In 1974, Richard Easterlin, Professor of Economics at the University of Southern California, concluded from both GDP statistics and subjective ‘well-being data’ collected in earlier years from a number of nation-states, that once a certain level of GDP is achieved, the relevance of GDP growth as an indicator of enhanced national well-being declines markedly. Thus, after basic needs are met, nations that get richer don’t necessarily become happier. In fact, he concluded that the positive change in aspiration which occurs as a result of GDP growth may actually limit the potential of nation states to achieve enhanced levels of happiness.

 Since Easterlin reached his conclusion, there have been a number of claims to the contrary, which serve to widen this useful debate on the value and appropriateness of subjective research. And, of course, there will always be those who will argue to the bitter end that any attempts by researchers to have society ‘self-anchor’ a subjective measure of something as obscure as ‘happiness’ will inevitably deliver an inconclusive result.

 All very logical, and difficult to disagree with. And yet……… we all know, in our hearts, that Kennedy was right. GDP doesn’t tell the whole story. So, what does?

 Societal well-being has hit the UK headlines recently because our Prime Minister, David Cameron, has openly supported the investment of taxpayers’ money to investigate the meaning of well-being. Hardly a priority in these straightened economic times, you’d think. So the chat rooms are abuzz with the scepticism and negativity of those desperate to grab the moral high ground on behalf of the thousands of public sector workers who are about to lose their jobs, and the countless others who are suffering in myriad ways as a result of the recession. All perfectly understandable if your aim is to undermine a new approach or score a political point.

And yet Cameron is right to proceed. Why? Well, if the banking crisis and global economic recession has taught us anything, it is that our traditional approach to balancing the books(or even understanding what ‘the books’ are telling us) does not make clear everything that we need to know. As social groups, whether in the home, in the office, as a community or as a nation, our over-reliance upon traditional numbers-based assessments of performance means that we are singularly failing to balance tangibles and intangibles or even know how to interpret nuance.

 Consider the litigious, rule-based, target-driven and compensation-seeking culture which has taken hold of our society in the past 2 decades.  Beggar thy neighbour. In short, there is something missing in the way in which we define what success looks like and determine whether we are being successful, beyond the strictures of the balance sheet. Yet nuance and interpretation can provide such insight.

It is to Cameron’s credit that he has brushed off the attacks on his happiness initiative, telling his detractors that ‘if you believe in something, you just have to get on and do it’. It would be all too easy to cave-in to the naysayers, but Cameron senses, albeit belatedly, that Kennedy was on to something. Well-being can say just as much about the state of the nation as GDP. As economies and societies evolve, seeking new techniques to measure the subjective is no bad thing, offering the potential to enlighten us far more than relying entirely upon traditional measures.  

And Kennedy’s argument that there is more to life than GDP translates well within the business, firm or corporate environment. In fact, for the people-led business, it represents a crucial, yet sadly under-developed attitude of corporate mind. Revenue growth and the profit imperative continue to be immensely important to the economic success of any business. But are we missing an opportunity to further investigate, understand and manage the intangible nature of business success? It is this very thought which underpins the thinking behind the study of organisational personality, to which this blog is mostly dedicated.

By understanding intangibles and striving to measure subjective feedback, we have much to discover about the demeanour of our people and the potential of our organisations to succeed in the future. It is these important aspects of organisational character which traditional balance sheets can never hope to reflect or represent.

The argument is that the list is quantified, definitive and easy to source, whereas the conversation is often rambling and, at times, incoherent. So, what could be easier than reading someone else’s list and putting it into action? Simple. Job done. Success awaits.

Of course, for the creator of the list, fleshing it out and publishing it in book form remains an attractive source of income. And publishing a business book is now so straightforward that this appears to be the main reason why the business sections of most bookstores are crammed full of so much ‘management by list’.

Yet, the fact is that you cannot run a people business by relying upon another manager’s list of actions and priorities in isolation. No matter how much they try to accommodate your particular circumstances, their lists are inherently personal and are developed almost entirely from their own readings, thoughts and experiences.  Whereas the list is sterile, it is the nuance in the conversation which has the potential to generate ideas, unlock uniqueness and engender differentiation. When it comes to good advice, it’s all a question of knowing where to look and what to look for.

