Companies love to talk about being customer-centric. They set bold experience goals, craft compelling vision statements, and invest in innovation. But too often, there’s a disconnect between strategy and execution—between what the company wants the experience to be and how teams actually operate.
I’ve built a lot of journey maps. Trained teams to create them. Led organizations that rely on them. Journey maps—and the idea of the customer journey—have become ubiquitous.
What’s not as widespread? Journey management. Though it’s gaining traction.
What is journey management?
It’s not just knowing the customer journey—it’s about making it the backbone of how your business operates. That means not just printing it on a wall (and if you’re one of the few who still makes things physical and tangible—bless you) or creating a document that sits on a server. It means integrating the journey into your operations, your metrics, and even your organizational structure.
Tools like Smaply, TheyDo, and JourneyTrack have emerged to make this more dynamic. They provide ways to visualize and manage the journey in real time, integrating live metrics to make the information actionable. But adoption is still fragmented. And tools alone don’t transform organizations—structure, leadership, and culture must follow.
Organizations are complex ecosystems—nothing like the structured flow of a customer journey. You can’t simply look at an org chart and see how teams align to the experience.
Reorgs happen all the time. But the journeys an organization supports remain unchanged.
Journey Management = Organizational Management
I was lucky enough to be part of an organization that embraced this idea so deeply (I may have had some influence) that we structured the business around the journey itself. We anchored to a shared understanding of the experience. Defined a collective vision. Teams were named for the phases of the journey. They understood what happened before and after their part of the experience—and who to collaborate with when needed. Training was stood up. New roles were created. New processes were put in place to keep teams aligned.
Not only does this strengthen the customer experience, but it also creates massive business efficiency. No more teams unknowingly working on the same thing. No more misplaced resources. No more features built in isolation, disconnected from the larger vision. It helps teams see their impact and gives leaders a clearer way to assess if the organization is heading in the right direction.
Doing this is hard. It requires strong leadership and change management. But for those willing to make the shift, the benefits are transformative—and long-lasting.
Have you implemented journey management in your organization? I’d love to hear how it’s working. And if you’re looking for guidance, let’s connect.
This post was also posted on LinkedIn.