hard to embed. A practical look at the org structures, decision rights, and measurement moves that make the shift stick beyond the workshop.
Customer-centric aspirations are everywhere; results are not. A candid diagnosis of why the label rarely translates into outcomes, and the Outside-In corrections that make the difference.
The CX world doesn't need another operating officer. It needs a Chief Inspiration Officer. Steve makes the case for the role that keeps customer experience aspirational and executable at the same time.
Why customer experience has moved from differentiator to imperative, and what that means for how leaders allocate attention, investment, and organisational design.
Amazon's rise wasn't retail disruption, it was customer obsession executed with discipline. The lessons every non-retail industry still refuses to learn.
CX has become noisy and fragmented. A short, practical case for a revival grounded in Outside-In common sense and the basics that most programmes have quietly dropped.
Five traits that separate genuinely customer-led CEOs from the ones who just say the words. Observed across hundreds of executive engagements, rarely named out loud.
What hospitality leaders still do better than most industries, why it works, and the specific moves other sectors can copy without pretending to be restaurants.
Why serious transformation programmes need a Command Center, what it actually does beyond a PMO, and the operating rhythm that keeps it useful rather than theatrical.
A working view of the CX and digital trends that will actually matter to leaders in the next 18 months — filtered for substance, not hype.
A short, sharp take on the difference between surface change and genuine transformation, and the organisational metamorphosis most programmes refuse to actually complete.
A curated look at the customer experience trends that will actually matter in 2025 — stripped of vendor hype and framed for leaders who need to act on them.
Why most CX executive roles are set up to fail, the root cause Steve sees across industries, and the structural fix that actually gives CX leaders a chance.
A practical note on the memory, attention, and recall practices that high-performing leaders rely on — and why they matter more as information overload accelerates.
Measurement is the place most CX programmes quietly die. Steve sets out what to measure, why it matters, and the common measurement traps that hollow out customer-led strategy.
Where generative AI genuinely changes experience management, where it flatters to deceive, and how to pick the few use cases worth governing at board level.
A sector-specific read on how AI is actually reshaping insurance — underwriting, claims, and client outcomes — and the governance required to keep the customer in frame.
A short, unexpected history lesson on early American railroads and the Outside-In moral it hands to today's transformation leaders.
How the CEMMethod applies directly to fraud prevention in banking — customer-first framing, process intelligence, and the governance shifts that move the numbers.
Jargon slowly suffocates organisations. Steve names the worst offenders in CX and transformation, and offers a simple cleanup that sharpens decisions.
Twenty hard-won rules for CX leaders who want to be taken seriously by the board and trusted by the customer. Short, direct, and unsentimental.
Part 2 of the CX Killers series. Steve names the measures that quietly destroy customer outcomes from inside the organisation, and how to detect them before they do the damage.
The opening piece in the CX Killers series. Why most CX scoreboards are already out of date the day they are published, and the move leaders can make this quarter to fix it.
Steve's honest read on the 2024 CX conference circuit — what advanced the conversation, what stayed stuck, and where to invest your time next year.
Ten principles that distinguish real Outside-In customer centricity from the branded version most organisations settle for. A useful checklist for leadership teams.
The latest statistics that actually move the CX debate forward in the boardroom — curated for leaders who need evidence, not anecdote.
A grounded view on how AI is genuinely reshaping customer experience — distinguishing durable shifts from short-lived hype, with implications for leaders.
An inside-track read on AI in customer experience — what's working for practitioners now, what's being oversold, and the patterns serious operators are already using.