It was this odd stream of thought which grabbed me as I meandered around an airport book store awaiting my departure announcement. Everywhere I looked, there were cold and calculating lists of how to do things. And yet, there was I, clutching a couple of secondhand titles by Paulo Coelho. Little did I realise at the time that Coelho’s writings were about to teach me more about the essence of leadership, visioning, people management, motivation and communication for the people-centric business than all of the business lists in the book store.

Motivating a team? Try ‘The Fifth Mountain’. Creating the corporate vision? Read ‘The Zahir’. And if you are steeling your organisation for a long and difficult struggle in new markets, read the ‘The Alchemist’ – a wonderfully engaging story of a boy who follows his dreams, listens to those he meets along the way, recognises good advice and is eventually rewarded with success.

So much more rewarding and relevant to the real-world challenge of running a successful business than A N Other’s ‘How to do something difficult in 10 easy steps’! As I say, when it comes to sourcing useful advice, it’s all a question of trusting your instinct and knowing where to look.

Great answer? Well, maybe. It ticks the box, and whether we like the product/service on offer or not, we now have a good feeling about the brand, don’t we? Until recently, the standard answer to that type of question said more to the marketplace about the values and morality of the business, as projected by its leader, than anything you might read on its website about its products, services, green policy or profits. It must be a good company because it cares about autistic children. Right?

 Now consider this. Would the answer to that question be sufficient to nudge you, the buyer, in the direction of that company’s services in preference to another business offering the same or similar? Perhaps, and perhaps not. It depends upon what motivates you when considering the seller’s proposition, and whether the values, operating ethos and morality of the seller hold any sway whatsoever.

However, for me, the interesting thing was not the answer, but that the question was being asked in the first place. Increasingly, we want to know more about the personality of the organisations we may be considering doing business with. The interviewer has tapped into this need and, as far as our entrepreneurial interviewee is concerned, answering the morality question is relatively easy. More often than not, for the small business, the answer comes from the heart. A detailed substantiation is rarely necessary.

However, scale-up the organisation for the mid-sector or corporate markets, and the question takes on an entirely different hue. This simple question alludes to an altogether more complex interrogation: ‘We understand all about your services and your commercial proposition. Now let us understand more about the way you work, your culture and your values. What do you stand for? How might our association with you affect our reputation, for better or for worse?’

Questions such as these bring into sharp relief a far more complex challenge for the majority of businesses, far beyond the calculated messaging inherent within so many Corporate Social Responsibility agendas:

• First of all, the questions demand an answer. No faltering, stumbling, or avoidance tactics.
• Secondly, they may be asked not just of the Leader or the Board of Directors, but possibly of the entire workforce.
• Thirdly, the questions can and most probably will be asked both formally, as part of the buyer’s supply chain research and tendering processes, and also informally during the everyday buying and selling routine.
• And finally, the supplier will increasingly be asked to substantiate aspects of its personality, morality, organisational proposition and core values by way of policies, best practice, smart partnering initiatives, leadership examples and hard facts.

 Answering these questions entails listening to the heartbeat of your organisation more than ever before, and ensuring that its people live and breathe its core values. Yet, the bar is about to be set much higher. With the exception of the small, owner-led business whose Leader can respond from the heart to the question of core values and morality, most businesses remain ill-prepared to present, in good faith, a substantiated organisational proposition. Those firms which take steps now to make that leap are the ones with the greatest potential to combine the delivery of long-term societal benefits with a nudge of the market in their direction.

Whilst it is easy to head-off down a path from which a discussion on corporate values never returns, this one is nicely framed by the real-world example of what drives GE to build wind turbines – is it environmental altruism or the profit motive?

 I would argue that the two need not be mutually exclusive. In fact, in some saturated supplier markets, where service differentiation is already difficult to articulate clearly, values are becoming part of the marketing proposition – marketers are asking themselves ‘Do we actually have a core set of values and, if so, how do we portray them in the marketplace without sounding glib and ‘me too’ ‘? Of course, profits still have to be made, but the alignment of buyer/supplier values in the supply chain will hold greater sway than used to be the case.

