When organisations lose their way
When we think about the promise, the commitments an organisation makes to its customers, the very essence of for what it stands, it is hard to imagine a situation where nobody knows what this is.
And yet it happens. ‘Who knows’ happens more frequently than we might imagine. And it happens gradually over time.
Organisations are established, developed, grown and become successful. They get very good at doing their ‘thing’ and serving their market. And when the market is changing, and they don’t see this, their ‘promise’ becomes redundant. Their customers no longer value that promise and want something different. If the organisation does not make that shift, it results in a situation where nobody really knows what they are about.
“Many brands have lost their way in the process of evolving from a small company to a much bigger corporation.”
And we’ve seen it happen, infamous cases like Kodak being a great example. They were so focused on their promise around film, and generating prints from photographs, they failed to see that the customers were moving on from this and demanding something else. They failed to realise their promise was nothing to do with the technology or the features (film and prints) when it should have been about sharing memories. If they had understood their promise was connected to sharing memories (a benefit and emotional connection), who knows, they may have been able to innovate within that context, whereas they got stuck in the wrong context, and ultimately failed.
‘who knows?’ often occurs when an organisation’s promise is not re-visited from time to time and is too heavily focused on the tangible facts of what the organization delivers, rather than the underlying reason its customers buy from it.
It’s a bit like the cog in a gear that isn’t looked after overtime. Eventually, it gets worn away and what was once a cog, becomes a smooth metal ring, of no use to anybody.
This great visualization shows how large organisations have come and gone, and risen up again over the last 20 years. Some of these have lost their way and have found it again, others have lost it never to re-emerge. All credit to Microsoft who has maintained its position consistently throughout the period, General Electric has not been so fortunate.
For the first time in 127 years, General Electric has recruited two outsiders to its executive team in the last year. Just last week it announced an external CFO appointment to join the new Chairman and CEO appointed last October. Perhaps this is their response to their challenges of 'who knows?'
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