The Fourth Gimbal

Autonomy just one aspect of business personality

If you can afford to take 10 minutes out of your day, then grab a cup of coffee and get yourself in front of an internet connection to watch this very impressive marketing video. Not only is it an excellent piece of creative operational marketing(incidentally, the book being marketed has nothing to do with me), but it also portrays an important message about one technique which organisations may consider deploying to get the most and the best out of their people.

Whilst the cleverness of the marketing itself is notable(and I would imagine we will see many variations on this theme in the future), it is important to recognise that smart marketing ideas tend to come and go. That is the nature of creative marketing.

So, why highlight this particular technique? Well, in this case, the author’s focus on Autonomy and Mastery bears significant long-term relevance for all professional(or cognitive) services organisations.

Autonomy is one of the core personality traits which we address as part of the process of determining and then shaping an organisation’s personality. The original work by Mintzberg and Ghoshal, which has inspired this blog and underpins the concept of organisational personality, juxtaposes ‘Autonomy’ and ‘Synergy’ as a balanced trade-off.

As you might expect, the trade-off suggested by Mintzberg and Ghoshal considers how tightly coupled the constituent parts or silos of an organisation might be, and the relative benefits of loose and tight coupling. Their perspective is clear: “tight integration reduces a multi-business enterprise to a single entity, perhaps destroying some of the potential benefits of diversity. Thus, a major issue in organisation design is to nuance the trade-off between Autonomy and Synergy”.

From the perspective of organisational personality, this trade-off can contribute towards determining how the organisation is perceived externally across two personality spectra: ‘Synergistic’ being team-oriented but with the potential for introspection and slow, consensual decision-making and ‘Autonomous’ being flexible and responsive, but with the potential for maverick tendencies.

However these two spectra alone cannot paint a full picture of an organisation’s personality, characteristics or drivers. The clever piece of marketing discussed above suggests that the benefits of autonomy may be derived from explicitly giving employees more time to be creative for the company, and enabling them to relish the challenge of ‘purpose’. For some businesses, this may be valid, yet it is surely just one part of a more complex answer. Only when the range of personality features displayed by a business are better understood can executive leadership confidently begin the process of shaping how the business will be portrayed and perceived in the future.

Given that maverick tendencies tend to reside at the extremes of the Autonomy/Synergy spectrum, for many businesses, the individualism inherent in Autonomy as an organisational characteristic may bring benefits but also has the potential to undermine an organisation’s core systems & processes and ultimately pull the organisation apart. 

It is therefore important that each of the criteria which comprise organisational personality are assessed in conjunction with all others, rather than in isolation. This enables the organisation to, in the words of Mintzberg and Ghoshal, “sustain a dynamic balance” and present the uniqueness of the organisation’s personality to the marketplace. A singular, ‘one-size-fits-all’ solution will never suffice.

Aligning business personality with buyer behaviour

I wrote recently of a barrage of culture-based articles, each with their own perspective on the irrational nature of decision-making. Thanks to sub-prime mortgages and the global financial crisis, the myth of the rational market has been thoroughly debunked. Traditional economists hang their heads, whilst proponents of behavioural economics are standing up to be counted. They tell us that people, groups, businesses and markets are essentially irrational. Didn’t we suspect this all along?

McKinsey’s most recent article on countering the effects of the buyer’s decision-making bias, though informative, may represent a forlorn attempt to help businesses hold onto the status quo when things are clearly changing all around us. It is time to embrace the change. We all know, and yet don’t like it being pointed out to us, that the purchasing decisions we take, whether personal or commercial, often make no logical sense. What drives us to the conclusion that a particular course of action or a particular service selection is the right one? Values, beliefs, habits, herding, group-think, norms, self-interest, familiarity, resistance to change? Most likely several of those in combination, but certainly not pure logic or infinite market knowledge in isolation.

 Suddenly marketers have a spring in their steps. Having had to satisfy themselves in recent years with managing sausage-machine marketing operations and overseeing the development of ever-more technologically advanced but essentially vapid websites, the wave of behavioural theories heading our way will necessitate that marketers look again at what motivates a buyer to change supplier, make the purchasing decision and then remain loyal. Being creative, offering the Board genuine strategic insight and truly understanding what drives customer/client decision-making is back on the agenda.  

