In retrospect, it turns out that Theresa May, the British prime minister, took a terrible risk by calling a snap election on the back of a 24-point Conservative Party lead over Labour in the polls. She had hoped to increase her power in Parliament from a slim majority of 330 seats — a mere four seats above a majority — to something in the range of 380 seats. Instead, her party dropped 12 seats and will now be forming a painful minority government at a time of great political turmoil due to Brexit. Is the lesson: Don’t take risks? No, the lesson is to take a customer-centric perspective on risk to avoid exposing yourself to risks that you didn’t contemplate.
The UK’s Snap Election Reminds Us That Proposing a Change Forces People to Ask New Questions About You
Any change can come as a shock to customers, and thus, any change poses a risk. When it comes to taking a risk with customers — whether they are website users, shareholders, movie patrons, or voters — you have to think about what question they’ll ask themselves as a result of the change you are proposing. It’s probably not the question you wish they’d ask. For example, in the 2017 snap election, British Prime Minister Theresa May thought she was asking the voters: “Do you like my party better than the other party?” The answer to that question, in crystal clear terms, was yes – the Tories do still hold a plurality of the seats in Parliament. But lots of voters decided to ask themselves a different question: “Do I trust this politician?” And the answer there was no. P&G, CBSSports.com, and numerous other companies have made the same mistake. It can even happen to individuals if they take on the wrong kind of project — one that reshapes others’ perceptions of them. (See: Faye Dunaway as Joan Crawford.) Proposing a change – any change – forces customers to ask themselves new questions about you, and the biggest risk therein is assuming that customers will automatically ask the question you’d like them to ask.