Keep on top in a bottom market.

• Author: Guttman, Howard M.
• Position: Marketing model - Business & Finance

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

"Without aligned roles and responsibilities, it is difficult to imagine an organization being able to respond to the pressures of the marketplace in time to stave off trouble."

EARLY IN 2009, Patrick Parenty was promoted to the position of president of brands for L'Oreal s Professional Products Division. Like most consumer products companies, L'Oreal experienced a difficult sales environment during 2008. All seven brands in the Professional Products Division suffered, but the one that held up best in a difficult market was Redken Fifth Avenue, which Parenty has led since 1999.

"If you have an organization where strategy, business priorities, and roles and responsibilities are very clear, and people are held accountable, you will have a relatively stronger business," Parenty asserts. "In a downturn, you probably won't be able to avoid losing some business, but you will have smaller losses than the competition."

Parenty is describing the horizontal, high-performance organization model, which Redken has been following for more than a decade. It is a radical departure from the traditional, hierarchical model that continues to dominate the corporate landscape, and it is the best way we know to drive up and sustain results in good times and bad.

In December 2008, the Wall Street Journal reported the results of two surveys conducted by The Conference Board: one in July 2008 and, the second, with the same group of executives, in November. In between, the credit crunch had deepened, and the global economy had slowed substantially. How did these changes affect the participants' view of the challenges facing their companies? After the downturn, execution of business strategy remained the top priority, but nearly twice as many respondents said they were concerned about the need for speed, flexibility, and adaptability to change. The horizontal, high-performance model ideally is suited to deal with all of these.

In today's business world, work gets done largely by teams. A horizontal, high-performance organization is made up of high-powered teams, working at peak potential, at every level. Everyone on every team understands the overall company strategy and the operational goals that stem from it. Each team is focused on achieving the highest level of results as quickly as possible.

Think about the benefits of the model, especially in a time of contraction and churn: greater top-to-bottom alignment; elimination of silos; faster, belier decisionmaking; more flexibility; greater sense of accountability; and added focus on results, How do you best equip teams to deal with the challenges of a downturn? How do you get the maximum benefit from the model? It begins with the process of "alignment," which is gaining the agreement of everyone on the team in five key areas: business strategy; goals and deliverables coming from the strategy; roles and responsibilities at individual and department levels; protocols for interpersonal behavior and decisionmaking; and business relationships and interdependencies. Let us take a closer look at this alignment:

Business strategy. This is about the fundamentals. What is our competitive differentiator? What is the direction for new business development? What products or...