 The challenge facing all organisations is to ensure that the business does more than just talk a good game. It has to be seen, through the daily actions of its employees, to be embracing a core set of values which represents the operating ethos of the organisation and its leadership. For many, superseding the service proposition with the organisational proposition is, indeed, uncharted territory, but it represents an aspect of proposition development which has the potential to nudge the buying decision in your direction.

Examples of message dislocation abound: -

• The big banks portray themselves as the friend of small business, yet are generally perceived by the small business community to be unsupportive when times are hard.
• BP’s self-portrait as an environmentally-friendly business flies in the face of the emerging perception of the company as one which puts profits before safety and environmental care.
• Consider the UK’s Valuation Office Agency, a government quango which portrays itself as the reasonable voice of commercial property tax-raising power, yet is perceived as being contentious, unreasonable and antagonistic.
• And the UK government’s Foreign Office, portrayed as a progressive and sophisticated overseas support for UK business, yet perceived by some to be staffed by introverted, ‘risk-averse clones’.

It is easy to discount arguments such as these as the rabid claims of a disenchanted minority. However, mud sticks, particularly in our highly networked online social/business environment. A well-spun press release alone is no longer sufficient to counter an emerging negative market perception.

So, let’s consider the relationship between a) how a business formally portrays itself, b) how the day-to-day actions of employees can alter the perception of the business and c) the market’s expectations of the service provider. The first thing to recognise is that Portrayal, Perception and Expectation rarely align naturally for any significant period of time. There are simply too many external factors altering expectations and influencing perception. So the choice is yours; pray for divine intervention or take action to minimise message dislocation. Meeting the market’s expectations is a continuous work-in-progress, not just in delivering service value but in the portrayal of a higher sense of purpose and meaning which permeates the entire business and is perceived as having become part of the fabric of the organisation.

In short, it is no longer just about pitching service definition. It is about pitching the organisation, its culture, values, beliefs and ethos. This is a hard nut to crack because it is not just a question of marketing or a question of human resource management or a question of service delivery. It is a question of actively shaping and communicating the true personality of the business – its values, its standards, its ethos, what it stands for, its principles, as well as its services and solutions – in the knowledge that the entire organisation is on-board and has the skills, tools, belief and wherewithal to deliver.

The organisation in its entirety has to be seen to living the brand message, and delivering upon the promises being made to the marketplace. If those representing the organisation, through their informal words and daily actions, fail to dovetail what they say and what they do with the organisation’s self-portrait, then the ensuing credibility gap between words and actions is likely to have a detrimental effect upon the market’s perception of the business, and may ultimately bring about its undoing.

Take, for example, terms such as Sustainability, Corporate Social Responsibility or Climate Consciousness as the latest in a long list of buzz terms which have become fundamental to the way in which a business seeks to portray its morality and higher-value credentials. Talking the talk is all very well, and from there the ethical high-ground is clearly visible, but organisations are increasingly being asked, both formally and each day in informal conversation, to substantiate their claims and prove that they are walking the walk. Blink, stall, hesitate or fail to respond and the battle is surely lost. This is organisational positioning as an extension of service positioning. The further apart Portrayal and Perception become, the larger the credibility gap and the more likely that the market’s Expectations fail to be met, and so respect for the organisation, its people and its capability diminishes.

 Tightening the relationship between Portrayal and Perception, and ensuring that Expectation can be met, is a crucial new area of cross-discipline challenge within any services organisation. To gain an edge, the successful service provider must better coordinate each as part of an integrated approach to communication and delivery which proves beyond doubt that the organisation has a meaningful proposition, has taken a position on the important issues of the day and, importantly, is already ‘walking the walk’. Hoping to impress the market by spinning an idealistic portrayal of a service, in isolation, is no longer enough.

