Impact of drivers on organisations

Once we appreciate the nature of the drivers, we can establish some important and useful rules for management:

  1. All jobs should provide reasonable scope for fulfilling all four drivers.
  2. Managers must balance carefully the individual's competitive drive to acquire with the group's need to bond.
  3. For organisations to thrive, everyone must have achievable and manageable goals.
  4. Products and services should be designed with value (acquiring), service (bonding), innovation (learning) and reliability (defending) in mind.

Let me comment briefly on each of these four conclusions from my own experience.

Fulfilling Jobs

I have seen organisations without any job descriptions, with no interest in training or in developing their people. I have, as yet, never seen a company that consciously sets out to fulfil the lives of its people with a clear focus on how it helps them meet the four basic drivers. No one goes to work to fail. However, the unthinking attitude of many managers assumes they do. They treat them accordingly almost as necessary evils, and then wonder at the high turnover rate and lack of commitment.

Lawrence and Dyer chart the history of automation at Ford in the 1920s from early innovation and management and labour collaboration to the "slave labour of the 1930s" and the rise of Unionism. "Ye get the wages, but ye sell your soul at Fords – ye're worked like a slave all day" a worker said and then significantly added: "A man checks his brains and his freedom at the door when he goes to work at Fords." Renewing American Industry.

The values of the western world have been much vaunted recently by Presidents and Prime Ministers. Many corporate annual reports still boast that "our workforce is our greatest asset", but these values and these boasts ring hollow. There is little trust between labour and the executives. This matters to the point where European economic growth is constrained by the inability of both sides to work together, to deal with such massive common threats as the pensions time–bomb, the inequitable compensation for civil servants and private sector workers, or the drive for fundamental improvements in efficiency and value–added in economies such as France and Germany, hamstrung by their weak labour laws. 

The truth is that labour, abused for so long, and management, so ill–trained for so long, are ill–equipped to cope. The more leaders flout their positions of authority, the more they govern without the stamina of consistent values themselves, and the more they are seen to be abusing the trust that is placed in them, the less likely are western democracies to look so value–driven or to be so effective as they would like. 

Workers need fulfilling jobs. They need their drivers met. Given the suffering of the Industrial Revolution in Europe and America, this is a big ask. Each company can start with its own workforce, and it should start now to overcome the endemic mistrust between them.

Balancing the Drivers

It is now commonplace to hear of executives, investment and corporate bankers being paid millions in bonuses. What receives less coverage is the divide–and–rule, fearful and anxious regimes that are imposed upon them. Financial products are managed as separate fiefdoms, short–term results are everything; there is little supportive collaboration, and little concern for the client. Is it a wonder that most years see an exodus following bonus day? Is it a wonder that clients disdain the aggressive self–seeking of their would–be advisers? Is it a wonder that so many lead such unfulfilled lives?

This picture could as readily be used to describe many leading professional firms. The target of 2000+ billable hours per annum has become the materialistic cross that destroys marriages and lives. There is still less concern for people development, bonding, learning or job security. This is a dog–eat–dog world of the survival of the most recently successful, as measured by the single yardstick of billings.

Leadership is about knowing yourself, knowing your own values and living by them. Companies with such an understanding can readily make a difference. Recently, the major British brewer, Bass, set such an example, requiring its lawyers from Clifford Chance not to work excessive hours, but instead to quote for and deliver a reasonable workload within a reasonable time. 

Setting Goals

In most cases the goals set are purely financial. And the setting is done by management. In most cases the goals for the next year are higher than those achieved in this. In most cases the debate, if there has been one, is heavily dependent on coercion and macho posturing. It is rarely concerned with the precise detail as to how a further 10% or 20% can be achieved, how such a success can be resourced and helped, and how the rest of the individual's or group's life can be improved. 

Business Planning, setting goals, can and should be one of the most creative, helpful and mutually inspiring exercises. As it is, the process all too frequently becomes a frustrating dumb show of eye–to–eye bullying – who will blink first? The Director spends little or no time understanding the business in question, offers no insights, no deterministic help. The budget executive wins or loses in the game of stare–down, and leaves more stressed by the experience. The plan concocted in this unexamined manner now becomes fixed in concrete, and is used to pressurise and to measure performance over the coming year. The acquiescing executive has contrived an irrelevant, but no less painful, rod for his or her own back. No learning has taken place, no bonding – instead, both parties now collaborate at a mutually stressful form of cover–up, and, in doing so, each loses the respect and affection of the other. The Director has been unable to be useful, to help, to reassure or to teach the executive – he looks no more than a rather mindless bully. In the process he loses the followership of the executive and, unless he or she is remarkably insensitive, feels all too inadequate in not being able to contribute. 