However some of the rules have changed. In the first instance, product or service differentiation alone is no longer enough. No matter how much you differentiate the service, a competitor will quickly promote a replica service or enhancement. Secondly, traditional approaches to positioning the brand are also under threat. Buyers are irrational so the logic of the brand message may be having less of an influence on perception and sales success than you think. Understanding the factors influencing buyer behaviour therefore becomes the key focal point. The psychology of the market takes centre-stage.

I suspect that what was known in the 90’s as the ‘whole product’ will experience a renewed vitality and re-definition as businesses seek to incorporate a broader range of influencing factors into the overall promotional messaging and, crucially, orient the entire business towards the marketplace as never before. Suddenly the personality of the organisation takes on a heightened level of importance.

Focusing on personality to ‘know thyself’

I am struck by the number of executive-level articles being published at the moment which reference culture and organisational awareness. Harvard Business Review’s ‘In a Turnaround, Put Culture First’ and ‘The CEO Conundrum’ at chiefexecutive.net are just two examples published today. What is the message? Perhaps it is this: Hunkering down during a recession is a short-term tactic. When the time comes to put your head above the parapet again, in a tight market it will serve you well to have done your homework and know the value of all of your assets.

 With this in mind, I continue my exploration of the tools, techniques and processes required to leverage the unique personality of your organisation in the marketplace. With the scene set to consider investigating how the personality of a business might be deployed in the marketplace as a source of uniqueness, the approach demands structure, confidentiality and analytical rigour. The process of performing an assessment is likely to comprise 2 stages:

Part 1: Surveying, Assessing and Reporting –

• Gathering, understanding and presenting facts about the organisation’s personality in a structured way.
• Presenting the opportunities to develop organisation-wide differentiating characteristics.
• Identifying those traits which may be having a negative effect upon the market’s perception of the organisation.

Part 2: Shaping, Differentiating and Communicating –

• Putting in place the actions necessary to shape the organisation’s personality.
• Agreeing a differentiated proposition.
• Portraying the core differentiating attributes of the organisation in all future market communications.

Although an in-house approach may initially be perceived to be cost-beneficial to the organisation, it is important to recognise that much of the information gathering process is likely to focus upon the thoughts and opinions of staff members. After all, it is those employees, by way of their day-to-day actions, who do most to present the personality of the business to the marketplace. So, as the two articles above suggest, executives should take the time required to truly ‘know thyself’. However the problem with an in-house approach is that it can be perceived by employees as lacking the necessary levels of confidentiality to allow them to express honest opinions and candid thoughts on the organisation, its management, ethos, values and, ultimately, its personality.

It is also important to accept that the surveying, assessing and reporting process should be performed in a structured and analytical fashion, such that the data gathered is quantified, analysed and reported using proven techniques. However, a word of warning: A failure to strike the right balance between achieving analytical rigour on the one hand and making inference from thoughts and opinions on the other can result in conclusions being drawn which only serve to underpin the status quo. 

Any professionally-delivered investigation of organisational personality must therefore be able to assure participants that the data gathered is secure, that confidentiality will be maintained and that the resulting analysis will deliver a statement of actions fundamental to how the business will go to market. The analysis should have the potential to directly support transformational change where necessary, altering the operating ethos of the organisation and enabling the very personality of the business to become a unique, integrated and differentiated component of the marketing and selling process.

The next posts in this category will look in detail at AP2 – The Balanced Business Personality Monitor, and the processes of Surveying, Assessing and Reporting data on organisational personality.

Value challenge for Facilities Management

 I thought I would reproduce here an extract from a  response I made to a question on ‘professionalisation’ from the Facilities Management sector. For those not in the know, Facilities Management(or FM) is a catch-all description for the various technical and management disciplines which we all rely upon to keep our commercial properties up & running. From care-taking and changing light bulbs to catering, cleaning, security, technical services and onwards to the management of IT infrastructure, FM covers a very broad church. And therein lies the problem. FM has a problem of definition and also of perception. Together, they drive down the value which the sector is perceived to deliver. In the past, attempts have been made to enhance the reputation of FM through professionalisation, but to little apparent effect. I believe the sector needs to re-focus how it sells its value to the marketplace:  

 Mark, your sense of frustration is pretty clear. From my perspective, what you are referring to is the ‘professionalisation’ of FM. As you know, the myriad FM associations and organisations have been batting this around for years, and reached no real conclusion – or am I being unfair?

