Rethinking organizational 'wants'.

• Author: Hall, Robert
• Position: Marketing Solutions

What does your organization really want? Call it purpose, or strategy, or mission or aspirations--many organizations are painfully re-examining themselves on that most basic of questions.

The late Stanley Marcus, chairman emeritus of Neiman Marcus, had a simple way of defining the company's purpose. "The purpose of business is to provide products or services that the market would be willing to pay you a profit for," His definition makes explicit that the value received by the customer is the driver of profit, and therefore, if you want more profits, then your "wants" must deliver more value.

Many recent "wants" have fallen out of favor as it became evident that too much of the wanting centered on getting value rather than giving value. Stock price, management gain, short-term profits. These "wants" are bereft of value for customers. They are "wants" that need to be earned from value delivered.

Process vs. content

Mature industries like airlines, fast food, telecommunication and financial services have become quite adept at zeroing in on the stock price or earnings per share they want to achieve. They have honed a competence in creating "street" expectations. Their ability to measure and report on these measures has never been stronger.

What most have not matured in equal part is the ability to define and create the distinctive value they want to deliver that will produce--that is, earn--those results.

That is partly because there can be an intrinsic conflict between the two. What drives predictable results is careful control of mechanics and process. What drives customer value is a commitment to creative experimentation, constant learning and invention, and continual mining of the corporate value proposition. "Process versus content" is how the conflict is often framed and often played out on management teams.

Like people who are either dominantly right-handed or left-handed, many organizations have become process-dominant and content-passive. The mechanical steps of process often swamp the creative processes of value creation, draining the organization of what probably formed it in the first place--an excitement about delivering something of unique value to customers.

We see recognition of this...