Focusing on personality to ‘know thyself’ |The Fourth Gimbal

Focusing on personality to ‘know thyself’

By Russell Thomson | May 17, 2010

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.