Unfortunately, the term ‘professionalisation’ is a double-edged sword. Whilst a professionalised environment clearly defines boundaries, expectations and quality standards, many in the firing line hold a fundamental disregard for any form of professionalisation because it is perceived to represent control, bureaucracy, targets and inflexibility at the expense of creativity and endeavour. So it comes as no surprise to me that a drive for the professionalisation of the sector fails to attract unbridled support.

I believe there is more than one way to skin this particular cat. I would argue that the sector and its representative organisations could achieve similar professional stature in the eyes of the marketplace by focusing relentlessly on value. After all, do I retain a lawyer or an accountant or a surveyor primarily because they are a member of their respective Chartered Institutes, or do I retain them because I perceive them to be able to deliver a service which brings me value? Yes, retaining someone with chartered membership status provides me with a layer of comfort, but it is not the key driver of value. There is an entire range of value attributes which should be driving the sector, but aren’t.

 Your point about re-naming the sector/discipline raises another issue. I work with surveyors and they face the same challenges – eg. defining the difference between property management and asset management. Inevitably there are grey areas and overlaps, each bringing different types of competitor. That is the nature of service provision. So I say to them, ‘concentrate on the unique value you add to the sector and keep re-inventing that value as the market evolves’. Wrt the challenge facing the FM sector, I would suggest that recognition is earned through the delivery of value. Waiting for a global FM ‘brand’ to miraculously appear in order to gain recognition could mean a very long wait.

 Finally, as for FM gaining a seat at Board level, there is a pretty long queue. For example, HR has been knocking on the door for a very long time. Only now, as advanced economies become almost irreversibly service-oriented, is HR’s role in ‘human capital management’ being recognised as a key strategic influence on the ability of a business to succeed. I get the feeling FM’s de facto seat at the top-table may be some way off.

 Interestingly, FM is not the only services-led sector facing the challenge of perceived value-add. Most service sectors have service providers who, to a greater or lesser extent, struggle with the combined challenge of identifying where true value lies and aligning the business to deliver that value to receptive markets. But that doesn’t take away from the fact that the delivery of value is what ultimately makes the difference.

HR’s role as tomorrow’s marketers

If I can mix my metaphors, that old chestnut, ‘HR on the Board’ has bubbled to the surface once again. The argument from various commentators is that, as we begin to exit the recession, HR stands front & centre as the professional discipline best placed to advise the Board on how to make the most of existing ‘Human Capital’, and where to make the cuts. No argument there, but is that a reason in itself for HR to have a seat reserved at the top-table long-term? I think not.

Dona Roche-Tarry’s article at the Management Issues blog makes the point that part of HR’s role is to “take the pulse of the organisation”. This too is fine, but to what end? Management information on human resourcing is of course crucial, particularly for people-based services businesses. However, some of that information also has the potential to be deployed in the marketplace, to shift market opinion and to tell the market more about the organisation. It’s all a question of HR strengthening its market-orientation, and this is the point I am making in my response to Dona’s article:

 HR has been fighting for top-table recognition for years, and it is happening, albeit very slowly. Whilst I accept to a certain extent the argument that, post-recession, the spotlight may fall upon HR as the owners of human capital, Dona touches upon something of even greater importance – the increasingly crucial interconnection between the Marketing and HR disciplines, – but doesn’t quite get the point across.

 The point is that, as advanced economies become increasingly service-oriented, people ARE the product. Businesses rely increasingly for success upon selling competence, professionalism, capability, intellect, confidence, trust, etc. In hyper-competitive global markets where traditional product or service differentiation has very limited shelf-life and few products or services remain unique for any length of time, people, with their inherent personalities, traits, characteristics, values and operating ethos make the difference between ‘me too’ and ‘unique’ in the marketplace. (see www.connoptix.com/thefourthgimbal)  The question is how to understand, then shape, then articulate these potential differentiators.

 In the future, I believe HR reps will only be taken seriously at the top-table if they can speak the language of the marketplace and work with marketers and brand managers to get the ‘Human Capital’ message across to the marketplace. This means deploying tools and techniques which support the translation of the important ‘touchy feely’ stuff into hard & fast marketable attributes, rather than hiding behind the lame and well-worn excuse that executives don’t take softer attributes of human capital management seriously enough. Show the executives genuine, people-based differentiating attributes and they’ll sit up and listen!

Some of the best businesses already embrace the HR discipline at executive level, and welcome its input in good times and in bad. Why? Because those HR professionals have taken the time to understand more about the dynamics of the business, and the business-wide impact of their staffing/training/rewards recommendations, rather than focusing purely on the operational imperatives of the HR silo.