The worst of such a situation is that each side complains about the other, neither side feels any joy or satisfaction, and neither understands what has gone so wrong. At least in this example, both have met and talked; there may have been scope for some pleasantries, even some shared frustrations. In many instances, there is not even the face–to–face encounter, and then, not only are the four drivers ignored, we are now in the world of "abused" drivers and of reaction that rapidly becomes counter–productive, even calculatedly destructive. 

An example is explored in a case study about one of the world's largest banks and their  "Meaningless targets".

Setting goals should be about far more than two–dimensional financial figures. If organisations are to thrive and prosper, then they must understand and respond to the complex feelings of their staff, and that means understanding the four drivers. The more we ignore these, the less our future success.

Most Merger & Acquisition projects ignore these drivers, and the feelings associated with them. It could be said, perhaps, that the failure of most mergers and acquisitions to add value to the overall sum of the companies involved is related directly.

Designing and Delivering Services That Satisfy

I have recently been advising a digital printing company – this is an example of how respecting and responding to the complete set of client drivers has led to a transformation not just in the digital print machinery supplied, but the mind–set of the sales and marketing team, how they develop and deliver their services. The transformation is particularly impressive because the digital print arena is relatively new to the parent group, Canon, one of the world's leading brands for cameras, sold in relatively small unit values to individuals from the general public. Print machinery is high ticket item sold to professionals. The arena is also relatively new for the print companies historically familiar with the large, greasy and inky world of litho presses, huge print runs, with little scope for design or print flexibility.

During the last few years, a seismic change has taken place in the print room. Today we can access a text remotely via the internet, download it digitally onto the Canon press and print it out at once in any number of copies. The service is clean, silent, rapid. There is almost limitless scope for online real–time editing, improvements in design and distribution. Clients no longer need to worry about long runs. Stockpiled brochures used to become outdated – now clients can call off their requirement in real time, and link delivery to the shared databases. Changes, updates can be made quickly.

The average age of print room managers and professional print companies is in the mid–40s. For many, the changes are worrying. They are unfamiliar with the new technology; they have decades of experience and familiarity with the large, old–fashioned metal printers. They are uncomfortable with the move from production to client servicing as the major theme of their business. They may find the range of options, speed, the scope for colour and the potential to add value through design skills, a daunting challenge. Above all, the key note is to understand the clients' business, to empathise with their real needs – a big step from their historic focus on large print runs and on production engineering and machinery, rather than people.

Canon had started out with the customary sales process and teams, preselling advice, marketing the brand, followed by hard face–to–face selling with service engineers to sort out the problems as they occurred. They did well, because the products are good. But they did not do well enough. The transformation in their sales strategy came as they applied the four Drivers both to their own staff and also to their target customers.

Bonding:

Both groups were challenged, not only by the new technologies, but also by the pace with which it changed and improved. Both were challenged by the realisation that the true value of Canon's equipment lay in transforming the print business, opening new markets, enabling real growth to take place. This was not just a replacement for yesterday's technology – it was the propeller to a wholly new league of business. Both sides felt vulnerable, lonely and ignorant. The most common undiscussable was "Do I have the skills to be able to do this?". Both sides, however, had a common experience – they tended to work alone, either as a solo salesman in a geographical patch, or as the sole owner manager of the business. That was why Canon started to arrange for the two to get together to receive training that would help both to understand their businesses, and to seethe salesman as the long–term business advisor, product champion and servicer of the equipment. Canon wanted the two sides to bond.

Learning:

Most owner managers of business are quick learners. The next step was to match this with training courses, workshops, illustrative case histories and a service and business support unit. There is a conscious effort to help each and every client grow, learn and succeed.

Acquiring:

The machines are stunning, the potential for step–by–step improvements in profitability is no less satisfying. The Canon focus has turned from selling more boxes to helping its clients build a more profitable business.

Defending:

Finally the Canon promise is to provide continuous product improvement and enhancement, to go on helping their clients through case histories, clubs and education – the clients will not be alone (bonding), they will keep improving (learning), their businesses will grow (acquiring) and Canon will be there for them (defending).

Let's wrap up by considering the implications of these drivers on leaders.

 

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