Modeling to make customers experiences more successful for them is no different… there’s a goal (to get and keep more loyal customer’s no and into the future) and the path to getting there (understand that your customers are engaged in process with you and that their own expectations for successful outcomes will tell you the path to take).

The model (or map) needs to represent enough of the work your organization does to enable a successful customer outcome. I say enough because many firms will spend a great deal on fancy models, pages and pages of them, over weeks and weeks and when they’re done, the client’s universe has already changed. Enough means to discover very quickly and basically that you need to change. Enough means discovering with the same urgency what to change to. All of this measured around the expectations your customers have for their own success.

And, the model changes, constantly. In the era of continuous improvement to meet continually change markets, your ability to recognize answering the two questions: what to change and what to change to, has been compressed into weeks and months. Your organization must act more like a living organism than a rigid stone. The simpler, more agile your modeling capabilities, the easier to reach answers those to questions in light of what your customers are actually expecting.

So, recognize that your modeling is a map that guides you from A to B relative to what your customers expect from you. And, in doing so, learn when “enough” is just the right amount of information to know that you are taking the right route to get there, what to change about it, and what to change to.