Even though the UK’s Office for National Statistics has estimated 1.1% growth in GDP for the second quarter, employee engagement was always going to be a lagging indicator, and so the CIPD’s conclusion is understandable. Having been bombarded during the past 18 months with downbeat media messaging on credit crunch, bankers’ bonuses, redundancies, the national debt, the Eurozone crisis and the upcoming restructuring of our public services, one quarter’s relatively good news on GDP was never likely to see an employee feel-good index rebound to pre-recession levels.

There is still a long way to go, with set-backs guaranteed and much bad news still to be swallowed en route. However, the positive signs are there at every level in the economy, from micro businesses to major PLCs. If you have a finger on the pulse, you can feel it. Having, in relative terms, ‘hunkered down’ for the past 18 months, businesses are sensing the re-emergence of market opportunity. Deals are being done, restructuring is happening, efficiencies are being driven through, focus is being tightened and services are evolving to meet the needs of a new economic reality. At the macro-economic level, life goes on.

Yet, for individual businesses, there is a problem of perception. The longer a business allows a gap to persist between the re-emergence of general economic prosperity and the re-bounding of employee positivism and certainty, the greater the likelihood that the individual business is naturally portrayed as negative in a positively rising marketplace. In a post-recession, cut-throat competitive environment where genuine commercial differentiation is difficult to achieve or sustain, the attitude of your organisation and its people can make the difference between winning and losing the next tender.  

It is therefore time for leaders to lead, by looking afresh at how the business and its people are portrayed in the marketplace. Then, positive employee engagement will surely follow.

As is often the case in competitive situations, whether related to sport or business, the market’s perception of poor performance in a high-profile, public setting casts a spotlight on the ability and commitment of the organisation and the management style of those in charge. In the case of the English football squad, the team Coach, Fabio Capello, has attracted particular rage. Fans, as stakeholders with a vested interest in the team’s success, are hungry for answers and the blame game has begun.

 In order to consider what the anecdotal evidence of Capello’s reign as Coach says about the personality of the English football squad, I plugged some assumptions into the Balanced Business Personality monitor model. It is important to make clear that this analysis is based purely upon my interpretation of anecdotal evidence. Under normal conditions, participants would respond to a series of questions and statements designed to offer clues as to the state of the organisation’s personality and, importantly, how that personality may be being perceived in the marketplace. However, in this case, an in-depth analysis has not been performed, so many of the subtleties normally hidden within the data cannot be uncovered or commented upon.

One output from BBPM is a top-level or ‘headline’ definition of organisational personality. The BBPM model assesses an organisation’s attributes, differentiating characteristics and traits against 16 core business personality types. Based upon news and commentary about Capello, the players, the coaching staff and their routines, the BBPM output suggests that the English World Cup squad presents a ‘MAVERICK POTENTIAL’ headline organisational personality. Though the evidence may be purely anecdotal, clear themes run throughout the analysis which provide reasonable substantiation for this conclusion:

 A squad of footballing ‘superstars’, many highly rewarded at club level for the rare mix of individual skill, club-level team-orientation and an innate drive to succeed, and most with existing high-profile public personae, are brought together for a finite period to perform a major task. Having been taken out of their normal team-environment and forced together with other high-profile superstars, their propensity to display individualism and act autonomously within the hierarchy of the new team is natural. The management challenge is to focus the innate individualism of all team members on a singular team goal, either by developing a culture of joint responsibility and ‘greater good’ or by putting in place restrictions which are designed to achieve control.

By appearing to have tended towards the latter option, Fabio Capello has been painted by the media as a control freak. Restrictions including no access to wives and girlfriends, no mobile phones, no Playstations and almost no alcohol represented, to the ‘superstar’ team members, a restricted ‘prison-camp’ environment.

Imagine the predicament facing the beleaguered Coach. In an effort to control the team and focus on achieving a key goal, the ‘boss’ appears to have placed severe limitations on many of the squad’s normal routines. So, having already removed each team member from the comfort of club-level team-orientation, the boss imposes upon these professionals what are perceived to be additional controls. If pushed too far, this approach has a high potential to provoke a negative reaction.

 Yet, I have some sympathy for Capello in this situation. The BBPM model suggests that if he had failed to put in place stringent controls in order to achieve the desired level of focus, an organisation comprising team members who are primarily motivated by creativity, autonomy and individualism tends to automatically assume the initiative. However, they do so as individuals and are therefore more likely to act to the detriment of achieving team goals. Without controls in place, such an organisation begins to display the characteristics of the FRAGMENTED organisational personality type. The nature of this personality type suggests it is unlikely ever to succeed in achieving a singular team goal. 

What else could Capello have done? The one area of pundit commentary which remains under-reported is the degree to which the team came together as a close-knit operating unit. Analysis of cultural integration is often subjective, and so comments can appear unconvincingly ‘touchy feely’. Yet in this case the clues are there. Capello has had innumerable successes at club-level, and is clearly adept at creating a positive team bond or culture over time. However, with limited access to ‘his’ players throughout the year, and coming face-to-face with the Club vs Country dichotomy, it may have been tempting to apply the strength of single-minded executive drive in order to build and motivate the team, rather than invest in developing a team culture.

 Capello’s animated antics on the touchline during each game attest to his enduring passion for driving his team relentlessly towards the desired outcome. When John Terry commented publicly about negative feelings within the team camp, he openly questioned Capello’s management style. Capello’s description of the outburst as a ‘big mistake’ was simultaneously menacing and dismissive. In a more culturally-oriented organisational environment, raising the flag of doubt would have been an accepted course of action.

Yet, as most managers know, developing that culture for the longer-term takes time, effort and an ongoing involvement with the team members. This does not appear to be Capello’s style. By driving the team hard from the top as the means to achieving the key goal, the approach may actually have contributed to the poor performance of the team.

In summary, the individualistic nature of the team personality which grew-up around Capello in the England locker room was always going to be tempted to push back against his propensity to control activities and drive endlessly for achievement. In the end, team members appeared to resent, then mock Capello’s single-mindedness, and England’s World Cup aspirations paid the price.

For executives and team leaders in sport and business, the lessons are profound.

Persuading employees, via the carrot of enhanced remuneration, to perform SMART business development activities will deliver short-term results at best and represents an organisational command & control orientation which has seen better days. The problem with SMART anything is that those on the delivery side of the bargain spend more time gathering evidence as proof of performance than actually believing in the usefulness of the tasks and performing them from the heart.

This is just one of many current examples which appear to show the old models of mechanistic business management crumbling under the weight of their own bureaucracy and outdated thinking as new organisational innovations and more effective routes to market open up. With executives facing unparalleled choice and options for going to market in the future, commentators, advisers and consultants ought to have more to offer than a re-hash of 20^th century control-speak. Even if some sectors, such as professional services, are slow to embrace change, those with an interest in progressive HR should be showing the way forward rather than publicising techniques which are well past their sell-by date.

Moreover, if a turnaround in brand fortunes is not achieved quickly, then a more insidious turn of events may occur; not only will the carefully crafted brand image have been tainted, but many of the future actions of the business and its employees, whether good, bad or indifferent, will tend to become associated with an overpoweringly negative stereotype. As employees instinctively seek to adapt their actions in the face of negativity, the very personality of the business begins a subtle change in temperament.   

Could things be any worse? Well, yes, in fact they could be. The grass is always greener on the other side, isn’t it? Organisations operating in the Business-to-Business(B2B) arena watch with interest and some trepidation as high profile events such as those in B2C unfold before their very eyes. At least their counterparts in B2C have the advantage, yes I said advantage, of being subjected to the glare of publicity as an early warning system. If the brand takes a high-profile knock, then rapid action can often limit the damage. Take the recent Punch Taverns homophobia incident as an example. Twitter feeds and other online social/business networks were abuzz within minutes of the offending words being spoken, enabling the company to gauge reaction and then move quickly in order to contain the problem.

No such luxury for those operating in the B2B arena. The unfortunate words and actions of employees can remain hidden for years, ultimately subverting the good intent of brand messaging and having the potential to become embedded within the organisation as pseudo ‘standard operating procedure’. So standard, in fact, that prospective customers and clients assume the offending actions are by design, part of the brand, and ‘just the way that that company does business’.

In many ways, the public flogging of businesses operating in the B2C arena, whilst unpleasant at the time, may in fact be a Godsend. After all, forewarned is forearmed, and only the most blinkered of executives would fail to act. However, for many players in B2B, the first sign that the market’s perception of the business, its people and its brand has ‘gone negative’ is when the customer fails to renew the contract. Only with hindsight, when it is often too late, does it become clear that the market’s expectations and the organisation’s values had gradually moved out of alignment.

We take a structured approach to assessing and shaping an organisation’s personality, as this best enables us to gather & interpret data and assure executives that the decisions they take regarding the future market portrayal of their business have been substantiated in fact. This is an important aspect of the assessment process because, when we talk of organisational personality, we are dealing with intangibles and opinions. By its very nature, organisational personality is a subjective concept. As such, the thoughts, opinions and emotions which, in part, help to determine the profile of the organisation, can be open to interpretation. Thus, a structured and quantified approach to assessment and analysis provides a far more reliable basis upon which to reach shaping decisions than gut instinct alone.

The Balanced Business Personality monitor relies upon a number of interlinking models and constructs which enable the assessment of personality to be performed. From the outset, it is important to recognise the multi-dimensional nature of the analytical process. We gather and analyse personality data from 3 contributing user perspectives:

• Executive View: How the Executive team views the organisation’s personality today.
• Executive Aspiration: How the Executive team would wish the organisation to be portrayed in the future.
• Organisational Reality: How the employees view the organisation’s personality today.  

 
This approach to comparing and contrasting the interpretation of opinion data provides a multi-dimensional perspective: 

• A comparison of Executive View versus Executive Aspiration delivers a Board-level perspective on how the portrayal of the organisation’s personality ought to be evolving over time to achieve longer-term aspirations. This perspective provides the lynchpin linking the overall strategic goals of the organisation as a market-facing business with how the executive leadership of the business perceives the organisation today. By making this comparison, executives gain an initial insight into the extent of the work which may be involved in moving the portrayal of the business from today’s status quo towards the achievement of a market portrayal which is naturally promoted by all staff and is readily sustained. 
• By contrasting Executive View and Organisational Reality, the resulting gap analysis highlights the degree to which the executive leadership and the employees have differing opinions regarding the organisation’s public persona which warrant further investigation. It almost goes without saying that executives, managers and staff members each have the potential to view the values, ethos and competences of the organisation from differing, and sometimes opposing angles. Whereas the executive strives to take an all-encompassing strategic view of a specific discipline or function, the staff member as functional specialist typically has a more short-term and functional perspective. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that opinions differ. This comparison often represents a wake-up call to management as, not only will it highlight minor discrepancies, it may also help the executive leadership to understand how the market’s perception of the organisation may be hindering the achievement of key strategic goals. 
• Finally, a comparison of Executive Aspiration with Organisational Reality allows the project team to begin to consider what actions will be necessary to shape the organisation’s personality for the future. After all, by comparing the executives’ ideal future model of portrayal and market perception with how employees view the organisation as it stands today, obvious differences are highlighted and the goals of the shaping process are immediately brought into focus. This comparison therefore ensures that, where employee opinion appears to be at odds with the longer-term positioning goals of the executive group, specific actions can be deployed during the personality shaping process to bring the contradictory views into alignment.   

The analytical framework described above provides the foundation for the entire process of organisational personality assessment and shaping. It describes a core set of opinion data which has been gathered from across the business and is predicated on the involvement of employees at all levels.

By taking this approach, the organisation’s leadership is able to:

a)      identify and quantify any major disconnects between employee opinions and executive opinions,

b)      set executive-level aspirations for the future portrayal of the organisation’s personality, and

c)      approve an organisation-wide action plan to move forward the marketing portrayal of the organisation as a uniquely differentiated, service-delivering entity.

The next articles in this category will discuss the Organisational Balance construct, the Core Process construct and data gathering for Dichotomy Analysis.